Bitcoin News and Finance: What You Need to Know

Officials at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) say that the correlation between the performance of the Asian equity markets and crypto assets such as bitcoin and ethereum has increased significantly. IMF Staff on Crypto and Correlation to Asian Equities The International Monetary Fund (IMF) published a blog post on Monday on cryptocurrency regulation and how crypto is now “more in step with Asia’s equities.” Anne-Marie Gulde-Wolf, deputy director of IMF’s Asia and Pacific Department, Nada Choueiri, the mission chief for India, and Tara Iyer, an economist in the global financial stability analysis division of the IMF’s Monetary and Financial Markets Department, authored the post. “While the returns and volatility correlations between bitcoin and Asian equity markets were low before the pandemic, these have increased significantly since 2020,” they wrote. “Crypto trading, however, soared as millions stayed home and received government aid, while low interest rates and easy finan...

A survey by NYSE-listed Stifel Financial shows that most executives are bracing for a recession in the U.S. In addition, “53% of respondents believe that inflation will be an issue for the next two quarters to a year.” Most Executives Surveyed Say Recession Cannot Be Avoided Stifel Financial Corp. (NYSE: SF) announced the results of a survey it conducted on the state of the U.S. economy last week. The St. Louis-headquartered financial services company surveyed 70 corporate executives, business owners, and private equity investors between July 18 and Aug. 5. According to the company: Nearly all respondents believe the U.S. economy is either already in a recession (18%) or will face one within the next 18 months (79%). Noting that 3% think the U.S. economy will avoid a recession entirely, the firm added that “Inflation and the tight U.S. labor market represent the two biggest perceived threats to business today.” Moreover, “53% of respondents believe that inflation will be an is...

The investment management giant Invesco has launched a metaverse fund that will invest in a myriad of startups focused on metaverse technology, a Citywire report detailed on Monday. “We will seek to capitalise on these opportunities through a highly selective, valuation-conscious approach,” Tony Roberts, Invesco’s fund manager, explained. Invesco Reveals Metaverse Fund — Investment Manager Plans to Invest in Small, Medium, Large-Cap Startups On Monday, Citywire’s Chris Sloley published a report explaining that the fund manager Invesco (NYSE: IVZ ) launched a metaverse fund. According to the report , the Invesco metaverse fund will invest in small, medium, and large-cap companies worldwide that are dedicated to metaverse technologies like virtual worlds, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), augmented reality, play-to-earn (P2E) gaming, and artificial intelligence (AI). Sloley’s report notes that the fund will be managed by Invesco’s fund manager Tony Roberts and the deputy fund manager Jame...

Ethereum extended recent declines to start the week, as the token briefly fell below a key support point in today’s session. Monday’s sell-off saw the majority of the cryptocurrency top 100 in the red, with the global market cap down 1.61% as of writing. Bitcoin also slipped, once again falling below $21,000. Bitcoin Bitcoin ( BTC ) started the week in the red, as prices of the token dropped following a mini-rally over the weekend. Less than 24 hours after hitting a high of $21,668.85, BTC /USD slipped to an intraday low of $20,939.18 earlier in the day. This drop led to bitcoin moving closer to its recent support point of $20,800, which it last hit on Saturday, however bulls have so far resisted a similar occurrence today. Looking at the chart, earlier bearish momentum has somewhat eased, and as of writing, the token is trading at $21,251.86. Overall, BTC has fallen lower for seven of the last nine sessions, and this has resulted in a downward cross between the 10-day (red) mo...

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has decided to overhaul the company’s flagship metaverse app Horizon Worlds after it received heavy criticism due to its graphic simplicity. The backlash was received as a consequence of one of the selfies of Zuckerberg’s avatar in Horizon Worlds presented to illustrate the launch of the platform in Spain and France. Horizon Worlds to Get Graphics Overhaul Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, a social media and VR company, announced that a series of changes are coming to Horizon Worlds, Meta’s metaverse-focused app, to make it more immersive and visually impressive for users. Zuckerberg delivered the news via an Instagram post, where he also showed the new graphical style that the platform will use in the future. He explained : Major updates to Horizon and avatar graphics coming soon … The graphics in Horizon are capable of much more — even on headsets — and Horizon is improving very quickly. The announced overhaul comes in answer to backlash that originated f...

A set of hackers managed to impersonate Binance chief communications officer (CCO) Patrick Hillmann in a series of video calls with several representatives of cryptocurrency projects. The attackers used what Hillman described as an AI Hologram, a deepfake of his image for this objective, and managed to fool some representatives of these projects, making them think Hillmann was helping them get listed on the exchange. Binance CCO Patrick Hillmann Impersonated by Third Parties Hackers and scammers are refining their methods by including more technological tools in their schemes. Binance chief communications officer (CCO), Patrick Hillmann, reported last week about a new and sophisticated way in which attackers have used his image to perform a listing scam operation. Hillmann stated that hackers managed to program an AI (artificial intelligence) hologram of him, a kind of deepfake that was used to scam representatives of several cryptocurrency projects in Zoom calls. The hologram was...

An IT specialist working for a medical institution in Russia’s Altai Republic has been detained for illegally mining cryptocurrency at the premises of a Covid-19 hospital. The man minted digital currencies using stolen electricity for almost a year before law enforcement busted his crypto farm. Altai Resident Apprehended for Running Underground Crypto Mining Operation An employee of the republican hospital in Gorno-Altaisk, the capital town of the Altai Republic in southern Siberia, has been arrested for setting up a crypto farm at a medical facility. He had been running the mining equipment since early last year, the Russian crypto news outlets Bits.media and RBC Crypto reported. In February 2021, the man, who worked as a chief information security specialist, installed the coin minting hardware and connected it to the servers of the hospital which was previously used to treat patients with Covid-19, the republic’s Ministry of Internal Affairs detailed in a press release. Accordi...

The upcoming consensus change that Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, is planning to execute in September has worried many users about the possibility of censorship happening at a protocol level. This means that, even by interacting directly with smart contracts, blacklisted addresses would not be able to transact or operate in the base layer . Incoming Merge Event Triggers Worries in Crypto Circles The Merge , Ethereum’s migration from a proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm has raised concerns about the future of the chain when it comes to censorship. After the addresses of the smart contracts of Tornado Cash , a privacy-centered mixing protocol, were sanctioned and blacklisted by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, the privacy and censorship-resistant character of Ethereum has been in the spotlight. Gabriel Shapiro, the general counselor at Delphi Digital, believes that big validators of Ethereum will try to...

Bluebenx, a Brazilian crypto company that recently stopped customer withdrawals, has changed its story regarding the causes which took it to take that measure. While the exchange issued an email statement informing customers it had been the victim of a vicious hack, now the company states the liquidity problems were the consequence of a listing scam. Bluebenx Switches Versions Regarding Liquidity Issues Brazilian crypto investment company Bluebenx changed the version on the recent liquidity issues it is facing, having stopped the withdrawals for some customers last week. The first explanation of this resolution included allegations of the exchange being the victim of an “ extremely aggressive hack ,” with the operations halt being part of the security protocol to handle the aftermath of the event. However, now it has backpedaled on this explanation, offering a very different take on the issue. Bluebenx explained that the incident was the consequence of a listing scam, in which the ...

On Sunday, August 21, 2022, the floor value of the Cryptopunks non-fungible token (NFT) collection briefly surpassed the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT collection’s floor value. While it’s not by a huge amount, at the time, Cryptopunks floor was ​​66.45 ether, while BAYC’s least expensive NFT was 64.99 ETH . Cryptopunks Reclaims the Throne It Held Last Year by Flipping BAYC’s Floor Value Non-fungible token (NFT) sales are not doing so well this week as sales are down 18.75% lower than the week prior’s sale volume, according to cryptoslam.io statistics. Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) holds the top sales this week with $15,087,189 million in sales, up 61.47% higher than last week. 👀 pic.twitter.com/NOprcn7Vja — Nick Tomaino (@NTmoney) August 20, 2022 While Cryptopunks is the sixth largest collection in terms of this week’s NFT sales with $4,517,133 in sales this week, sales are down 52.38% lower than the week prior. Despite the lower number of sales this past week, Cryptopunks ...

On August 20, 2022, Ethereum Classic’s hashrate reached an all-time high at block height 15,776,674 as it tapped 38.37 terahash per second (TH/s). The crypto asset has seen its hashrate surge since Wednesday, August 17, jumping 39.22% higher from 27.56 TH/s to the all-time high (ATH). Ethereum Classic’s Hashpower Skyrockets to 38.37 Terahash Roughly six years after ethereum classic (ETC) miners mined the first ETC block at block height 1,920,000, ETC ’s hashrate tapped an ATH on August 20, 2022. ETC ’s hashrate reached 38.37 TH/s at block height 15,776,674. The hashrate has been added to the ETC chain as Ethereum ( ETH ) approaches The Merge upgrade on or around September 15, 2022 . Four days ago, on August 17, ETC hashrate was 27.56 TH/s and its jumped 39.22% higher since that day. ETC ’s largest mining pool is Ethermine as it commands 8.05 TH/s, which is followed by Poolin’s 8.02 TH/s. Ethermine’s and Poolin’s combined hashrate of around 16 TH/s is more than 40% of...

Gold bug and economist Peter Schiff has warned that the seeming ease in inflation for the United States economy is nothing to get too excited about, as Shark Tank star billionaire Mark Cuban is facing a class action lawsuit for allegedly promoting a “massive Ponzi scheme.” In other news, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon thinks “something worse” than a recession could be coming, and popular play-to-earn (P2E) blockchain game Axie Infinity hits $4B in sales and announces the removal of SLP rewards from classic mode. This is the Bitcoin.com News Week in Review. Peter Schiff Warns US Faces a ‘Massive Financial Crisis,’ Economist Expects Much Larger Problems Than 2008 ‘When the Defaults Start’ The economist and gold bug Peter Schiff usually has a lot to say, and this past week Schiff explained during an interview that he believes the U.S. will face a financial crisis worse than 2008’s ‘Great Recession.’ Schiff explains that the U.S. has a lot more debt than it did back then, and insists America...

According to reports on social media, a number of users have complained that FTX has blocked a transaction that was associated with the Aztec Network’s zkmoney privacy technology. Following the accusations, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried explained that transactions are monitored for AML compliance but it “does not mean any accounts were frozen.” Journalist Wu Blockchain Says an FTX User’s Account Was Frozen After the User Transacted With the Aztec Network’s Privacy Enhancing ZK-Rollups On August 18, the China-based journalist, Colin Wu ‘Blockchain,’ published a tweet that said a user who transacted with Aztec Network’s zkmoney tech , had their account frozen. Aztec Network is a privacy and scaling network, and similar to Optimism and Arbitrum it uses ZK-rollups, but Aztec Network’s zkmoney tech is privacy enhancing. Aztec’s technology uses a zk-SNARK scheme called “ Plonk ,” a general-purpose zero-knowledge proof mechanism. So while the average Ethereum network fee is 0.0014 ether or $2...

Russia’s largest market for equities, bonds, and derivatives, the Moscow Exchange, intends to launch a product based on digital financial assets by the end of the year, an executive has revealed. The trading platform is already working with a partner to organize the placement of digital tokens. Russia’s Top Exchange to Facilitate Trading of Financial Instruments Based on Digital Assets Releasing a product based on digital financial assets (DFAs) is in the plans for 2022, a high-ranking representative of the Moscow Exchange ( MOEX ) has indicated in a recent interview. The announcement comes after a turbulent period for Russia’s leading stock market when it had to deal with market volatility, sanctions pressure, and cyberattacks earlier this year. Alongside ‘digital rights,’ DFAs is currently the main legal term in Russian law that applies to various digital assets, including cryptocurrencies according to some statements by Russian officials, but primarily those that have a specific...

U.S. authorities have warned about the rising popularity of a crypto scam known as “pig butchering.” The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) explained: “The fraud is named for the way scammers feed their victims with promises of romance and riches before cutting them off and taking all their money.” ‘Pig Butchering’ Crypto Scam on the Rise U.S. authorities have been warning about a type of cryptocurrency scam called “pig butchering” that has been growing in popularity at an alarming rate. Lakewood Police Public Information Officer John Romero detailed: The term pig butchering basically comes from a farmer fattening up the pig before they slaughter it. And in this case, it’s the suspect who was fattening up their victim. The police officer explained that the pig butchering scam usually starts on social media or dating sites like Linkedin and Tinder, where the scammer finds and convinces the victim to hand over some funds. The scammer then puts the money into a crypto account w...

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has sent a cease and desist letter to five companies, including crypto exchange FTX US. CEO Sam Bankman-Fried explained that FTX does not have FDIC insurance, stating: “We never meant otherwise, and apologize if anyone misinterpreted it … to be clear FTX US isn’t FDIC insured.” FDIC Orders 5 Firms to Cease and Desist The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) issued crypto-related cease and desist orders to five companies Friday. The agency regulates and insures the deposits of FDIC-insured community banks and other financial institutions. The letters demand that the five companies and their officers “cease and desist from making false and misleading statements about FDIC deposit insurance.” They must also “take immediate corrective action to address these false or misleading statements.” The five companies are FTX US, Cryptonews.com, Cryptosec.info, Smartasset.com, and FDICCrypto.com. The FDIC detailed: Each of these compa...

SBI Holdings, the largest online brokerage in Japan, is shutting down its crypto mining business in the Russian Federation. Amid mounting uncertainty over the future of such investments due to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, as well as decreased mining profits, the financial firm said it plans to sell its equipment and withdraw. Japan’s SBI Broker to Complete Withdrawal From Russian Mining Industry Access to low-cost power and suitable climatic conditions made Russia an attractive destination for cryptocurrency miners when China cracked down on the industry in May of 2021. However, sanctions imposed over Moscow’s decision to attack Ukraine this year have hit bitcoin mining, among other Russian industries. One of the largest mining data-center operators with significant presence in Russia, Switzerland-based Bitriver, was targeted by the U.S. Treasury Department this spring. Then the U.S. company Compass Mining sought to liquidate $30 million in mining hardware installed in Siberia...

Following three consecutive days of declines, shiba inu rebounded on Saturday, as the meme coin appears to have found a support point. Cosmos was also higher, in what has mostly been a bearish start to the weekend. As of writing, the global crypto market cap is down 1.31%. Shiba Inu (SHIB) Shiba inu (SHIB) was back in the green on Saturday, as the token rallied following three straight days of declines. The world’s twelfth-largest cryptocurrency rose to an intraday peak of $0.00001397 to start the weekend. This came less than a day after prices of the meme coin were at a low of $0.00001270, which was below a key support point. Looking at the chart, this price floor was the $0.00001290 mark, however bulls resisted any further declines, pushing SHIB/USD back into the $0.00001300 region. As of writing, the 14-day relative strength index (RSI) is tracking at 52.13, which is marginally above a floor of 51.44. Should the index continue to climb, and move towards a ceiling of 58, then...

This week’s sell-off in cryptocurrency markets worsened on Saturday, with bitcoin falling below $21,000 for the first time in nearly a month. Ethereum also continued its descent in today’s session, as the price of the token dropped under the $1,700 level to start the weekend. Bitcoin Bitcoin ( BTC ) continued to reside in the red to start the weekend, as prices of the world’s largest cryptocurrency fell below $22,000. Saturday saw BTC /USD fall to an intraday low of $20,868.85, with the token edging closer to a key support level. This floor has been at the $20,800 point, which was last hit on July 16, when prices were trading below $20,500. As a result of these declines, the 14-day relative strength index (RSI) dropped to a low of 32.97, which is its lowest point since July 12. Bitcoin prices have since rebounded, and as of writing are back above $21,000. BTC is currently trading at $21,191.27. Taking a closer look at the chart, it can be seen that the 10-day (red) moving aver...

The Central Bank of Colombia is studying the launch of a digital currency, according to statements made by its manager, Leonardo Villar. The organization is evaluating the launch of this instrument as a means of unifying the different digital wallets in the country, making them interoperable and easier to use for customers. Central Bank of Colombia Studies Digital Currency Issuance Many governments in the world are preparing to launch digital currencies in order to compete with cryptocurrencies and other assets. Leonardo Villar, manager of the Central Bank of Colombia, recently announced that the organization was studying the issuance of a digital currency. During a banking convention at Cartagena, Villar explained that the functions and the convenience of such currency were being reviewed by the bank. While the officer did not offer more details about the structure or nature of the announced currency, he did reveal that one of the experiences the bank is looking closely at, is on...

Mercado Libre, a leading Latam-based e-tailer, has announced the launch of its own token, called “Mercadocoin,” for Brazilian customers. The token will be the main reward of a loyalty program on Mercado Libre’s platform and will be awarded to customers that purchase certain items linked with the token. The token will have an initial value of $0.10. Mercado Libre to Launch Mercadocoin Token to Power Loyalty Program Mercado Libre, a retailer and financial services unicorn in Latam, has announced the inclusion of cryptocurrency as a part of its royalty program. The company announced the launch of its own token, denominated mercadocoin, that will be used to power its rewards to users. The token, to be issued on top of Ethereum, will be given to users that purchase certain articles on Mercado Libre’s platform identified with the loyalty program. The program, which is already being implemented, will include Brazilian customers only, though the company aims to extend it to other countrie...