Bitcoin News and Finance: What You Need to Know

Pavel Durov, CEO of Telegram, has hinted at a series of Web3 enhancements coming to the popular messaging platform. Durov talked about the benefits that tradable usernames and channel links might have in the future, creating a marketplace where users could use them in the same way Ethereum Name Service addresses are utilized. Telegram Might Receive Web3 Enhancements Digital companies are starting to see benefits that Web3, NFTs, and user-led digital marketplaces might bring to their operations. Pavel Durov, CEO of Telegram, one of the most popular messaging services linked to crypto, has hinted at the integration of some Web3 services into the platform. Durov examined the success of a recent domain name auction on the TON network where more than 2,000 domains were sold for prices as high as $260,000. TON is the platform that Telegram dropped in 2020 due to a restraining order requested by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for selling alleged unregistered securiti...

The CEO of a major cryptocurrency exchange, Bitstamp, says that his trading platform is seeing “massive crypto interest” from institutional clients. “Many institutional companies are looking to make their first move into crypto,” he explained. Bitstamp’s CEO on Crypto Regulation, Institutional Interest Bitstamp’s global CEO, Jean-Baptiste Graftieaux, shared his view on cryptocurrency regulation in an interview with Business2community, published Monday. Discussing crypto winter, he explained that Bitstamp has “a very active licensing journey across all the regions – 10 in progress globally.” The executive added that his crypto exchange will increase its regulatory footprint over the next couple of quarters in order to be “in a strong position to fully participate in the next bull run.” He shared, “We see a strong trend on the institutional side,” elaborating: Many institutional companies are looking to make their first move into crypto – there is massive crypto interest from our ...

Despite the apparent slow embrace of the e-naira digital currency by Nigerians, the Central Bank of Nigeria governor has said his institution is targeting a tenfold increase in the number of users of the digital currency in the next twelve months. The governor predicted that the use of cash will “dissipate to zero” while the “use of digital currency will increase to become part of our lives.” E-Naira to Become Available to All Nigerians Some ten months after its launch, the app for the Nigerian central bank digital currency (CBDC) — the e-naira — has now been downloaded 840,000 times, a report has said. This revelation suggests that less than one million Nigerians have embraced the digital currency that the CBN touts as a better alternative to volatile cryptocurrencies. The revelation of the number of times the e-naira app has been downloaded follows reports of growing Nigerian interest in cryptocurrencies. For instance, early this month, Bitcoin.com News reported that a survey h...

As a crypto trader, you have to be on your toes. From checking market conditions to tracking your portfolio, there are many things to keep track of. Whether a newbie or a pro, it’s essential to pick a reliable and user-friendly platform to help you make informed decisions from the get-go and on the go. Introducing Phemex , an all-in-one cryptocurrency trading and digital asset investment platform. From advanced features to 24/7 customer support, Phemex has everything you need to make the most out of your portfolio. In this Phemex article, we’ll look at all the features that make this platform stand out from the rest. We’ll also see how it could help you take your trading game up a notch! Phemex Mobile App Features The Phemex Mobile App offers everything a crypto trader needs, all in one place. The user interface is clean and easy to navigate, making it easy for anyone to get started with the platform. It allows you to seamlessly place orders with a single button, accessible fr...

After seeing Ghana’s inflation rate surge to 31.7% in July, the Bank of Ghana responded by hiking the benchmark interest rate by 300 basis points. In addition to the rate hike, the central bank said it will gradually raise banks’ primary reserve requirements. One expert has said President Nana Akufo-Addo must trim the size of his government. Largest Benchmark Rate Hike Since 2002 In an attempt to tame the country’s runaway inflation rate, which topped 31.7% in July, the Ghanaian central bank hiked the benchmark interest rate by 300 basis points. Following the latest hike, which is the largest increase on record since 2002, Ghana’s benchmark interest rate is now 22 percent. According to a Bloomberg report , the latest increase means Ghana’s benchmark rate has now risen by 550 basis points since November 2021. In addition to increasing the benchmark rate, the Bank of Ghana (BOG) revealed in its emergency monetary policy committee (MPC) press release that it plans gradually increase b...

Iran’s association of importers has stressed the need for a stable regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies now that the Iranian government is officially using crypto to pay for imports. “By the end of September, the use of cryptocurrencies and smart contracts will be widespread in foreign trade with target countries,” a government official said. Imports Association: Iran Needs Stable Crypto Regulation Alireza Managhebi, the chairman of Iran’s Importers Group and Representatives of Foreign Companies (Imports Association), voiced concerns about the country’s crypto regulation Saturday, local media reported. He stressed that a stable regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies should be established for cryptocurrencies to be successfully used as a means of payment for imports. Noting that crypto can be useful in this regard under the right regulatory infrastructure, Managhebi said: Our main and most important concern is that this new method cannot be exploited by some people. “The...

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...