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Showing posts from September, 2020

Onecoin Victims Join Petition Seeking Establishment of European Crypto Fraud Compensation Fund

Onecoin victims have joined a consortium that wants the European Parliament to consider a petition seeking the establishment of a compensation fund. The envisioned EU-administered fund will function as an insurance kitty for current and future victims of all crypto fraud. The petitioners are proposing the levying of an “unnoticeable” fee of 0.0001 cent per €1 on all crypto-asset transactions conducted on EU territory. Explaining the pivot towards the European Parliament, the victims’ lawyer, Jonathan Levy, says they have now made the decision to approach the legislature because they know this body “will not shy away from providing remedies to people as it has done in the past with the GDPR.” Also, the victims will feel encouraged by the recent reports that the EU wants to institute continent-wide regulation of crypto assets that “will be phased in by 2022.” Previous attempts to have the EU Commission consider the petition failed to yield positive results for the victims. Meanwhile,...

Crypto Bets on the US Election Show Joe Biden Winning the Presidency by 60%

During the first half of the year, betting portals that allow people to wager cryptocurrencies on the upcoming U.S. election had shown Donald Trump winning the election. However, after Tuesday evening’s Presidential Debate, betting markets like Cloudbet show Joe Biden’s chances of getting elected is favored by 61% over the incumbent Trump. Tuesday’s Presidential Debate was considered by many as one of the “ worst debates ” in the history of American leadership. However, many people still kept score on how each candidate did during the evening’s political discourse. In addition to all the people watching the debate on television, a great number of people have been betting on the outcome. The betting web portal Cloudbet, a gambling operator that accepts BTC , USDT , BCH , and ETH , detailed that the company saw a “significant pick-up in betting activity ahead of the debate.” Tuesday evening’s Presidential Debate was considered the “worst” in American history by many political pundit...

JPMorgan Admits Fraud, Agrees to Billion Dollar Settlement for Illegal Trading

JPMorgan Chase has admitted to fraud charges and agreed to settle with the U.S. Department of Justice, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm has agreed to pay nearly a billion dollars in penalties and victim compensation. JPMorgan’s Fraud Cases The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced separate actions against New York-based global banking and financial services firm JPMorgan Chase & Co. and several of its subsidiaries on Tuesday. According to the agencies, JPMorgan has admitted to fraud charges and agreed on settlements to resolve criminal charges against it. The Justice Department explained that the criminal charges against JPMorgan Chase relate to two distinct schemes to defraud. “The first involving tens of thousands of episodes of unlawful trading in the markets for precious metals futures contracts, and the secon...

Dock Announces Mainnet Launch

Switzerland . September 30, 2020. Dock is pleased to announce the launch of its much-anticipated blockchain mainnet. The mainnet is the culmination of years of collaboration, hard work, and testing that brings to the market a bespoke credential issuing and verification platform. Dock seeks to solve the most difficult issues that face the credential industry today. Currently, most companies rely on centralized platforms that hoard data or issue digital credentials that are easy to forge. Dock was specifically built for this purpose of enabling organizations to create verifiable credentials on a decentralized network that are cryptographically secured and exist independently of any organization. Dock’s mainnet will enable issuers to create their own decentralized identities (DIDs) to authenticate credentials, while also enabling recipients to control, present, and retain ownership of their credentials. The mainnet is completely open-source and its use of the W3C’s industry-leading s...

Cumulative Ethereum Transaction Fees in 2020 Supersede Bitcoin’s by a Long Shot

This week the research and analysis team Coin Metrics published a report on how decentralized finance (defi) is “fueling Ethereum’s growth.” Meanwhile, the researchers also highlighted that Ethereum’s cumulative transaction fees in 2020 are now over $350 million and more than double the aggregated total of Bitcoin’s network fees. Coin Metrics researchers and Nate Maddrey published a new report that discusses Ethereum’s defi evolution and the growth the blockchain has seen this year. However, with the new demand Coin Metrics highlights that ETH fees have “changed dramatically” and the authors note “high gas prices are becoming the new norm.” A few defi project launches contributed to the dramatic rise in network fees including UNI, SUSHI, YAM, and YFI. The trading of the new tokens has been more prevalent on decentralized exchange (dex) platforms and because swaps are onchain this created a fee market. “This can lead to escalating transaction fees as users compete to be first in l...

Devere Group CEO Predicts Bitcoin Can Replace Gold as Top Safe-Haven Within a Generation

A few weeks ago, Devere Group CEO and founder Nigel Green said that he believed the U.S. election would bolster the price of bitcoin. Speaking with the financial broadcast MoneyFM on Monday, Green said he also believes that bitcoin will replace gold as the ultimate financial safe haven within the timespan of a generation. Devere Group CEO Nigel Green is a big believer in crypto assets like bitcoin (BTC) and he’s been more vocal about his forecasts in recent days. Last August, news.Bitcoin.com reported on Green explaining why he thinks the U.S. presidential election would have devastating effects on the U.S. dollar but also bolster bitcoin at the same time. Green’s firm Devere Group is one of the world’s largest independent financial advisory organizations in the fintech world and the firm’s assets under management (AUM) exceed $10 billion. On Monday, Green once again spoke about the crypto asset again during an interview with the broadcast MoneyFM. The discussion was prompted ...

Uniswap Captures $2 Billion Locked, Dex Volume Outpaces Second-Largest Centralized Exchange

The decentralized exchange (dex) built on Ethereum, Uniswap has accumulated a whopping $2 billion in total value locked (TVL) this week. Tuesday’s data shows out of all the decentralized finance (defi) application’s Uniswap dominates the $11 billion landscape by over 18%. Just recently, the defi space has touched a few new milestones as the ecosystem’s TVL this week has topped $11 billion. The dex Uniswap is dominating the defi landscape by 18.65% with over $2 billion TVL to-date. Uniswap is followed by Makerdao ($1.9B), Aave ($1.56B), Curve.fi ($1.22B), and the Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) project ($990M). The Uniswap trading platform has captured a massive amount of demand this week with 104,324 unique users during the last seven days. Today according to stats, the Uniswap dex is moving just as much trade volume as some of the top centralized exchanges (cex) globally. On Tuesday, Binance has the top trade volume as far as cex trade volumes are concerned with $2.5 million in 24-hour v...

Easily Spend Your Bitcoin via Prepaid Debit Card or a PayPal Account with Bitcoin of America’s Easy to Use Trading Platform

Bitcoin of America offers a number of convenient ways to transfer your bitcoin or litecoin to commonly used USD payment gateways like prepaid debit cards or a PayPal account . Read the guides below to find the method that’s best for you. Most commonly, bank transfers are used to transfer bitcoin, but using popular fiat gateways like PayPal and Prepaid debit cards can make it easy to spend Bitcoin and Litecoin anywhere that accepts USD. Sell Bitcoin to Prepaid Debit Card Want to spend your crypto at any location across the globe that accepts debit cards, to make purchases of goods and services? Simply sell your bitcoin or litecoin using Bitcoin of America’s online exchange, and you will receive a prepaid debit card for the amount sold for use immediately online; you can also obtain a physical card in the mail. If you aren’t already familiar with how prepaid cards work, they function in pretty much the same way that a pay-as-you-go mobile phone does, when you top up the phone wi...

Bitcoin Miner Maker Ebang Narrows First Half Loss To $7 Million, as Covid-19 Hit Demand

Ebang International Holdings Inc., the Chinese maker of bitcoin mining hardware, reported a net loss of $6.96 million during the first six months of this year, down from $19.07 million a year ago, as demand fell due to the coronavirus pandemic. Revenue plunged 51% to $11.04 million from $22.35 million previously, said the company in an earnings release shared with news.Bitcoin.com. For the half-year, the Nasdaq-listed Ebang sold a total 0.25 million terahash per second (TH/s) of Bitcoin hashpower. The figure represents a year-over-year decline of 86% from 1.82 million TH/s sold in the same period in 2019. Shares of Ebang rose 0.3% to $9.88 on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange, at the time of writing. The stock has tanked more than 30% since listing on the exchange in June. Then, it traded at a high of $14.95. Ebang reached a low of $3.80 during this period as well. Dong Hu, chairman and chief executive officer of Ebang, blamed the loss on the Covid-19-induced global economic recession and...

Bitcoin’s Big Believers: 6-Digits ‘Inevitable,’ BTC Has a Better Chance of Going to $100K Than Zero

For a number of years now bitcoiners have predicted that the price of bitcoin will surpass its all-time high from 2017 and many believe it will rise to the $100k or six-digit price range. This week bitcoin enthusiasts discussed the possibility of the crypto asset reaching $100k at great length. In mid-December 2017, the price of bitcoin ( BTC ) touched an all-time high (ATH) of $19,600 per coin. Today, BTC is 45.81% lower than the 2017 ATH but a number of bitcoiners believe that the crypto asset will surpass that price range. For instance, at the 2020 Virtual Blockchain Week event, the well known venture capitalist Tim Draper said he believes the price of BTC will touch $250k by 2022 or early 2023. Mark Yusko the CEO of Morgan Creek said he thinks BTC will reach $100k. Other influencers who believe $100k per BTC is attainable include Blockfyre’s Simon Dedic, Cardano’s Charles Hoskinson, and Morgan Creek’s Anthony (Pomp) Pompliano. This week a great number of average folks lev...

Token Projects to Recover $130M from the Kucoin Hack, Devs Condemned for Centralization

The cryptocurrency community has been discussing the Kucoin hack as a great number of ERC20 projects have frozen, paused, or reversed their smart contracts after the hack. Estimates say that at least $129 million ERC20 tokens affected are considered “safe” from the hacker’s clutches. Additionally, evaluations show the breach may be much larger than originally estimated, as one report says the compromise saw $280 million stolen. The Kucoin hack has been the talk of the town in crypto land these days, as the exchange was hacked on September 25, 2020. News.Bitcoin.com reported on the initial losses estimated to be around $150 million, the day after calculations were up to $200 million . Today, another analyst has stated that the hacker likely stole nearly $280 million during the Kucoin breach. “So I did some accounting of the Kucoin hack based on the wallets very likely associated and based on my estimation, there was nearly $280 million of assets stolen, not $150M,” said Larry Cerm...

Defi Token Exposed as Pump and Dump Scam in Leaked Telegram Chat 

A leaked Telegram discussion by 50 so-called crypto influencers has exposed the extraordinary steps they take in order to profit on the back off unsuspecting defi investors. According to a leaked screenshot of the chat, an elaborate plan to defraud defi investors using the worthless “$Few” tokens had been hatched. $Few tokens would be airdropped to some of the influencers who in turn promoted these to unsuspecting followers on Twitter. Once the “new flash mob project” gained traction, members of this conspiracy planned to sell the “airdropped” tokens to defi investors and thus make a profit in the process. According to a report by Boxmining, the plotters were attempting to capitalize on the current defi hype after missing out on the MEME airdrop. However, it appears the plot collapsed after a screenshot of the alleged discussion began circulating on social media. On Twitter, some users reacted angrily to the revelations and accused some of the prominent names in the defi space of b...

Grayscale Investments Scooped Up Over 17,000 BTC in the Last Seven Days

During the last seven days, Grayscale Investments purchased 17,100 BTC or $182 million worth of bitcoin using today’s exchange rates. The company’s bitcoin position is now close to 450,000 BTC worth roughly $4.7 billion. The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) is a very popular investment vehicle and in 2020 the trust has obtained a massive amount of BTC . Today, GBTC has $4.7 billion assets under management (AUM), according to data provided by bybt.com. Grayscale’s bitcoin position is also displayed on the company website as well for transparency purposes. Since the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust inception date on September 25, 2013, there are 471,022,700 shares outstanding and each share is worth 0.00095519 BTC per share. This week, digital currency proponents noticed that Grayscale scooped up around 17,100 BTC or $182 million using today’s exchange rates. Bybt.com’s data shows the trust obtained the bitcoin stash during the last seven days and GBTC’s aggregate bitcoin position is no...