Month: January 2020

In the two years since it launched cash-settled Bitcoin futures, CME has firmly established itself as a leader in the regulated crypto derivatives space despite not always being the first to market. In December 2017, it launched regulated Bitcoin futures a week after rival exchange CBOE. However, it only took 15 months for CBOE to completely withdraw from the market. By August, CME had announced record highs for Bitcoin futures trading. Most recently, Bakkt came into the market ahead of CME with its regulated options on Bitcoin futures. However, after successfully launching its own options contracts on…

Britain’s tax agency is inviting contractors to provide a tech tool to help Britain’s tax agency combat crypto cybercriminals.  What the agency wants The technology, which Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) posted on Jan. 17 in an open contract call worth 100,000 pounds sterling, should gather intelligence through cluster analysis. The HMRC’s Cybercrime team hopes this will help them correlate crypto-asset transactions with service providers.   As opposed to free online tools and human analysis that exist, HMRC reportedly believes a commercial product would help the agency illuminate the blind…

Three plaintiffs who have been involved in three separate lawsuits against Tether and its sister company Bitfinex have moved to consolidate their cases into one class-action suit. Court filings by David Leibowitz et al., Eric Young et al., and Bryan Faubus et al., accuse Tether and Bitfinex of creating “the largest bubble in human history” after they allegedly manipulated the crypto market out of up to US$1.4 trillion. All three cases were brought against the companies off the back of longstanding claims that Tether essentially printed billions of dollars worth…

Nicolas Maduro, president of Venezuela, announced on Friday the opening of a new crypto-run casino in a battered country where betting halls have all but gone extinct.  A casino for relief Maduro said Ávila National Park’s Hotel Humboldt will soon be home to an international casino that will operate with Petro (PTR), Venezuela’s state cryptocurrency, and that proceeds will fund the country’s public health and education sectors.  The announcement comes less than a decade after Maduro’s mentor, former president Hugo Chavez, ordered the closure of all betting places as harbors…

The correction in most major cryptocurrencies is shallow, which suggests that the up move is likely to continue within the next few days. The total market capitalization of the crypto space rallied from about $184 billion on Jan. 3 to a high of $250 billion on Jan. 19. That is a 35% gain within a short span of time. Usually, fast-paced rallies do not last long, hence, for the long-term health of the markets, it is better to have rallies with intermittent corrections. Bitcoin has been following the Stock-to-Flow model…

Chinese blockchain spending in areas of investment and financing deals has dropped over 40% in 2019, according to a new study by state-run sources. Over the course of 2019, China totally had 245 investment and financing deals, which is nearly 60% less than in the preceding year. Chinese blockchain investment spending has seen the biggest numbers in 2018 According to a joint study by China’s government-run financial information and media firm Xinhua and financial data platform Rhino Data, the total amount spent in blockchain investment deals has accounted for 24.4…

Speaking with Cointelegraph’s video team on Jan. 20, Satoshi-claimant Craig Wright remained confident that he will get access to the Bitcoin fortune he famously claims to be locked up in the Tulip Trust.  Access to the Tulip Trust Regarding the controversial Tulip Trust, and his ultimate ability to access his reported bitcoin fortune, Wright told Cointelegraph:  “I’m 99.9999 and a few more 9s percent certain that I will be taking control of my BTC and whatever else.” Craig Wright is one of the more famous of the many people to…