Month: July 2020

From a Teenage Dream to a $38B Blockchain

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It would seem that five years is a relatively short time for an information technology company, but Ethereum has made colossal progress during this time, growing from its own initial coin offering project to the largest blockchain platform, running about 2,000 decentralized applications. Today, the market capitalization of its native cryptocurrency, Ether (ETH), is worth $38 billion — larger than Ford Motor Company and the popular app Snapchat. Not only that, but the value of Ether has seen a 121-fold increase over the period of the network’s existence. While the…

A 17 Year Old Was Just Arrested in Connection With Twitter’s Recent Hack

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Authorities have taken a 17-year-old into custody, alleging the not-yet-adult cooked up the massive Twitter breach. “Early this morning, the FBI, IRS, US Secret Service, and Florida law enforcement placed a 17-year-old in Tampa, Florida, under arrest — accusing him of being the ‘mastermind’ behind the biggest security and privacy breach in Twitter’s history,” a July 31 article from The Verge said. The massive exploit saw many top Twitter accounts breached on July 15, including the likes of Elon Musk, Joe Biden and Bill Gates. “Our offices found 30 felony…

DeFi User Base Needs to Be More Decentralized, Says Former ConsenSys Exec

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At a Kraken-hosted webinar titled “DeFi-ing expectations: the future of Ethereum,” panelists discussed the rise of decentralized finance, its defining features and how to measure its success. The webinar was held on July 31 and featured known DeFi influencers Anthony Sassano, co-founder of EthHub.io, Ryan Sean Adams, founder of Mythos Capital, Andrew Keys, managing partner at Darma Capital and former ConsenSys executive, and William Mougayar, an early Ethereum investor and former advisor to the Ethereum Foundation. Pete Rizzo, editor-at-large at Kraken, moderated the panel, often asking somewhat provocative questions about…

Money Reimagined: Let’s Be Privacy Scolds

All well and good. Yet, it’s easy to imagine how peeping Toms could take advantage of this feature to spy on unsuspecting innocents, if they haven’t already. Neophytes who neglect to cover their tracks, for example by sharing their addresses publicly and reusing them, would be easy prey. It’s unsettling enough how much you can find out about someone in 10 minutes of googling. Now add financial transactions, which perhaps say more about people than anything else, to the mix. If crypto achieves mass adoption before privacy leaks are fixed,…

Mastercard and Visa Are Making Bold Moves Toward Mass Crypto Adoption

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Leading global payment companies Mastercard and Visa have been making moves to accelerate the support of cryptocurrency payment processors by opening up new options for users around the world. Both companies made strong statements in support of the use of cryptocurrencies in July by announcing respective projects and collaborations that are driving the adoption of cryptocurrencies. The positive attitude toward cryptocurrency exchanges and payment platforms from the world’s largest traditional payment processors signals a shift in perception from the traditional financial space. Mastercard has been actively encouraging exchanges and payment…

$1.2B Bitcoin Futures and Options Contracts Just Expired — What’s Next?

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A total of 106,000 Bitcoin (BTC) futures contracts and options expired today, and this has investors curious about how BTC price may respond, leading into and after the expiry.  Bears were not expecting the most recent run to $11,000, especially after two months of sideways trading activity.The 52% increase in Bitcoin futures’ aggregate open interest increase in July indicates that sellers are either excessively confident or mostly using it for hedge and arbitrage opportunities. Bitcoin futures aggregate open interest. Source: Skew The above data shows total futures open interest surpassing…

What To Expect If Bitcoin Forms Three White Soldiers On Weekly Timeframes

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Bitcoin price this week exploded through resistance at $10,000 and blasted to a high of $11,400. The cryptocurrency is now consolidating below that level, gearing up for what one crypto analyst expects to be a follow up nearly one and a half times the size of this week’s rally. Will the cryptocurrency close a “Three White Soldiers” formation, and if it does, what can be expected for price action in the days and weeks ahead? Bitcoin Price Weekly Structure Looks Set For Bullish Uptrend Pattern, Claims Crypto Analyst In response…

Blockchain Bites: Dollar’s Decline, Ether’s Moneymakers and Coinbase’s Considerations

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The Securities and Exchange Commission appears to be interested in Binance’s eponymous blockchain, 132% of ether wallets are in profit and the Bank of Japan is getting serious about CBDC R&D. You’re reading Blockchain Bites, the daily roundup of the most pivotal stories in blockchain and crypto news, and why they’re significant. You can subscribe to this and all of CoinDesk’s newsletters here.  Top shelf Binance Sleuths The SEC appears to be gearing up for a closer look at Binance coin (BNB) and other tokens on cryptocurrency exchange giant Binance’s eponymous blockchain. The U.S. securities…

Tesla’s Rival Xpeng Motors to Raise $300M in Funding before U.S. IPO

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Xpeng Motors is said to be going to raise over $300 million in new funding, ahead of its U.S. IPO listing. Chinese electric vehicle major manufacturer Xpeng Motors, which is considered to be a huge competitor to Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) in China, is said to be in talks to raise over $300 million in funding. Although not confirmed by the company nor the investors, a person familiar with the inside happenings opened up to media outlet CNBC. According to the source, Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority,…

Decentralized Exchange Bancor Officially Launches Upgraded V2 Platform

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The Bancor project has launched a heavily upgraded version of its decentralized exchange, promising to solve what it calls “DeFi’s dirty little secret.” According to a blog post released on Friday, the contracts have been deployed to mainnet in a beta launch mode. Each pool will have its liquidity capped to $1 million until a “pool manager” permanently removes the limitation when it is confirmed safe. As Cryptox previously reported, the exchange mitigates the issue of impermanent loss, where liquidity providers could lose some of their money as prices for…