Samsung Electronics to Use Blockchain in Climate-Focused Reafforestation Program

Samsung Electronics America has committed to the planting of 2 million Mangrove trees in Madagascar in a bid to advance its quota on the fight against climate change. Per the tech giant’s announcement, the initiative will be handled by Veritree, a startup that specializes in using blockchain technology to track every stage involved in the tree planting process.  The Samsung tree planting initiative is billed to be completed in the first half of this year, with the tropical trees expected to restore roughly 200 hectares of land and sequester roughly…

Coinbase exec says major Ethereum scaling improvements coming soon

Coinbase Chief Product Officer Surojit Chatterjee is the latest to publish his predictions for the crypto industry in 2022 and he foresees major advances in the scaling of Ethereum. Industry leaders, analysts, and investors are sharing their 2022 predictions for the crypto ecosystem, and Coinbase’s Surojit Chatterjee is confident that Ethereum will be at the forefront of Web3 and the crypto-economy as it scales. The CPO shared his predictions in a company blog post on Jan. 4 in which he stated that Ethereum scalability will improve but alternative layer 1…

Crypto predictions platform Polymarket fined $1.4M by CTFC

New York-based crypto predictions platform Polymarket has reached a settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to pay a fine of $1.4 million. Polymarket is a decentralized platform that enables users to bet on the outcomes of event markets such as pro-sports games and political elections via binary options contracts. On Jan. 3, the CFTC announced that it had entered an order filing and simultaneously settling charges against Polymarket, with the platform found to have operated an “illegal unregistered or non-designated facility” since June 2020. Under the order, Polymarket…

The number of countries banning crypto has doubled in three years

Although 2021 was a good year for the cryptocurrency industry in terms of market performance, the number of jurisdictions banning crypto has more than doubled since 2018. A report by the Library of Congress (LOC) details the nine jurisdictions that have now applied an absolute ban on crypto and the 42 with an implicit ban. This is up from eight and 15 respectively in 2018 when the report was first published. The LOC is the research library for the United States Senate, acting as the national library for the country.…

This key trading pattern hints at the continuation of Fantom’s (FTM) 125% rebound

Fantom (FTM) looks poised to hit a new record high in the coming sessions after its 125% price rebound from $1.23 on Dec. 14, 2021, to $2.84 on Jan. 3, 2022 triggered a classic bullish reversal setup.  Dubbed inverse head and shoulders (IH&S), the setup appears when an asset forms three troughs below a so-called neckline resistance, with the middle trough (the head) deeper than the left and right shoulder.  The price of FTM has recently undergone a similar price trajectory, as shown in the chart below. As a result,…

CFTC Fines ‘Decentralized’ Prediction Market Platform Polymarket $1.4 Million, Shuts Down Noncompliant Markets – Regulation Bitcoin News

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has ordered a “decentralized” prediction market platform to shut down non-compliant markets and pay a fine of $1.4 million. “Polymarket had been operating an illegal unregistered or non-designated facility for event-based binary options online trading contracts, known as ‘event markets,’” said the derivatives regulator. CFTC Takes First Crypto Enforcement Action of the Year The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has taken the first crypto enforcement action of the year in the U.S. The derivatives regulator announced that it entered an order Monday “filing…