Category: Exchanges

Iran is actively regulating cryptocurrency miners, months after the government introduced a new licensing regime. The Ministry of Industries, Mining and Trade has issued more than 1,000 permits to cryptocurrency miners, according to an official at the Iranian ICT Guild Organization (IIG), an industry body representing the country’s computing sector. However, IIG’s Amir Hossein Saeedi Naeini told the Financial Tribune on Friday that although there are now licensed cryptocurrency mining operations in the country, the new regulations have not attracted much foreign investment. “Our studies show that the crypto mining industry…

Bitcoin gold, a cryptocurrency that forked from bitcoin in 2017, has again been hit by 51-percent attacks. Occurring Thursday, according to tweets from the bitcoin gold team, two deep blockchain reorganizations (or reorgs) resulted in double spends of 1,900 BTG and 5,267 BTG, respectively. The losses amount to around $87,500 at current prices. “We do not know if they successfully extracted any value from an exchange. Advanced risk control systems in exchanges make it likely one or both attacks failed,” they wrote. “Evidence” suggests the attacks used mining power obtained…

Jason Wu had to cancel a dozen meetings with his crypto clients in China after the coronavirus epidemic broke out this month.  “We planned a 10-city tour to talk with potential clients in China,” Wu, the CEO and founder of non-custodial crypto lender DeFiner, said. “Nobody wants to attend any crypto-related conferences or any meetings at all because of the virus, we have to rearrange everything.” Since the first patient was identified on Dec. 8  in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province in central China, the virus has claimed 80…

The best Sundays are for long reads and deep conversations. Earlier this week, the Let’s Talk Bitcoin! Show gathered to discuss Lightning Network technology and two innovative approaches at the wallet level which simplify the new-user experience at a tangible, but seemingly minimal cost.  Subscribe to the new CoinDesk Podcast Network for fresh, insightful episodes nearly every day of the week In today’s podcast we zero in on the challenge of “Channel Management”, an until-recently-mandatory and manually-managed part of connecting to and utilizing the still-nascent Lightning Network. A little context:…

Independent Reserve, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in Australia, is expanding to Singapore after an “overwhelmingly positive” response from the regulator. Adrian Przelozny, CEO and founder of the Sydney-based exchange, announced Friday it had expanded its trading services to users in Singapore, saying in a statement that his team “felt the time was right to make this move.” Przelozny referenced “a number of positive moves by Singaporean regulators” as part of his reasoning. Independent Reserve offers a host of retail and institutional trading features, including a spot marketplace and…

That’s a wrap! The World Economic Forum is over, and the key ideas coming out of Davos for our industry are: 1) a continued “blockchain, not crypto” narrative; 2) a belief in the inevitability of cashless futures (without much concern about the negative implications) and 3) the rise of CBDCs.  On the CBDC front, the WEF put out a toolkit for governments that are considering their own currency, Japan announced a project to explore a digital currency as a counterweight to the influence a digital yuan might bring China and…

Holders of the ONE token from the team at Harmony should make plans to swap their ERC-20 (ethereum) or BEP-2 (binance chain) tokens for the coin on Harmony’s blockchain if they want to be able to participate in staking and other network activities.  According to a blog post shared Thursday, Harmon’s token swap is ready to commence, allowing current holders to switch to the company’s native asset. “The native ONE token of Harmony blockchain will serve as the bridge for building an open platform without sacrificing performance, decentralization, community-based governance,…

DAVOS, Switzerland – Most Middle Eastern elites at the World Economic Forum are highly skeptical of bitcoin, but there are whispers about its potential for cross-border settlements in the energy sector.  According to Egyptian businessman M. Shafik Gabr, chairman of the ARTOC Group for Investment & Development, some Middle Eastern nations are already exploring the possibility of settling oil contracts in bitcoin. But he declined to specify which, and most of the leaders gathered in Davos for the annual conference that wrapped up Friday are adamant they see bitcoin’s post-sovereign…

In addition to our news roundup, for the next few episodes we’ll also be highlighting select interviews from the CoinDesk crew reporting inside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.  Today, we’ll hear from former Monero head “Fluffypony” and more from cypherpunk Harry Halpin. Listen or subscribe with your preferred service: Disclosure Read More The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group,…

AT&T says a lawsuit over a $1.8 million crypto hack fails to show how the U.S. telecoms giant was responsible. The case, brought by VideoCoin head of strategy Seth Shapiro in October, alleges that, in 2018, AT&T employees were responsible for transferring control of his phone number to hackers, who used it as part of a SIM-swap scam that drained his exchange accounts of more than $1.8 million-worth of cryptocurrencies. In a Jan. 22 filing in support of its December motion to dismiss the case, AT&T says Shapiro’s allegation has…