Month: April 2020

Bad U.S. jobless data pulled markets lower Thursday, affecting even bitcoin. But there may be a silver lining for the cryptocurrency. At press time, the world’s largest cryptocurrency was up just 1% over 24 hours at $8,864, with 10-day and 50-day technical indicator moving averages converging, thus signaling sideways sentiment. After bitcoin prices jumped to their

An adviser to the U.S. Federal Reserve through the Great Financial Crisis to 2015 examines the latest in the largest monetary policy experiment in human history. Danielle DiMartino Booth is the CEO and chief strategist of Quill Intelligence. Before that, after correctly predicting the mortgage meltdown, she spent nine years as an adviser to Federal

Andreessen Horowitz’s (a16z) second crypto fund shows the venture capital firm is targeting specific areas to invest in the cryptocurrency space. The company said Thursday it had raised a total of $515 million – more than the original $450 million target – for a second fund called “Crypto Fund II,” dedicated to cryptocurrency and blockchain

George Calle is Market Intelligence Lead at R3, an enterprise blockchain software firm.  In just a few short years, digital currencies have progressed hugely. But while the early adopters of cryptocurrencies dreamed of entirely new digital coins transforming the way we pay for things, the volatility of cryptos like bitcoin has made this vision impossible,

Large crypto investors, popularly known as “whales,” seem to be accumulating bitcoin amid the ongoing price rally.  The seven-day moving average of the number of addresses holding 10,000 bitcoins or more rose to 111 on Wednesday, the highest level since Aug. 2, 2019, according to blockchain intelligence firm Glassnode. That number has risen by more

Coinbase experienced a brief outage yesterday as investors raced to the crypto exchange, propelled, in part, by a fear of missing out.  FOMO is seen elsewhere in the market, as derivatives products soar 300% on daily trading volumes and Grayscale reported a notable uptick in shares of its Bitcoin Trust. Meanwhile, a16z is making another long-term

Thanks in part to the uncertainty of the coronavirus crisis and rising bitcoin prices, bitcoin wallet startups have seen a sudden uptick in activity.  For example, over the past two months the Austin, Texas-based bitcoin startup Unchained Capital, with over $50 million in assets under management and $150 million worth of bitcoin transactions processed, garnered

Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company to Bakkt, spent close to $300 million helping the bitcoin warehouse acquire loyalty rewards provider Bridge2 Solutions, CEO Jeffrey Sprecher said Thursday. The revelation came during a discussion of the financial strength of ICE, the parent company to several major trading venues, include the New York Stock Exchange. Sprecher said

BTSE, a British Virgin Islands-based cryptocurrency exchange, has upped the limit for its over-the-counter request for quote (RFQ) due to April’s increasing demand for bitcoin. The limit, which has been changed from $100,000 to $1 million, represents a ten-fold increase resulting from growing investor demand in digital assets, the exchange says. It comes at a

Fireblocks, a platform that secures digital assets in transit, is expanding its business in Asia with two new offices, one in Hong Kong, the other in Singapore.  The New York-based firm now provides its secure transfer services to major Asian crypto firms including trading platform Amber, investment firm Blitz Group and hedge fund Three Arrow

The cryptocurrency project launched by video live-streaming platform YouNow is ditching its private network and migrating onto public blockchain Algorand. The move comes as the Props project seeks higher throughput for its continued expansion, according to an announcement Thursday. Props said it’s now raised $2 million in a funding round led by Union Square Ventures

Brock Pierce’s Puerto Rican nonprofit has teamed up with Binance to buy $1 million in personal protective equipment to help fight coronavirus in Puerto Rico.  Integro Foundation – run by one-time bitcoin billionaire Brock Pierce who in 2018 tried to make Puerto Rico into a crypto utopia – donated 44.5 BTC to Binance Charity on

Bitcoin has lagged gold this year as investors looked for hedges against inflation – especially with the Federal Reserve creating trillions of dollars of fresh money to offset the devastating economic and market toll of the coronavirus.  Not anymore. The oldest cryptocurrency jumped 13% on Wednesday, the most in six weeks, as Fed Chair Jerome

Bitcoin jumped to two-month highs early on Thursday and now looks set to register its biggest monthly gain in nearly a year. The top cryptocurrency by market value rose to $9,469 at 06:05 UTC, the highest level since Feb. 25, having rallied from $7,700 to $8,900 on Wednesday, according to CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index. At

Alibaba has patented a blockchain-based means of vetting the originality of songs. Granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on April 21, the process as described by the Chinese e-commerce giant addresses one of the recording industry’s major issues – protecting the copyright of music tracks – by hosting and vetting that content on

Blockstack’s financial operations have run almost exclusively on Stacks token sales – a revenue stream the decentralized web builder said it does not expect to tap into again. The public benefit corporation’s FY 2019 revenue – $23.3 million – came almost entirely from its Regulation A+ compliant token sale that raised over $23 million in

Messaging app Telegram postponed the launch of its blockchain project TON for a second time on Wednesday, pushing the new go-live date to April 2021 and triggering a costly clawback clause in its agreement with token-sale investors. According to a letter to investors obtained by CoinDesk, Telegram is offering to return up to 72% of

Micree Ketuan Zhan, the ousted co-founder and former chairman of leading bitcoin mining equipment manufacturer Bitmain, has scored a partial legal victory over his former employer.  The Beijing Haidian District Bureau of Justice on Tuesday granted Zhan’s request to block the company from registering CFO Luyao Liu as the legal representative of its Beijing branch,

There’s an old saying on Wall Street that financial markets are driven by two emotions, fear and greed. In the crypto markets, the driver is often a combination of the two: fear of missing out. The FOMO, as it’s often called, looked strong Wednesday as bitcoin jumped to its highest levels in nearly two months,