Blockchain tech has come a long way. It wasn’t that long ago that crypto remained at the fringes, evangelized by a vocal minority. The narrative shifted once the COVID-19 pandemic pushed people into their homes with plenty of time to dive into new interests. Crypto benefited from the increased attention, entering everyday conversations among friends, family and colleagues. Even so,…
This week in coins. Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt. At the start of the week, two big events put the brakes on the bull market. On Monday, President Joe Biden signed off on a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that lets the government collect taxes from crypto custodians—and could, confusingly and perhaps unworkably, require DeFi protocols to report information about…
What a story—and what a twist! I’m talking of course about the frenzied auction on Thursday for a rare original copy of the U.S. Constitution. Thousands of patriotic crypto nerds came together in a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) and in barely one week raised more than $40 million—what should have been more than enough for a successful bid. But at…
During the last 90 days, Bitcoin’s hashrate has been climbing higher and has been slowly nearing the all-time high (ATH) the network captured six months ago in May. The accelerated hashrate has caused the network difficulty to rise, as Bitcoin’s mining difficulty has adjusted upward nine times in a row to date and it’s closing in on the network difficulty…
Zcash (ZEC) surged by nearly 20% in the past 24 hours, helped by the euphoria surrounding its core protocol’s decisive transition from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS). The ZEC price logged an intraday high at $188.80 on Binance after rising two days in a row by more than 27%. The cryptocurrency’s move upside also wiped out a big portion of…
As 2021 comes to a close, Bitcoin (BTC) has had a tumultuous ride this year, with wild price swings that have seen the pioneer cryptocurrency hit all-time highs only to retrace to lower prices — including a 50% drop that shook the market. Now, Bitcoin is once again back and stronger than ever, even recently going past its previous all-time…
Russian parliamentarians have cautioned against risks associated with the introduction of a digital ruble. Among them are the likely increase of competition pressure on banks and new challenges that may arise in the field of information security. Financial Market Committee Sees Threats in Digital Ruble Project Russia’s digital fiat, currently under development, brings certain risks that lawmakers want the central…
DeFi Friday is Decrypt’s DeFi email newsletter. (art: Grant Kempster) The biggest news in DeFi this week was the ParaSwap airdrop. Some said it was rigged, others said it was bugged, and still others said it was a stroke of genius. But no matter how you slice it, the drop was a game-changer. Here’s why. A huge part of the…
Gemini, the regulated cryptocurrency exchange founded by the Winklevoss Twins, has raised $400 million in its most recent growth equity funding round. This financial round gave it a valuation of $7.1 billion, being one of the most valuable exchanges in the crypto world. The financial round, led by Morgan Creek, also had the participation of key leaders in the venture…
New York-based crypto-mining service provider Foundry USA takes the lead to become the world’s second-largest Bitcoin (BTC) mining pool after taking up a 15.42% share of the network. Data from BTC.com shows that Digital Currency Group-owned Foundry USA stands behind the pool leader AntPool by a hash rate of just 4,000 PH/s, which contributed to a 17.76% network share at…
