On Dec. 17, reports detail that residents in Lebanon have been staging sit-ins and protests at banks in order to access their own savings accounts. Since the economic collapse in 2019, Lebanon’s banks froze Lebanese bank accounts, and a number of branches have remained closed indefinitely. The deprivation of wealth has caused a few impoverished Lebanese to demand their savings…
Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, currently in the custody of Bahamian authorities, has reportedly agreed to be extradited to the United States to face charges. According to a Dec. 19 report from Reuters, Bankman-Fried’s legal team said it planned to prepare documents to have him reappear before the Bahamas Magistrate Court sometime this week. The former FTX CEO attended an…
Bitcoin (BTC) broke below $16,800 on Dec. 16, reaching its lowest level in more than two weeks. More importantly, the movement was a complete turnaround from the momentary excitement that had led to the $18,370 peak on Dec. 14. Curiously, Bitcoin dropped 3.8% in seven days, compared to the S&P 500 Index’s 3.5% decline in the same period. So from…
Staffers at the Bank of Canada released an analytic note on fiat-referenced crypto assets, otherwise known as stablecoins, Dec. 19. In addition to a review of mechanisms for creating and distributing stablecoins and a list of the potential risks and benefits they involve, the note expressed the authors’ support for further regulation of the crypto asset. The global market for…
Once flush with cash, FTX racked up prominent sports marketing deals in 2021 and early 2022, committing at least $375 million in disclosed funds to teams and leagues along the way. Now those sponsorships are all falling apart, one by one, since FTX filed for bankruptcy in November amid a liquidity crunch. All of FTX’s major sports and esports partners…
Decentralization via blockchain technology has given rise to several applications such as cryptocurrency, nonfungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), decentralized finance (DeFi), and many more use cases. However, the future of decentralization may very well extend beyond blockchain technology. Nillion, an internet infrastructure platform based on cryptography, has developed a technology called Nil Message Compute (NMC), which changes how data is…
Bloomberg Intelligence senior commodity analyst, Mike McGlone, believes a “warm spell” is coming in terms of bitcoin markets as the market strategist detailed on Monday that “bitcoin appears poised to resume its inclination to outperform.” McGlone’s comments follow his previous prediction that noted bitcoin and ethereum appear to have “completed the bulk of their drawdown.” Mike McGlone Believes a Crypto…
It would be ideal for the industry for Congress to weigh in on its fate rather than leaving it to unelected regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). To that end, representatives from both sides of the aisle have introduced bills designed to offer “regulatory clarity.” The moderate position seems to favor placing crypto mostly under the jurisdiction of…
North Carolina Representative Patrick McHenry, the current ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee and chair starting in January, has reintroduced legislation aimed at creating innovation offices within government agencies dealing with financial services. In a Dec. 19 announcement, McHenry said he had reintroduced the Financial Services Innovation Act — a bill he previously pushed in 2016 and 2019.…
How Tezos Was Ahead of the Proof-of-Stake Merge: Web Summit 2022 Tezos co-founder Kathleen Breitman talks about how the Tezos blockchain has used a proof-of-stake mechanism since its inception, her admiration for Tendermint, Ethereum and sharding, progressive decentralization, and NFT gaming with Decrypt’s Stephen Graves onstage at Web Summit in Lisbon. Source: https://decrypt.co/videos/live-events/pvrRKj4z/how-tezos-was-ahead-of-the-proof-of-stake-merge-web-summit-2022
