Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you significant developments over the last week. The DeFi ecosystem started 2023 on a bullish note, similar to the broader cryptocurrency market. However, the bullish start to the year didn’t diminish the damage caused by vulnerabilities and attacks in 2022. A…
Less than 48 hours after a raid on cryptocurrency lender Nexo’s offices in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, prosecutors have reportedly charged four people. According to a Jan. 13 report by Bloomberg, authorities charged four Bulgarian nationals with forming an organized crime group, which may have included activities related to money laundering and unlicensed banking. The country’s National Police Service…
Bitcoin (BTC) mining company Bitfarms has unveiled plans to modify an existing loan agreement with BlockFi — a move the company said would reduce its indebtedness amid the bear market. On Jan. 13, Bitfarm disclosed that it is working with creditors to modify a loan agreement for Backbone Mining Solutions, or BMS, which owns and operates Bitfarms’ 20-megawatt mining facility…
Ethereum core developers say they are chugging steadily towards their goal of launching Shanghai and enabling staked ETH withdrawals on the network by March. This week, the group launched “devnet 2,” a developer network designed specifically to allow client teams to tweak the ETH withdrawal process and make sure they get it right. The network launch went mostly smoothly, with…
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) and associated organizations marshaled a sizable team of researchers in four low- and middle-income countries — India, Indonesia, Nigeria and Mexico — to study inclusion issues related to retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) design. They released the results of their 15-month research project on Jan. 13. In spite of…
The nonfungible token (NFT) industry has experienced some market turbulence over the past few months, but this hasn’t stopped both Twitter and Instagram from making moves into an industry that some estimate could be worth $231 billion by 2030. This comes off the back of Twitter having recently announced NFT Tweet Tiles and Instagram releasing an array of different NFT-related…
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged crypto exchange Gemini and crypto lender Genesis Global Capital, a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group (DCG). “Through this unregistered offering, Genesis and Gemini raised billions of dollars’ worth of crypto assets from hundreds of thousands of investors,” the SEC alleged. SEC Takes Action Against Gemini and Genesis The U.S. Securities and…
In many countries, millions of people clack basic equitable access to the financial services that would allow them to meet their daily needs. On this week’s episode of NFT Steez, hosts Alyssa Expósito and Ray Salmond meet with Mashiat Mutmainnah to discuss how regenerative finance (ReFi) can provide more accessibility and inclusivity to blockchain technology. Mutmainnah explained that as a…
Following considerable backlash from the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) community this week, publisher Wizards of the Coast today said that it will scrap some planned license changes that impact fan-made content and projects. But an updated license is still coming, and it appears that derivative Web3 content such as NFTs will indeed be prohibited under the new rules. Wizards of…
Talk of decentralized social media platforms continue to gain significant traction, with users becoming increasingly concerned with the centralized nature of traditional platforms and the potential for censorship. Even the former CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey has publicly pushed for a decentralized Twitter alternative. Cointelegraph interviewed Rick Porter, the CEO of decentralized social media start-up DSVR, about the potential these…
