Snow Crash—one of Web3’s most formative texts—predicted a lot, but it didn’t depict the climate of speculation that comes with NFTs today. No character in Neal Stephenson’s novel is shown flipping avatars for a profit like an NFT trader on marketplaces OpenSea or Blur might. Stephenson wasn’t necessarily wrong, however. Stephenson tells Decrypt that he sees an eventual shift away…
Central banks show continued demand for gold in 2023, as per a recent report from the World Gold Council (WGC), which noted that the world’s central banks accumulated 31 tons of the precious metal in January. Turkey was the largest gold buyer, adding 23 tons to its central bank’s stash, while the People’s Bank of China also purchased 15 tons…
Decentralized cryptocurrency exchange PancakeSwap announced Saturday that a new version of its application is rolling out to users next month on BNB Smart Chain. “The new features we’re introducing will offer our users an even better experience and help make DeFi accessible to more people than ever before,” said Mochi, the pseudonymous head chef of PancakeSwap. The launch of PancakeSwap…
The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), Damian Williams, and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are requesting “proposed modifications” to the bail conditions of former FTX CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried. The SDNY prosecutor is asking the court to prohibit Bankman-Fried from using a smartphone with an internet connection. Instead, the disgraced FTX co-founder would receive a government-issued…
Crypto exchange Binance sought to hire Gary Gensler as an advisor before he became chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), according to a Wall Street Journal report based on messages and documents from 2018 and 2020, as well as interviews with former employees. Gensler was approached by the crypto firm while teaching at the Massachusetts Institute…
Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt Even though it was the first two consecutive weeks of losses this year, Crypto Twitter was largely unfazed. Instead, a host of other topics took center stage this week. On Monday, a crypto-savvy lawyer who tweets under the handle @MetaLawMan took aim at Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chair Gary Gensler for his agency’s…
Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt Even though it was the first two consecutive weeks of losses this year, Crypto Twitter was largely unfazed. Instead, a host of other topics took center stage this week. On Monday, a crypto-savvy lawyer who tweets under the handle @MetaLawMan took aim at Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chair Gary Gensler for his agency’s…
The United States equities markets made a strong recovery this week but Bitcoin (BTC) failed to follow suit. This means that cryptocurrency investors stayed away and could be worried by the ongoing problems at Silvergate bank. These fears could be what is behind the total crypto market capitalization dropping to nearly $1 trillion. The behavior analytics platform Santiment said in…
An errant Google Forms account and an early trading launch were among the missteps that concerned team members at Binance, based outside of the United States, who worried that U.S. regulators would flag undue influence over its American licensee, Binance.US. This according to a Sunday Wall Street Journal report. The revelations come less than a month after company officials reportedly…
Co-founder of content studio Bankless David Hoffman apologized for spreading rumors about what he called a “Wells Notice Carpet Bombing” targeting crypto firms, including the decentralized finance protocol Lido Finance. “Carpet bombing” was a reference to an allegedly flood of well notices sent to crypto firms last week, Hoffman was told by a source. He shared the unverified information on…
