Bitcoin

Top Stories This Week Silicon Valley Bank shut down by California regulator, holding over $5 billion for prominent crypto VCs Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was shut down by California’s financial watchdog on March 10 after announcing a significant sale of assets and stocks aimed at raising additional capital. The California watchdog appointed the Federal Deposit

The chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has insisted that ether is a commodity, not a security as claimed by the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The CFTC chief stressed that the derivatives watchdog would not have allowed ether futures products to be listed on CFTC-regulated exchanges “if we did

Bitcoin (BTC) briefly slipped below $20,000 for the first time in nearly two months, following the latest budget from United States President Joe Biden and the collapse of “crypto-bank” Silvergate. The price of BTC dipped to $19,945 on March 10 before recovering to hover just above $20,000, according to data from CoinMarketCap.  Bitcoin had a

Britain’s top financial regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), has widened its crackdown on unauthorized cryptocurrency ATMs. “There are currently no crypto ATM operators registered with the FCA, which they must be to operate legally,” the regulator noted. FCA Cracks Down on Illegal Crypto ATMs Britain’s top financial regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), announced

Bitcoin (BTC) faced a one-hour $1,420 pullback on March 3 following Silvergate Bank’s 57.7% stock crash, which was due to significant losses and “suboptimal capitalization.” The U.S. fintech-friendly bank was a key financial infrastructure provider for exchanges, institutional investors and mining companies, and some investors are worried that its potential demise could have wide-ranging negative

Billionaire Mark Mobius, founder of Mobius Capital Partners, says he cannot take his money out of HSBC in Shanghai, China. Citing severe capital control by the Chinese government, he stressed: “It’s crazy … They’re putting all kinds of barriers.” Mark Mobius Has Trouble Getting His Money Out of HSBC in China The founder of Mobius

In the Russia-Ukraine war, both sides of the conflict have been leveraging cryptocurrencies to achieve the upper hand.  Pro-Ukraine causes have collected around $200 million from crypto donations, showing how borderless and uncensorable money could be useful in time of emergency.  But the Russian side has taken advantage of crypto too: a total of about

Silvergate Bank has discontinued its cryptocurrency payments network. The decision to shut down Silvergate Exchange Network followed the withdrawal of banking relationships by several major cryptocurrency firms, including Coinbase, Gemini, Paxos, and Circle. Silvergate Discontinues Crypto Payments Network Silvergate Bank announced Friday that its cryptocurrency payments network, the Silvergate Exchange Network (SEN), has been terminated.

On March 2, 2023, FTX debtors released their second stakeholder presentation, which contains a preliminary analysis of the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange’s shortfalls. The latest presentation reveals a significant shortfall, as approximately $2.2 billion of the company’s total assets were found in FTX-related addresses, but only $694 million is considered “Category A Assets,” or liquid cryptocurrencies

Crypto traders’ urge to create leverage positions with Bitcoin (BTC) appears irresistible to many people, but it’s impossible to know if these traders are extreme risk-takers or savvy market-makers hedging their positions. The need to maintain hedges holds even if traders rely on leverage merely to reduce their counterparty exposure by maintaining a collateral deposit

On Wednesday, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, also known as CZ, announced the launch of a new non-fungible token (NFT) platform infused with artificial intelligence (AI). The AI-centric product is named Bicasso, and CZ said the beta version dropped today and was limited to 10,000 mints. Combining AI and NFTs: Binance CEO Announces Bicasso Artificial intelligence

Stacks is one of the first blockchains to enable a way for minting Bitcoin (BTC) Ordinals, which puts it in an excellent position to benefit from the hype. However, Ordinals have invoked an issue from the past where Bitcoin maximalist ideologies will be tested if the NFTs lead to network congestion. On top of that,

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase announced it will suspend trading and delist the Paxos-managed stablecoin asset BUSD. The decision follows Paxos’ revelation that the New York State Department of Financial Services directed the firm to stop issuing the U.S. dollar-pegged token BUSD. Coinbase to Suspend BUSD Stablecoin on March 13 On Feb. 27, 2023, Coinbase announced that

The cryptocurrency markets and the United States equities markets witnessed profit-booking this week as the macroeconomic data hinted toward continued rate hikes by the Federal Reserve. Bitcoin (BTC) is down more than 4% and the S&P 500 fell 2.7% to record its worst week of the year.  The CME FedWatch Tool shows a 73% probability

International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva says crypto needs “more regulation.” She added, “We should not take off the table banning those assets,” if regulation fails or is too slow to implement. IMF’s Chief Calls for More Crypto Regulation IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva talked about crypto regulation Saturday on the sidelines of

Bitcoin’s (BTC) recent price rally from $16,500 to $25,000 can be attributed to a short squeeze in the futures market and recent macroeconomic improvements. However, while prices increased, data suggests that many interested buyers (including whales) were left on the sidelines.  The recent rally to $25,000 shared many similarities with the 2019 bear market rally,

Four Russians have been charged in the U.S. with operating a crypto pyramid and Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors of millions of dollars. If convicted, they would face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for their roles in the purportedly decentralized finance (defi) platform Forsage. Forsage Founders Charged With Running Cryptocurrency Pyramid A

The capacity of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network (LN) recently surpassed an all-time high of 5,000 Bitcoin (BTC).  The Lightning Network is a neutral protocol built on top of Bitcoin, and it currently does not have a “native” token attached to it like many decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms. Although the Lightning Network’s total liquidity is less than

Eight days ago, Paxos announced that the company would no longer mint the stablecoin BUSD. Since then, the coin’s market capitalization has been sliding lower as redemptions have become more prominent. Meanwhile, a data researcher from Nansen has discovered that Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange by trade volume, has increased its usd coin holdings by

It might seem like forever ago that Bitcoin (BTC) was trading below $18,000, but in reality, it was 40 days ago. Cryptocurrency traders tend to have a short-term memory, and more importantly, they attribute less importance to negative news during bull runs. A great example of this behavior is BTC’s 15% gain since Feb. 13