Grayscale Investments, a leading crypto investment firm, has added at least $1 billion to its Assets Under Management (AUM) this week. As a part of that, the CEO commented that the firm had attracted as much as $300 million in new capital in a single day. The vast majority of the capital that Grayscale holds in kept in Bitcoin and Ethereum, however, Litecoin assets grew by the biggest percentage, with a rise of 7.5% in a single day. Another notable token allocation was Zcash,…

MORE

According to recent research from Arcane Research, undocumented immigrants are using Bitcoin to send money home. Many people leave their own country to work abroad, and need to send money back to the families they left behind. Regular banking channels are off limits, so they need to find ways to help the ones they care about. Useful Tulip's Matt Ahlborg talked about the process, "Immigrants in Western countries transfer value abroad via gift cards on Paxful. The gift cards ar…

MORE

The CEO of MicroStrategy, Michael Saylor, recently addressed online chatter about how the company would handle its $425 million position in Bitcoin. Many have speculated that the company had entered the Bitcoin market on a speculative basis, and will cash out when it makes a large return on its Bitcoin when measured in fiat terms. Saylor refuted this view, and told the public, “I see these guys on crypto Twitter. And they’re like, ‘Ya, Saylor’s going to buy it and he’s going…

MORE

PayPal, the multi-billion dollar global payments platform, has announced that some clients will be able to both send and receive cryptos for in their accounts next year. Shares in the company traded as much as 4% higher on the news, and some commentators think that this event is responsible for Bitcoin's surge above the $13,000 mark. While US clients will be able to send and receive some of the major cryptos, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, there has been no word on how owner…

MORE

The city of Compton, in Southern California, is the latest to experiment with what is essentially a Universal Basic Income program. The program, called the “Compton Pledge” will give 800 of its residents free money every month with no requirements whatsoever. While many nations have social assistance programs, they generally focus on people who are disadvantaged, or have dependents. Compton Mayor Aja Brown commented, “I recognized that there’s a need for additional income, es…

MORE

The CEO of Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse, recently told media that the company is considering a relocation to Japan. Other execs from the company previously mentioned Singapore as a possible place for a relocation. Ripple has been doing well in Japan, and has numerous connections within the Japanese banking market. Garlinghouse told Bloomberg that, “Japan has been one of our strongest markets. We have a very successful partnership there with a group called SBI. They are actually…

MORE

The CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, has commented on the threat the Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) may pose to Bitcoin. Zhao told media that while CBDCs may help digital assets to gain credibility with a wider audience, they may also damage the appeal of popular decentralized currencies. The CEO also thinks there could be a race between the major nations to launch CBDCs. Zhao stated, “If there is a government pushing another cryptocurrency that’s even more open, more…

MORE

Tether, the USD-linked stablecoin, is being created at a rapid pace as Bitcoin prices surge through the $13,000 mark. Data shows that over the last 48 hours, nearly 500 million new USDT tokens have been created. Most of these new tokens have been sent to exchanges, with Binance receiving more than any other exchange. Binance has been sent a little less than 127 million USDT over the last two days, while other exchanges like Huobi have been sent smaller amounts. At the time of…

MORE

LGO, a European-based crypto exchange will be merging with Voyager, which is a publicly traded broker. The merger will allow Voyager to enter the European markets, at least according to the CEO of Voyager. LGO will wrap up its institutional exchange business, and transfer all remaining assets to Voyager. The CEO of Voyager, Steve Ehrlich, commented on the token merger, “As part of the merger, the next version of the Voyager token will be minted which will allow holders of the…

MORE

r/Bitcoin, the most popular Bitcoin community on Reddit, now has more members than r/sex. The popular Bitcoin Reddit is also larger than r/Design, r/DeepIntoYouTube, and r/JusticeServed. It is the 198th most popular community on Reddit. R/Bitcoin has been growing steadily since Bitcoin's 2017 bull run, and despite the bear market, has been able to add users on a regular basis. The most popular post on r/Bitcoin was written when Bitcoin prices first rose above $10,000, which h…

MORE

BlockShow, one of the biggest blockchain event companies in the world, will be working with Singapore's Central Bank, called the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), on the annual Singapore FinTech Festival (SFF) 2020. BlockShow will act as a 'Knowledge Partner' to the MAS, and will bring leaders in the blockchain space to the festival. SFF will run from December 7-12, and attendees will be able to access all the resources online on a 24/7 basis. The subjects covered at SFF…

MORE

The value of the average Bitcoin transaction has risen by at least 500% since July of this year. According to BitInfoCharts, which is a crypto market research firm, October 20 recorded the higest average daily Bitcoin transaction value so far this year, at $151,000. This is much higher than Ethereum's highest average transaction value, which is sitting at $793 for 2020. A number of high-profile investors have entered the Bitcoin market this year, including Square, which bough…

MORE

Many OKEx users are taking to social media to express their feelings about withdrawals at exchange being suspended for nearly a week. The situation began on October 16, when OKEx announced that some of the top people at the company were under investigation by the Chinese police. OKEx began life in China, but moved to Malta when China made crypto illegal a few years ago. Although the exchange is no longer Chinese, many of the owners still live in China. There has been little i…

MORE

According to research from the World Gold Council, cryptos are now the fifth most popular kind of investment in Russia. The top four are savings accounts, foreign currencies, real estate, and life insurance, in that order. The research is based on responses from 2,023 investors, all of whom made at least one investment in the last 12 months. According to the responses, cryptos are bought more frequently by younger people, and are actually more popular than gold across all age…

MORE

UN sanctions on Iran recently expired, which allows the nation to both buy and sell many kinds of arms. The Iranian government hasn't announced any large scale arms purchases, however, it is planning on selling arms to nations that want to stand up to the USA. Iranian Brigadier General Amir Hatami commented on the nations openness to selling arms to nations that oppose the USA, “Many countries have already talked to us; we have held negotiations with some countries, and the g…

MORE

The Cordite Society has launched XDC, which is the first native token for the Corda Blockchain. XDC is a token that allows people or companies to buy and sell over the Corda Blockchain, such as contracts, invoices, securities, and other goods and services. XDC can also be used for DeFi applications, and would allow entities to cooperate towards a shared platform like a uniswap platform, or distributed exchange. Ben Wyeth, the Director of the Cordite Society, told media, “The…

MORE

Data from Skew, a crypto market research firm, shows that Bitcoin's realized volatility above $10,000 has never been as low as it is right now. The research shows that Bitcoin's realized volatility is now close to 10%, which has never happened at current price levels. In the past, Bitcoin has been far more volatile above $10,000, and has either spiked higher, or fell rapidly to lower levels. That has not been the case in 2020, as Bitcoin has been moving between $10,000 and $1…

MORE

Major holders of Ethereum are taking their tokens out of exchanges and putting them into private wallets at a rapid pace. This movement out of exchanges is happening at a time when Ethereum prices are relatively high, at least on a post-2018 basis. Leading crypto research firm Santiment has confirmed these market trends, and also stated that many of the accounts are held by large investors, sometimes known as 'whales'. Grayscale Investments, a crypto investment firm, has rece…

MORE

The United States Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, has just hit Larry Dean Harmon with $60 million in civil penalties for operating an unregestered Money Service Businesses (MSB). FinCEN alleges that Harmon was behind the Lightning Network Wallet Dropbit, as well as Bitcoin tumblers Coin Ninja and Helix. FinCEN claims, FinCEN’s investigation has identified at least 356,000 bitcoin transactions through Helix. Mr. Harmon operated Helix as a bitcoin mixer, or tum…

MORE

Protocol Labs' Filecoin platform has effectively been brought to a halt do to insufficient mining resources. The architecture that Filecoin uses requires that miners stake a substantial number of FIL, or Filecoin tokens in order to build blocks, however, as the project is new, there are very few FIL tokens available. As a result, it is very hard for the miners to operate the platform, or even acquire FIL tokens in order to begin mining on the platform. As a result of the situ…

MORE

Gold proponent Peter Schiff's bank, called Euro Pacific Bank is being investigated by a coalition of nations. Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and the Netherlands are looking into Euro Pacific Bank in an operation dubbed “Atlantis”. The bank has allegedly been doing business with known criminals, and may be helping its clients evade taxes. Euro Pacific Bank is based in Puerto Rico, which isn't technically a US state. As Puerto Rico is a US territory,…

MORE

Bitcoin may be a beneficiary of a new monetary world order. The established financial system is under a tremendous amount of strain, and trillions of dollars have been created over the course of 2020. Additionally, most governments are running massive deficits, which is unlikely to end anytime soon. The new managing managing director of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, thinks that drastic action may need to be taken. She commented, “Today we face a new Bretton Woods “moment.” A…

MORE

US Federal prosecutors have filed tax evasion charges against billionaire Robert Brockman in the largest tax evasion case in the history of the country. Brockman used offshore bank accounts and shell companies to avoid paying as much as $2 billion in taxes he owed to the US government. The accounts were held in tax havens like Switzerland, the Caribbean, and Bermuda. The billionaire was apprehended as a result of a deal that the US government struck with Robert Smith, another…

MORE

US political network C-SPAN has suspended a producer, Steve Scully, over his repeated lies concerning his Twitter account being hacked. Scully had been a candidate to moderate the second US presidential debate, which has since been canceled. The producer and editor has admitted to lying about his Twitter account being hacked as recently as October 8th. In addition to being accused of lying about Twitter hacks, Scully has also been accused of having a political bias, which is…

MORE