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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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,…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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A fractal analysis by Coiner-Yadox demonstrates that Bitcoin prices may soar higher in the coming weeks. The analysis is based on comparing the past performance of the NSADAQ with Bitcoin prices. In addition to the compelling analysis by Coiner-Yadox, there are fundamental reasons why Bitcoin may appreciate when compared to fiat currencies. Raoul Pal, the CEO of Real Vision, recently commented, “Most people don’t understand the latter but is simply put, Powell has shown that…

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Grayscale Investments has disclosed that it now holds 2% of the available Ethereum, as well as 2% of the Bitcoin that is available in the marketplace. The company recently received an investment from the Rothschild Investment Corporation (RIC), and offers a range of cryptocurrency investment products to established investors. The company has around $6 billion in assets under management, and typically deals with major funds and family offices, not retail investors. It attracte…

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According to early media reports, Chinese police are talking to the major holders of Malta-based crypto exchange OKEx. As a result of this the exchange has suspended all withdrawals, and Bitcoin prices appear to be reacting negatively to the news. Although the exchange is based in Malta, it was founded in China, and still serves many Chinese crypto investors. Cryptocurrencies are illegal in China, which means that many of the clients at OKEx are likely in violation of local l…

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The Rothschild Investment Corporation (RIC), which represents the Rothschild family, has entered the Bitcoin market via a purchase with Grayscale’s GBTC. The RIC has around $1.4 billion in assets, and the value of its Bitcoin purchase is around $235,000. This recent investment isn't the first time that the family has made an investment in blockchain-based assets. Back in 2018 the family first entered the marketplace. At the time Vitalik Buterin posed the question, “Are ‘the R…

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Kava has launched Harvest.io, the world's first cross-chain money market app. It allows users to stake BTC, XRP, BNB, BUSD, KAVA, and USDX to gain a passive return from the staked tokens, as well as HARD governance tokens. Notably, Harvest.io is also the first platform to support staking for XRP. Harvest.io is built on the Kava blockchain, and is designed to enable cross-chain functionality. There is also a planned integration for Chainlink, which would allow both Harvest.io…

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According to recent research by Chain.info, more than 10% of the total available Bitcoin supply is held by five major exchanges. Huobi, Binance, OKEx, Kraken and Coinbase hold more than 1.96 million Bitcoin, with Coinbase holding more than any of the other exchanges. Huobi has the second most with a total of 323,665 BTC across around 901,600 unique wallets, with Binance in third place with 289,961 BTC held in nearly 2.7 million Bitcoin addresses. There is a big gap between th…

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At the beginning of October the US CFTC filed civil charges against crypto exchange BitMEX and some of its executives over alleged violations of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations. SEC commissioner Hester Peirce commented on these charges recently, and thinks that there could be more charges coming for exchanges that operate in the USA. Peirce told media, “I think that the message has been coming to the industry fairly loud and clear on the AML/KYC front, and I’m sure it…

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Investment firm Wilshire Phoenix released a report that suggests that the Bitcoin futures that are traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) have a greater impact on Bitcoin's price than the spot market. These contracts are cash-settled, which means that there is no actual buying or selling of Bitcoin when the futures are traded or settled. According to the report, “The findings of Wilshire Phoenix indicate that CME Bitcoin Futures contribute more to price discovery tha…

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Lawyers for BProtocol Foundation, the parent entity of Bancor, are arguing that a court in the US Southern District of New York doesn't have the ability to try a class action lawsuit that is being brought against it by Timothy C. Holsworth. According to the lawyers, the case is, “based on a man in Wisconsin using an exchange in Singapore to purchase tokens issued by a Swiss entity.” Instead, the defendants' lawyers suggest the Holsworth use the legal system in Israel, where m…

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Andre Cronje, the founder of Yearn.finance (YFI), recently took an experimental new platform public, and it received a warm reception from potential investors. Sadly, the project was never meant to be launched as a new product, although investors quickly piled into Ethereum smart-contracts to the tune of $6 million. The project was announced via a Medium post on Cronje's account titled, “Crypto Economics, Perpetual Liquidity and IL offsets.” He also explicitly stated that the…

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Fidelity Digital Assets, which is the section of Fidelity that handles cryptocurrencies, recently issued a report that suggests that investors allocate 5% of their assets into Bitcoin. The report was very positive on crypto assets, and pointed out they have a low correlation with major asset classes. It also made the case for Bitcoin's market cap to rise above $1 trillion. The report states, “If bitcoin were to capture 5% of the alternatives market as measured by CAIA, that w…

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The Reserve Bank of Australia's (RBA) Head of Payments Policy, Tony Richards, recently commented on the RBS's stance toward a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). The tone of the commentary was negative on the development of a CBDC, although the issue wasn't discounted entirely. He stated, “Even though the use of cash for transactions is declining, cash is still widely available and accepted as a means of payment...In addition, Australian households and businesses are well s…

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Mega bank JP Morgan commented on Square's recent decision to buy $50 million in Bitcoin. The bank sees it as being supportive of Bitcoin prices, and may lead to more purchases by Square in the future. JP Morgan also sees the move by Square as the opening of a new move into Bitcoin by other companies, which may want to buy now before the prices move up. Over the summer MicroStrategy, a market intelligence firm, bought $425 million in Bitcoin, which it sees as a superior asset…

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The financial oversight arm of the G20, called the Financial Stability Board (FSB), has issued a report that calls for increased regulations over the stablecoin market. The report recognizes that G20 member states have limited control over how stablecoins could be regulated, as the stablecoin companies and custodians can simply choose to operate in nations that don't regulate the tokens. The FSB thinks that popular stablecoins could become systemically important, which puts n…

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