The barrage of news about FTX’s collapse means that it will take time to disentangle the many narratives emerging from it. But that hasn’t stopped many people from suggesting solutions to ride out the current crisis of confidence in crypto. One of those proposals comes from Binance chief Changpeng Zhao, an instigator of the current… Read More Can Proof of Reserves Bring Transparency to Crypto?
As a concept for collective governance, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) are replete with hip buzzwords and ideas. Their practical implementation, however, is clunky. The latest example is that of Ooki DAO – a margin lending platform that is being sued by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The agency contends that Ooki DAO violated investment… Read More Reckoning With DAO Governance
Central bank digital currencies (CBDC) are becoming popular among countries. According to the Atlantic Council’s CBDC tracker, 105 countries, representing 95 percent of the world’s GDP, are developing digital versions of their national currency. Eighty-one countries were exploring the use of CBDCs in their economy last August. CBDC development accelerated in the aftermath of Russia’s… Read More Notes 10/4: CBDC Development, An Opening for Crypto?
At the beginning of September, bitcoin price, which has crashed by more than 60% since its high last November, was poised for further downward movement. It bucked that script. Except for a brief surge in the middle of this month, bitcoin price mostly traded sideways and stuck to a trading range of around $20,000, its… Read More What Will October Bring for Bitcoin Markets?
El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender, a year ago, was considered a watershed moment by crypto advocates hankering for more recognition for the world’s biggest cryptocurrency. The tiny Central American country is the region’s fourth biggest economy and has been a dollarized nation since 2001. Proponents of the move argued that Bitcoin adoption… Read More Is El Salvador’s Bitcoin Experiment A Failure?
Controversial stablecoin Tether’s holdings of commercial paper fell and its cash and bank deposit holdings rose, according to a “reasonable engagement report” released yesterday. The report provides a breakdown of the reserves backing tokens circulating in the market. Tether claims that its holdings of commercial paper and cash and bank deposits increased by 58% and… Read More Tether’s Misrepresentations Continue In Its Latest Reserves Report
The fallout from the Treasury Department’s sanctions on Tornado Cash continued this week. The department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) claims that the crypto-mixing service, which is a decentralized application (dApp) running off Ethereum’s blockchain, was used by hackers in North Korea to launder more than $7 billion worth of cryptocurrencies. Privacy activists in… Read More Tornado Cash Sanctions Become Rallying Cry For Crypto Privacy Activists
There was not much to cheer about in Coinbase’s first quarter earnings for 2022 yesterday. If anything, they provided more proof of the pain in crypto markets. North America’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume reported losses and a revenue decline of more than a billion dollars in its latest earnings period. The exchange, among… Read More Coinbase Reports Disappointing Earnings, Reflecting Crypto Winter
Bitcoin’s emergence as an asset class has been tumultuous. Amidst a raucous debate about its utility, the cryptocurrency’s price volatility has transfixed investors and traders looking for short-term profits. But they do not have much choice in terms investing avenues because the cryptocurrency remains largely outside the perimeters of regulation. Instead, players have crafted unique… Read More Delving Into MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin Bet
Among the limited number of bitcoin-related investments available to investors, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) is the most well-known. It was the first publicly traded investment vehicle in public markets and has the biggest number of assets under management. In the last year, however, GBTC’s popularity has waned. Its shares, which traded at significant premiums… Read More What Does The Future Hold For GBTC?
I have written about Ethereum’s expensive gas fees earlier. The fees are an important source of revenue for miners in a volatile crypto market where double-digit price swings are not uncommon. But they are not the only source of profits. The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) released a bulletin last month highlighting the need to… Read More Miner Extractable Value: A Source of Profits and Future Regulation
Ethereum has ambitions to become a hub for decentralized finance (DeFi) – one where millions of users conduct sophisticated transactions using financial applications and payment systems on its network. The platform’s selling point is its decentralized and peer-to-peer design that reduces costs and transaction times. But transactions on Ethereum are time-consuming. A technical and complicated… Read More An Experiment In Ethereum’s Gas Fees
UST. Celsius. Three Arrows Capital. The list of crypto’s casualties in the current downturn is growing by the day. There’s more bad news ahead. Experts say that the crypto ecosystem is due another capitulation event. “Some giant player will go to zero [soon],” Shark tank personality and crypto investor Kevin O’Leary told Coindesk recently. The… Read More Will Tether, Crypto’s Biggest Stablecoin, Be Its Next Casualty?
After climbing to dizzy heights last year, markets are hemorrhaging value as prices plummet since the beginning of this year. Expensive assets that were worth millions of dollars as recently as last year have crashed from their earlier valuations. One of the world’s biggest financial instruments careened to a sudden and spectacular crash in less… Read More Can Crypto Handle A Recession?
Bitcoin’s fortunes may have tumbled this year but its advocates are not backing down yet. Investment firm Grayscale is pulling out all stops in its bid to get approval for conversion of its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) – a closed-end fund for accredited investors – to an ETF. The company submitted its application to the… Read More Grayscale Launches Advertising Blitz For Bitcoin ETF Approval
It’s yesterday once more in cryptoland. The dizzying rise and rapid fall of algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD’s (UST) demise brings to mind the initial coin offering (ICO) frenzy of 2017. Back then, all you needed to raise funds from investors was a whitepaper and a generous marketing budget to hype the offering. With the media and… Read More In The Aftermath of stablecoin UST’s Collapse