Digital Currency
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US Government Sues Decentralized Content Platform LBRY Over $11M in Token Sales
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is pursuing yet another case of a blockchain company allegedly selling unregistered securities. According to court documents filed Monday, peer-to-peer content distribution network LBRY is being accused of selling “millions of dollars worth of unregistered securities to investors” beginning in 2016. The securities regulator is seeking a permanent injunction against LBRY from selling further tokens in addition to a disgorgement of “ill-gotten gains” plus prejudgement interest. The SEC says the securities were sold in the form of LBRY Credits (LBC), which were communicated to investors as…
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Don’t Follow the Suits, Follow the Weirdos
Cryptocurrency was invented by a guy who liked message boards. Then a young developer who thought decentralization could go even further kicked off a world computer with a white paper and some emails. The big wins in crypto are going to come from the punks, the hippies, the malcontents and the contrarians. What I’m saying is: In this very bullish season, don’t be enraptured by the suits. This article is excerpted from The Node, CoinDesk’s daily roundup of the most pivotal stories in blockchain and crypto news. You can subscribe to get the full newsletter here. We see the…
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Visa Settles USDC Transaction on Ethereum, Plans Rollout to Partners
Visa has processed a cryptocurrency payment directly on the Ethereum blockchain as part of a new service the payment giant plans to introduce to its partners later this year. The move, the latest sign of increased adoption of digital currencies by the old-guard financial industry, bumped the price of bitcoin (BTC, +3.22%) and ether (ETH, +5.93%) roughly 5% each. Per a press release shared with CoinDesk, Crypto.com sent a USDC (+0.03%) stablecoin transaction on Ethereum to an account at Anchorage custody under Visa’s name. Crypto.com issues “crypto-backed” Visa cards that allow its users to spend the coins in their…
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Technology and value drive together, TGC shock online
Recently, TRON GlobalChain (TRON GlobalChain), a one-stop DEFI predictor based on a global perspective, was launched. TGC is an interoperable full-stack DEFI protocol based on the public chain of TRON, created by the core force of TRON. At the initial stage, it realizes the function of market prediction by providing the foundation to meet users’ demand for price prediction. At the later stage, it gradually realizes the project vision through the DAO governance mechanism. What technologies will TGC use to realize these visions? First of all, TGC makes…
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Staking as an Asset Class? This Swiss Institutional Fund Is Jumping In
While institutional investors around the world are just getting their heads around bitcoin (BTC, -1.43%), asset managers in crypto-friendly Switzerland are heading into staking on next-generation blockchain networks. Announced Friday, Zurich-based investment firm Tavis Digital has partnered with Singapore-based Persistence, a bridge for traditional firms into undiscovered realms such as token staking and decentralized finance (DeFi). Tavis Digital is a spin-off of Tavis Capital, an asset manager regulated by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) with about $1.07 billion in assets under management. Nimble and financially sophisticated countries like Switzerland and…
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Whale Shark’s NFT Collectors Playbook
Thinking about buying some non-fungibles? Maybe you’re even thinking about investing? Maybe you still can’t wrap your brain around the idea of digital art being sold for $69 million, but you’re open-minded, you’ve done your homework and you think the rewards outweigh the risks. And maybe this is money you can afford to lose, so what the hell? [Obligatory disclaimer: Nothing that follows is financial advice. Investing in NFTs – or anything in crypto – is packed with risk and you can lose everything. Proceed with caution.] But if you’re trying to get your…
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Money Reimagined: NFTs Can Learn From DeFi’s Growth
This week, you could be forgiven for thinking bitcoin has ceded ground at the epicenter of the crypto zeitgeist to non-fungible tokens (NFT). Bitcoin’s price dropped to its lowest level since March 8, after failing to consolidate gains made on yet another Elon Musk tweet. Meanwhile, NFT stories were everywhere again. Another Beeple art piece sold for $6 million to raise funds for the Open Earth Foundation’s efforts to fight climate change, and both The New York Times and Time Magazine announced sales of their own NFTs. It’s also true that bitcoin continues to attract attention in financial troubled…
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The Beginnings of Institutional Ethereum: Recapping the First Few Weeks of CME Ether Futures
On February 8, CME Group officially launched Ether futures. ETH futures went live just a little more than three years after CME Group began offering Bitcoin futures. In this interview, CME Group Global Head of Equity Index and Alternative Investment Products Tim McCourt discusses the origins of ETH futures, what convinced them that the time was right for the product to go live, how institutional investors’ attitudes towards Ethereum (and crypto as a whole) have changed, and how the response from the market has been. When did you start thinking…
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Duke University’s Early Coinbase Investment Could Now Be Worth $500M: Sources
The endowment fund of Duke University, the alma mater of Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam, was one of the fortunate few to have made an early investment in the soon-to-list cryptocurrency exchange, CoinDesk has learned. Two people familiar with the matter said the $3.9 billion Duke Endowment was included early on in the cap table of Coinbase, which is expected to command a price tag of around $100 billion when its shares debut on Nasdaq. Those shares are now worth a small fortune, on the order of nine figures, the sources…
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Staking as an Asset Class? This Swiss Institutional Fund Is Jumping In
While institutional investors around the world are just getting their heads around bitcoin (BTC, +5.09%), asset managers in crypto-friendly Switzerland are heading into staking on next-generation blockchain networks. Announced Friday, Zurich-based investment firm Tavis Digital has partnered with Singapore-based Persistence, a bridge for traditional firms into undiscovered realms such as token staking and decentralized finance (DeFi). Tavis Digital is a spin-off of Tavis Capital, an asset manager regulated by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) with about $1.07 billion in assets under management. Nimble and financially sophisticated countries like Switzerland and…