Category: Bitcoin News

Brian Brooks defends fintech charter to House Financial Services Committee

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Brian Brooks has defended the fintech banking charter introduced while he served as the acting comptroller of the currency after Congressional Democrats took aim at the license on Thursday. Brian appeared as a witness before the House Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Financial Institutions at an April 15 hearing titled, “Banking Innovation or Regulatory Evasion? Exploring Trends in Financial Institution Charters.” The fintech charter was introduced by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, or OCC, and overseen by Brooks in 2020, allowing financial technology firms…

Liquity Protocol attracts $1B TVL in just 10 days

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The team behind Liquity Protocol — a DeFi project launched on April 5 — has attracted $1 billion worth of locked up value according to data from Dune Analytics. From $0 to $1B TVL in 10 days Here’s some charts highlighting Liquity’s growth so far: pic.twitter.com/qpSzRp0gZs — Liquity (@LiquityProtocol) April 15, 2021 The Pantera Capital-backed Liquity is a Swiss-based decentralized and governance-free lending protocol that offers interest-free loans against Ethereum locked as collateral, with users required to maintain a minimum collateral ratio of 110%. Loans are paid out in the…

Email server breach sees Celsians targeted by phishing attacks

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Crypto asset lending platform, Celsius Network, has revealed an email server breach that resulted in malicious phishing links being sent to customers. An April 15 announcement notes that some of Celsius’ customers have been receiving emails and SMS messages directing them to a malicious website impersonating the Celsius platform. The messages claim the link would direct them to a new web wallet from Celsius, purporting to offer $500 to users who create a wallet using the link. Phishing email sent to Celsius users: Reddit Celsius asserts the phishing links were…

Mick Jagger is using NFTs to raise money for indie music venues

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The Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger is jumping into the nonfungible token craze to help independent music venues that have been adversely affected by the pandemic.  In an announcement from the music legend on Thursday, Jagger said he had started a 24-hour auction on Nifty Gateway featuring a nonfungible token, or NFT, based on a new song with Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl. The digital piece designed by artist Oliver Latta, also known as Extraweg, features a loop of a figure running through two human heads, with Grohl and…

Zcash (ZEC), Horizen (ZEN) and Hedget (HGET) soar as altcoins lift off

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Three of Cathie Wood’s ARK exchange-traded funds bought nearly $246 million worth of Coinbase Global Inc. (COIN) shares on its listing day. Another fund, Amplify Transformational Data Sharing ETF (BLOK) also purchased COIN stock. These purchases show that ETFs are eager to buy into the crypto growth story. Crypto market data daily view. Source: Coin360 However, Blackrock CEO Larry Fink has a different point of view. Fink said that institutional investors were fascinated by crypto but that did not translate into demand from institutions worldwide. One of the reasons for…

It was only a matter of time — Some NFTs now have human DNA sequences

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Nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, haven’t quite reached the level of awareness to take over the human race — yet — but at least one of them contains the chemical building blocks of life. A crypto user known as “Cybex_Dreamer” recently listed their personal genome as an NFT for sale on OpenSea’s digital marketplace. The anonymous seller is auctioning off three NFTs, each containing one-third of their complete DNA sequence, based on identifier, chromosome number, base pair position and genotype. A small sample of the user’s genetic code shows the data…

Blackrock CEO says crypto ‘may become a great asset class’ but is no substitute for currency

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Despite the successful rollout of Coinbase’s stock on Wednesday, Blackrock CEO Larry Fink still expressed some concerns over the institutional adoption of crypto. In an interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box on Thursday, Fink said he was “encouraged by how many people were focusing” on crypto and the narrative surrounding it, but he seemed to imply his views were largely unchanged in the wake of a major cryptocurrency exchange going public.  “[Crypto] may become a great asset class, and I do believe this could become a great asset class,” said Fink. “I…

Switzerland’s largest insurer AXA starts accepting Bitcoin as payment

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Europe’s second-largest insurance firm, AXA, has become Switzerland’s first all-line insurer to offer its customers the option to pay their bills with Bitcoin (BTC), facilitated through a collaboration with the established cryptocurrency broker Bitcoin Suisse. Bitcoin payments will be accepted for nearly all AXA products, except for life insurance due to regulatory barriers to the latter.  AXA has cited the accelerated digital transformation of the global economy during the coronavirus pandemic as being a key factor in its choice to integrate cryptocurrency into its everyday operations. However, even back in…

New ‘inverse’ Bitcoin ETF now lets investors short BTC price

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Bitcoin (BTC) investors in Canada have two more outlets for BTC exposure this week — and can now even bet on a price crash. In a press release on April 14, Horizons ETFs Management confirmed that its two new exchange-traded funds (ETFs) would start trading on the Toronto stock exchange Thursday. Horizons: Bitcoin has “polarizing views” Already a pioneer in the regulated institutional investment space for Bitcoin, Canada has now given the go-ahead for the first such fund dedicated to Bitcoin price losses, not gains. Dubbed the BetaPro Inverse Bitcoin ETF (BITI),…

Bitcoin power consumption ‘66 times higher than in 2015’: Citigroup

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The Bitcoin energy consumption debate is heating up faster than the planet, with corporations facing pushback from the public and shareholders over Bitcoin investments. According to a Citigroup Inc. report, Bitcoin is consuming 66 times more electricity than it did in 2015. It added that the carbon emissions associated with mining will likely face increasing scrutiny, according to Bloomberg. This assertion is backed up by new research from Mastercard — which just released its own Carbon Calculator — that shows 54 percent of people believe that preserving the environment is…