Day: July 18, 2022

1.1m XRP Tokens Dumped by Ripple Co-Founder Jed McCaleb

by Blockchain News

Ripple co-founder and former Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Jed McCaleb resumed selling his Ripple reserves and liquidating 1.1 million Ripple tokens.

Jed McCaleb’s “Tacostand” wallet has only 46.7 XRP left, according to blockchain browser XRP Scan.

The price of XRP was trading at $0.3654, up 2.93% in the past 24 hours. The asset has down nearly 90% from its January 2018 all-time high of $3.40.

At current prices, Jed McCaleb has cashed out a total of $401,940, leaving only $17 worth of XRP left in the account.

Founded by RippleLab’s Chris Larsen and Jed McCaleb in 2012, Ripple is a global payment system that aims to replace the SWIFT system of cross-border payments with their open-source distributed ledger technology, the Ripple Transaction Protocol (RTXP).

Before leaving Ripple, McCaleb received 9 billion Ripple and agreed that he could sell Ripple. Still, only a certain amount of Ripple per day to ensure that the transaction would not affect the market. Ripple price was negatively affected.

McCaleb was awarded 9 billion XRP, of which roughly over 6 billion have already been disposed of.

In late 2020, the SEC charged Ripple Labs and its co-founder Chris Larsen and CEO Brad Garlinghouse with selling Ripple since2013 without officially registering it as a security.

This is seen as a means for the co-founders to get rid of Ripple’s reserves, especially as the SEC lawsuit has led to the ongoing devaluation of Ripple.

With the eventual sell-off, XRP proponent “XRP whales” claimed on Twitter that:

“Recently Jed McCaleb has sold off his remaining 5M $XRP. You now own more XRP than him.”

Jed McCaleb ends the eight-year sell-off of his XRP holdings.

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Hyperledger Fabric-based Platform Remooz.com Launches NFT Marketplace

by Blockchain News

Remooz.com, a platform based on Enterprise grade distributed ledger Hyperledger Fabric, has launched an NFT marketplace platform.

A growing number of celebrities, including musicians, athletes, movie stars, and others, have turned their interest to the digital token, creating their own series of NFTs and selling them.

The latest NFT platform will be a marketplace that allows collectors, artists, and ordinary people who have no exposure to NFT technology to create, buy and resell NFTs through blockchain-backed transactions.

The platform’s digital assets are traded in U.S. dollars, offering businesses, investors, users and ordinary people a huge opportunity to build a user-friendly, highly accessible and socially engaged platform.

The strength of the Remooz NFT marketplace platform lies in Hyperledger Fabric’s blockchain.

Hyperledger Fabric is an open, proven, enterprise-grade, distributed ledger platform started in 2015 by The Linux Foundation.

It uses a modular, general-purpose framework with unique identity management and access control capabilities that make it ideal for a variety of industry applications, such as track and trace supply chains, trade finance, loyalty and rewards, financial asset management, Clearing and settlement, etc.

Based on this blockchain, Remooz can become a partner and work together to promote the company’s business development.

The Co-founder & CEO of Remooz, Marwan Salem, stated that: “Either serving the business-to-consumer (B2C)or business-to-business (B2B)segments, Remooz is redefining the blockchain infrastructure and making NFTs accessible to all.”

Recently, Video game retailer GameStop Corp announced Monday the launch of a public beta version of a non-fungible token.

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Bitcoin Endured Two Major Capitulation Events in H1, Glassnode Shows

by Blockchain News

Bitcoin (BTC) has experienced significant ups and downs in the first half year due to various uncertainties and events like the LUNA collapse.

Glassnode believes the top cryptocurrency has persisted in two huge capitulation events so far in 2022. The market insight provider explained:

“2022 has seen Bitcoin markets weather two enormous capitulation events, both with the largest BTC transfer volume in loss since 2011. When LUNA collapsed, the total transfer volume in loss was 538k BTC. This was followed by 480k BTC as the market traded below the 2017 ATH.”

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Source: Glassnode

The collapse of LUNA and UST, the native tokens of the Terraform network, sent shockwaves in the crypto market, and Bitcoin was not spared. This emerged as the first significant capitulation event.

Nevertheless, the top cryptocurrency dusted itself off after 538,000 BTC was transferred in massive loss. 

The second capitulation event continues to play out after Bitcoin nosedived below the all-time high (ATH) of $20,000 recorded in 2017.

Since capitulation happens when investors have given up trying to recover lost gains based on falling prices, Glassnode recently pointed out that this was happening in the BTC market because a resilient bottom had not yet been formed. 

Crypto analyst Rekt Capital acknowledged that bear market bottoms are time intensive and said:

“Typical BTC bear market bottoms tend to take months to develop before a new macro uptrend begins. BTC has been meandering at current prices for only a few weeks. History suggests it is too premature to expect a full-blown macro trend reversal so soon.”

Rekt Capital added that the psychological price of $20,000 was the level to watch based on how strong or weak it would emerge as a support level.

Bitcoin was up by 4.38% in the last 24 hours to hit $22,337 during intraday trading, according to CoinMarketCap. 

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Bitcoin Endured Two Major Capitulation Events, Glassnode Shows

by Blockchain News

Bitcoin (BTC) has experienced significant ups and downs in the first half year due to various uncertainties and events like the LUNA collapse.

Glassnode believes the top cryptocurrency has persisted in two huge capitulation events so far in 2022. The market insight provider explained:

“2022 has seen Bitcoin markets weather two enormous capitulation events, both with the largest BTC transfer volume in loss since 2011. When LUNA collapsed, the total transfer volume in loss was 538k BTC. This was followed by 480k BTC as the market traded below the 2017 ATH.”

Image

Source: Glassnode

The collapse of LUNA and UST, the native tokens of the Terraform network, sent shockwaves in the crypto market, and Bitcoin was not spared. This emerged as the first significant capitulation event.

Nevertheless, the top cryptocurrency dusted itself off after 538,000 BTC was transferred in massive loss. 

The second capitulation event continues to play out after Bitcoin nosedived below the all-time high (ATH) of $20,000 recorded in 2017.

Since capitulation happens when investors have given up trying to recover lost gains based on falling prices, Glassnode recently pointed out that this was happening in the BTC market because a resilient bottom had not yet been formed. 

Crypto analyst Rekt Capital acknowledged that bear market bottoms are time intensive and said:

“Typical BTC bear market bottoms tend to take months to develop before a new macro uptrend begins. BTC has been meandering at current prices for only a few weeks. History suggests it is too premature to expect a full-blown macro trend reversal so soon.”

Rekt Capital added that the psychological price of $20,000 was the level to watch based on how strong or weak it would emerge as a support level.

Bitcoin was up by 4.38% in the last 24 hours to hit $22,337 during intraday trading, according to CoinMarketCap. 

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Coinsfera Enables Users to Trade USDT in UAE through OTC

by Blockchain News

Coinsfera, the global over-the-counter(OTC) digital asset trading platform, announced that it allows users to buy or sell stablecoin USDT in Dubai over OTC.

Users can now purchase or sell USDT in cash directly by visiting the Coinsfera crypto OTC desk without the need for a bank account or credit card.

Coinsfera is an exchange for buying and selling cryptocurrency with cash in Istanbul of Turkey, Dubai of UAE, Kosovo of Prishtina, and so forth.

Due to the recent market volatility, crypto investors are largely looking to sell their holdings of BTC, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies and buy USDT to keep their assets in a stable currency and avoid market volatility.

Tether (USDT) is a cryptocurrency with a value meant to mirror the value of the U.S. dollar.

Users can contact Coinsfera via Whatsapp or phone, and a staff member will arrange a meeting. This service is available across the UAE.

This is a big deal because it opens up a whole new world of possibilities for those who want to capitalize on cryptocurrency profits.

According to the exchange, customers only need to bring their ID or passport to use Coinsfera’s services. Tourists only need to bring their passports to buy/sell USDT at the OTC counter.

Instead of buying Bitcoin or Ethereum first, they can sell USDT directly for cash. This will be especially helpful for those who want to use cryptocurrencies for local payments or remittances.

With Tether, they will be able to avoid the high fees associated with traditional banking methods.

Dubai is more than just a well-known tourist destination in the world but also aspires to be the global financial centre in the Middle East. Dubai comes off as one of the latter with the slew of licenses being granted to cryptocurrency exchanges. As reported by Blockchain.News, OKX, one of the leading crypto exchanges in the digital currency ecosystem, is one of the latest in the industry that has just been given the green light to operate in Dubai.

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76% of Financial Institutions Eyeing Crypto Adoption in Next 3 Years, Ripple Report Shows

by Blockchain News

More financial institutions intend to join the crypto bandwagon for various reasons like bridging the payment gap, according to a report by crypto solutions provider Ripple. 

The Ripple report, “New Value: Crypto Trends in Business & Beyond,” highlights how the crypto space is revamping the finance landscape. The research highlighted:

“76% expect to use crypto in the next three years, assuming regulation allows for it. In a deviation from the pattern of the enterprises being more favorable to digital assets of all types and more optimistic about their benefits, slightly fewer enterprises, at 71%, say they will use crypto in the next three years.”

Financial institutions not only see crypto as a speculative asset but also as an ideal payment channel, collateral, and inflationary hedge.

The Ripple report also pointed out that institutional crypto adoption might be at a tipping point and stated:

“A tipping point scenario where institutional adoption begets broader institutional adoption, the speed of which can be fueled by a variety of factors including use for hedging and payments.”

When choosing cryptocurrencies, financial institutions and enterprises did not highly consider sustainability. 

Nevertheless, consumers were keener when choosing sustainable crypto. Per the report:

“Over 75% of consumers say they would prefer to buy a cryptocurrency that is sustainable. And more than 20% of global consumers say they would only buy sustainable cryptocurrencies.”

The consensus was that financial institutions and enterprises saw crypto as a stepping stone toward more equity and inclusion in their organizations.

Meanwhile, the appetite for cryptocurrencies in e-commerce has been gaining steam because they render more convenient and safer payments, according to a report by global payments solution provider Checkout.com.

Deloitte shared similar sentiments by highlighting that 87% of merchants eyed crypto payments based on the competitive advantage presented, Blockchain.News reported. 

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Coinbase Puts Gnosis, Metal & Raydium on its Roadmap

by Blockchain News

U.S. Nasdaq-listed cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase has updated its roadmap, adding two Ethereum-based altcoins, Gnosis (GNO) and Metal (MTL), and Solana-based blockchain project Raydium (RAY).

Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, a protocol designed to be a decentralized prediction market built on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain.

Upon listing, Gnosis was up 5.43% in the last 24 hours. The live Gnosis price was trading at $143.10 with a 24-hour trading volume of $4,432,452.

Metal (MTL) is an Ethereum-based payment platform. Metal Pay allows users to register a free bank account and buy and sell over 50 cryptocurrencies. Metal’s price was $1.26 with a 24-hour trading volume of $14933541 during the intraday.

The third project goes to Raydium, an Automated Market Maker (AMM) and liquidity provider built on the Solana blockchain for the Serum Decentralized Exchange (DEX).

Raydium has the first-mover advantage as an AMM within Serum and will be an integral part of bringing new and existing projects and protocols into the ecosystem.

Coinbase’s latest move triggered RAY to surge 10% from $0.86 to $0.95.

In order to Increase transparency for new asset listings on Coinbase, Coinbase’s listing roadmap is a set of crypto projects that may be joining the exchange’s list of supported assets.

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Heather Morgan of Bitfinex Crypto Heist Cleared to Seek Proper Employment

by Blockchain News

American rapper and entrepreneur Heather Morgan, indicted for contriving with her husband Ilya Lichtenstein to launder money, has been permitted by a judge to seek proper employment.

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Her case will still be on trial, but she is authorized to get a job that can earn her more than $10,000 in a month.

The digital currencies stolen from the Bitfinex 2016 heist are presently worth $4.5 billion in Bitcoin (BTC). So far, the United States authorities have successfully recovered over $3.6 billion in crypto connected to the hack.

Recalling, the United States Department of Justice attested that the Bitfinex heist was the biggest crypto robbery it had ever unravelled. The couple Heather Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein were picked in Manhattan due to their suspected connections to the hack.

How Did the Couple Achieve the Heist?

The man and his wife conspired to launder about 119,754 Bitcoin that were redirected from Bitfinex through a breach of the exchange’s security system. With the loopholes created in the system, the hackers were able to perform 2000 unauthorized transactions. Upon investigation, the transactions were traced down to wallets linked to Lichtenstein.

Several transfers worth about 25,000 BTC were noticed to have been authorized from Lichtenstein’s wallet. The transferred funds ended up in a financial account that belonged to both Lichtenstein and Morgan. The remaining crypto worth about 94,000 BTC is yet to leave the initial account to which it was sent during the heist.

Further investigations led to the discovery of online files linking the ownership of the account to Lichtenstein. Private keys needed to access the wallets where the funds were deposited were discovered in those online files. Strapped with this information, the authorities were able to retrieve the 94,000 BTC left.

However, the analysis showed the complex money laundering techniques that the couple used. Lichtenstein and Morgan utilized computer programs to automate the transactions and created false identities to set online accounts. They also involved anonymity-enhanced virtual currency (AEC) in converting the BTC to other cryptocurrencies.

While the Bitfinex hack mimics those of MtGox, other less draining hacks have been recorded by other exchanges like KuCoin and Crypto.com.

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Sweden Prefers Using Electricity for Job Creation Activities than Bitcoin Mining

by Blockchain News

Sweden is at the crossroads of choosing to use electricity for job-creation projects or Bitcoin mining. The dilemma could be tough for this Northern European country to make a wise decision.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Khashayar Farmanbar, Sweden’s Energy Minister, stated that it is more important to offer electricity for job-creating projects such as steel plants than for Bitcoin mining firms that consume huge amounts of energy.

“We need energy for more useful things than Bitcoin, to be honest,” Farmanbar said in the interview that was published in Bloomberg media on Saturday. 

Last month, the Swedish government requested the energy agency – a government agency responsible for the supply and use of energy in the country – to track how much electricity is used for digital infrastructure, with a focus on cryptocurrency mining.

However, Farmanbar declined to talk about what measures the energy agency could take to limit crypto mining. The report shows that the energy ministry may prioritize new power users based on their ability to benefit society through job creation.

According to the Sweden Energy Agency, crypto mining does not come into the argument when the manufacturing sector is considered. Bitcoin mining is regarded as not creating as many jobs as other sectors, and its power consumption is a major threat to societal welfare.

Another option the energy ministry could consider introducing is cancelling tax incentives for particular data centres. The agency initially designed such taxes for traditional firms such as Microsoft and Meta Platforms. As a result, mining firms have also benefited from such incentives by default, but that is likely to change.

Protecting Environment

In January, Swedish government officials called on the EU to ban energy-intensive cryptocurrency mining methods proof of work, such as those used by Bitcoin.

The officials said such activities could not be tolerated at a time when all countries around the globe urgently need to reduce their energy consumption to combat the climate threat.

The government argued that Bitcoin mining is bad for the climate and worldwide efforts to convert the global energy system to renewables. According to Sweden, Bitcoin production deploying renewable sources is not environmentally friendly.

Months before Sweden’s proposal, China, which had dominated the crypto mining sector, moved and outlawed mining in the country. With China’s move, miners migrated worldwide, looking for cheap electricity and a friendlier regulatory environment. Currently, the U.S leads in the lion’s share of the global mining market, followed by Kazakhstan and Russia. But energy usage among crypto miners in such nations is still a big issue.

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Privately Issued, Regulated Digital Crypto Might Better than CBDC, Says Australian Central Bank

by Blockchain News

A key regulator has challenged the notion that cryptocurrencies are risky investment assets. Phillip Lowe, the Australian central bank governor, said on Sunday that consumer-focused digital tokens issued by private firms could be better than central bank-issued tokens if the firms can be regulated appropriately.

Many central banks across the globe are developing either retail CBDCs to be used by consumers or wholesale CBDCs to be used by banks within the financial system. Such developments have evolved as a response to the so-called stablecoins, privately issued tokens like Tether and USDC, whose value is pegged to fiat currencies, such as the US dollar.

The risk of such tokens to financial systems was witnessed in May when crypto markets crashed, triggered by the collapse of TerraUSD stablecoin and its sister cryptocurrency Luna.

“If these tokens are going to be used widely by the community, they are going to need to be backed by the state or regulated just as we regulate bank deposits,” said Lowe in a panel discussion at Indonesia’s G20 finance officials’ meeting.

“I tend to think that the private solution is going to be better – if we can get the regulatory arrangements right – because the private sector is better than the central bank at innovating and designing features for these tokens, and there are also likely to be very significant costs for the central bank setting up a digital token system,” he stated.

Lowe and his fellow panellists agreed that more is needed to be done to build a sufficiently strong regulatory system for such tokens.

Eddie Yue, the CEO of The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), mentioned that greater scrutiny of such tokens could also help minimize risks from decentralized finance (DeFi) projects, part of the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

Regulators Eyeing Stablecoin Safeguards

The collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin significantly impacted the crypto sector and wider financial markets. The market instability fueled regulators to push for a regulatory framework to address crypto’s risks.

Last month, U.S. regulators said the incident of the TerraUSD crash confirmed their previous concerns about stablecoin risks and vulnerabilities within the crypto ecosystem.

Policymakers are currently working to coordinate a policy response to the relatively new financial sector. Multiple agencies are getting involved in regulating digital assets and by whom.

Key global financial regulators such as The President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, among others, are spearheading international efforts to bring stablecoins within the regulatory perimeter and tackle the above-mentioned risks with a collaborative approach across global standard-setting bodies and international forums.

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Bitcoin (BTC) $ 26,209.02 0.31%
Ethereum (ETH) $ 1,586.92 0.10%
Litecoin (LTC) $ 63.90 0.78%
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) $ 213.84 1.68%