Marathon Patent Group, a mining company traded on the Nasdaq exchange, bought 4,813 BTC for $ 150 million. This is the first time a bitcoin mining company bought them on the market. In mid-January, Marathon managed to raise $ 250 million. When asked if the funds were used to buy bitcoin, Marathon CEO Merrick Okamoto said that the purchase was made from the company’s budget. She already had $ 425 million in cash, and some…
E-cigarette and vaping goods maker PuffBar will use the Vechain blockchain to combat counterfeit products and will also start accepting BCH and ETH for payments. PuffBar is controlled by Cool Clouds Distribution, founded in 2019 and registered in Los Angeles. Cool Clouds stopped marketing its products in the United States after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned the sale of flavored e-cigarettes. The reason was that these products became popular among children and…
The developers of the DeFi Kyber Network have announced plans to provide liquidity and launch a new KNC token as part of the Kyber 3.0 platform update. Kyber Network, the Ethereum-based DeFi token exchange, has announced plans to roll out the Kyber 3.0 update. According to the statement, the update will protect liquidity providers from losses due to price volatility. Kyber also plans to vote on changes that will make the KNC exchange’s own token…
The Singapore branch of the BIS Innovation Center is developing an international platform for testing Central Banks’ digital currencies. The management of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) said that one of its top priorities in 2021 is the study of government digital currencies. BIS intends to explore how these tools can speed up cross-border payments and reduce fees. BiS Innovation Center also plans to study a multi-tier architecture for distributing digital currencies between users.…
US President Joe Biden froze consideration of bills proposed by the previous administration, including rules for regulating non-custodial cryptocurrency wallets. According to a statement on the White House website, consideration of laws and regulations proposed by the administration of the past president has been temporarily suspended. This also applies to the rules for regulating cryptocurrency wallets proposed by the American Financial Crimes Network (FinCEN) in December. The new government’s initiative received support from cryptocurrency advocates…
BitMEX Research has identified an alleged double-spend transaction of 0.00062063 BTC (about $ 21) at block 666,833. This was likely by accident. The ForkMonitor BitMEX service reported on January 20 that “several blocks were created in Bitcoin at block height 666 833”, as a result of which one of the chains won, the rest of the blocks were lost. A double spend transaction occurred while undoing an “old” block. Given the insignificance of the amount,…
The trustee of the closed cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX will agree with the court on the date of fixing cryptocurrency rates for payment of compensation. On January 26, Ernst & Young (EY) will go to court with a proposal to set a date for assessing claims for cryptocurrencies instead of the date of bankruptcy of the exchange on April 15, 2019. The trustee takes a different position than one of the claim holders, the cryptocurrency startup…
The developers of the Celo decentralized protocol are planning to launch the cEUR stablecoin, which will be backed by a basket of digital assets pegged to the euro. The launch is scheduled for March 2021. This was announced by Marek Olszewski, a partner at cLabs, a firm involved in the development of the project. The protocol is still at the testing stage, but in a few months the developers will be ready to “release it”.…
The Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) plans to submit two advisory documents on cryptoasset regulation in 2021. The Dubai International Financial Center Special Economic Zone Financial Regulatory Authority will develop a regulatory framework for digital assets as part of the 2021-2022 business plan, released this week. According to information from the DFSA, the future cryptoasset regulation structure will expand the Authority’s powers over digital asset issuers and associated trading platforms. The framework will include rules…
Ethereum developer James Hancock has released five Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIP) updated in the Berlin hardfork specification. The Berlin update aims to improve the current Ethereum Proof-of-Work (PoW) network. Earlier, the developers decided to suspend work on the Berlin hard fork until August due to excessive dependence on the Geth client. Otherwise, any failure in this client could suspend the entire network. The developers considered that the best solution would be the transition of node…
