After being integrated with Blockstream’s Greenlight solution, users of the Bitcoin-only app Relai, based in Switzerland, will be able to use Lightning payment capability.Blockstream’s Lightning-as-a-service solution is being integrated into Relai’s wallet platform, which is exclusive to Bitcoin, according to a release shared with Cointelegraph that explains the specifics of the partnership.Greenlight is configured to enable 100,000 Relai users to send and receive inexpensive Bitcoin payments over the Lightning Network while keeping control of their private keys.By integrating Greenlight, Relai can avoid developing and maintaining custom Lightning infrastructure. In June 2023, Blockstream introduced Greenlight as a substitute service that allows platforms and developers to offer quick, inexpensive Bitcoin payments.Utilizing Blockstream’s infrastructure while maintaining user control over private keys is essential to the service.Custodial solutions represent an alternate choice that provides expedited onboarding and convenience; however, these usually erode user security and privacy assurances.Security and privacy are given priority in noncustodial systems, although they come with higher operational and technological costs. The method used by Greenlight to enable custodial Lightning divides nodes into smaller, independent parts.Greenlight enables all activities involving private keys to be carried out on a user’s device acting as the signer, using Core Lightning as the foundational implementation.The infrastructure of Blockstream powers the remaining nodes and requirements for operations. In order to guarantee end-to-end verification, Blockstream developed its signer on the Validating Lightning Signer project.This implies that no one with comparable control or access, including the infrastructure operator, may start operations involving their cash; only users may do so. With a user-controlled client interface and signer and a wallet provider running a Bitcoin node that connects to the network, the design is akin to hardware wallets.Blockstream manages the node, but user-controlled components have the ability to start payments and sign invoices. When Relai was established in 2020, its only goal was to trade and store Bitcoins.Over the previous four years, the app has produced trading volume of over $300 million.Relai’s move to integrate Lightning payments follows the lead of several of the largest exchanges aiming to enhance their Bitcoin payment capabilities.September 2023 will see the integration of Bitcoin Lightning payments into Coinbase’s offering, as stated by the largest exchange operator in the US.Citing Bitcoin’s status as the most valuable asset in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong claimed that the platform’s features will enable quicker and less expensive BTC transactions.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of Thailand has granted an exemption, permitting institutional investors and extremely wealthy individuals to purchase cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The SEC’s Secretary-General, Pornanong Budsaratragoon, announced on Monday that asset managers would now be permitted to purchase spot bitcoin (BTC) ETFs on American markets. The SEC Act classifies spot bitcoin

The bitcoin (BTC) treasury of El Salvador currently has $84 million in unrealized profit on the assets it began buying in September 2021. The nation of Central America’s bitcoin treasury reached over $206 million as of Tuesday, a 69% increase on starting capital due to the cryptocurrency’s 250% surge over the previous year. According to

A regulatory sandbox was established by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) to provide prospective stablecoin issuers with a penalty-free environment in which to develop and test certain operations. The regulator stated on Tuesday that the sandbox gives regulatory flexibility and is in line with Hong Kong’s strategy to control fiat-backed stablecoins, or cryptocurrencies linked

The administration estimates that these taxes may bring in close to $10 billion in 2025 and more than $42 billion over the next ten years. U.S. President Joe Biden will once again push wash trading rules, cryptocurrency mining taxes, and other regulations in his proposed budget for the future year.Line items for applying wash sale regulations to digital assets, information reporting requirements for financial institutions and digital asset brokers, reporting regulations for foreign cryptocurrency accounts, incorporating cryptocurrency in mark-to-market regulations, and an excise tax on mining are all included in the president’s proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which was made public on Monday. “The Budget saves billions of dollars by closing other tax loopholes that overwhelmingly benefit the rich and the largest, most profitable corporations. This includes: closing the so-called ‘like-kind exchange loophole’ that lets real estate investors defer tax indefinitely; reforms to tax preferred retirement incentives to ensure that the ultrawealthy cannot use these incentives to

The largest stablecoin by market value, USDT from Tether, will be live on Celo, a layer-1 platform with a mobile focus. Currently, Celo is moving from an independent blockchain to a fresh layer-2 built on top of Ethereum. With an emphasis on emerging regions, the platform aims to be a mobile-first network that provides users

ARK Invest, Cathie Wood’s investment manager, sold more than 580,000 Coinbase (COIN) shares during the week that concluded on March 8. At Friday’s closing price of $256.62, those sales were valued at $149.85 million. Three of ARK’s exchange-traded funds (ETFs)—the Innovation ETF (ARKK), the Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW), and the Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF)—were

Edul Patel, the CEO and co-founder of Mudrex, an Indian cryptocurrency investment platform, said that institutional and retail investors in India will be able to purchase U.S. spot bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETFs). “In a recent interview, Patel stated that this is much more valuable to institutions because retailers already had access to it.” While

According to the CEO of asset manager ARK Invest, bitcoin will reach $1 million before 2030.Cathie Wood stated that there are “new expectations for institutional involvement” in the rise in Bitcoin prices in an interview with the New Zealand Herald on March 7. Since the first spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were introduced in the US, bitcoin has changed, according to Cathie Wood.Speaking to a crowd of mainstream journalists, the well-known supporter of Bitcoin reiterated her belief in the future of the biggest cryptocurrency.She clarified that ARK itself was compelled to reassess its level of bullishness on Bitcoin due to the overwhelming interest in and momentum surrounding the spot ETFs.Prior to now, the company had set a price objective of $1 million for each bitcoin by 2030.The roadmap is now being updated. “That target — it was before the SEC gave us the green light, and I think that was a major milestone, and it has pulled forward the timeline,” she explained, referring to the regulatory nod from U.S. regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission. Wood went on to say that no significant wirehouse, including Bank of America, Merryl Lynch, and Morgan Stanley, had yet to support the institutional effort. “No platform has approved Bitcoin yet, so all of

Local cryptocurrency stakeholders have expressed regret at the current prohibition on Binance naira operations in Nigeria, claiming that it will negatively impact many Nigerians’ means of subsistence and may lead to a rise in the country’s youth unemployment rate.Local cryptocurrency insiders told Cointelegraph in separate interviews that other exchanges will emerge to fill the void left by Binance’s withdrawal and find a method to stay in compliance with local laws as a result of Binance delisting its naira-related services.According to Nathaniel Luz, CEO of Flincap, a liquidity provider for cryptocurrency exchanges, a number of Nigerian traders who depend on P2P trading on Binance for their livelihood are now impacted.They have, nevertheless, recently led to trading on Telegram and WhatsApp groups. Luz emphasized this development by saying.According to the chief marketing officer of Flincap, Oladotun Wilfred Akangbe, the continuing uncertainty surrounding cryptocurrency regulation in Nigeria and the decision to seize operations of Binance can undermine the confidence of many people in the space. It can lead to massive fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) in the

More bitcoin (BTC) has been amassed by the BlackRock iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) in its less than two-month existence than by MicroStrategy (MSTR).IBIT had 195,985 bitcoin on Friday following another day of strong inflows, per the fund’s most recent declaration.As of February 26, 193,000 tokens were held by the corporation, according to MicroStrategy’s latest public announcements. Given that MicroStrategy priced a $700 million capital round earlier this week with plans to utilize the proceeds to buy more bitcoin, it’s plausible that the company has increased that sum since then.With the exception of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, which was converted from a closed-end fund, BlackRock’s IBIT has consistently added hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of bitcoin every day since the spot ETFs launched on January 11. This has made it the largest new spot product. The next cryptocurrency in line for IBIT would be Grayscale’s GBTC, which currently possesses about 400,000 tokens despite having lost almost 200,000 bitcoin since the spot products’ launch. The main driver of bitcoin’s more than 60% price increase this year has been the enormous demand for the new spot ETFs.According to statistics from CoinDesk Indices, the cryptocurrency crossed $70,000 for the first time ever on Friday morning and ultimately hit a new all-time high of $70,136.Bitcoin was trading at just less than $70,000 at the time of publication.

The US appellate court said that the district court’s justification for dismissing the action against cryptocurrency exchange Binance was “erroneous.” A US appeals court reversed a decision that had dismissed a class-action lawsuit filed by investors against Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange. Claimantly, investors were misled into believing they were purchasing securities-registered cryptocurrency tokens. An appeal

Maker Vaults, the PSM, the Dai Savings Rate (DSR), SparkLend DAI Borrow Rate, and the Governance Security Module (GSM) Pause Delay are among the modifications. Due to increased market volatility and optimistic emotion, MakerDAO, the organisation in charge of creating the MKR token, has passed a new Executive Vote to impose temporary fee changes to

Concerns regarding the transformation of Grayscale’s Ethereum Trust into a spot ETF were discussed during a meeting between Coinbase and the SEC on March 6. In order to explore a regulation change for the introduction of spot Ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs), representatives from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently met with cryptocurrency businesses

The creator of Jito, a well-known substitute Solana client, abruptly removed its mempool feature on Friday. This feature was a crucial component of Jito’s engineering stack, but it had allowed for a number of expensive front-running attacks against cryptocurrency traders. Jito announced on Friday that its mempool would shut down in a few hours via

According to the most recent on-chain data, Bitcoin whales are not in a rush to sell into the current surge that has driven the cryptocurrency to unprecedented heights above $70,000. As of March 7, there were 2,104 distinct addresses that had 1,000 Bitcoin or more, referred to as “whale” addresses. This is still less than

Recently, the total value frozen by DeFi worldwide topped $100.1 billion. Nevertheless, these amounts are still less than the $189 billion record set in November 2021. The atmosphere surrounding the cryptocurrency business is being fueled by the demand for Bitcoin, which on March 9 raised the amount of capital locked on the chain to above

Chief Investment Officer of Bitwise Matt Hougan issues a warning, saying that not all tokens experiencing a spike in value in the cryptocurrency market “deserve to be.” Investors should view cryptocurrency projects with high valuations with caution, as the market is experiencing the “wealth effect,” according to Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan. He said

The FBI claims that 86% of all investment losses in the US in 2023 were due to investment fraud involving cryptocurrencies. According to a report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States, the majority of investment losses in the country in 2023 were attributable to investment fraud related to cryptocurrencies. According

Seraphim Czecker, head of growth at Ethena Labs, stated in an X post on March 8 that Ethena had crossed $6.8 million in daily total income over the past week, making it the highest-earning decentralized application (DApp). Only two blockchains, Tron ($38.6 million) and Ethereum ($182.5 million daily cumulative income over the past seven days),

On March 8, Bitcoin reached fresh all-time highs as the argument for interest rate reductions was strengthened by the US unemployment rate. Following strong BTC price movement, Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView data showed that bulls drove the market into price discovery, reaching $70,184 on Bitstamp. The biggest cryptocurrency increased in value after the most

An email sent to subscribers on Thursday stated that some of the account holders of Cryptopia, a cryptocurrency exchange based in New Zealand that is being liquidated due to a cyberattack in 2019, will begin receiving their cryptocurrency back. The email stated that qualifying customers will receive their dogecoin (DOGE) and bitcoin (BTC) back in

According to Bloomberg, the United States will challenge a Montenegro court’s decision to send Do Kwon, a co-founder of Terraform Labs, to South Korea. Kwon’s lawyer, Goran Rodic, sent out a text message on Thursday informing his client that he will not be challenging the decision made by a Montenegro court to extradite him to