Free tokens or coins are distributed to wallet addresses as part of a cryptocurrency airdrop to advertise a new coin. It’s a means for businesses to draw interest, promote trade, and honour devoted customers. Crypto airdrops aid in the broad distribution of tokens, which can strengthen decentralisation. Some crypto airdrops require you to retain a
The Ministry of Energy and Petroleum of Kenya and Bitcoin (BTC) mining company Marathon Digital (MARA) signed an agreement on Friday to spend over $80 million in the development of Kenya’s energy infrastructure. According to Marathon CEO Fred Thiel, the partnership’s goals are “monetizing underutilised energy across Kenya and jointly developing technology projects.” The business
Following the initiation of spot Bitcoin ETF trading, the price of Bitcoin experienced a 15% decline; however, traders are unsure if Ether’s price would follow suit. When spot Ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are introduced, traders are hesitant to assume that the price of Ether would drop, as was the case with Bitcoin when spot Bitcoin
Users in the United Kingdom are still only able to see the Bitcoin white paper on the Bitcoin.org website with limited access due to regulatory restrictions. Following Craig Wright’s failed legal attempt to establish his identity as the pseudonymous architect of the Bitcoin protocol, Satoshi Nakamoto, the white paper has been released again to the
Over the last ten years, the technology giant Nvidia has outperformed Bitcoin; nevertheless, cryptocurrency executives believe there is little likelihood of a recurrence. According to crypto executives, the fact that technology giant Nvidia (NVDA) outperformed Bitcoin during the last ten years should not be interpreted as a sign for the upcoming ten years. Cory Klippsten,
A family representative for Binance and two of its executives stated in an interview that a Nigerian court had postponed the money laundering trial against the company and two of its executives until June 20 due to the illness of one of the executives. Along with his company, Tigran Gambaryan, an American citizen who oversees financial crimes compliance for Binance, was accused of tax evasion and money laundering. Gambaryan’s attorney wrote to trial judge Emeka Nwite that their client is “very ill and requires comprehensive medical attention,” according to a Reuters report. According to the letter written by Gambaryan’s attorney, the medical facility administered intravenous therapy for malaria to him after he collapsed on Thursday. Gambaryan was arrested by Nigerian police in February and, after celebrating his 40th birthday this past week, was sent to Kuje jail, which is home to members of the terrorist organization Boko Haram. Alongside him in custody was Nadeem Anjarwalla, the British-Kenyan regional manager for Africa. Although Anjarwalla managed to flee, he was nevertheless charged with money laundering. “Yesterday, despite numerous signs of severe illness, my husband was still required to appear in court, where he later collapsed,” Gambaryan’s wife, Yuki Gambaryan, said in the statement seen by CoinDesk. “The conditions in the notorious Kuje prison are, in a word, devastating. My husband is a strong, healthy
Experts in the field are already speculating about the cryptocurrency that will be next, having approved a significant application in the competition to introduce a spot ether (ETH) exchange-traded fund (ETF). Not until 2025, according to Standard Chartered (STAN), Solana (SOL) or Ripple’s XRP may be the next big thing. “For other coins (eg. SOL, XRP), markets will look ahead to their eventual ETF status as well, albeit this is likely a 2025 story, not a 2024 one,” analyst Geoffrey Kendric said. “For now, bitcoin and ether dominance will rise, with selective “next in line” winners as well.” Form 19b-4, which prospective issuers had submitted, was approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday. Although this is a significant milestone in the race to introduce a spot ether exchange-traded fund (ETF), it is only one of two formats that require regulator approval. The SEC may require weeks, months, or even indefinitely to accept the S-1 paperwork, which has only been filed by a small number of possible issuers. Given SOL’s resemblance to Ethereum, a number of industry professionals have proposed that it might make sense to include it as a third ETF. Given that Ethereum is categorized as a commodity, brokerage company Bernstein stated in a note on Thursday that the token may proceed in a similar manner. By market capitalization, Solana ranks third among cryptocurrencies, following Bitcoin and Ether. This does not include Binance Coin (BNB) or the stablecoin Tether (USDT).
OKX, a prominent cryptocurrency exchange, announced that it had withdrawn its application to offer digital asset services in Hong Kong. “After careful consideration of our business strategy, we’ve decided to withdraw OKX HK’s VASP license application at this time,” the exchange said on its website. By May 31, the exchange—which ranks third in terms of traded volume according to CoinGecko data—will no longer offer centralized virtual asset trading services within the region. Customers will only be able to withdraw their monies after that. Huobi Hong Kong, an HTX subsidiary operating in Hong Kong, was among the several applicants that withdrew their petitions from the Securities and Futures Commission earlier this month. The government is presently reviewing the licensing of a number of significant cryptocurrency exchanges, including Crypto.com and Bullish, the company that owns CoinDesk. The latest exchange was authorized by the SFC in 2022.
Total Value Locked, or TVL, is a phrase used in the cryptocurrency space to refer to the total amount of assets held in various decentralised finance (DeFi) protocols at any given time. It represents the total value of all cryptocurrencies stored in smart contracts, including those that are utilised for trading, lending, and borrowing. TVL
The virtual asset services providers (VASP) registration was obtained by the Irish branch of the U.K.-based crypto infrastructure startup Ramp Network, the company announced in a news statement on Thursday. An organisation called The Ramp Network is developing payment rails to integrate cryptocurrency into the world’s financial system. Users who register will be able to
Pepe (PEPE) surged into the top twenty tokens in terms of market capitalization earlier on Thursday, according to CoinMarketCap statistics, after a “beta bet” narrative increased the token’s value by around 40% during the previous week. After being released in April 2023, the coin with a frog theme shot to a $1 billion market capitalization
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) received updated 9b-4 forms from Bitwise, BlackRock, and Grayscale on Wednesday for their proposed spot ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The staking ether requirements were eliminated from all new forms, which some claim was creating a regulatory bottleneck. “According to the amended BlackRock filing, no action will be taken
In order to enable Sonic, a new layer-1 blockchain with a layer-2 bridge connecting it to Ethereum, the foundation behind the layer-1 Fantom Opera blockchain said on Thursday that it was establishing the Sonic Foundation and Sonic Labs as the primary organizations. While Sonic Chain aims to create a layer-2 bridge that connects the Ethereum ecosystem, Fantom Opera is a stand-alone network that concentrates on decentralized finance. According to an email sent to CoinDesk by Michael Kong, CEO of Fantom Foundation, Sonic will be able to “withdraw funds on Ethereum independently” and will produce a proof “for every asset bridged from Ethereum to Sonic chain.” Sonic will be “greatly superior in terms of speed and security compared to the Fantom chain. Over time, we anticipate that users and developers will fully migrate to the Sonic chain,” Kong added. The Fantom Foundation released a press statement stating that the Sonic Foundation will oversee the management of the Sonic ecosystem and its finances.Sonic Labs will concentrate on the community for the Sonic network and decentralized apps. The Fantom team also revealed that the network will have its own native token, $S, once the Sonic chain launches, which is anticipated to happen later this year. According to them, $S will be 1:1 compatible with Fantom’s current $FTM token following a recent governance vote that codified the two tokens’ interoperability. Fantom announced the completion of a $10 million investment round lead by Hashed, which would be used to expand Sonic’s ecosystem and product line, in addition to the news about the new Sonic entities. Only after the Sonic chain is operational will Sonic Foundation and Sonic Labs begin to operate. “I’m incredibly grateful to our investors for their belief in our vision for Sonic and for our dedicated team
An increasing number of compliance-focused cryptocurrency initiatives are optimistic that a more hospitable regulatory landscape may eventually result in a boom of blockchain-based RWAs, or real-world assets, as blockchain competes for widespread acceptance this week in the corridors of the US Congress. A firm called Plume has successfully received $10 million in initial funding for their project, which aims to create the first layer-2 blockchain specifically designed for RWAs. Haun Ventures led the investment, with participation from Superscrypt, A Capital, SV Angel, Portal Ventures, and Reciprocal Ventures. The Ethereum-based blockchain developed by Plume is marketed as a one-stop shop for conveniently transferring off-chain assets onto blockchains. In other words, the protocol assists users in navigating the complex documentation, custodial requirements, and other administrative work necessary to transfer assets such as real estate, artwork, and specific types of financial instruments onto blockchains. “The RWA industry is one of the fastest-growing verticals in crypto today but there remains a critical gap – to date there has not been a permissionless blockchain equipped with fullstack RWA infrastructure to deploy any asset class compliantly,” the company explained in a statement shared with CoinDesk. “The robust DeFi ecosystem
Washington, D.C. Gary Gensler, the chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, declined on Thursday to provide a sneak peek at his organization’s ruling regarding ether (ETH) exchange-traded funds (ETFs), but he did encourage viewers to “stay tuned.” When queried by CoinDesk on Thursday about what the agency is planning to do in response to the specific applications on this much-anticipated crypto judgment, he mostly avoided answering the question, even though he had underlined that the court decision on ETFs had forced his agency to “pivot” in its thinking. “I don’t have anything on this particular filing,” Gensler said outside an Investment Company Institute event in Washington. “We do it within the law and how the courts interpret the law, and that’s what I’m deeply committed to,” he said, after having noted on stage at the event that the agency had responded to
SEC Chair Gary Gensler stated on Wednesday that the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act would be detrimental to investors and the work of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “The Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (‘FIT 21′) would create new regulatory gaps and undermine decades of precedent
The coalition that aims to respond to and prevent online fraud and scams includes cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase, Kraken, and other organisations in the space. According to a statement on Wednesday, the “Tech Against Scams” coalition will act as a gathering place for its members to work together to take action against the techniques scammers use
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has approved asset management WisdomTree (WT) to list cryptocurrency exchange-traded products (ETPs) on the London Stock Exchange (LSE). The company claims to be one of the first applicants to receive permission for its prospectus from the UK regulator. According to a statement released on Wednesday, WisdomTree’s Physical Bitcoin (BTCW) and
The Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data (PCPD) declared on Wednesday that Worldcoin’s iris scanning and identification practices violate Hong Kong’s data protection laws. “The Privacy Commissioner has served an enforcement notice on Worldcoin Foundation, directing it to cease all operations of the Worldcoin project in Hong Kong in scanning and collecting iris and face images of members of the public using iris scanning devices,” PCPD said in its statement. CoinGecko statistics shows that Worldcoin’s token WLD has decreased 1.2% in the last 24 hours to $5.01. In response to privacy concerns, the commission, an independent statutory authority, began looking into the iris biometric cryptocurrency initiative in December. Between December 2023 and January 2024, it conducted ten visits to the six locations that were essential to the project’s operation. “Worldcoin confirmed that there were 8,302 individuals
The president isn’t threatening to veto the measure that the U.S. House of Representatives is trying to approve to regulate the cryptocurrency market, which is encouraging for the sector. In an administrative policy statement released on Wednesday, US President Joe Biden’s White House stated that the administration was against the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act’s passage, citing worries about the act’s potential to weaken investor protections if it were to pass Congress. Additionally, contrary to prior remarks made by Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler, who has maintained that the industry does not require additional legislation specifically pertaining to the crypto markets, the bill indicated that the White House would want to collaborate with Congress on future legislation addressing the crypto markets. “The Administration is eager to work with Congress to ensure a comprehensive and balanced regulatory framework for digital assets, building on existing authorities, which will promote the responsible development of digital assets and payment innovation and help reinforce United States leadership in the global financial system,” the statement said. “H.R. 4763 in its current
The primary development company of the layer-2 blockchain Starknet, StarkWare, revealed plans on Wednesday for its own zero-knowledge rollup that is compatible with the current Ethereum infrastructure. This configuration is referred to as a zkEVM. The Starknet Stack, a suite of software tools that facilitate developers in creating their own tailored application-specific chains, will make the zkEVM, known as Kakarot, accessible. It is now undergoing testing. Since Cairo is the programming language used by Starknet, it already has its own zero-knowledge virtual machine (zkVM).The Starknet blockchain will now be more approachable to a wider range of project builders thanks to the zkEVM, which allows developers to write code in Solidity, the most popular programming language for Ethereum smart contracts. Press release obtained by CoinDesk states that Kakarot is presently in a “public whitelist” phase. The Kakarot zkEVM will thus only be accessible to a limited group of developers in order to test out any new protocol modifications prior to the network’s launch. “This is a great sign of Starknet’s growth and maturity,” said the CEO of StarkWare, Eli Ben-Sasson, in a statement to CoinDesk. “Starknet dared to be different, and use the powerful Cairo language, instead of Solidity. At the same time, some developers want the zkEVM approach, and for that reason, this is excellent
After the investment and research division of the massive cryptocurrency exchange Binance, Binance Labs, disclosed in a blog post that it had made an investment in the protocol, the native token of the decentralized cryptocurrency derivatives trading platform Aevo surged on Tuesday.At $0.9, the highest price since mid-May, AEVO saw a 10% increase. Nevertheless, CoinGecko data indicates that it’s still around 70% below its March opening price of about $3. The amount of the investment, how Binance Labs obtained the stake, and whether or not it purchased tokens were all kept a secret. Using the OP tech stack, Aevo, a rebranded version of Ribbon Finance, is constructed on top of its own Ethereum layer-2 (L2) network. By settling deals on the Ethereum blockchain, it enables users to trade tokens, perpetual futures, and options for cryptocurrencies prior to their introduction. Because of farming incentives prior to the token launch, the platform experienced a surge in trading activity in February and the first part of March, with daily derivatives trading volume reaching $1 billion. Since then, traffic has waned; as of late, DefiLlama stats reveal that daily traffic was considerably below $100 million. “As part of the future roadmap, Aevo will launch vault strategies, yield products, and Aevo staking,” Binance Labs said. “It will expand its ecosystem of derivative products by allowing builders to deploy their dApps permissionlessly on Aevo L2 to leverage its growing user base and unique features.”
According to on-chain documents and claims in Gala’s Discord community, the hacker who generated and then sold hundreds of millions of its native (GALA) token on Monday gave Gala Games roughly $23 million worth of ETH tokens. Gala receives an unexpected $23 million in ETH tokens as a result of the turn of events. The CEO of the project, Eric Schiermeyer, better known as Benefactor, stated in its Discord chat, “We will probably buy and burn on galaswap.” This entails purchasing GALA tokens with ETH and removing them from circulation. Gamers can hold NFTs and other cryptocurrency assets while playing a range of video games on the blockchain gaming platform Gala Games. The platform’s currency for purchasing and selling in-game items is the GALA token. The action was taken a day after 5 billion fresh GALA tokens were minted by an anonymous hacker by taking advantage of Gala’s internal restrictions. After that, the person made close to 6,000 ETH tokens by selling 600 million of those tokens on decentralized markets. All of the ETH in the compromised wallet was moved to a wallet under Gala Games’ control on Tuesday. “We believe we have identified the culprit and we are currently working with the FBI, DOJ and a network of international authorities,” Schiermeyer said Monday. The exploit caused GALA’s price to drop as much as 19% on Monday as traders fretted over the implications of the increased circulating supply and the hackers’ selling
As stated in a post by founder Dan Romero, Farcaster, a blockchain-based social media project, has raised $150 million in a fundraising round headed by Paradigm and including participation from a16z, Haun, USV, Variant, and Standard Crypto. As Romero stated in an update on Tuesday, “this will support our work on Farcaster for many years to come.” Staff-level engineers were being hired for the project, he continued. Farcaster is built atop the Ethereum blockchain as well as OP Mainnet in the Optimism layer-2 ecosystem, according to the project’s documentation. Romero stated in Tuesday’s article that since the project became “permissionless” in October, there had been “350,000 paid sign-ups and a 50x increase in network activity.” “There are hundreds of developers building on the protocol and a growing number of apps and frames for people to use.” Romero was most known for being the former roommate of Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam while attending Duke University.
Blockchain technology has the potential to bring about revolutionary changes in a number of different industries. Blockchain technology has the potential to significantly enhance computer vision in a number of important ways through computer vision integration. Ths concept of Computer vision Digital photos, videos, and other visual inputs can provide computers and systems with meaningful
According to the firms on Tuesday, Bitski, a browser extension wallet that focuses on Web3, has been acquired by Phantom, the top cryptocurrency wallet in the Solana ecosystem. According to a press announcement, Phantom and the Bitski team will work together to deliver embedded wallets to Solana. The deal’s financial details were kept a secret.
According to a press statement, USDX, a new stablecoin on layer-1 blockchain Flare, has been released by Hong Kong-based crypto custodian Hex Trust Group. Ahead of a surge in decentralised finance (DeFi) activity on the blockchain, USDX becomes the first native stablecoin on Flare. It will have a staking mechanism to a specific T-Pool, which
According to an S-1 update that Fidelity submitted early on Tuesday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company has retracted its plans to put Ethereum (ETH) holdings in its proposed exchange-traded fund (ETF). The company stated in earlier filings that it planned to give “one or more” infrastructure providers “a portion of the trust’s
Amidst the ever-changing digital terrain, several advancements are particularly noteworthy due to their potential to fundamentally transform our future. Of them, 5G networks and blockchain technology are particularly noteworthy, each bringing about substantial breakthroughs in their respective fields. With its incredibly quick data transfer, reduced latency, and improved connectivity, 5G promises to completely change how
The Attorney General of the State of New York, Letitia James, declared that her office had reached a $2 billion settlement with the cryptocurrency company Genesis to reimburse investors who had been duped.A bankruptcy court has accepted the $2 billion settlement between authorities and Genesis Global Capital, Genesis Asia Pacific, and Genesis Global Holdco, according to a letter sent by the New York AG on May 20.The settlement forbids Genesis from conducting business in New York and mandates that the money be repaid to the investors. James asserted that Genesis had been deceiving and misleading investors by sending over $1.1 billion to the platform via the Gemini Earn initiative. A Genesis representative who was contacted by Cointelegraph pointed to the company’s May 17 statement. “Our goal throughout this process has been to maximize value for all creditors, and we are gratified that the court approved both our [bankruptcy plan] and the NYAG settlement agreement,” said Genesis interim CEO Derar Islim. In October 2023, the Attorney General’s office in New York filed a lawsuit against Genesis. Subsequently, the litigation was expanded to encompass the Digital Currency Group, its CEO Barry Silbert, and Soichiro Moro, the previous CEO of Genesis. According to James, the settlement provisions only applied to Genesis; the other defendants and the Gemini Trust Company would still be targets of the litigation. The New York AG filed many actions against cryptocurrency companies operating in the state, the most recent of which being the Genesis settlement. James’ office sued KuCoin in 2023 for acting as an unlicensed exchange and asserting that Ether was a security at the time. The lawsuit was resolved for $22 million with the company. In addition, the New York AG sued former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky, alleging that he concealed the platform’s “dire financial condition.” Mashinsky is scheduled to go on trial in January 2025. He is presently being charged with crimes in the Southern District of New York, including securities fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to conduct fraud.
