Category Financial

Bitcoin surged to a five-month high on Monday, climbing back above $57,000 to outperform the broader cryptocurrency sector.

The digital currency claimed an intraday high of $57,776 before paring gains to trade up 3.48% at $57,331 as of 12:50 p.m. ET Monday. The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization hit a record high of $65,000 in April.

Tim Frost, the CEO of the digital-wealth-management platform Yield App, couldn't point to one particular reason behind the rally. Catalysts could include the Securities and Exchange Commission's recent approval of an exchange-traded fund made up of stocks with bitcoin exposure, growing institutional adoption of the digital asset, and the daily settlement hitting $31 billion worth of transactions for the first time last week, he said.

But bitcoin could be headed for another short-term dip.

Continue reading at businessinsider.com

Robinhood has sounded the alarm to investors about potential risks to its business model related to increased regulatory scrutiny of cryptocurrencies and payment for order flow (PFOF), a payment arrangement with market makers which allows trading platforms to offer low-commission or commission-free trading.

According to Robinhood, payment for order flow and transaction rebates from cryptocurrency trading accounted for 79% of the company's total revenue in the second quarter, with PFOF making up 38% and cryptocurrencies making up 41%.

"Regulation of the cryptocurrency industry continues to evolve and is subject to change. Moreover, securities and commodities laws and regulations and other bodies of laws can apply to certain cryptocurrency businesses,"  the platform said in an amended S-1 filing on Friday.

Continue reading at foxbusiness.com

A clash over tax rules for digital currencies like bitcoin turned into a political coming-of-age moment for the cryptocurrency industry, galvanizing a usually fractious coalition of investors, exchanges, financiers and social-media influencers.

In public, Ashton Kutcher, Elon Musk and Square Inc. Chief Executive Jack Dorsey brought the Twitter heat over a provision in the $1 trillion infrastructure bill seeking to expand and strengthen tax enforcement of crypto transactions. That helped prompt tens of thousands of followers to call members of Congress.

Behind the scenes, lobbyists, trade-group officials and executives at crypto companies hopped on Google Meet every few hours to coordinate Congressional outreach and tracked legislative contacts in a shared spreadsheet.

Continue reading at wsj.com

A new stablecoin pegged to the value of the Chilean Peso is now live on the open-source Stellar payments network — but is yet to prove popular with users.

Chile-based firm CLPX Inc launched what it describes as the first-ever Chilean Peso pegged stablecoin dubbed the “CLPX” token.

According to the public ledger on Stellar Expert, since the launch on Monday the stablecoin has seen limited volume of just $12,689 from a total of 12,902 trades.

CLPX was designed to provide a cheaper alternative to traditional Peso-based remittances, with the firm utilizing the Stellar Network as it incurs “substantially” lower fees than wire transfers or remittance services.

“The new CLPX token is set to streamline remittances and make it easy for investors worldwide to use the copper-linked Chilean peso as a hedge,” an announcement read.

CLPX also has an eye on offering international exposure to Chile’s booming copper market, which has been a critical driver of economic recovery amid the global pandemic. The Latin American nation is the current world’s leading copper producer by a long distance, with China being the main buyer of Chile’s red metals.

Continue reading at fintechzoom.com

CoinDesk Learn Editor Ollie Leech explains why the cryptocurrency community isn't excited about the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

Video Transcript

- Something else to understand is what's going on in the Crypto Corner. And we want to bring in Ollie Leech, Coindesk Learn Editor. Lot to talk about here. I mean, I got Bitcoin back above $46,000. But I can't avoid the elephant in the room.

We saw the PolyNetwork, the decentralized finance platform that got hacked. Apparently, the hackers have returned, what, about a third of the 600 million that was stolen. But what is the message that this is sending to investors and to the crypto world?

OLLIE LEECH: Yeah, it's a really interesting story, actually. Like you said, you know, over $260 million has been returned. SlowMist, a blockchain-based security team was able to somehow uncover the hacker's mailbox, IP, fingerprints. And a lot of the industry got together-- [INAUDIBLE], Binance, a lot of these leading exchanges acknowledged the attack and were going to help blacklist these addresses to try and cut off the hackers' escape routes.

Continue reading at finance.yahoo.com

Bitcoin managed to hold above its key US$45,000 price level on Tuesday as a key vote on crypto regulation neared in the US Senate, raising hopes of a further bull run.

In late morning trading in London, Bitcoin was up 2% in the last 24 hours at US$45,791, giving it a market cap of just over US$860bn.

The increase means Bitcoin has broken above its 200-day moving average for the first time since April, which was then followed by a strong bull run for the digital currency, leading many analysts to predict a similar trend will emerge this time.

Continue reading at proactiveinvestors.co.uk

Digital Currency Investment House, Silver Castle, and The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange Ltd (TASE: TASE) announced today the first-ever issuance of Bitcoin linked and backed bonds on TASE UP. This new channel of investment in Bitcoin creates a pathway for institutional and qualified investors into the digital currency realm and further diversification of their investment portfolio.

The series of bonds issued will have term of three years and will not bear interest. The capital raised in the issuance will be used solely in the purchase of Bitcoin and the monies will be fully exposed to the exchange rate of the Bitcoin. The trading of the bonds will be subject to the rules of TASE UP. The redemption of the Bitcoin will be paid for in Shekels, based on the exchange rate of the Bitcoin on redemption date, less commissions. Weekly early redemption will become available at the end of three months, based on a formula that weights the exchange rate of the Bitcoin on early redemption, less commissions.

The new instrument enables exposure to Bitcoin with significantly reduced operational risks and product holding costs. Until now, Bitcoin could be obtained by way of direct purchase and holding, bitcoin delivery agreements, and Israeli or foreign hedge funds. Starting today, institutional and qualified investors can also purchase Israeli Bitcoin bonds on TASE UP.

Continue reading at prnewswire.com

More than a decade after Satoshi Nakamoto combined proof of work and bitcoin mining together, fallacious comparisons of “energy cost per transaction” continue to be spread by seemingly intelligent and well-researched individuals.

We can trace much of the spread of this narrative back to Alex de Vries—a data scientist who goes by the handle “Digiconomist” and is cited in nearly every anti-bitcoin energy article and op-ed in the mainstream media. There's just one problem. Neither he, nor most of the journalists that cite him, regularly disclose that his employer is De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), the Dutch Central Bank, which is an undeniable opponent of bitcoin and open payment rails. It’s irresponsible for journalists to cite de Vries, or his work, without disclosing his conflict of interest. He is effectively a DNB lobbyist.

Continue reading at bitcoinmagazine.com

Many of South Korea’s 200 crypto exchanges face an “existential crisis” as they struggle to meet conditions for regulatory approval, in a shake-up for one of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency markets.

To win a business licence as a legal trading platform, Korean exchanges are required to partner local banks to open real-name bank accounts for customers. But banks are concerned that this could leave them liable for any money laundering in digital currencies.

Now, a deadline of September 24 from the Financial Services Commission is looming, and only a handful of exchanges is expected to meet the requirements, reflecting the pressure on the thousands of crypto exchanges that have sprung up around the world while global regulators tighten up on the market.

Continue reading at ft.com

US banks may soon give their customers to buy cryptocurrencies – Gecko

The New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG) is a financial service dedicated to financial services Bitcoin. It has partnered with global banking technology solutions group Fidelity National Information Service (FIS) to provide and provide guidance to US banks seeking to offer exchange services.

When asked by the American channel CNBC on Wednesday, Patrick Sell, director of banking solutions for NYDIG, said that many small banks had already signed up for the program, but also that the firm was in contact with large institutions . Actually, according to him, big banks prefer JP Morgan Or Bank of America, previously reluctant to bitcoin, may change its mind if the adoption of cryptocurrency trading proves successful for small banks.

More and more US banks’ increasing interest in access to crypto-assets can be explained by the success of exchange platforms Robin Hood Or Coinbase, the latter recently went public with flying colors. The amount of money deposited in the accounts of these platforms is staggering. Some 9.5 million Americans have traded cryptocurrency on the Robinhood platform since the beginning of the year and Coinbase deployed in Q20 2021 has revenue of $ 765 million. According to NYDIG President Yan Zhao, banks want a piece of the pie: “It’s not just banks that think their customers want bitcoin, they say: We have to do it, because we see the numbers.” They see deposits known in the world’s Coinbases, Galaxies and Krakens“.

Continue reading at sproutwired.com