Friday, July 26
Louisiana State Congress Unanimously Pass Crypto-Business Licensing Bill
26May Antoinette TurnerBy Antoinette TurnerNo Comments
PR Wire

Louisiana State Congress Unanimously Pass Crypto-Business Licensing Bill

Crypto businesses may soon be offered a regulated path to legalization in the state of Louisiana. The state of Louisiana may soon pass a bill, that was filed earlier this year and will allow crypto-businesses to operate legally under a state license. The proposed bill has been backed by Louisiana state representative Mark Weight. Should the bill be passed, the state would have a regulated crypto framework to operate within and would provide an official definition of traditionally ambiguous cryptocurrency-related terms. Unanimous Approval The crypto-license bill was unanimously approved in Louisiana’s House of Representatives last week. A positive sign for potential cryptocurrency providers, but it will now have to pass through the State Senate, and then to the Committee on Commerce, Con...
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Bitcoin Bounce Stalls at $9K Amid 2% Rise in S&P 500 Futures
26May Annette WeberBy Annette WeberNo Comments
PR Wire

Bitcoin Bounce Stalls at $9K Amid 2% Rise in S&P 500 Futures

Bitcoin moved back over $9,000 earlier on Tuesday alongside signs of an improved risk appetite in the traditional markets.  Prices rose to a high of $9,010 at 08:05 UTC, but quickly fell back below $8,900, pouring cold water over excitement generated by Monday’s 2.3% bounce from the two-week low of $8,630.  At press time, the number one cryptocurrency by market value is changing hands near $8,860, according to CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index.  Meanwhile, the futures tied to the S&P 500, Wall Street’s equity index, are reporting over 2% gains Tuesday. Major European equity indexes are flashing green, too, with the U.K.’s FTSE index leading the way with a 1.33% gain, as per Investing.com. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude, North America’s oil benchmark, has so far scored a 2.4% gain on...
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Indian Crypto Exchange CoinDCX Raises $2.5M From Polychain Capital, Coinbase Ventures
26May Annette WeberBy Annette WeberNo Comments
PR Wire

Indian Crypto Exchange CoinDCX Raises $2.5M From Polychain Capital, Coinbase Ventures

India’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, CoinDCX, has secured a $2.5 million strategic investment led by Polychain Capital with support from Coinbase Ventures. The investment aims to reinforce the exchange’s efforts to drive cryptocurrency adoption in the country after a major legal victory in March. CoinDCX’s #TryCrypto campaign seeks to bring the total number of crypto users in India to 50 million. Specifically, the financing aims to bolster CoinDCX’s meetup events, community engagement efforts, educational programs and consumer campaigns, the company said. “This new strategic investment into CoinDCX is a shot of confidence in our roadmap toward bringing the crypto asset class to a largely untapped Indian market. We look forward to our investors’ continued counsel,” said Sumit Gupta, CE...
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Binance CEO Says Steem Too Centralized but Exchange Must Support Controversial Hard Fork
25May Annette WeberBy Annette WeberNo Comments
PR Wire

Binance CEO Says Steem Too Centralized but Exchange Must Support Controversial Hard Fork

Binance is forced to “technically” support last week’s hard fork of the Steem blockchain, according to the crypto exchange’s CEO, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao. In a statement on the company’s official blog Sunday, CZ said that, while the exchange is “very much against zeroing other people’s assets on the blockchain,” to not support it would mean that Binance users would not be able to withdraw their steem tokens. The result of a dispute in the Steem community over the acquisition of SteemIt – the blockchain ecosystem’s biggest and more powerful application – by Tron and Justin Sun, the hard fork was used as a tool to strip 64 dissenters of their token holdings. At the time around $6.3 million-worth of cryptocurrency was grabbed, with one of the affected parties, Dan Hensley, saying he alone had lo...
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Craig Wright Called ‘Fraud’ in Message Signed With Bitcoin Addresses He Claims to Own
25May Annette WeberBy Annette WeberNo Comments
PR Wire

Craig Wright Called ‘Fraud’ in Message Signed With Bitcoin Addresses He Claims to Own

The credibility of Craig Wright – the Australian tech entrepreneur who controversially claims to be bitcoin’s pseudonymous inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto – has taken another blow. After a list of bitcoin addresses Wright had provided as being his holdings in an ongoing court case were briefly and “inadvertently” made public by plaintiffs on May 21, 145 of the addresses were used to sign a public message both calling Wright a “fraud” and making it plain that he does not in fact own or control them. The court case was brought by Ira Kleiman, the brother of Wright’s former business partner, David Kleiman, and seeks half of 1.1 million bitcoin (worth around $9.6 billion) the two allegedly mined in the early days of the cryptocurrency, as well as intellectual property. The case hinges on whether ...
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Zcash’s First Halving May Solve Its Inflation Problem
25May Annette WeberBy Annette WeberNo Comments
PR Wire

Zcash’s First Halving May Solve Its Inflation Problem

Mining reward halvings are a hot topic in the crypto markets, as they alter a cryptocurrency’s supply and often have a significant impact on prices.  Bitcoin, the biggest cryptocurrency by market value, underwent its third halving on May 11, which reduced the reward per block mined to 6.25 bitcoin from 12.5. Bitcoin offshoots bitcoin cash and bitcoin SV also witnessed halvings in April.  Next in line is zcash (ZEC), a privacy-focused cryptocurrency first created in 2016 that uses a proof-of-work (or mining) algorithm and encrypts user information within shielded transactions. Currently, it is the 26th largest cryptocurrency by market value, as per data source CoinMarketCap. Rewards per block mined on the zcash blockchain – launched and supported by the Electric Coin Company – are schedul...
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Bitcoin in Africa: Cryptocurrency and P2P Bitcoin Trade Surge Across the African Continent
25May Antoinette TurnerBy Antoinette TurnerNo Comments
PR Wire

Bitcoin in Africa: Cryptocurrency and P2P Bitcoin Trade Surge Across the African Continent

According to recent data and reports, Bitcoin and cryptocurrency adoption are soaring across Africa. Cryptocurrency adoption and peer-to-peer Bitcoin transactions are on the rise across the African continent. There have been significant advances across Africa for crypto adoption in terms of regulation, trade volume, and reported cryptocurrency ownership. Currently Uganda, Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, and Kenya frequently rank among the top 10 countries for Bitcoin Google searches according to a recent report by Arcane Research and Luno. The research emphasizes that Africa is, “one of, if not the most promising regions” for cryptocurrency adoption as it exhibits a young and largely underbanked or unbanked population who are often forced to use expensive forms of money remittance.Crypto ...
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As Bitcoin Falls to 2-Week Lows, Small Investors Look to Be Buying
25May Annette WeberBy Annette WeberNo Comments
PR Wire

As Bitcoin Falls to 2-Week Lows, Small Investors Look to Be Buying

With bitcoin’s price losing altitude again, small investors appear to be seeking exposure to the top cryptocurrency by market value. Prices fell by 9.8% last week to register bitcoin’s biggest weekly decline since the second week of March, according to CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index. A two-week low of $8,630 was registered early on Monday, with prices last seen at $8,730 – down over 11% from the post-halving high of $9,960 registered on May 18.  Despite the price drop – or perhaps because of it – the number of addresses holding smaller amounts of bitcoin has continued to rise.  The number of unique addresses holding at least 0.01 BTC (around $87 at press time) rose to a new high of 8,478,746 on Sunday, according to data provided by blockchain intelligence firm Glassnode. Meanwhile, the n...
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Chinese E-Commerce Giant JD.com Launches Enterprise-Level Blockchain-Based Smart Contracts
25May Antoinette TurnerBy Antoinette TurnerNo Comments
PR Wire

Chinese E-Commerce Giant JD.com Launches Enterprise-Level Blockchain-Based Smart Contracts

Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com, also known as Jingdong, has successfully launched two enterprise-level applications, including blockchain-based smart contracts, and the protection of commercially confidential information.     These two applications were launched on JD’s independently-developed proprietary blockchain, JD Chain. The JD Chain blockchain framework was made open sourced around a year ago, five months after the company launched the JD Blockchain Open Platform enabling companies to use JD’s platform using pre-built APIs. The blockchain protocol has been opened up to allow enterprises to built custom solutions.   The two enterprise-level blockchain applications have been applied to industries such as supply chain, human resources, leasing, and around ten other industries. The ...
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Telegram Quits Court Fight With SEC Over TON Blockchain Project
25May Annette WeberBy Annette WeberNo Comments
PR Wire

Telegram Quits Court Fight With SEC Over TON Blockchain Project

Telegram has thrown in the towel in its court battle against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and will no longer be fighting the ban on its blockchain token project. In a filing on Friday (see bottom), the messaging app provider said it was withdrawing its appeal over a previous court decision that backed the SEC in prohibiting the issuance of “gram” tokens to investors both in and out of the U.S. The new document filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit states: “The parties in the above-referenced case have filed a stipulation withdrawing this appeal pursuant to Local Rule 42.1.” The rule means that the parties have filed an agreement for dismissal of the case without prejudice. As such, the case is over for now, but not necessarily forever. Telegra...
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