Bittrex really didn’t want to get involved in the war that’s currently raging within the Steem community. Richie Lai, co-founder of the U.S.-based crypto exchange, posted an announcement late on Wednesday saying his firm would return – reluctantly, it seems – million of dollars worth of disputed cryptocurrency back to a Steem wallet no one knows who controls. After the 23.6 million steem tokens were confiscated from community dissenters in a tit-for-tat Steem hard fork Wednesday, they were quickly diverted to Bittrex by an unknown individual (or individuals) in the hope they would be returned to their original 64 owners – currently all persona non grata at the blockchain project. The controversial hoard is worth a little over $5 million at press time and was worth approximately $6.3 milli...

Harsh new rules making many uses of digital assets punishable with fines or prison might soon become law in Russia.  New draft bills setting out how Russia should regulate cryptocurrencies were sent to the country’s parliament, the State Duma, earlier this week. Although the official website for the planned legislation hasn’t been updated yet, the two documents have been published in the OrderCom Telegram channel and were confirmed as genuine by sources of Russian news outlet RBK.  The legislative proposals were reportedly written by staff at the Digital Economy think tank and the Skolkovo business accelerator. They seek a new version of the bill on digital assets, which has been stuck in the Duma for more two years now, as well as crypto-focused additions to the country’s criminal code. T...

Mark Yusko, the CEO and chief investment officer at Morgan Creek Capital Management, shared several reasons he thinks bitcoin's price will hit $100,000 by the end of 2021.Yusko said it would be "perfectly logical" for bitcoin to hit $400,000 to $500,000 if its market capitalization moves toward that of gold.The call comes after the legendary investor Paul Tudor Jones' recent disclosure that he's built a stake of bitcoin futures, making him the latest investment mogul to buy the cryptocurrency.Click here for more BI Prime stories. With the legendary investor Paul Tudor Jones disclosing purchases of bitcoin futures for the first time, it's become increasingly clear that market denizens who were once skeptical about the cryptocurrency are revisiting their stance.But Mark Yusko, the CEO and ...

Anchorage now has six executives in its C-suite, hiring a head of finance and head of sales with experience in both tech and Wall Street. Julie Veltman, who’s joining the crypto custodian as head of finance, has issued new asset-backed securitizations for Merrill Lynch’s Structured Product Capital Markets group. She also built out a broker-dealer, debt issuance platform and fixed-income trading business for financial services firm Cohen & Company. Most recently, Veltman drove financial planning, reporting, and efficiency at Salesforce.  Geoff Clauss, who’s joining Anchorage as head of sales, has more than two decades of experience in private equity, wealth management and fintech. Before Anchorage, Clauss spent seven years overseeing sales at wealth management platform Addepar. He also ...

Top ShelfYesterday, some of the earliest mined bitcoin moved after more than a decade of dormancy. Whale Alert – a popular, mostly-automated Twitter account that tracks major crypto transactions – broadcast the message across the cryptoverse, saying 40 coins mined in the first month of the network’s operation had transferred from a “possible #Satoshi owned wallet,” referring to bitcoin’s long silent creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.  This unfounded connection – based on the age of the bitcoin, and the fact they had not been moved for 11 years – caused a minor market stir. You’re reading Blockchain Bites, the daily roundup of the most pivotal stories in blockchain and crypto news, and why they’re significant. You can subscribe to this and all of CoinDesk’s newsletters here.  Since then, blockchain...