Environment

Risky Assets Are Rallying, Bitcoin Back Above $7,000

“In every generation a man is obligated to feel as if he himself has experienced the exudes from Egypt.” This is one of the core principles of the upcoming holiday of Passover that Jewish people across the globe will celebrate tomorrow. It’s the very reason that we embrace strange customs like eating herbs that are so bitter they make you cry, drinking four full glasses of whine, and of course the famous flat bread known as matzah. Though I will never ever understand what it must have been like to

NFT Floodgates Open With Impressive Lineup of Blockchain Games in 2020

Blockchain in the gaming industry is one of the space’s hot topics of 2019. This year is catching the interest of both young independent developers and large corporations. Conferences and hackathons are periodically held around the world for developers to search for new ideas for integrating blockchain into games.The main advantages of blockchain are its decentralization and open-source nature, which can significantly change the gaming market. The technology is taking trust between developers and players to a new level, and users can now own and freely exchange in-game assets without

Bitcoin Price Rallies Higher but Must Hit $8K to Start a Bull Market

Bitcoin (BTC) closed the week up 15.4% at $6,775 and has started the day with a further 6% move to the upside, breaching the $7,000 handle and making highs at $7,300. Looking at performance relative to its peers, Ether (ETH) and EOS have posted an impressive 16% gain over the last 24 hours. As a result, Bitcoin dominance is down 1.5% at 65%.Crypto market daily price chart. Source: Coin360The total cryptocurrency market capitalization breached the $200 billion level, breaking from the diagonal resistance dating back to February when the total market

Most of China’s DLT Firms That Closed in 2019 Were Scams or Poorly Planned

Most of the blockchain firms that closed in 2019 were cryptocurrency scams or had deficient business models, according to recent research.Research sent to Cointelegraph by Chinese market research firm EqualOcean on March 26 suggests that most blockchain-backed Chinese businesses that halted their activity last year had major flaws.Short-lived companiesThe report found over 70 blockchain projects that shut their doors last year. Among them over 70% of the projects reportedly did not survive their first year and 30% did not last 6 months. The research reads:“A considerable number of which were

Bank of Korea Launches Experimental Trial for National Cryptocurrency

The central bank of South Korea has announced the launch of its Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) pilot project to determine the requirements of issuing a government-backed cryptocurrency in the future.  According to a report by Yonhap today, the trial which commenced last month is a 22-month program focused on the technological and legal provisions needed to launch a CBDC. The Bank of Korea (BoK) believes the possibility of issuing a CBDC in the future is slim because of the increased demand for fiat currencies, the competitive nature of the global

FATF Grades U.S. Government on Crypto Regulation Enforcement 

The Financial Action Task Force, one of the most prominent Anti-Money Laundering (AML) enforcers in the world, has called out the United States government for being lax on policy enforcement. On March 31, the body published a report in which it explained that the United States is only “largely compliant” with its AML and Counter-Terrorist Financing (CTF) regulations – especially when it comes to the issue of virtual currencies. Higher Awareness is Good, but Loophole Still Exist In the report, the FATF outlined the United States’ degree of compliance with the recommendations it issued last

Talking Digital Future: Smart Cities

My journey into smart cities and their future development was a really big surprise, as the way I arrived there was not something that I had planned. I was working as the chief information officer for a company in Northern California called O'Reilly Media when I got a call from a headhunter who asked if I would consider being the chief information office for the City of Palo Alto. I can vividly remember — it was only about eight years ago — my feeling when she asked the question. The

Is Decentralized ASIC Production Possible?

The news about ASICs for Nervos CKB came out recently, as the time of writing, there are four ASICs announced, the Toddminer C1, Toddminer C1 Pro, Bitmain K5 and PA miner — the first batch of C1 was delivered on March 9, K5 and PA Miner are expected to be delivered in April and C1 Pro in May.Since mainnet launch, the total hashrate on CKB mainnet has been around 200TH/S on average, it is now gradually picking up (at the time of writing at ~500TH/S) with ASICs. Toddminer says C1+C1

Ark’s 1 Million Token Grant Fund Drives Community Innovation

Interoperable blockchain project Ark (ARK) designated one million ARK valued at roughly $150,000 toward its new development grants program on March 24.While the grant program was launched one week ago, Ark’s Strategic Partnerships Manager, Ray Alvarez, told Cointelegraph that it has already received proofs-of-concept from developers.The program exclusively funds “proposals involving technical deployments and usage of [the] ARK technology stack.”The applications include standalone applications and plugins, including development contributing to Ark’s decentralized private messaging application, desktop wallet, and transaction plugins.In addition to sparking development for specific applications, Alvarez states that

Fed’s Quantitative Easing Strategy Holds Long-Term Benefits for Crypto

These are perilous times, and it hasn’t escaped anyone’s notice that the United States Federal Reserve is doing its part to alleviate the suffering — which began with the coronavirus pandemic and has spread to the global economy. It’s printing more money. “There is an infinite amount of cash at the Federal Reserve,” Neel Kashkari, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, told Scott Pelley of CBS on March 22, adding: “We will do whatever we need to do to make sure there is enough cash in the financial