Crypto

Tuesday’s crypto hearing before the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs also included a call for stricter regulations on cryptocurrency miners. Addressing the committee, professor Angela Walch claimed that miners held “meaningful power” over the way blockchain networks operate. According to Walch, miners can exploit their role of transaction ordering, which could become a “major issue” for cryptocurrencies, as reported by Law360. In stressing the point, professor Walch likened the miner extractable value paradigm — where miners earn more profits from ordering transactions in a certain way — as being akin to a “bribe.” As such, Walch called for “greater scrutiny” on the activities of miners, given their role as “intermediaries” in the multi-billion-dollar cr...

Crypto-finance unicorn Amber Group has partnered with TR Lab to launch a new initiative to help creators access the booming NFT market, highlighting once again the rapid uptake of digital collectibles in various industries.  The CreatorFi initiative was unveiled Wednesday as a new platform to help NFT creators go to market faster. This includes receiving infrastructure setup support, including minting, custody and platform penetration testing, directly from Amber Group. CreatorFi leverages leverages the expertise of Amber Group and TR Lab to provide users with customizable, end-to-end services for their NFT auctions. Related: Blockchain tech is holding NFTs back because of these three design flaws “NFTs are revolutionizing the traditional art world,” said Annabelle Huang, a part...

Biconomy, a multi-chain infrastructure network for decentralized applications, has concluded a $9 million private funding round that was co-led by venture firms DACM and Mechanism Capital. Ahmed Al-Balaghi, CEO of Biconomy, said his protocol has been designed to address some of the biggest challenges with Web 3.0 transactions, such as gas fees, Ether-only payments and fragmented layer-2 solutions. He explained: “If we are able to solve even a fraction of those challenges, we believe we will be able to onboard the next billion users into the DeFi and broader web3.0 ecosystem.” Related: A multichain future will accelerate innovators and entrepreneurs Biconomy describes itself as a multi-chain relayer infrastructure network that enables developers to more easily build applications for decentr...

Senator and former United States presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren believes that the digital asset industry may be a tool to tackle some challenges in the traditional financial system. A known skeptic of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), Warren appeared to have softened her stance on the crypto industry in a CNBC Squawk Box interview on Wednesday, stating that digital currencies could be an instrument to bank the unbanked: “There has been an enormous failure by the big banks to reach consumers all across the country. Digital currency and central bank digital currency may be an answer there.” The senator emphasized that the existing financial system has a lot of problems, suggesting that some cryptocurrency-related solutions could be a potential solution to these issues. “The quest...

Valora, which already has over 200,000 users, will now be a separate company, with cLabs’ Jackie Bona serving as its CEO Mobile-focused blockchain ecosystem Celo announced yesterday that Celo-native wallet Valora had raised $20 million in a Series A funding round which saw the participation of well-known backers such as Polychain Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and SV Angel. Valora will now operate as a separate company and cLabs’ former Head of Consumer Growth, Jackie Bona, will serve as Valora’s CEO. a16z General Partner, Arianna Simpson, commented, “Valora is tackling many of the friction points that have hindered the broader adoption of crypto and DeFi [decentralised finance]. It’s truly becoming the global gateway to crypto. We look forward to continuing to partner with the exceptional t...

Payment giant Mastercard has launched a cryptocurrency accelerator programme called Start Path in a bid to support more companies in the ecosystem Mastercard, one of the leading payment processors in the world, announced the launch of a cryptocurrency accelerator programme. The programme, called Start Path, is dedicated to helping cryptocurrency startups by giving them access to partnership opportunities and tools to grow. In its blog post, Mastercard said it has already chosen some startups to kick start the programme. “As a continuation of Mastercard’s digital assets works, seven startups have joined the program, including – GK8, Domain Money, Mintable, SupraOracles, STACS, Taurus, and Uphold, – and together with Mastercard seek to expand and accelerate innovation around digital asset te...

Goldman Sachs has filed with the US SEC to create an exchange-traded fund that would grant investors access to blockchain equities and decentralised finance Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs has filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to create an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that targets decentralised finance (DeFi) and blockchain equity. According to its filing, the ETF will be tied to the performance of companies working in the blockchain sector and DeFi. Goldman Sachs wrote that the “fund seeks to provide investment results that closely correspond, before fees and expenses, to the performance of the Solactive Decentralised Finance and Blockchain Index (the “Index”).” At the moment, it is unclear what the Index is composed of. “The Index is designed t...

RocketFuel’s solution has the joint benefits of better privacy for customers and lower fees for merchants People have long been advocating for crypto to go green, and now it seems it is, though perhaps not in the way many anticipated. Global payments solution provider RocketFuel announced yesterday that licensed cannabis merchants and dispensaries would be able to integrate its payment solution. RocketFuel enables merchants to accept Bitcoin and more than 50 other cryptocurrencies through a user-friendly, one-click checkout process, without the previous need for the cart paradigm. Advantages of the solution include no chargebacks or card declines, lower fees for merchants, better privacy protection for customers and the ability to generate new sales channels. The payment solution will mean...

Changpeng Zhao has revealed that Binance US is looking at the possibility of becoming a publicly-listed company The CEO of leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance, Changpeng Zhao, has revealed that Binance US, its trading platform in the United States, could go public. He made this known during the “Redefine Tomorrow” event organised by SCB 10X. Zhao pointed out that Coinbase listing on the NASDAQ stock exchange in April has made the United States a prime environment for cryptocurrency companies that wish to become publicly listed entities. “We are setting up those structures. Once those structures are in place, you may make it easier for an IPO to happen. So that’s not out of the question. But right now, we are still in the early stages,” he added. The Binanc...