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Moscow Exchange drafting bill on digital financial assets and securities trading: Report

The Moscow Exchange (MOEX) is drafting a bill to allow trading in digital financial assets (DFAs) and securities based on them, according to a report in the Russian press. The stock exchange is writing the bill on the behalf of the Russian Central Bank, which does not have the power to introduce legislation, Vedomosti newspaper reported on Thursday.  Speaking at a banking conference, MOEX supervisory board chair Sergei Shvetsov said the bill in preparation foresees trading in both DFAs and DFA certificates that would trade like securities. “The exchange and its subsidiaries will apply to the regulator and I hope that they will receive the status of exchange operators” to trade in DFAs, Shvetsov said. He added: “We want the market to make its own choice between blockchain accounti...

Crypto Biz: DID you see what Africa is doing with Web3?

If you’ve spent any time reading about blockchain and Web3, you know that this industry is filled with big buzzwords and half-baked concepts. But, concepts such as decentralized identity services, or DIDs, bring real meaning and utility to Web3. If you haven’t yet wrapped your mind around DID, it refers to a self-owned, independent identity that enables trusted data exchange. In other words, it puts digital identity management and administration directly in your hands instead of some third party’s.  In this week’s Crypto Biz, we take a look at a Web3 partnership designed to bring DID-powered payment solutions to Africa. We also chronicle Maple Finance, the European Central Bank and Nasdaq. Payments platform Fuse integrates ChromePay to bring DID services to Africa Is Web3 even possibl...

Framework to ban members of Congress and SCOTUS from trading stocks includes crypto provision

Members of the United States House of Representatives and Senate as well as Supreme Court justices currently trading cryptocurrencies may have to stop HODLing while in office should a bill get enough votes. According to a framework released on Thursday, chair Zoe Lofgren of the Committee on House Administration — responsible for the day-to-day operations of the House — said she had a “meaningful and effective plan to combat financial conflicts of interest” in the U.S. Congress by restricting the financial activities of lawmakers and SCOTUS justices, as well as those of their spouses and children. The bill, if passed according to the framework, would suggest a change in policy following the 2012 passage of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, or STOCK Act, allowing members of Co...

Manchin’s pitch to energy leaders: IRA without permitting reform a missed opportunity

Most of the developed world can build and permit infrastructure in a few years, but the U.S. permitting process can take as long as a decade, Manchin said. “Why should we be at a disadvantage and can’t compete?” he said. “We know what needs to be done. Why can’t we be able to do it?” In the Inflation Reduction Act, “everything’s based on a 10-year window,” Manchin added. “If it takes seven to eight years or longer to permit something, we’re going to miss the window for having those investments come to fruition and you miss that window, then you’re going to have money stranded out there.” Democrats’ party-line climate and clean energy spending bill was enacted earlier this year after more than a year of negotiations that were halted more than once by Manchin. The ultimate legislation that t...

Why is the crypto market down today?

Crypto prices keep falling, but why? This year’s market crash has turned most winning portfolios into net losers, and new investors are probably losing hope in Bitcoin (BTC). Investors know that cryptocurrencies exhibit higher than average volatility, but this year’s drawdown has been extreme. After hitting a stratospheric all-time high at $69,400, Bitcoin price crumbled over the next 11 months to an unexpected yearly low at $17,600. That’s a nearly 75% drawdown in value. Ether (ETH), the largest altcoin by market capitalization, also saw an 82% correction as its price tumbled from $4,800 to $900 in seven months. Years of historical data show that drawdowns in the 55%–85% range are the norm after parabolic bull market rallies, but the factors weighing on crypto prices today differ from tho...

Crypto gaming sucks — But devs can fix it

What we have today in terms of Web3 gaming is not working. Play-to-earn has not worked and neither will play-to-earn or any X-to/and-earn. On top of that, traditional gamers view nonfungible tokens (NFTs) with suspicion. They dunk on expensive apes and are skeptical of large game publishers applying the lipstick of NFTs for further monetization. Nobody knows what a successful Web3 game will look like yet. To get there, we need more developers to experiment with more models. We need infrastructure that will lower the barriers to Web3 game development and make it easy for developers to experiment. That’s why it’s imperative to invest in developing the underlying infrastructure rather than getting carried away by the speculative hype. The Web3 gaming infrastructure can be broken into two phas...

Pantera Capital’s CEO suggests blockchain growth will continue despite economic turmoil

The economic landscape may seem dire at the moment, but it’s unlikely to affect blockchain development, according to Pantera Capital CEO Dan Morehead. In an interview for Real Vision on Thursday, the venture capitalist said that he believes blockchain technology will perform based on its own fundamentals, regardless of the conditions indicated by traditional risk metrics: “Like any disruptive thing, like Apple or Amazon stock, there are short periods of time where it’s correlated with the S&P 500 or whatever risk metric you want to use. But over the last 20 years, it’s done its own thing. And that’s what I think will happen with blockchain over the next ten years or whatever, it’s going to do its own thing based on its own fundamentals.”  ...

Web3 technologies could be a game changer for the travel industry

Many companies and industries are incorporating Web3 technologies into their business structures, and the travel industry is no exception. On Wednesday, Flybondi, an Argentinian airline, announced a strategic alliance with TravelX, a blockchain technology company responsible for tokenizing flight tickets. The partnership intends to enable travelers to purchase airline tickets as nonfungible tokens through Binance Pay, using USD Coin (USDC) as payment for transactions. Speaking with Cointelegraph, the co-founder of TravelX, Facundo Diaz, shared that he was fully convinced that Web3 technologies could allow the travel industry to expand, not only in market size but also in terms of use cases and benefits for travelers: “In 1990, there were 1.2B of airline passengers, and the industry’s marke...

GitHub unbans Tornado Cash repositories following OFAC guidance

Crypto mixer Tornado Cash has returned to the software development platform GitHub after several weeks of being banned on the website. Ethereum developer Preston Van Loon took to Twitter on Thursday to report that GitHub has partly unbanned the Tornado Cash organization and contributors on their platform. The developer suggested that Tornado Cash’s code repositories are now in read-only mode, which means that GitHub is yet to restore full functionality. “But that is progress from an outright ban. I still encourage GitHub to reverse all actions and return the repositories to their former status,” Van Loon stated. According to GitHub data, the latest Tornado Cash repositories updates were made on Aug. 22, or shortly after Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Semenov reported that his account w...

IRS to summon users who don’t report and pay tax on crypto transactions

With the crypto community growing bigger and as trading volumes reach new highs, the United States is also making more effort to ensure that its Internal Revenue Service (IRS) could properly collect cryptocurrency tax.  U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, Deputy Assistant Attorney General David Hubbert and IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig announced that U.S. judge Paul Gardephe authorized the IRS to issue a “John Doe summons,” a term used when the IRS investigates unknown taxpayers. The summons compels the New York-based M.Y. Safra Bank to submit information about taxpayers that might have failed to report and pay taxes on their crypto transactions. According to the announcement, the IRS is specifically looking at users of the crypto exchange SFOX. The IRS believes that even though crypto u...

European stock exchange to list Bitcoin carbon neutral ETP

A subsidiary of DeFi Technologies, Valour, will debut its new Carbon Neutral Bitcoin Exchange Traded Product (ETP) on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Trading of the ETP begins on Sept. 23.  The company positions its ETP as a “sustainable and climate-friendly” exposure to Bitcoin with a management fee of 1.49%. The alignment with global environmental goals and Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) is reportedly achieved through funding certified carbon removal and offset initiatives to neutralize the associated BTC carbon footprint. To structure the ETP, Valour partnered with Patch — a platform that provides climate action infrastructure and has previously worked with Andreessen Horowitz and other notable institutional investors. The announcement states: “All carbon emissi...

China accounts for 84% of all blockchain patent applications, but there’s a catch

China accounts for 84% of all blockchain applications filed worldwide, according to the latest data shared by the country’s government official. China has steered clear of the cryptocurrency market. However, the Beijing government has been supportive of the underlying blockchain technology. The country has actively promoted the use of blockchain tech over the years, and thus the high percentage of blockchain patents isn’t surprising. President Xi Jinping has also played a key role in promoting the nascent blockchain technology. In 2019, the President called upon citizens, tech companies and stakeholders of the ecosystem to actively participate and innovate with the nascent tech as it would play a key role in the future of the next industrial revolution. As Cointelegraph reported earlier, C...