Technology

Bitcoin (BTC) suffered its biggest drop in seven years, as fears over the spreading coronavirus triggered a new wave of selling in everything from stocks and junk bonds to cryptocurrencies. This came despite a new European Central Bank pledge to pump more cash into panicky markets.   Prices for the largest cryptocurrency by market value plunged

U.S. central bankers pledged Thursday to inject some $1.5 trillion into the financial system in an effort to calm panicky markets after the spreading coronavirus triggered steep price declines on everything from stocks to bitcoin. The move by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York comes as investors in traditional Wall Street markets have rushed

U.S. prosecutors indicated a Dutch national Thursday for allegedly spearheading a rape and child pornography website that’s made over $1.6 million worth of bitcoin selling videos since 2012. Known as “Michael R.M.,” and “Mr. Dark,” the man allegedly ran a site called “DarkScandals” that operated on the darknet, which requires special software to access, and

A federal court has ordered ICOBox to pay a $16 million penalty to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) for violating U.S. securities law. On March 5, Judge Dale S. Fischer of the District Court for the Central District of California granted the SEC’s motion for default judgment against the ICO-as-a-service platform and founder and

Washington state resident Kenneth Warren Rhule has been charged with laundering over $140,000 in bitcoin after agents with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) made a series of undercover cash-for-crypto deals with the 26-year-old. Rhule faces multiple counts of operating an unlicensed bitcoin money transmitter business and laundering monetary instruments after allegedly meeting with government agents “posing

Cryptocurrency scams in 2019 were more risky for U.S. residents than fraud involving romance or payments. That’s the conclusion of a report released last week by the Better Business Bureau (BBB), a nonprofit organization focused on marketplace trust. The report found an average dollar loss in crypto-focused fraud of $3,000 for victims aged between 25

YouTube has deleted videos and temporarily banned the accounts of two more cryptocurrency enthusiasts citing a breach in company policy. Earlier this week, cryptocurrency educator “Ivan on Tech” and crypto news reporter “The Moon” took to Twitter to express their anger over being censored for what they believed were overreactions by the video sharing platform.

With assets from oil barrels to bitcoin being pulverized by the coronavirus slowdown, people worldwide are reevaluating their plans for crypto gatherings, especially in geographies where anti-COVID-19 measures are increasingly serious.  In Milan, Italy, which was officially placed in lockdown by the Italian government on Sunday, bitcoin entrepreneur and meetup organizer Mir Liponi is facing

For once, U.S. lawmakers had an informative conversation about blockchain technology without posturing.  It was a sharp contrast from past Capitol Hill proceedings, when lawmakers took their entire allotted time to compare Libra to terrorist attacks or ask pointed questions about how Silicon Valley is biased toward one partisan slant or another. Rather, the small-business

DISH Network, a major U.S. television services provider, and Kin, the payments platform built by Kik, are reportedly looking to tap up-and-coming Solana as the basis for their blockchain networks. According to a Solana pitch deck seen by CoinDesk, which indicates the company is looking to raise at least $2 and potentially up to $12

Monday’s historic financial tumult reached beyond stocks, sinking commodities and even bitcoin markets. “I don’t think any asset is safe right now – except cash, U.S. dollars,” said Ali Khedery, formerly Exxon’s senior Middle East advisor and now CEO of U.S.-based strategy firm Dragoman Ventures. While bitcoin prices dropped nearly 10 percent over the weekend,

Micree Ketuan Zhan, the ousted co-founder of Bitmain, has filed another lawsuit in his fight to regain control of the bitcoin mining giant – this time in his home country. A recent notice from the Changle District court in China’s Fujian province indicates Zhan has filed a lawsuit against Bitmain’s fully-owned subsidiary Fujian Zhanhua Intelligence

GrainChain, a commodities tracing platform that uses smart contracts to open up liquidity for low-income farmers, has raised $8.2 million in its latest funding round, the company announced Friday. Luis Macias said the money will bolster GrainChain’s burgeoning operations in Mexico, Honduras and the southwest United States. “This funding is really going to allow us

Blockchain might help major apparel brands from Nike to Macy’s better share product data across the retail supply chain, according to a white paper Auburn University’s RFID Lab published Wednesday. The study, named the “Chain Integration Project” (CHIP), saw those retailers and others run Hyperledger Fabric nodes on a slice of their mammoth supply chains.

Unstoppable Domains, a censorship-resistant web developer, has released a Google Chrome extension in its bid to open up web 3.0. The extension will give users access to .crypto domain names directly from the Chrome browser, currently the most-used web browser. Developed by Unstoppable Domains, .crypto domains are smart contracts on the Ethereum network, meaning to

Crypto software firm Zabo, which claims it can connect bank accounts directly to cryptocurrency wallets, raised $2.5 million to build out its engineering team and add new customers. The Dallas-based firm announced Thursday it had successfully completed a funding round, with participation from Castle Island Ventures, the Tezos Foundation, CoinShares and Digital Currency Group. The

Beijing-based cryptocurrency lending startup Babel Finance said it has reached a record of $380 million in outstanding loans as of February. Flex Yang, co-founder of Babel Finance, said on Thursday the firm’s outstanding loans have grown from $52 million-worth of USDT as of Q1 2019 to $289 million as of the end of last year,

Hours before the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) also cut interest rates in hopes of curbing market reaction to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak. In a meeting held on March 3, the RBA announced it would be cutting the cash rate by 25 basis points (bps) to 0.50 percent, its lowest on

The computer processing power of the bitcoin network is growing again – albeit slowly – as major Chinese miner manufacturers gradually resume business after the coronavirus outbreak delayed shipments. The average hashing power on bitcoin (BTC) over the past seven days has reached a new high of around 117.5 exahashes per second (EH/s), up 5.4

Bitcoin prices slid Tuesday after the U.S. Federal Reserve announced an emergency cut in interest rates to counteract risks to the economy from the spreading coronavirus.  The largest cryptocurrency by market value was down 2.2 percent to $8,722 as of 15:28 UTC (10:28 a.m. ET). Prices had surged 4.6 percent on Monday, rising alongside U.S.