Category: Crypto News

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Crypto News Japan

Japanese Crypto Telcoin (TEL) Surges 260% In a Week, Amid Liquidity Integrations

Telcoin header
Telcoin header https://twitter.com/telcoin_team

Japanese cryptocurrency Telcoin (TEL) has made significant gains this 2021, surging over 260% in a week following recent liquidity integrations.

TEL has surged more than 4,000% since February 1, now trading at $0.054 USD at the time of writing, having recorded over $110 million USD in 24-trading volume.

Telcoin (TEL) / Tether price chart

Global Remittance Services With Telcoin

The recent surge in price follows the launch of V2, an upgrade that enables Telcoin remittance services between the Philippines and Canada, being the North American country the first of four initial sending markets for fiat remittances, with Australia, the United States and Singapore to follow.

The project has called the crypto community’s attention since its CEO, Paul Neuner, appeared before the Nebraska Legislature on February 23 to talk about how the state could benefit from making legislation geared toward turning the state into a decentralised finance hub.

A Brief Explanation of Telcoin

Telcoin is an Ethereum-based platform that bridges mobile money platforms to decentralised finance systems.

The protocol allows users to make instant transfers with their phones or PCs by leveraging blockchain technology to transfer money worldwide in seconds instead of making long lines to send remittances.

TEL can be bought on several centralised and decentralised exchanges, including Kucoin, Uniswap and Quickswap.

Categories
Crypto News Dogecoin E-commerce

Will Amazon accept DOGE payments?

Amazon Day Delivery
Amazon Day Delivery [amazon.com]

A Doge-like image on Amazon website has got some Dogecoin enthusiasts thinking that one of the largest e-commerce companies, Amazon, would consider accepting payments with the meme cryptocurrency.

This would be a milestone for Dogecoin (DOGE), which could also push price above the $1 mark, owing to the popularity of the e-commerce company.

However, that doesn’t seem to be the case. The image on the Amazon app was actually a “Corgi” and not Dogecoin’s “Shiba Inu,” as some DOGE-fans thought. Amazon users confirmed this, saying that the Corgi image has been on the mobile application for years.

Meanwhile, this doesn’t negate the fact that many Dogecoin enthusiasts want Amazon to accept payment the cryptocurrency, which is currently the fourth-largest by market capitalization.

Dogecoin Enthusiasts Wants Amazon to Accept DOGE

In a recent survey conducted by GamblersPick, nearly 53 percent of the respondents indicated that they want Dogecoin to be accepted on Amazon. Apparently a good number of them believe that the meme cryptocurrency is the future and the “next Bitcoin”.

Dogecoin as a currency [GamblersPick]

Amazon is not the only big company to have expressed interest in cryptocurrency payments and blockchain technologies.

At the time of writing, DOGE was listed at $0.5007 USD on CoinMarketCap. On a weekly count, the cryptocurrency lost about 11.5 percent of its value. Its market capitalization sits around $64.8 billion USD.

Tesla Might Add Dogecoin 

On Tuesday, Elon Musk opened a Twitter poll on whether to accept Dogecoin for payment in Tesla. At the time of writing, the results indicate that about 78 percent out of over 3 million respondents want the electric car company to add Dogecoin (DOGE) as a payment option.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Institutions

Bitcoin’s Daily Volume Surpasses Mastercard

During this year Bitcoin (BTC) has slowly been creeping closer to the transaction volume that Mastercard has been posting on an average day. In the last month Bitcoin has reached the Mastercard transaction volume average nine times.

It’s impossible to know how far Bitcoin adoption will go. If Bitcoins were accepted as widely as Visa or Mastercard, it could lead to increased use of the network.

At the moment Bitcoin does not process close to as many transactions per day as Mastercard, yet they have reached the same volume multiple times. This means that Bitcoin transactions are larger but fewer whereas Mastercard processes many smaller transactions. If Bitcoin were to process as many transactions as Mastercard their volume would likely be considerably higher.

The Problem of Scaling

One of the issues with Bitcoin at the moment in is that the network only processes about 5 transactions per second (tps) and currently has a physical limit of 7 tps, due to the size-cap of the blocks transactions are stored on. Mastercard can process a whopping 5000 tps.

Bitcoin Transactions Per Second: Blockchain.com

There are various technical reasons as well as policy reasons why Bitcoin can only process so few transactions compared to companies like Mastercard and Visa. It doesn’t look like Bitcoin isn’t trying to become a new Mastercard or Visa. However, Bitcoin SV (BSV) could make it, as BSV’s test network hit a new record of processing over 9000 transactions per second earlier in the year.

Lightning network is also a solution that aims to solve the problem of scalability for Bitcoin, through creating a second layer that only handles small transactions and thereby reducing the load on the blockchain. This is called the off-chain approach.

Cryptos Are Becoming More Popular for Everyday Use

According to Mastercard, 71% of people expect to use cashless services moving forward. This means that electronic methods of payment are becoming increasingly popular, and as Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are becoming more mainstream people might prefer to use them.

Consumers are also increasingly showing interest in being able to spend crypto assets for everyday purchases. As global interest in cryptocurrencies as a payment method continues to accelerate, 4 in 10 people (40%) across North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and Africa, and Asia Pacific say they plan to use cryptocurrency in the next year.

Mastercard Investor Relations [source]

Mastercard has dabbled with blockchain and digital assets a few times:

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Binance Coin Bitcoin Crypto News Cryptocurrencies Dogecoin Ethereum Litecoin Markets Ripple

Top 10 Cryptos Prices in 2016 vs 2021

Crypto prices and market caps, 2016 (left) vs 2021 (right)
Crypto prices and market caps, 2016 (left) vs 2021 (right) [CoinMarketCap]

A lot has changed in the cryptocurrency market over the past five years. There have been many coin ranking reshuffles, with massive growth in the global market capitalization as more people got to know and invest in digital currencies.

Back in 2016, the top-ten digital currencies by market capitalization (according to data from CoinMarketCap) and their corresponding prices were:

  1. Bitcoin (BTC) at $455.25 USD
  2. Ethereum (ETH) at $9.82 USD
  3. Ripple (XRP) at $0.006069 USD
  4. Litecoin (LTC) at $3.98 USD
  5. Dash (DASH) at $6.89 USD
  6. DigixDAO (DGD) at $12.17 USD
  7. Dogecoin (DOGE) at $0.000233 USD
  8. MaidSafeCoin (MAID) at $0.052008 USD
  9. NEM (XEM) at $0.001491 USD
  10. FedoraCoin (TIPS) at $0.000029 USD

At the time, Bitcoin was only a three-digit price cryptocurrency ($455 USD), with a total market valuation of $7.075 billion USD. Also, Ethereum was less than $10 USD, while XRP traded around $0.006 USD, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Crypto prices and market caps, 2016 (left) vs 2021 (right)
Crypto prices and market caps, 2016 (left) vs 2021 (right) [CoinMarketCap]

As of May 2016, the global cryptocurrency market capitalization was $8.449 billion USD.

Crypto total market capitalization [CoinMarketCap]

The Crypto Market is up by Over 29,000% Since 2016

Fast forward to today, the crypto market has seen immense growth of over 29,000 percent in the market cap – in other words, more than 290 times. The total valuation of global cryptocurrencies now sits around $2.47 trillion USD compared to $8.4 billion USD cap in the past five years. This follows the wake of more retail and institutional investors.

The leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC) saw over a 12,300 percent increase from 2016 to date, with a market capitalization of over $1 trillion USD. This means that a $100 USD investment in BTC over the past five years would be worth more than $12,000 USD in today’s value. At the same time, the second-largest cryptocurrency Ethereum (ETH) surged by over 41,000 percent, which is a much higher return compared to Bitcoin.

Some of the top-ten coins in 2016 are no longer ranking high on the list today, including DigixDAO and FedoraCoin. It remains to be seen how the list will change in the next five years. Do you think Bitcoin and Ethereum can be overthrown by the likes of Binance Coin (BNB) or even Dogecoin (DOGE)?

Categories
Blockchain Crypto News DeFi Scams

DeFi Company Rari Capital To Reimburse UpTo $26 Million After Getting Hacked For 2600 ETH

Hacker binary attack code
Hacker binary attack code https://unsplash.com/photos/iar-afB0QQw

Last weekend, Rari Capital was hit with an attack that left them down by 2600 ETH – which was around 60% of all user funds in the Rari Capital Ethereum Pool.

A DeFi company that automates yield farming by rebalancing users’ funds and pools, the attack seems to have been carried out by “evil contract” exploits affecting the HomoraBank contract.

However, Alpha Finance Lab itself seems to not have been affected.

The hacker’s message

Currently in possession of an ETH wallet recently emptied into Tornado.Cash Proxy transactions, the hacker took the time to leave a tongue-in-cheek message to the recently attacked DeFi firm.

However, the message also seems to indicate that Alpha Homora’s security prevented Rari from taking yet another $6 million in losses.

In an update by the founder of Rari Jai Bhavnani, holders of the DeFi firms tRGT token will be able to claim reimbursement in RGT – up to a total sum off all reimbursed losses of $26 million.

While it was indeed initially meant to scale the team, all of the protocol contributors have elected to give that 2M $RGT back to the DAO with the ask of using the newly acquired $RGT to reimburse lost funds and reward those that helped in the war room.

Jai Bhavnani, founder of Rari Capital

The price of RGT dropped steeply after the attack, losing nearly half of its value. Reportedly it has been proposed that the reimbursement funds will be taken from the developer incentive stash held by the DeFi company, in possession of 1% of all RGT.

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Crypto Exchange Crypto News Cryptocurrency Tax Kraken

Kraken Required To Provide Transactions Over $20,000 USD To The IRS

A Federal Court in Northern California has allowed the IRS to require Kraken to provide information on all users who made the equivalent of $20,000 USD in crypto transactions.

Following the announcement on 5 May the IRS has gotten permission “to serve a John Doe summons on Payward Ventures Inc., and subsidiaries d/b/a Kraken.” This summons stipulates that the IRS may obtain records about U.S. taxpayers that have made transactions over $20,000 USD between the years of 2016 and 2020.

This John Doe summons is part of our effort to uncover those who are trying to skirt reporting and avoid paying their fair share.

Chuck Rettig, IRS Commissioner

Since transactions in cryptocurrencies can be difficult to trace, taxpayers may be using them to hide taxable income from the IRS.

Cracking Down on Crypto Tax Fraud

Tax guidance has been given to U.S. citizens regarding crypto tax and the treatment of crypto as property. These efforts aim to minimise tax fraud through the use of crypto exchanges and digital currencies in general.

In addition to Kraken, Coinbase was previously served a similar order, “seeking information about U.S. taxpayers who conducted transactions in a convertible virtual currency during the years 2013 to 2015”.

Last month, cryptocurrency payments firm Circle also received an order from a federal court in the District of Massachusetts. The order similarly requested identifying documents from all Circle and Poloniex customers who transacted over $20,000 between 2016 and 2020.

Tools like the John Doe summons authorized today send the clear message to U.S. taxpayers that the IRS is working to ensure that they are fully compliant in their use of virtual currency. The John Doe summons is a step to enable the IRS to uncover those who are failing to properly report their virtual currency transactions. We will enforce the law where we find systemic noncompliance or fraud.

Chuck Rettig, IRS Commissioner [source]
Categories
Crypto News Gambling Gemini

Las Vegas Casino Partners With Gemini Exchange To Offer Crypto Services To Customers

Las Vegas Casino Partners With Gemini Exchange To Offer Crypto Services To Customers

Major casino group Resorts World Las Vegas has teamed up with crypto exchange Gemini to “enhance the overall guest journey”.

Resorts World Las Vegas has affiliated operations in the Americas, Malaysia, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the Bahamas, and it is committed to being the most crypto friendly major casino group in operation. This may offer a decisive competitive advantage in the cut-throat international gaming market, which is struggling to rebound from lockdowns and impediments on global travel. Gemini also recently partnered with Mastercard to launch crypto rewards credit card.

Whether it’s the ability for their customers to use cryptocurrency at Resorts World Las Vegas or convert dollars into crypto, being one of the first to support crypto is a great way to meet the needs of the next generation of customers and provide a 21st century experience.

Tyler Winklevoss, CEO of Gemini

Gamblers, cryptos and banks

This type of adoption adds to the wide-scale applications of crypto currencies for everyday transactions. Gambling high rollers have long struggled with anti-money laundering (AML) legislation as their pastime requires the wiring of huge volumes of cash, often across international borders. For example, Bank of America received significant customer backlash when it froze the accounts of poker superstar Daniel Negreanu for apparent violations of its AML code for legitimate gambling related transactions.

Crypto-holding casino gamblers of all bankroll sizes will welcome the opportunity to deploy their funds with the least amount of intermediary transactions. Complicated cross-border money wire transfers may become a thing of the past as crypto wallets are not subject to the same onerous restrictions as bank accounts. Seamless crypto usage, in this case to pay for resort stays and gambling, may bring advantages to the entire business ecosystem.

Categories
Crypto News DeFi

DeFi Tokens Generated $252 Million In Revenue For April 2021

DeFi Tokens Generated $252 Million In Revenue For April 2021

Last month, cryptocurrency users gained over $250 million USD from top protocols in the decentralized finance (DeFi) market, according to data from The Block.

This is the highest monthly revenue ever generated by DeFi protocols, which includes Uniswap, Maker, Compound, Aave, SushiSwap, and seven others.

Monthly DeFi revenue [TheBlock]

According to the data, the protocols precisely generated about $252 million USD in April revenue. This revenue accounts for the profits made by DeFi token holders as well as protocols’ liquidity providers and other users.

Daily DeFi revenue [TheBlock]

Daily revenue increased by six percent to $8.45 million USD, from April to May. The cumulative DeFi revenue reached about $1.13 billion USD, as of 1 May 2021.

Uniswap Leads DeFi Revenue With Over $113 Million

The leading decentralized exchange (DEX), Uniswap, posted the highest revenue, about $113.66 million USD, followed by Compound ($46.08 million), SushiSwap ($35.23 million), Aave ($24.72 million), Maker ($10.45 million), while the other protocols generated combined revenue of $22.17 million USD.

The increase in the DeFi revenue last month could be attributed to the overall growth of the DeFi market, especially in April.

DeFi Pulse graphs on 11 May 2021
DeFi Pulse graphs on 11 May 2021

Following the data provided by DeFi Pulse, the total value of assets locked in decentralized protocols increased by about 40 percent from April to May. The total value locked in DeFi is worth $83.01 billion USD at the time of writing.

Categories
Crypto News Dogecoin

‘Dogecoin Killer’ Shiba Inu Hits Australian Crypto Exchanges

SHIB ecosystem woof paper
SHIB ecosystem woof paper

Shiba Inu (SHIB) token has become available on many crypto exchanges, including Binance Australia and Swyftx.

SHIB on Swyftx exchange

SHIB vs DOGE

Just a few short years ago, Dogecoin (DOGE) was a joke. Arguably, not many thought it would become the fourth-largest cryptocurrency in the world following an astonishing price surge during 2021. Some investors looking for a repeat of the Doge “miracle” have recently turned to a new coin called SHIB, or Shiba Inu Token.

Named after a famous Japanese breed of dog, SHIB has been nicknamed “the Dogecoin killer” and it looks like it is now being taken more seriously than its pooch-themed image might suggest.

A word of caution

When Binance listed SHIB in its Innovation Zone, a place “where users are able to trade new, innovative tokens that are likely to have higher volatility and pose a higher risk than other tokens”, it issued the following warning:

Please note that, as of the time of writing, the top #1, #2 and #5 wallets hold 50.5%, 7.0% and 3.0% of total supply respectively.
SHIB is a relatively new token that poses a higher than normal risk, and as such will likely be subject to high price volatility after the Binance listing. Please ensure that you exercise sufficient risk management, have done your own research in regards to SHIB’s fundamentals, and fully understand the project before opting to trade the token.

Binance announcement [source]

The man who owns half the world’s Shiba Inu is Vitalik Buterin, whose holdings are now worth billions of dollars after SHIB shot up in price during May from around $0.000002 USD to about $0.000035 USD (an increase of over 15 times). He was given the deposit when SHIB was first minted and it’s understood that he did not know about the gift.

The team behind SHIB writes on their website: “We locked the 50% of the total supply to Uniswap and threw away the keys! The remaining 50% was burned to Vitalik Buterin and we were the first project following this path, so everyone has to buy on the open market, ensuring a fair and complete distribution where devs don’t own team tokens they can dump on the community.”

Is SHIB going to the moon – or doomed to plunge to Earth? No one can tell, but it will be very interesting to see what happens to the latest canine cryptocurrency phenomenon.

Categories
Crypto Memes Crypto News Dogecoin

Elon Explains Dogecoin on Saturday Night Live TV Show

Elon spoke about Dogecoin in character on NBC Saturday Night Live TV Show (SNL) on 8 May, playing a fictional financial analyst – Lloyd Ostertag.

What is Dogecoin?

When asked “What is Dogecoin?” Elon replied:

It’s the future of currency […] It’s an unstoppable financial vehicle that’s going to take over the world.

Elon Musk

He went on to say:

It’s a cryptocurrency you can trade for conventional money.

Elon Musk

Finishing up the skit, Musk jokingly said that the cryptocurrency is “a hustle”, then he howled, “to the mooooooon!”

The episode aired on May 8th and received the third highest ratings for the show so far this season. SNL has over 10 Million viewers and for the first time ever, the show was also live-streamed on YouTube in more than 100 countries; however “The Dogefather” himself was not enough to sustain the uptrending price of Doge.

Elon Musk as The Dogefather [source]

The effect on DOGE price

Dogecoin (DOGE) fell off a cliff mid way through Elon Musk’s appearance on national television. The coin dropped sharply in a matter of hours, crashing from around $0.73 USD to around $0.43 USD.

Dogecoin’s price action saw a steady pump in the week-long run up to Musk’s SNL appearance, as some buyers loaded up their bags to ride the hype and take advantage of the memecoin’s volatility. But as they say “the higher they rise, the harder they fall”. Just as quickly as Dogecoin’s price pumped, it dumped even faster, as investors rushed to cash in, selling off to take profits.

Perhaps not so coincidentally, popular trading apps Robinhood and Binance experienced problems midway through the program, trapping unwitting noobs by preventing access.

Who knows, one day perhaps Dogecoin will literally go to the moon.