After months of waiting, the Bank of Spain has finally issued instructions on how to register to offer crypto-related services in the country. Institutions are instructed to apply through an electronic registry, after which the central bank will take up to three months to consider the application. The process was first announced by Spain’s central bank in June, with a promise that instructions on how to proceed would be issued in due course. These instructions have now finally arrived. Much of the uncertainty related to whether existing mainstream financial institutions, such as banks, would have to register since they are already regulated entities. The Bank of Spain has now made it clear that they do: “The obligation to register in this registry applies to all natural or legal persons who are in any of the above cases and provide virtual […]

The last time the Bitcoin network locked in a major upgrade, in July 2017, the cryptocurrency’s price jumped almost 50% through Aug. 23, when the changes went live. Now, as the original blockchain network prepares for its next big upgrade in November, known as Taproot, few investors are expecting a price reaction remotely on that scale. The bitcoin price has already doubled this year and hit a new all-time high near $67,000 last week. While further gains are possible, Taproot alone probably wouldn’t be the catalyst. “The Taproot upgrade will have minimal impact on bitcoin’s price,” said Edward Moya, senior market analyst for the online foreign-exchange broker Oanda. Set to go into effect on Nov. 16, the Taproot upgrade is designed to increase privacy protections on some transactions over the network through an innovation known as “Schnorr signatures.” The upgrade […]

There is never a dull moment in the crypto market. While bitcoin and the broader crypto market appear to be in stasis at press time, FXS, a governance token of a lesser-known fractional algorithmic stablecoin protocol Frax, has jumped 80% in 24-hour. You read it right; in a single day, the token has gained nearly twice more than what bitcoin has done so far this month and is now trading near $14.40, according to data provided by Messari. “People seem to be buying FXS from an already limited circulating supply to earn juicy yields from Tokemak’s dedicated reactor launch,” Alex Svanevik, CEO of blockchain data company Nansen told CoinDesk in a Telegram chat. “75% of all circulating FXS [16,209,404.70] is locked away for an average of 1.08 years, circulating supply is heavily locked as veFXS (similar to veCRV).” The Ethereum-based […]

Stablecoin issuer Tether is taking steps to be more compliant with global crypto regulations. Tether announced on Tuesday that it has begun a trial partnership with Notabene, a digital identity startup that provides know-your-customer (KYC) infrastructure to crypto exchanges, to help it comply with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF)’s “travel rule,” which requires financial institutions to exchange KYC information for both senders and recipients of relevant transactions. The Paris-based global, money-laundering watchdog’s guidelines for crypto compliance have expanded to include exchanges and stablecoin issuers, which it calls virtual asset service providers, or “VASPs”. Tether’s trial partnership with Notabene comes as the stablecoin issuer wrestles with probes and lawsuits from regulators over its financial backing, and accusations from the crypto community that it has not been transparent. According to Tether Chief Compliance Officer Leonardo Real, the partnership with Notabene is […]

Developers on the NEAR blockchain are getting a lift Tuesday with data indexing and query service The Graph going live in beta. The Graph is a decentralized indexer used by developers to access key data such as prices on automated market makers (AMMs), user information and other on-chain metrics. The protocol is currently live on 25 blockchain networks. Tegan Kline, a co-founder of The Graph developer Edge & Node, told CoinDesk in an interview that it took “many months” to complete the integration, as The Graph has previously only expanded to Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible chains. The protocol managed to make the migration by virtue of a grant to blockchain data company StreamingFast, which became a core The Graph contributor earlier in the year. Kline also said that developers can expect to find The Graph on other non-EVM chains in […]

Dubai’s Financial Services Agency announced new rules for “investment tokens,” which can represent securities or be derivatives. The agency defines investment tokens as cryptographically secured tokens that have some of the same attributes as securities and derivatives, and are issued, transferred and stored using distributed ledger technology. These tokens are different to exchange tokens, or cryptocurrencies. Security tokens are blockchain-based representations of underlying assets, and derivatives tokens derive their value from other tokens. The framework, which is not detailed in the announcement, applies to any firms that want to issue or trade investment tokens in the emirate’s Dubai International Financial Centre and accredited firms that wish to offer financial services related to investment tokens. The DFSA is also planning to roll out a framework for exchange and utility tokens, as well as some asset-backed tokens such as stablecoins, according to […]

Leveraged funds on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) raised their bets against bitcoin to record high in the week ended Oct. 19, possibly to profit from the widening gap between futures and spot markets prices. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) Commitments of Traders report released on Friday showed leveraged funds held a net short position of 31,000 contracts in the seven days to Oct. 19, marking an increase of 6,000 from the previous week. Record shorts by leverage funds does not necessarily mean these traders had a bearish bias. They may have raised short positions in the futures market and simultaneously bought the cryptocurrency in the spot market, booking the so-called

London-based regtech firm ComplyAdvantage is beefing up its cryptocurrency anti-money laundering (AML) capabilities by partnering with blockchain sleuthing company Elliptic. ComplyAdvantage is already working with crypto firms like Paxos and Gemini, but mainly to assist on the fiat AML side of things, said ComplyAdvantage Vice President Rob Dickinson. White-labeling Elliptic’s blockchain tracking and wallet attestation provides Dickinson’s firm with deeper on-chain detection tools. “What we already provide for some of the larger crypto exchanges is the behavioral side. So looking at when Entity A sends money to Entity B via Entity C,” Dickinson explained in an interview. “Elliptic then gives us the ability to say this entity, if you follow up or down the chain, is linked to a darkweb pool somewhere, or a less-than-reputable exchange elsewhere.” Partnering with blockchain sleuthing firms is probably a smart move, particularly in light […]

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) may have moved one step closer to achieving significant oversight on stablecoins. According to a Bloomberg article on Monday, which cited people familiar with the matter, a report expected this week by the U.S. Treasury Department and other agencies will indicate that the SEC has significant authority to regulate cryptos pegged 1:1 to fiat currency. The report will also ask Congress to detail how stablecoins should be regulated in the same way bank deposits are. Gary Gensler reportedly pushed for changes behind closed doors. Gensler is seeking to make clear the government will take a more active role in stablecoin regulation in the short-term while awaiting legislative changes in the long term, according to the report. Read more: Gary Gensler Says Crypto Is a ‘Wild West.’ Others See Pure Capitalism

Facebook will begin breaking out results for Facebook Reality Labs (FRL), its augmented/virtual reality division, starting in the fourth quarter, the company announced in its third quarter earnings release. ”As we have discussed, we are dedicating significant resources toward our augmented and virtual reality products and services, which are an important part of our work to develop the next generation of online social experiences,” the company said. “The new segment disclosures will provide additional information on the performance of FRL and the investments we are making.” CEO Mark Zuckerberg has discussed plans to reposition Facebook as a metaverse company, and there have been recent reports the company plans to rebrand and potentially even rename itself accordingly. Starting in the fourth quarter, Facebook said it will have a new reporting structure with two reportable segments: Family of Apps (FoA), which includes […]

Bitcoin is recovering from a weekend dip as traders anticipate the third U.S. futures-focused bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) listing. The VanEck Bitcoin Futures ETF is expected to launch on Tuesday and will trade under the ticker symbol XBTF. Analysts continue to expect further upside in bitcoin’s price given strong investor sentiment on ETF approvals. Last week, crypto investment funds saw a record $1.47 billion in inflows as investors positioned themselves ahead of the first U.S. bitcoin-linked ETF launch, by ProShares. Alternative cryptocurrency-focused funds also saw inflows, which coincided with a near 30% rise in Solana’s SOL token over the past week. Analysts are also monitoring the recent rotation to alternative coins (altcoins), which are starting to outperform bitcoin. “The crypto market is turning from being dominated by short-term traders who want to ride the speculative trends to longer-term investors who […]

Last week, a crypto investment collective called PleasrDAO paid $4 million for a copy of the Wu-Tang Clan’s seventh album, “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.” If that sounds insane to you, consider the circumstances, which are also insane. The record was conceived as a one-of-one physical edition – just one CD would ever be made, and whoever bought that one copy would be contractually forbidden from distributing it for sale. Martin Shkreli, the notorious pharmaceutical executive and fraudster, bought the album back in 2015. He held onto it until 2018, when the federal government confiscated it in the wake of his fraud conviction. This article is excerpted from The Node, CoinDesk’s daily roundup of the most pivotal stories in blockchain and crypto news. You can subscribe to get the full newsletter here. Announcing their purchase of the record last […]

Last week Digital Currency Group, a crypto-industry holding company, opened its wallet to defend its Grayscale subsidiary’s Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), when the fund’s shares traded at a 20.53% discount to its underlying bitcoin holdings – the steepest in five months. Digital Currency Group’s pledge to buy as much as $1 billion worth of GBTC shares might have represented savvy, opportunistic timing. Or it might have been a demonstration of support for the $39.45 billion GBTC, the world’s largest bitcoin fund, in the face of increasing competition. Then, a day later, Grayscale officially filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to convert the trust into a spot-based exchange-traded fund (ETF), even though SEC Chair Gary Gensler has signaled his preference for an ETF investing in bitcoin futures. (In recent days several futures ETFs have been approved in the U.S.) […]

Sam Altman’s Worldcoin project, which promises to distribute a universal basic income (UBI) to global citizens willing to have their retina scanned, came in for a fresh round of incredulous backlash from privacy advocates after announcing new funding last week. Early info about Worldcoin first surfaced in June, and I eviscerated it for the ominous implications of gathering biometric data from the global poor (and the godawful optics of naming the Big Brother device at the center of it all the “Orb”). But it seems Sam Altman doesn’t read CoinDesk, because four months later the project is moving ahead basically unchanged. Altman’s effort to build the CIA’s wet dream will now be backed by $25 million from Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase Ventures, and Digital Currency Group (Yes, that’s CoinDesk’s parent company: We don’t like everything the bosses do, and we write […]

Storj (STORJ) is the native cryptocurrency of Storj, a decentralized cloud storage (DCS) platform that uses blockchain technology to provide decentralized and encrypted cloud storage. Operating on the Ethereum blockchain, Storj is an alternative to centralized cloud storage platforms such as Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud. Storj allows individuals to make their hard drive space available for rent, and users of the platform can use other peoples’ hard drive space to store files. Storj price The Storj Network uses the STORJ token, released in 2017, to power its network. Prior to the release of the token, a legacy token, SJCX existed with a supply of 500 million. In 2017, the legacy SJCX token was discontinued and the project migrated from the Bitcoin-based Counterparty platform to the Ethereum blockchain. Until January 2020, legacy SJCX token holders were able to convert […]

Melon (MLN) is the native cryptocurrency of Enzyme Finance: a decentralized asset management platform built on the Ethereum blockchain. The protocol is intended for people or entities to manage their wealth or the wealth of others on a customized blockchain, according to Enzyme’s white paper. MLN sale, price MLN (Melon) is an ERC-20 token (a fungible crypto token compatible with the Ethereum blockchain) that powers Enzyme, which was formerly known as the Melon Protocol. The token essentially facilitates asset management on decentralized finance (DeFi) apps. Users acquire the MLN token to build investment DeFi strategies. The company distributed 1.25 million MLN coins between 2017 and 2018 and raised $2.9 million in an initial coin offering (ICO) in 2017. The MLN price reached an all-time high of $258.26 in January 2018. Since then, MLN has generally outperformed larger cryptocurrencies such as […]

DNT is the native cryptocurrency of District0x: a platform based on the Ethereum blockchain that provides tools for developers to create their own decentralized marketplaces and communities known as “districts.” Think of it as a platform for creating your own eBay, but instead of it being owned and operated by a single company, all marketplaces that are created run completely autonomously. That is all possible thanks to Ethereum smart contracts – self-executing computer codes that automatically perform certain functions when predetermined conditions are met. DNT price DNT is an ERC-20 token that launched on Aug.1, 2017. Some 600 million DNT tokens were sold during an initial coin offering (ICO), securing 43,170 ether, which was worth about $9 million at the time. A further 400 million tokens were created and distributed among the project’s founders, early contributors and advisers. The DNT […]

Mastercard and digital asset platform Bakkt are partnering to allow merchants and banks to build cryptocurrency into their offerings, the companies announced Monday. The two plan to also shake up the way consumers can collect loyalty rewards. Mastercard said in a statement that consumers can buy, sell and hold digital assets through custodial wallets offered by Bakkt, and customers can collect and spend loyalty rewards through cryptocurrency. The move brings the universe of cryptocurrency one step closer to bridging the gap with the traditional credit card payment industry. Bakkt is also appealing to younger consumers, according to its executive vice president of loyalty rewards and payments. “As brands and merchants look to appeal to younger consumers and their transaction preferences, these new offerings represent a unique opportunity to satisfy increasing demand for crypto, payment and rewards flexibility,” Bakkt’s Nancy Gordon […]

Algorand (ALGO) is an open-source, payments-focused blockchain network that aims to solve one of the most persistent problems facing cryptocurrency: scalability. To do that, Algorand employs a novel, more scalable form of “proof-of-stake,” a consensus mechanism that’s critical for securing blockchains and making sure no one can create new tokens out of thin air that they didn’t earn. ALGO price The supply of Algorand’s native cryptocurrency, ALGO, is capped at 10 billion tokens, created at the time Algorand launched in 2019. Many of those coins are locked up and have yet to be distributed. Some of the tokens have been allocated to the organizations that are developing the Algorand platform. The allocation includes the following: 2 billion (20%) of ALGO went to Algorand Inc., which reports in detail how it uses the funds on its website. 500 million (5%) of […]

Prices for Solana’s SOL tokens hit a record high during early U.S. trading hours on Monday, as a majority of tokens representing layer 1 blockchains followed bitcoin, which hit its own record last week. Solana, the native token of Solana, a public blockchain that is backed by Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of crypto exchange FTX, hit a record $218.9 on Monday, according to TradingView. “SOL was a top performer over the last few months… [It’s] only natural for it to perform well during the next leg of the bull cycle,” Ashwath Balakrishnan, research associate at crypto research boutique firm Delphi Digital, told CoinDesk. “Crypto runs on memetics…So what performs well during uptrends is what everyone is looking to buy.” According to decentralized finance data provider Defi Llama, the total value locked (TVL) in Solana reached an all-time high of approximately […]

ANT is the native cryptocurrency of Aragon: a blockchain-based platform that allows users to build and manage their own decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). A DAO lets people form groups that are governed by a defined set of computer codes, as opposed to a single leader. Users are required to hold ANT in order to vote on certain proposals related to a DAO, such as how to invest everyone’s pooled funds. They can also trade ANT for two other coins that exist in the Aragon ecosystem  – ANJ and ARA. The Aragon project runs on the Ethereum blockchain platform, relying on a globally distributed network of users to collectively manage its code. ANT price ANT is an ERC-20 token – a type of fungible token created to be compatible with the Ethereum network. In May 2017, 70% of ANT tokens were […]

By this stage, you will understand how bitcoin works, and what mining means. But we need to get from theory to practice. How can you set up bitcoin mining hardware and start generating some digital cash? The first thing you need to do is decide on what hardware you’re going to use. There are two main things to think about when choosing it: Hashrate: This is the number of calculations your hardware can perform every second as it tries to beat the target hash described in a previous section. Hashrates are measured in megahashes, gigahashes, terahashes, and exahashes per second (MH/sec, GH/sec, TH/sec, and EH/sec). The higher your hashrate (compared to the current average hashrate), the more likely you are to solve a transaction block. The Bitcoin wiki’s mining hardware comparison page is a good place to go for rough […]

Bitcoin was pushing back up Monday after experiencing a price dip below $60,000 over the weekend, down from the all-time high near $67,000 reached last week. As of press time the cryptocurrency was up 4% over the last 24 hours, trading around $62,900. The drop in funding rates is the most notable indicator seen over the weekend, according to Matthew Dibb, chief operating officer at Stack Funds. “This is extremely bullish given where we are,” said Dibb. Funding rates across major exchanges were lower over the weekend, making it cheaper for traders to take more long leverage on bitcoin. Funding rates are payments to long or short traders based on the difference between the perpetual contract market and the current price, according to the crypto exchange Binance. When funding rates drop, it’s generally a sign there’s less demand from traders […]