Author: Donald Munn

Revolut, the popular fintech app valued at $33 billion, announced today that it has been given permission by the EEA regulator to sell Bitcoin in Europe and the UK through its app. Revolut has 17 million users in Europe and the UK, so these people will have the opportunity to buy BTC directly from the app. The EEA in which Revolut will then be able to operate this way includes 27 countries including also the UK, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein. In particular, permission to operate has been given to Revolut by CYSEC, which is the Securities and Exchange Commission of…

Hodlnaut, a Singapore-based cryptocurrency lending company, in recent days notified the Asian city-state’s financial authority (MAS) that it has discontinued the possibility of withdrawals for its customers, citing adverse market volatility conditions. Hodlnaut, declares risk of insolvency This replicates what happened a month and a half ago to one of its competitors Celsius, which after discontinuing the ability to withdraw funds, was then forced to file for Chapter 11, the antechamber to bankruptcy for US companies. The Singaporean company appears to be retracing the same path, admitting in other words that it is at risk of insolvency, just like Celsius,…

The Federal Reserve has finalized new guidelines that open access to “master accounts” of new types of financial companies, benefiting crypto and fintech sector.  Federal Reserve opens access to “master accounts” to benefit crypto sector The Federal Reserve Board (FDB) announced that it has finalized new guidelines for Reserve Banks to offer “master accounts” to new financial institutions. Master accounts are a key link in the US (and international) financial chain; In essence, as institutions offering new types of financial products, or with new statutes that include crypto and fintech (such as cryptocurrency custody banks) have grown in recent years,…

Big changes are on the way for Ethereum. The Merge, scheduled for 15 September, may in fact trigger a number of potentially positive consequences for Ethereum, if all goes well.  The Merge will bring great benefits One of these has already been announced: next year the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, will install its own Ethereum node.  BREAKING: #Argentina will run #Ethereum nodes in 2023. pic.twitter.com/HeTfWZzO4P — Crypto Rand (@crypto_rand) August 15, 2022 Buenos Aires is the capital city, and its validator node would actually be run by the country’s government. The news was given during the ETH Latam conference…

The hashtag #Bitcoinmusk is getting a fair amount of attention on Twitter these days and many people are wondering what Bitcoin Musk actually is. Bitcoin Musk: new crypto project It has to be specified right away that this is not a project related to Elon Musk. Moreover, it does not even specifically involve Bitcoin.  In other words, it is a project that seeks to attract attention and interest by exploiting the name of Bitcoin and Musk.  Not surprisingly, it has a new token in pre-sale right now, called BTCMUSK, which is not yet tradable in the markets.  This is thus…

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said that the long-awaited Ethereum Merge update is likely to take place around 15 September 2022.  Vitalik Buterin and 15 September as the estimated launch date for the Merge Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, has stated that the long-awaited Merge update on the Ethereum blockchain, which would turn it into Proof-of-Stake (PoS), will take place around 15 September 2022.  The terminal total difficulty has been set to 58750000000000000000000. This means the ethereum PoW network now has a (roughly) fixed number of hashes left to mine.https://t.co/3um744WkxZ predicts the merge will happen around Sep 15, though the…

From 2020 to the present, complicit with the pandemic that brought the world economy to a standstill, geopolitical tensions in Ukraine, and the advent of a bear market that has historically correlated with BTC and the crypto world in general over the past 3 years, pension funds that were exposed in these markets have also taken a hit. Pension funds at a loss Investments made by pension funds have run into substantial losses due to the market downturn, and this is especially in North America where there is evidence of a greater appetite for exposure to this asset.  Fund managers…

When in December 2020 the SEC filed a lawsuit against Ripple, a leading crypto company that deals with peer-to-peer payments and is also used by many banking institutions, it was dubbed by many as the mother of all lawsuits. The reason for the lawsuit raised by the SEC against Ripple The SEC was convinced that by proving that Ripple had made a sale of tokens (which could be equated with securities) it had violated the rules on the sale of financial securities that apply in the United States. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused Ripple Labs CEO Brad…

Zcash, what future? Turbulent days for Zcash, caught between ZCON3-the annual conference organized by the Zcash Foundation, comparable to Ethereum’s DevCon, and the events that have engulfed the Tornado Cash project, which is also focused on the ability to make anonymous money transfers. ZCASH: The Project Unlike other blockchains, Zcash decided long ago to allocate 20% of new coin issuances, resulting from Proof of Work activity, to support three independent but each project-related entities: 8% to the Zcash Community Grant, 7% to the Electric Coin Company, and 5% to the Zcash Foundation.  During the final session of ZCON3, a question…

The MICA, the core legislative framework on the regulation of cryptocurrencies, tokens and financial instruments is in the home stretch, the framework will cover all European Union countries but there are still some knots to unravel regarding NFTs.  NFT for sale by Stefan Berger Stefan Berger, the European Parliament’s draftsman on the MiCA cryptocurrency law has recently come into the limelight for putting up for sale an NFT of his own creation involving a Non Fungible Token of a pair of sandals.  The design created by Beger represents a pair of slides called ‘Bergotten’, symbolizing the first step in a…