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European crypto-banking platform Bitwala, formerly known as Nuri, is coming back after ceasing operations in 2022. European cryptocurrency banking platform Bitwala, formerly known as Nuri, is coming back after ceasing operations and returning customer funds last year. Bitwala is re launch ing operations under its original name, in partnership with the support of the banking infrastructure company known as Striga, the firms said in a joint announcement to Cointelegraph on Nov. 8. As part of the partnership, Striga is providing Bitwala with “Banking and Crypto-as-a-Service,” enabling the crypto banking app to draw on its trading and card-issuing functionality, Bitwala CEO Dennis Daiber said. Bitwala, which rebranded as Nuri in 2021, filed for insolvency in August 2022, citing liquidity issues coming amid a massive crypto bear market that was triggered by the Terra crash. The firm eventually shut down operations in October 2022, asking its 500,000 users to withdraw their assets before ...

Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty to all seven counts of fraud charges related to the collapse of crypto exchange FTX. The ongoing criminal trial involving FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) will move into closing arguments on November 1.  On Day 15 of the SBF trial , lead defense attorney Mark Cohen's request for acquittal was denied by presiding judge Lewis Kaplan. Instead, the case will move to closing arguments from both sides at 9:30 a.m. ET (1:30 p.m. UTC) on Nov. 1, with all evidence discovery concluded. Attornies from both sides declined to call any further witnesses.  SBF has pleaded not guilty to all seven fraud-related charges in his criminal case, but is expected to face five more counts in a second trial scheduled to start in March 2024, including the alleged $150 million bribe of a Chinese government official. During discovery, prosecutor Danielle Sassoon presented documents, tweets, and corporate messages attesting that the crypto executive siphoned $8 billion ...

Taproot Assets is “how we bitcoinize the dollar and the world’s financial assets,” says Ryan Gentry, director of business development at Lightning Labs. Bitcoin layer-2 infrastructure firm Lightning Labs has release d the mainnet alpha of Taproot Assets, a protocol aimed at enabling stablecoin s and real-world assets to be issued on the Bitcoin and Lightning Network. The current version, Taproot Assets v0.3, will provide a “feature-complete developer experience” to issue, manage and explore stablecoin s and other assets on the Bitcoin blockchain, according to Ryan Gentry, head of business development at Lightning Labs. “We believe this new era for Bitcoin will see a myriad of global currencies issued as Taproot Assets, and the world's foreign exchange transactions settled instantly over the Lightning Network.” “With this release , developers can issue financial assets on-chain in a scalable manner,” Lightning Labs stated on Oct. 18 in a separate post. “Today marks a new era of mu...

A U.K. parliamentary committee called for a crack down on sports fan tokens and recommended the government issue a code of conduct for NFT platforms. A bipartisan parliamentary committee has urged the British government to protect creators from copyright infringement associated with nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and address potential harms from sporting groups issuing digital assets. In an Oct. 11 press release, Culture, Media and Sport Committee members warned the “most pressing issue” was the risk to artists’ intellectual property rights arising from the ease and speed at which NFTs can be minted, compared to the slow process for artists looking to enforce their rights. “Artists are at risk of seeing the fruits of their hard work pinched and promoted without permission while fraudulent and misleading adverts add an extra layer of jeopardy for investors involved in what is already an inherently risky business,” said committee chair Dame Caroline Dinenage. In an accompanying report, the c...

The Supreme Court of British Columbia has given Hut 8 final clearance to complete proposed merger with USBTC. Canadian Bitcoin mining firm Hut 8 is set to wrap up its planned merger with US Bitcoin (USBTC) following final approval from the Supreme Court of British Columbia. Hut8 and USBTC had announced the move in February 2023 which was subject to shareholder and regulatory approval. The merger will see Hut 8 and USBTC form Hut 8 Corporation, or “New Hut”, which will become a publicly traded United States-based business. An initial announcement from Hut 8 highlighted that the merger would open up 825 megawatts of capacity across six different Bitcoin mining and data center facilities. While the Supreme Court of British Columbia has issued a final order approving the merger , the closing of the deal is subject to a handful of outstanding requirements, including the approval of USBTC shareholders. Hut 8 anticipates that the final transaction confirming the merger and creation of Ne...

BNB Beacon Chain mainnet is set to undergo the "ZhangHeng" hard fork around July 19, which will bring new upgrades aimed at improving security. The Binance-operated BNB Beacon Chain mainnet is set to add a new feature in its upcoming hard fork, which will give the blockchain the ability to “halt” the production of new blocks if certain conditions are met. In a July 12 statement from BNB Chain, the “ZhangHeng” upgrade is expected to take place at block height 328,088,888, which it expects will occur on July 19. Important information about our latest upgrade ️https://t.co/4sJkTJbGeZ — BNB Chain (@BNBCHAIN) July 12, 2023 The hard fork will introduce Binance Evolution Proposal BEP-255, which seeks to implement "on-chain asset reconciliation" — which Binance believes could mitigate damage from potential cross-chain bridge exploits such as the Binance Smart Chain exploit on Oct. 7, 2022.  "Although some enhancements have been made to improve cross-chain security, ...

According to CoinShares, digital asset investment product outflows amounted to $88 million last week. On June 12, European cryptocurrency investment firm CoinShares published its latest weekly “Digital Asset Fund Flows Report,” revealing that cryptocurrency investment products experienced outflows of $88 million last week. The substantial drawdown added to the ongoing eight-week streak of outflows , which now total $417 million. Analysts at CoinShares have attributed this ongoing trend to monetary policy considerations, as interest rate hikes show no signs of slowing down, prompting investors to remain cautious. Digital asset investment products have seen a substantial drawdown over the past 2 months. Source: CoinShares In the past week, Ether (ETH) products witnessed $36 million of outflows , marking the largest weekly outflows for the asset since the Ethereum Merge in September 2022. Meanwhile, Bitcoin (BTC) investment products witnessed outflows totaling $52 million during the a...

Diluted net loss per American depositary share in Q1 2023 stood at $0.51 from $0.55 in the previous quarter. Chinese Bitcoin mining company Canaan reported slight improvements in some of its financial metrics in the first quarter of 2023. The progress, however, is still far behind where it was last year in this period. According to an unaudited report posted on its investor relations page, Canaan's net loss was at $84.4 million in Q1, lower than its $91.6 million net loss in the previous quarter. The net loss represents a major reversal compared to the same period of 2022, when the firm reported a net income of $65.1 million. Diluted net loss per American depositary share (ADS) in the first quarter of 2023 was $0.51 from $0.55 in the previous quarter, while diluted net earnings per ADS in the same period of 2022 stood at $0.38. According to Investopedia, an American depositary share, or ADS, is an equity share in a non-U.S. company, held by a U.S. depositary bank and available f...

Projects were allegedly swayed into signing contracts with dubious market makers as consideration for listing on crypto exchange Coinone. According to local news outlet The JoongAng, an indictment on May 22 revealed that four individuals named Mr. Jeon, Mr. Kim, Mr. Ko and Mr. Hwang in court proceedings, all of whom were employees of South Korean crypto exchange Coinone, allegedly used illicit means to profit more than 2.98 billion Korean won ($2.26 million) during coin listing s from various projects. At least 46 coins were involved in the incident lasting from November 2019 to December 2022, accounting for nearly 25% of all tokens listed on Coinone. As told by prosecutors, Coinone executives and staff members required projects to sign a market-making (MM) contract with a specific MM company through brokers before a coin’s listing. This was done to ensure sufficient liquidity in trading volume after the new coins were listed. However, the contract’s recipients allegedly operated i...

The new funds would invest in a wide range of different crypto-related assets including Bitcoin miners and privacy tech. Three new crypto -focused exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have been put forward for approval by crypto currency asset manager Grayscale Investments, which also announced a new entity to manage its growing funds . On May 9, Grayscale said it launched a new arm of its business — the Grayscale Funds Trust — allowing it to manage many of its publicly traded financial products in-house. In addition to the new trust, Grayscale revealed it filed a registration statement with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for three new crypto-focused ETFs, despite previous roadblocks from the regulator over crypto-related ETFs. The new funds comprise an Ethereum Futures ETF, a Global Bitcoin Composite ETF along with a Privacy ETF. The Global Bitcoin Composite ETF would invest in exchange-traded products that are related to or backed by Bitcoin (BTC), including ...

The Web3 wallet allows institutions to control which employees are allowed to use the tokens held within it. Securities token platform INX has launched a wallet with compliance features for institutions, according to a May 3 announcement. The new wallet was created in partnership with wallet infrastructure provider BitGo and uses multi-party computation (MPC) technology. Exciting announcement! INX now collaborates with @BitGo to enable institutional #investors to fully and confidently participate in the #security #tokens market and the greater digital economy: ️https://t.co/AbpdS86lYk — INX (@INX_Group) May 3, 2023 INX securities tokens exist on the Ethereum network and follow the ERC-1404 token standard. The standard was created in 2018 to allow for compliance-friendly Ethereum tokens. These tokens can only be transferred between users that have passed identity verification with a participating institution. The new wallet allows institutions to comply with cybersecurity and cu...

Ran Goldi, the vice president of payments at Fireblocks, believes that affordability and speed will keep big brands that have implemented crypto payments in the last two years. Hashing It Out Episode 16 explores one of the most popular use cases for crypto currencies: payment s. Elisha Owusu Akyaw is joined by Ran Goldi, vice president of Payments at Fireblocks, to explore the rapidly evolving world of crypto and payment s, the steps necessary for adoption, the role of stablecoins, and the hurdles — such as the collapse of crypto -friendly banks in the United States. The conversation begins with a discussion on the impact of the collapse of crypto -friendly banks in the United States. Goldi believes that the current banking issues in the U.S. are not helping with crypto adoption, especially with institutions. These issues shake the firms’ confidence in using Blockchain technology like stablecoins to move money globally, according to the vice president of Payments at Fireblocks. “We...

An earlier series of tweets sharing images of orange balls were the precursor to the announcement of a client for layer-2 solution Optimism. A series of cryptic tweets depicting orange balls were revealed to be building up hype for a new rollup client for Optimism (OP) called "Magi" from the crypto arm of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (A16z). An April 19 Tweet from a16z engineer Noah Citron explained Magi is written in the programming language Rust and will “help improve the client diversity and resilience of the entire OP Stack ecosystem.” Introducing Magi , our brand new OP Stack rollup client written in Rust. We've been working on Magi to help improve the client diversity and resilience of the entire OP Stack ecosystem. Lets dive in. code: https://t.co/U8ER6v2SSe blog: https://t.co/A4Tx8iaVOh pic.twitter.com/S5hDbx5Q4R — ncitron.eth (@NoahCitron) April 19, 2023 The OP Stack refers to the set of software that powers the Ethereum layer-2 solution Optimism....

Russian cybersecurity and anti-virus provider Kaspersky detected 5,040,520 crypto phishing attacks in the year as compared to 3,596,437 in 2021. When it comes to cryptocurrency-related cyber attack s, bad actors have seemingly reduced the use of traditional financial threats such as banking PC and mobile malware, and instead have shifted their focus to phishing .  Russian cybersecurity and anti-virus provider Kaspersky revealed that cryptocurrency phishing attacks witnessed a 40% year-on-year increase in 2022. The company detected 5,040,520 crypto phishing attacks in the year as compared to 3,596,437 in 2021. A typical phishing attack involves reaching out to investors via fake websites and communication channels that mimic the official companies. Users are then prompted to share personal information such as private keys, which ultimately provides attackers with unwarranted access to crypto wallets and assets. While Kaspersky could not predict if the trend would increase in 2023, phis...

"I just want to know why, we, a billion dollar project that paid $10m dollars to develop our layer 2, have another projects Chain ID," wrote one user. A series of events erupted in the official Shiba Inu (SHIB) Discord on Mar. 17, when a top-ranked community member, Steve, alleged identical chain IDs between that of the Shibarium layer-2 beta testnet ID and the Rinia testnet ID, an existing block chain . "So why is it that it looks like shibarium test net has taken rinia testnet genesis file Changed the name from renia But forgot to change the chain ID Rinia has been live and owned that chain Id since Feb. And was planned in December." Steve also alleged that "there's no way for it to be taken over without shytoshi and kaal [Shiba Inu developers] specifically having coms with him and asking him to reboot (tricking him) so they could take his genesis file and steal his work." To which Kaal responded: "Dispelling some FUD ever since we did the A...

Challenges women face within the industry include the lack of representation and toxic ”bro culture.“ The world of Web3 has opened up new opportunities for individuals to participate in a more open, transparent internet and create wealth. However, despite the potential benefits of this emerging technology, women face unique challenges in the Web3 space. From a lack of diversity in the industry to gender bias in funding, women encounter significant obstacles that can make it harder for them to thrive in the decentralized web. To better understand these challenges, Cointelegraph interviewed several women in Web3. Devon Martens, principal blockchain engineer at Sweet NFTs, shared her observation that the crypto industry, like many other technology and financial sectors, is male-dominated. Martens noted that this lack of representation can be a barrier to entry for women who may perceive themselves as outside the norm. Martens shared that she rarely sees women in the C-suite when looking ...

Despite stepping down as CEO for three years, Yuzu continued to have a significant influence on the company being the firm’s largest stakeholder. Yuzo Kano, the co-founder of Japan-based cryptocurrency exchange bitFlyer, is seeking to reinstate himself as CEO in a shareholders meeting next month, in an apparent bid to reinvigorate what he claims is a stagnating firm.  Kano resigned in 2019 following a series of management disputes but is now determined to reinvigorate the crypto firm and lead it toward an Initial Public Offering (IPO) in the coming months, according to a Feb. 26 report by Bloomberg. The former CEO also said he also wants to put Japan back on the map in the world of cryptocurrency. “I will make it capable of fighting on the international stage,” the bitFlyer co-founder said in a recent interview. Kano shared the Bloomberg post on Feb. 27 to his 111,500 Twitter followers. Source: Twitter. According to the interview, if reinstate d, he intends on introducing stablecoins ...

The issue is linked to the recent network upgrade from 1.13 to 1.14, which slowed block finalization. Solana network faced a slowdown in block production on Fev. 25 following the upgrade in the validator software. The incident resulted in disruptions to transactions and led validators to downgrade the software in an attempt to restore network performance.  The technical issue started around 6:00 AM (UTC), leading validators to downgrade to version 1.13 in an effort to restore transactions in the network . The downgrade, however, was not enough to restore Solana to normal operations, forcing the decision to restart the network on v1.13.6. The Solana network is currently restart ing after an issue during the upgrade from 1.13 to 1.14 that slowed block finalization Once validators with 80% of stake have restarted the network will resume You can track the progress of the restart here:https://t.co/HclrUqWQ2y — Solana Compass (@SolanaCompass) February 25, 2023 "The network...

Discover 11 essential tech jobs that don’t require coding skills, including UX designer, technical editor, digital marketer and data analyst. Tech jobs that do not require coding are important for several reasons. Firstly, they provide opportunities for individuals who may not have the technical background or interest in coding to work in the tech industry. This can help diversify the industry and bring in fresh perspectives and skill sets. Additionally, these roles are crucial for the successful development and launch of tech products and services. Technical support specialists, project managers, technical editors and quality assurance testers are all essential for ensuring that products are user-friendly, high-quality and meet user needs. Finally, these roles often require strong communication, problem-solving and organizational skills, which are valuable in many industries. Here are 11 jobs that do not require coding skills. User experience (UX) designer A user experience (UX) desi...

The conference known as “Proof of Conference” was slated to run in May has been canceled due to “less interest than anticipated,” according to co-founder Kevin Rose. ‘Less interest than anticipated’ — PROOF cancels NFT event Kevin Rose, the co-founder of the nonfungible token (NFT) collection Moonbirds has confirmed that their flagship conference “Proof of Conference” scheduled for May has been canceled, citing “less interest than anticipated.” We made a tough decision today, I want to apologize to everyone that planned on making the trip out. Full ETH refunds have been processed, hotels are refundable, and contact us about flights. (details below) https://t.co/tV4ba85648 — KΞVIN R◎SE (,) (@kevinrose) February 20, 2023 The Conference was first announced in early November. It was scheduled to run on May. 11 to May. 13 in Los Angeles. However, Rose explained in a Feb. 20 letter to ticket holders that it wasn’t “the right time” for the conference: “As you know, in the world of NF...