The United Arab Emirates has included the development of a national digital currency (CBDC) as a point in the country’s Central Bank development strategy for 2023-2026. But the path there was not easy: initially, it was conceived of as a monetary unit for several Arab countries at once. In early July, it became known that…

Breaking crypto news from the last week (24 – 30 July 2021): 24 July: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sees Bitcoin as a big part of Twitter’s future and forecasts its integration into Twitter services and new features, including Twitter Tip Jar and Super Follows. 25 July: In various experts’ opinions, Bitcoin has proven to be…

Could DeFi revolutionize finance? And can regulators do something about it? Chris Matthews reflects in his MarketWatch column, while Washington is paying close attention to this $100 billion movement. More than a decade after its creation, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have failed to achieve the dream of a new, widely-used global currency free from the…

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) claimed settled charges against UK-based Coinschedule. The Coinschedule platform that reviewed upcoming initial coin offerings (ICOs) from 2016 to August 2019 was providing overviews of which ones were more or less fraud. According to the SEC’s July 14 order: “The platform claimed to ‘list’ or profile the ‘best’…

The financial world is rapidly getting rebuilt using blockchain. China is ahead of its geopolitical rivals, having already adopted the digital yuan; and both businesses and private investors are putting billions in crypto and DeFi with zero central bank regulations. In these conditions, the Fed and the ECB are forced to accelerate. I confess that…

Parachains provide an original alternative to the current centralized internet infrastructure with its weaknesses. How does it works, explained by Alex Siman, founder of Subsocial, a Polkadot-based decentralized social network platform. The upcoming Ethereum London upgrade, along with the launch of Polkadot and Kusama’s parachains, has delivered a piece of good news to the crypto…

Some of the law firms that ferret out possible securities claims in search of fees and recovery for investors’ harm are increasingly being coldly received by federal courts. That is very good news for the crypto industry and investors who hold tokens in legitimate blockchain companies, thinks Marc Powers, an adjunct professor at Florida International…

Led by former professional poker players, the Ascensive Assets investment firm has raised a $130 million fund to focus on the decentralized finance (DeFi). That substantially exceeds Ascensive’s first fundraising of $24 million in 2019, backed by Polkaswap, Benqi, Yield Guild Games, and JennyDAO. By the words of Ascensive Assets partner Oliver Blakey, Investors in…

Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies pegged to traditional currencies in order to prevent volatility, and the financial authorities all over the globe have mixed feelings about them. On the one hand, these are still cryptocurrencies, and therefore are fraught with potential danger. On the other hand, they seem to confirm the authority of fiat currencies, so prohibiting…

Built on Polkadot, Pontem Network, a decentralized application framework, has partnered with Pinknode service provider to develop an experimental test environment for Facebook’s Diem blockchain-based payment system. It will lay the groundwork for various applications to join Diem’s network, providing decentralized finance and other features to Facebook’s users. Diem Association, the rebranded Libra cryptocurrency project…