In Indonesia, a provincial branch of one the largest Islamic organizations has declared cryptocurrency “haram,” i.e., forbidden under religious law. The decision came as a result of heated discussions with an invited crypto expert. However, the Indonesian government indicated that the country is not planning to follow in China’s footsteps imposing a wide ban on…

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is looking to ramp up the pressure on countries to adopt crypto regulations – and its updated guidance has made mention of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized finance (DeFi), peer-to-peer (P2P) trading, and stablecoins for the first time. The FATF published their report Friday on how best to tackle the…

The largest US banks are pleading with regulators for a way to work with cryptoassets. It has sparked a debate on what the boundaries for the new asset class should be. In the meantime, one American bank has already taken a risk and started working with crypto. On September 21, an advocacy group Financial Services…

Investors poured a record $1.5 billion into the cryptocurrency market last week, as the first-ever Bitcoin ETF kicked off trading, with the underlying asset itself hitting an all-time high, digital asset manager CoinShares’ report said on Monday. The 10th straight week of inflows was also the largest ever, far surpassing the prior weekly record of…

As legislation threatens to allow centralization to creep into the DeFi space, regulation could have complex effects on the adoption – reveals Anupam Varshney’s study on Cointelegraph. Decentralized finance (DeFi) is shaping up to be one of the most important sectors within the blockchain industry. In just the last two years, DeFi’s total value locked…

It seems that the crypto community has taken a big step towards one critical realization: Trading on a cryptocurrency exchange in hopes of getting rich only benefits the exchange itself. In the news feeds I’ve read recently, it appears that everyone, without exception, has had a take on a story of the hamster that traded…

According to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the top 10,000 individual investors in Bitcoin control about one-third of the cryptocurrency in circulation. Despite the growing popularity of Bitcoin, its ownership is still concentrated in just a few hands, the Time reported. Usually, it is difficult to determine the concentration of…

Mastercard Inc. and crypto firm Bakkt Holdings Inc. partnered to enable cryptocurrency card payments. Banks will be able to issue debit or credit cards that let people pay with Bitcoin and earn cryptocurrency as rewards. According to the WSJ, the companies announced the partnership to make it easier for banks, financial-technology firms, and merchants to…

DeFi, built on blockchain and legacy financial systems, is on the verge of clashing in one of the most tumultuous battles in economic history, writes Alex Shipp on Cointelegraph. On the opening day of Messari Mainnet 2021, New York City’s long-awaited first crypto conference since the start of COVID-19, reports came blazing in via a…

Nigeria launched on Monday a digital currency (eNaira), the central bank said, months after it barred banks and financial institutions from dealing in or facilitating transactions in cryptocurrencies. Nigeria joins 14 other countries now in the pilot stages with their own central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), including China, South Korea, and Sweden, with a total…