Category: Cryptocurrency News

Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro was sworn in for a second term on Jan. 10, amid tremendous hyperinflation, long-lasting political and economic crisis, and strict sanctions imposed by its former partner and oil purchaser: the United States. Since Maduro first took office in 2013, Venezuela has faced several brutal riots, including the “Mother of All Marches” in 2017 and the Caracas helicopter attack in the same year,  and the current crisis is very likely to be the last for the regime. Read more …

News Gold and bitcoin markets have have attracted comparisons for some time now, with gold investors taking an interest in the cryptocurrency during the 2017 bull market. But some of these investors are now reintroducing gold to their portfolio, according to Jan Van Eck of Van Eck Associates.  Also read: 8 Food Delivery Sites That Accept Cryptocurrency  Bitcoin vs Gold Van Eck, whose firm created the most popular gold exchange-traded funds, has said that investors are now going back to gold, Read more …

CCN had a moment to speak with Ben Fairbank, the general manager of Komodo (KMD), a community-oriented smart contract-centric fork of Zcash. Komodo offers a usable layer between the world’s largest proof-of-work system, Bitcoin, and decentralized applications. Komodo enables tokenized systems to rely on the security and immutability of the Bitcoin blockchain without having to build directly on top of it. They have pioneered the “crypto conditions” aspect of smart contracts. In layman’s terms, smart contracts can run on Bitcoin-based Read more …

Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX is down for maintenance, according to an announcement on its webpage on Jan. 28. The exchange, which has been wrapped up in legal troubles with the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), is inaccessible as of press time. Screenshot of QuadrigaCX Webpage. Source: QuadrigaCX The exchanges users, some of whom have purportedly been unable to access or withdraw their funds for months, took to Reddit and Twitter. One user asked, “Shouldn’t you let your customer know Read more …

Tangem, a Switzerland-based ‘smart card’ wallet manufacturer will reportedly issue physical banknotes for the Sovereign (SOV), the state digital currency of the Marshall Islands, according to an announcement on Jan. 28. Per the announcement, physical representations of the digital currency will purportedly ensure that citizens have “fair and equal access to their digital currency, whether or not they have internet connection.” The firm states that a physical SOV will be a “controllable mechanism” for issuing the currency by the Marshallese Read more …

A report from Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics firm based in the U.S. and Denmark, has revealed that just two groups have stolen more than $1 billion worth of crypto in the past several years. Based on the transactions and addresses traced by the firm, the hackers obtained around $90 million per hack on average, running a lucrative criminal operation spanning out many major crypto markets. How are Stolen Funds Cashed Out? Blockchain analytics companies like Chainalysis work with major cryptocurrency Read more …

The Central Bank of Iran appears set to prohibit “unapproved” cryptocurrencies from being used for payments in the country, according to a draft report obtained by CoinDesk. According to a translation of the draft report entitled “Obligations and Rules Regarding Cryptocurrencies,” “any cryptocurrency wallets will be used only for holding and transferring cryptocurrencies and integrating any kind of services in wallets using cryptocurrencies is forbidden.” If the plan is ultimately approved, the central bank will effectively seek to block the Read more …

Privacy On Jan. 24, Adam Gibson, author of Waxwing’s Joinmarket blog, wrote about an interesting Coinjoin concept called Payjoin. The protocol further obfuscates the ownership of UTXO inputs during a Coinjoin transaction mixing cycle. According to Gibson, the Payjoin technique is “another nail in the coffin of blockchain analysis.” Also read: Mystery Bitcoin Miners Are Altering Mining Pool Dominance Payjoin Bitcoin UTXO Mixing Method Improves Coinjoin’s Privacy Technique Over the past few years, blockchain analysis has kicked into high gear as Read more …

It is no secret that Chicago’s history is intertwined with finance. It therefore comes as little surprise that the city seems to be embracing the coming Bitcoin and cryptocurrency revolution too. Already home to proportionately large numbers of Bitcoin ATMs, Chicago is about to get a lot more, courtesy of Lux Vending. The decision was made to target the city based on its higher-than-average cryptocurrency adoption rates. New Bitcoin ATMs Coming to Crypto-Friendly Chicago According to a report in Chicago Read more …

Troubled crypto exchange QuadrigaCX, whose customers have been unable to withdraw funds for months, has been inaccessible for several hours. The Canadian company, which has faced a prolonged banking fight and said its CEO and founder died last month, blamed a system upgrade for the Monday outage. It was not immediately clear when the exchange would go back online. The company did not post any updates about the situation to its Twitter or Reddit pages, though users of both platforms complained Read more …

After weeks of consolidation, bitcoin finally broke through support. The market now finds itself cruising toward prior lows. On expanding volume and spread, the bitcoin market appears ripe for a continuation of the downtrend: Figure 1: BTC-USD, Daily Candles, Broken Support Although the current daily candle has yet to close, unless there is a strong influx of demand hitting the market, it stands to reason that bitcoin will be closing a new daily low for the first time since mid-December. Read more …

Iran is reportedly expected to announce its state-backed digital currency at the annual Electronic Banking and Payment Systems Conference which starts on January 29th. The move is an attempt to bypass US-imposed economic sanctions.  Iran-Backed Cryptocurrency Iran first announced its intentions to launch a state-backed digital currency in the summer of 2018. The move was occasioned by the fact that the country was set to undergo renewed economic sanctions from the US. Since then. the country was also kicked out Read more …