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After nearly a decade of promising financial and security audits for users and critics to look over, Tether has once again failed to put its money where its mouth is, instead choosing to announce a complete change of its business model. The rebrand is in line with many of the statements the company has been making over the past several years, around plans to get into the bitcoin mining business, the data industry, and blockchain education. The news comes on the back of new reporting from the Wall Street Journal that Tether has been extremely useful for Russia in its bid to acquire weapons to defeat Ukraine and numerous damning statements from Janet Yellen regarding stablecoins. Since US regulators and politicians started to pay closer attention to stablecoins, Tether has taken to calling itself ‘the largest company in the digital asset industry’ instead of the ‘largest stablecoin,’ and is clearly trying to put a positive spin on the work that it does. Tet...

Apple has been developing a self-driving car since 2015, and after multiple production delays, the now-electric car’s release has been pushed back to 2028. The car was previously targeting a release as soon as 2026, but according to reports, 2028 will be the earliest we see the Apple Electric Car (EV) on the roads. JUST IN: Apple plans to launch self-driving electric car in 2028, Bloomberg reports. — Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) January 23, 2024 Also Read: Launchpad XYZ Presale Set to Close After Raising $2.75 Million  According to those familiar with the Apple Car project, after previously envisioning a driverless car, the company is now working on an electric vehicle with more limited Features . After nearly a decade of rumors about a new Tesla self-driving competitor, Apple seems to have hit a wall. Instead of delaying the self-driving vehicle even further than 2028, the company will opt for an EV. Apple has yet to comment on the latest repor...

Despite Brian Shroder resigning as CEO of the exchange’s US wing amid SEC and CFTC lawsuits, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao claimed that the departure was normal. Binance Holdings CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) has shot down speculation surrounding the departure of Binance.US CEO Brian Shroder, noting that he i “ taking a deserved break " after a successful two year stint at the company.  Binance.US is a subsidiary of Binance Holdings, and the U.S. based exchange has seen a handful of other top executives recently step down from the firm amid lawsuits from the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodities Futures Trading Commission.  In a Sept. 15 statement via X (Twitter), CZ urged people to "ignore FUD" around the recent shuffling of execs, as he suggested that Shroder was leaving the firm amicably after accomplishing everything he "set out to do when he joined two years ago." "Under his leadership, Binance.US raised capital, improved its product and servic...

The upcoming MetaMask Snaps will allow users to interact with different blockchains like Bitcoin and Solana from inside their MetaMask wallet. MetaMask’s eagerly awaited Snaps will allow users to interact with a variety of different blockchain networks, receive updates from projects and will help demystify what’s happening in complex transactions, says Consensys head of strategy Simon Morris. Speaking to Cointelegraph on Sept. 6 at Korea Blockchain Week, Morris shared that MetaMask Snaps will function a lot like an Apple App Store for the crypto wallet , allowing third-party developers to launch new decentralized applications (DApps) — dubbed Snaps — that expand MetaMask’s functionality. Morris explained the first round of released Snaps will undergo security checks and be whitelisted by developers at Consensys. In the future, the goal is to make the process as permissionless as releasing apps on the web. The upgrade — which Morris said is coming sometime later this year — will see u...

Regulators from Rhode Island have approved X’s application for a currency transmitter license. Rhode Island’s regulators have granted X (Twitter) a currency transmitter license marking a step forward for the company’s foray into the financial services sector.  The license is legally required for companies conducting financial activities on behalf of users related to sending and receiving money — a definition that includes both fiat and crypto assets. The approval will allow for X to custody, transfer and exchange digital currencies.   X’s Rhode Island Currency Transmitter License was approved on Aug. 28 according to the Nationwide Multi-State Licensing System (NMLS). X has a total of seven money and currency transmitter licenses. Source: NMLS The move marks an important step forward in Elon Musk’s push for X to become an “everything app” — which would include crypto and fiat payments . While sources have suggested that X's upcoming payments feature will initially only offer su...

The monetary authority in Hong Kong released a report on its study Project Evergreen which looked at the highs and lows of recent bond tokenization activity. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) released a report on Aug. 25 detailing the findings of its Project Evergreen study which analyzed the market impact of bond tokenization .  In a 24-page overview, the Hong Kong regulator laid out use cases, benefits and any challenges faced during the study. The concluding sentiment being that tokenization provides improvement for the bond market . Eddie Yue, the chief executive of the HKMA, said the study highlighted the potential of deploying distributed ledger technology (DLT) to real capital markets transactions with the current legal framework existing in Hong Kong. “It also showed the potential in DLT to enhance efficiency, liquidity and transparency in bond markets.” Some of the primary efficiencies of bond tokenization revealed through the study were the ability to go paperless ...

The raised funds will be utilized to expand the network, attract more users and explore diverse use cases for Manta Pacific. P0x Labs, the cryptographic development team behind Manta Network, has announced that it raised $25 million in a Series A funding round, with leading contributions from Polychain Capital and Qiming Venture Partners in a company statement. This funding has resulted in a valuation of $500 million for the company. Additionally, Manta Network has introduced the testnet of its Layer 2 infrastructure, Manta Pacific, within its comprehensive ecosystem for zero-knowledge (ZK) applications, according to a company statement. The raised funds will be utilized to expand the network, attract more users and explore diverse use cases for Manta Pacific. In an interview with Cointelegraph, Kenny Li, the CEO of Mantra Network, highlighted the primary goal of Manta Pacific, which is to streamline the development of Features and applications, ensuring user-friendliness. Li said th...

Plaintiff Jeffrey Huang claims his reputation was damaged when ZachXBT allegedly falsely accused him of embezzlement. Blockchain investigator ZachXBT has been sued for libel by one of the people he accused of fraud, according to a June 16 social media post. According to the post, Jeffrey Huang, known as “MachiBigBrother” on Twitter, has accused ZachXBT of damaging his reputation through false allegations. MachiBigBrother also posted an announcement stating that he is suing the on-chain sleuth. A year ago, @zachxbt published a Medium article about me that damaged my reputation. Today, I have filed a defamation lawsuit against him in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas. — Machi Big Brother (@machibigbrother) June 16, 2023 ZachXBT responded to the lawsuit by calling it “baseless” and “an attempt to chill free speech.” He pledged to “fight back” against it. In a thread responding to his own post, ZachXBT linked to the Medium post that is accused of being l...

Mastercard’s new solution revolves around providing “secure transactions between users, verified according to standards” set by the company. Global financial services giant Mastercard has launched a new Web3 solution aimed at enhancing user verification standards and “reducing the opportunities for bad actors” in the digital asset space. The Solution is dubbed the “ Mastercard Crypto Credential” and its launch was announced on April 29. In an accompanying explainer video shared to Twitter, the firm outlined that its “building a way for Web3 and Blockchain service providers to help secure transactions between users, verified according to standards set by Mastercard.” At #Consensus23, we announced how we are instilling trust in the Blockchain ecosystem through Mastercard Crypto Credential. With crypto wallet providers @Bit2Me_Global, @LiriumAG , @MercadoBitcoin and @UpholdInc and public Blockchain network organizations @AptosLabs,… pic.twitter.com/P33mtDVAas — Mastercard News (...

Cointelegraph analyst and writer Marcel Pechman explains how a potential looming recession might be causing Bitcoin’s price to rise. The show Macro Markets, hosted by crypto analyst Marcel Pechman, which airs every Friday on the Cointelegraph Markets & Research YouTube channel, explains complex concepts in layman’s terms and focuses on the cause and effect of traditional financial events on the day-to-day crypto activity. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the United States Federal Reserve foresee an impending economic recession , which is the topic of today’s episode by crypto analyst Pechman. The video explains how the U.S.’s record-low unemployment rate could be hiding a bigger issue caused by inflation. Pechman explains that the S&P 500 being only 13% below its all-time high has been driven by investors moving away from fixed income and why inflation is no longer a primary concern. Finally, there’s the link between the banking crisis, a weaker U.S. dollar and Bitco...

FTX EU was only approved by the Cyprus regulator in March, 2022, about seven months before FTX collapsed in November. The European arm of FTX, FTX EU has launched a website to allow European customers to submit withdraw al requests. It comes nearly five months after the global trading platform collapsed and went bankrupt in early November. The new website domain name — https://ftxeurope.eu/ — was reportedly approved by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission according to a report in Finance Magnates. A screenshot of the newly launched website to withdraw funds from FTX EU. Source: FTX Europe The new domain will not offer any products or services other than to pay back impacted customers, the report said, referencing an email received by FTX Europe. "Please be informed that our new domain, www.ftxeurope.eu, has been approved by our regulator CySEC as you have well identified. The website will only be used for all FTX EU LTD clients to be able to claim their FIAT balances....

Community engagement has always been a key aspect of crypto, and it's proving its value during bear markets. The highly anticipated launch and airdrop of Arbitrum's native governance token ARB took place on March 23, creating a buzz around the layer-2 protocol as hundreds of thousands of eligible users and DAOs tried to claim the token. Overwhelming user demand led the airdrop claim page to crash shortly after its launch, displaying 404 and 429 errors for over an hour, Cointelegraph reported.  Since Arbitrum was one of the largest blockchain projects without a token, the hype around its drop was expected. Nevertheless, it exemplifies how community-driven projects in the space can still thrive, despite competitors, technical challenges, market downturns and regulatory uncertainty. Wen? Now. ‍ pic.twitter.com/CysJ9nPP3Z — Arbitrum (,) (@arbitrum) March 16, 2023 Arbitrum wasn't the first - and certainly won't be the last - project to mobilize massive audiences. In Febr...

Discover the causes and mechanisms behind stablecoin depegging. Stablecoins are a type of cryptocurrency designed to have a stable value relative to a specific asset or a basket of assets, typically a fiat currency such as the U.S. dollar, euro or Japanese yen. Stablecoins are designed to offer a “stable” store of value and medium of exchange compared with more traditional cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), which can be highly volatile. Fiat money, cryptocurrencies, and commodities like gold and silver are examples of assets used to collateralize or “back” stablecoins. Tether (USDT), USD Coin (USDC) and Dai (DAI) are a few examples of stablecoins pegged to the U.S. dollar. Stablecoins can also be algorithmically stabilized through smart contracts and other mechanisms that automatically adjust the supply of the stablecoin to maintain its peg to the underlying asset. Despite the potential benefits, stablecoins are not without risks. The most significant risk with any ...

Hedera said the smart contract exploit on Mar. 9 has not impacted the network or its consensus layer. Hedera, the team behind distributed ledger Hedera Hashgraph, has confirmed a smart contract exploit on the Hedera Mainnet that has led to the theft of several liquidity pool tokens. Hedera said the attacker targeted liquidity pool tokens on decentralized exchanges (DEXs) that derived its code from Uniswap v2 on Ethereum, which was ported over to use on the Hedera Token Service. Today, attackers exploited the Smart Contract Service code of the Hedera mainnet to transfer Hedera Token Service tokens held by victims’ accounts to their own account. (1/6) — Hedera (@hedera) March 10, 2023 The Hedera team explained that the suspicious activity was detected when the attacker attempted to moved the stolen tokens across the Hashport bridge, which consisted of liquidity pool tokens on SaucerSwap, Pangolin and HeliSwap. However, operators then acted promptly to temporarily pause the bridg...

The multi-chain bridge aims to provide a decentralized alternative to centralized exchanges by enabling cross-chain transactions by self-custodied token holders. Attacks on bridge technology in 2022 led to the theft of $2.5 billion from decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, according to a report by Token Terminal. While this could have been a setback for many projects and, thus, for the crypto space, it seems to be fueling infrastructure and security developments. At the ETH Denver 2023, Web3 protocol Koii Labs and software company Idexo announced a new middleware bridge to advance deployments on-chain with "just a few lines of code," Cointelegraph exclusively learned from the teams. The solution aims not only to improve security and speed up deployments, but also to create a path to replace centralized crypto exchanges with DeFi bridges. Through bridges, two or more blockchains can share data, such as smart contracts or tokens. Bridges connect different architecture and d...

The bonds were underwritten by four banks and priced at a yield of 4.05%. The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (HKSAR Government) announced on Feb 16 that it had issued HK$800 million in tokenized green bonds , under the Government's Green Bond Program (GBP). The bonds were underwritten by four banks and priced at a yield of 4.05%. According to the announcement, the platform used Goldman Sachs' tokenization protocol GS DAP for the bond, which uses a private blockchain network to settle security tokens representing the beneficial interests of bonds in a T+1 payment-vs-payment (DvP) manner, and cash tokens representing claims on the HKMA's Hong Kong dollar legal tender.  Tokenization, the process of representing assets or securities as digital tokens, is a relatively new concept in the financial world. By using blockchain technology to create digital tokens, issuers can provide more transparency, efficiency, and ...

Many casual gamers are still reluctant to play games that use blockchain tech, but gaming execs believe one good game could change that. The casual gaming market will remain a crucial audience for blockchain games and nonfungible tokens (NFTs) in gaming, according to three blockchain gaming company co-founders.  Casual gamers, people who play games somewhat regularly but rarely invest significant time, make up the largest segment of players in the gaming industry. Kieran Warwick, co-founder of blockchain role-playing game Illuvium called casual gamers "critical" because of the sheer number of them in the population. There are more than 3 billion gamers worldwide as of 2023, and it's estimated that at least 1.95 billion are casual gamers, according to Exploding Topics. Keiran Warwick, co-founder, Illuvium Source: LinkedIn Warwick said gamers interested in earning in-game yield, primarily from developing countries and attracted to mobile gaming, are becoming increasingly i...

Binance stressed that credit and debit card payments will continue to be accepted and that non-USD bank transfers would still be processed through the SWIFT payment system. Binance has informed its retail customer base of a potential incoming service disruption that may halt on and off-ramp bank payment transfers. The service disruption will impact U.S Dollar-held bank accounts that are looking to buy or sell cryptocurrencies for less than $100,000 via the SWIFT payment system. The disruption will take effect on February 1. Binance announced the news to its “Binancians” by email on January 21, stressing that they’re now “actively seeking” a new SWIFT (USD) partner to avoid service disruptions for future bank payment transfers. The Cryptocurrency Exchange added that this was the banking partner ’s decision and that Binance wouldn’t be the only trading platform impacted by the change: “This is the case for all of their crypto exchange clients. Please be advised that until we are able t...

The program will help five emerging artists set up and manage their brands in the Web3 space, and is also aimed at educating people in the music scene on what avenues Web3 tech can offer them. Global payments giant Mastercard is ramping up its exposure blockchain tech yet again, after announcing a Polygon-based accelerator program to help musicians build their careers via Web3. The firm announced the "Mastercard Artist Accelerator" program via a Jan. 7 blog post, outlining that from this spring, it will connect five emerging musicians from across the globe with mentors that will  help them set up their brand in the Web3 music space. "The artists will gain exclusive access to special events, music releases and more. A first-of-its-kind curriculum will teach the artists how to build (and own) their brand through Web3 experiences like minting NFTs, representing themselves in virtual worlds and establishing an engaged community," the post reads. The program will cul...

Core Scientific estimated that canceling the agreement with Celsius will provide $2 million in revenue per month as long as Bitcoin stays around $16,700. Bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network agreed to let Bitcoin (BTC) miner Core Scientific shut off more than 37,000 mining rigs it had been hosting for Celsius during the miner’s Bankruptcy proceedings. Core Scientific filed a revised proposed order on Jan. 3 which incorporated “revisions acceptable to Celsius” noting “all Celsius rigs will be powered down effective January 3, 2023 and will not be restarted during the transition period.” Previously, Core Scientific accused Celsius of failing to pay its power bills on Oct. 19 citing the non-payment as a major factor leading to its liquidity issues after the Bitcoin miner filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Dec. 21. On Dec. 28 Core Scientific filed a motion seeking approval to reject Celsius’ contracts claiming the firm's failure to pay its power bills constitutes a materia...