CoinDesk will be on the ground in Davos from Jan. 20–24 chronicling all things crypto at the annual gathering of the world’s economic and political elite. Below is the first edition of our pop-up newsletter, CoinDesk Confidential: Davos. Subscribe below. Get your Fourth Industrial Revolution hardhats on – it’s time to ponder the slew of problems
Open interest in bitcoin futures listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) have doubled in the first few days of the year, as noted by data analytics firm Skew. About $235 million worth of positions (5,329 contracts) were open on the CME on Jan. 17 compared to $110 million seen in early December. Open interest
A project which conducted a 2016 initial coin offering (ICO) has voted to liquidate its $64 million treasury, returning funds to investors. Project Ragnarok, a measure to return ether to ICO investors from the Digix project’s treasury – which was held independently of the company in a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), DigixDAO – has passed
Eleven years after Bitcoin’s release, Cointelegraph caught up with Adam Back to discuss the early years of Bitcoin, his emails with Satoshi Nakamoto, privacy and much more. The Blockstream CEO, who spoke to Cointelegraph at the Latin American crypto event LaBitconf in Uruguay, is a developer and cryptographer known for inventing Hashcash, a predecessor of
Charles Hoskinson, co-founder and CEO of IOHK, the blockchain firm behind Cardano (ADA), said that he expects the coin to see a hard fork in mid-February. During a livestream on Jan. 17, Hoskinson noted that he expects Cardano’s consensus algorithm to be upgraded with a hard fork next month. He said that he has “pretty
The South Korean government is said to be considering imposing a 20 percent tax on all cryptocurrency transactions. South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported Monday that officials from the Ministry of Economy and Finance’s income tax office had been reviewing a new proposal that could see the country adopt a clearer regime for how it
Bitcoin mining form Argo Blockchain says it took 10 times more revenue in 2019 than in the previous year. In a press release posted on the London Stock Exchange website on Monday, Argo said, for its first full year of operations, it generated £8.5 million (just over $11 million) in revenue, compared with £760,000 ($985,720)
View Bitcoin’s dramatic overnight fall from $9,200 is telling a tale of buyer exhaustion. A break below Sunday’s low of $8,461 would invalidate the recent bullish trend and could yield a drop to $8,200-$8,000. Dips could be short-lived as the longer duration charts are still reporting bullish conditions. Bitcoin may make another attempt to pass
Australia’s finance watchdog has given the go-ahead to a bitcoin fund aimed at retail investors. The first such fund in the country, the bitcoin offering is being launched by micro-investment app provider Raiz Invest Australia, reports The Australian Financial Review. The Raiz app allows users to invest the small change left over from everyday purchases
Society is now witnessing the implementation of digital currencies, AI and blockchain technology worldwide. These new digital technologies require a high consumption of electric energy, which is currently produced with coal and fossil fuels that adversely impact the environment. A global shift toward green energy will require the removal of the technological, infrastructural, regulatory and
China-based RenrenBit, a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency lending and wallet startup, has disclosed it took $600,000 in net income from revenue of $2.3 million in 2019. The startup, founded by well-known Chinese over-the-counter trader Zhao Dong, who’s also an investor in Bitfinex and Binance, published an unaudited income statement on Monday as part of its commitment to
A new study by Chainalysis finds that terrorists are refining their financing operations using cryptocurrencies. Faster and broader funding Earlier today, Jan. 17, the blockchain analysts identified Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades (AQB), Hamas’s military arm and noted terrorist organization, as the first confirmed case of terrorists using cryptocurrency to aid their activity. AQB used a
Sheila Warren is the Head of Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology at the World Economic Forum. Sumedha Deshmukh is a Project Specialist on the Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology team at the World Economic Forum. The opinions expressed here are their own. If the last few years have taught us one thing, it’s this: users
During the first couple of months of 2019, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) stayed put under the $4,000 mark, thereby solidifying fears that the market was indeed in the midst of a long crypto winter. Not only that, but all through 2018, this space witnessed the simultaneous collapse of around 2,000 cryptocurrencies — which lost
As Bitcoin enters its twelfth year, the past eleven offer a meaningful amount of time to identify key trends that have emerged around cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. These trends provide insights that are helpful in projecting the future of the digital asset space and how it will take shape over the next decade. In reflecting
Recently, the cryptocurrency mining community has been shaken with rumors of Chinese miners leaving Iran — where crypto mining is authorized as an industrial activity — for Central Asia. The move has ostensibly been taken in an attempt to find a new safe haven amid the tensions between the United States and Iran, as well