In this line, trading using traditional currencies has spiked to historical levels with a surge of about 30% following years of stagnant volumes, Bloomberg reported on October 10. The cash return has been attributed to volatility in risky assets such as Bitcoin (BTC) and the general crypto sector amid prevailing interest rate hikes and geopolitical tensions. Biggest gainers The primary beneficiaries of the situation include Deutsche Bank, UBS Group AG, and JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM), which control a market share of 30%....

Tenaga Nasional Bhd. is exploring enacting a special tariff for Bitcoin mining operators where participants will be allowed to apply for “regulated supply,” Bloomberg reports. According to the company’s President and Chief Executive Officer Baharin Din, the illegal use of electricity to mine digital currencies will likely increase in the coming days. Tenaga notes that illegal Bitcoin mining leveraging illegal electricity connection recorded 7,209 cases in 2021 from 610 in 2018....

In the raid, police arrested the suspect and confiscated equipment used in the activity including 1,720 Bitcoin mining machines, with total seized items totalling about RM3.5 million ($840,100), Bernama reports. The raid that had targetted 75 premises also resulted in the seizure of 15 units of monitors, 22 computer CPUs, 16 keyboards, 56 modems, a Toyota Hilux vehicle, 44 fans, seven closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras alongside a laptop. The suspect was identified as a 28-year old individual who was also accused of stealing electricity worth RM2 million ($480,000) to facilitate the illegal activity....

Mastercard has submitted fifteen new trademark applications to register Mastercard, its “Circles” logo, and the “Priceless” slogan, according to a tweet sent out on April 8 by non-fungible tokens (NFT) and metaverse trademark attorney Michael Kondoudis. A range of virtual, crypto, and financial products and services will be covered by patents filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office on April 4, 2022. Mr. Kondoudis stated: The attorney added:...

Strong demand for cars in Europe, the U.S., and China with an increasing backlog led to a strong performance, according to Chairman Ola Källenius who joined CNBC’s Squawk Box Europe to discuss the company’s performance. Asked about the chip-shortage evolution over time, Källenius added: Investments in the future Supply constraints and slowing consumer demand could be troubling for the auto sector; however, pent-up demand may also be a factor for car purchases....

Between December 13, 2021, and January 13, 2022, the number of smart contracts based on Plutus, a Cardano-based smart contracts platform, has added 72 projects growing from 897 to 969. The increasing number of smart contracts on Cardano validate the notion that the network will likely emerge as a major competitor to Ethereum, which is dominating the space. Although Cardano is relatively a new player in this sector, the growth of the smart contract by over 8% in a month is a significant milestone as the network moves to become the go-to blockchain for the development of decentralized apps....

According to a note by Simon Waever, the global head of emerging-market sovereign strategy at Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS), the market has “overly punished” the $7.7 billion in Eurobonds held by the Salvador government, regardless of the country having better metrics than other troubled peers, Bloomberg’s Maria Elena Vizcaino reported on July 19. As Waever explained: Effects of the poor market conditions Indeed, the price of Bitcoin has dropped by close to a third of its value since its all-time high in November 2021, leading to losses of about 48% for the Central American nation, which currently holds around $56 million in Bitcoin....

In particular, the top three cryptocurrencies by price increases on their weekly charts, among the 100 largest coins by market capitalization, are Toncoin (TON), OKB (OKB), and XDC Network (XDC), according to the results recorded by the crypto tracking platform CoinMarketCap on December 16. Secret to resilience The Telegram-backed Toncoin owes its success to the positive developments it had in recent days, including the announcement of the TON/USDT pair for futures trading on the gate....

Through personal experience, he also talked about the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the P2P sector while sharing how different classes of investors reacted to the health crisis. Mr. Evaldas also detailed measures put in place by the Lithuanian headquartered platform to improve risk assessment capabilities. Finally, he gave the future outlook of the P2P sector and notable trends to look out for. There is a constant growth of new investment tools and platforms....

Specifically, the number of addresses holding Bitcoin was 40.25 million as of March 24, an all-time high since the cryptocurrency’s nascence, as demonstrated in a chart shared by artificial intelligence crypto analytics platform IntoTheBlock on March 25. According to the research platform’s tweet, the number of addresses holding Bitcoin experienced a drop in February, only to continue growing and setting new highs. Holders accumulate and so do the holdings Finbold had also reported on the previous all-time high from March 14, when the average number of addresses holding Bitcoin reached 39....

In this line, Bitcoin has witnessed an inflow of over $73 billion within seven days amid sustained buying pressure. By the time of publishing on January 15, Bitcoin controlled a market cap of $399.1 billion, representing an increase of about 22% from $326.1 billion registered on January 8. Indeed, the value of Bitcoin is benefiting from the increased capital inflow, with the asset trading at $20.886, having rallied over 22% in seven days....

The statement notes that the suspects are largely from the MS-13 and 18th street gangs. The arrest comes after a one-week operation dubbed Operation Regional Shield (ORS). The Justice Department launched the ORS three years ago in a bid to curb transnational crime. The initiative has attracted gang prosecutors from the involved countries alongside Mexico. The prosecutors have been meeting quarterly. Human smuggling network dismantled Furthermore, the authorities also apprehended 36 people from El Salvador and Honduras linked to human smuggling networks operating in Central America and the US....

The firm assigned the company a “strong buy” rating and a $20 price target on Palantir shares. As a result of the initiation of coverage, PLTR stock closed the last trading session 3% higher. Even though the shares of PLTR are down more than 40% year-to-date (YTD), investors are hoping that the Q2 earnings report will propel the stocks higher after its release on 8 August. PLTR charts and analysis Over the last month, PLTR has been trading between $8....

The trader’s aggressive buying strategy supports the rally after Palantir reported stronger than expected September quarter results. The share price correction occurred this week amid investors’ concerns over lofty valuations. Palantir stock is trading around 446 times to earnings. However, market analysts believe any dip in Palantir’s share price would create an attractive buying opportunity for the long-term. Its move towards a more modular platform would accelerate demand from new customers....

Indeed, the report, published on June 21 and titled “Are Blockchains Decentralized? Unintended Centralities in Distributed Ledgers,” has discovered that “a subset of participants can garner excessive, centralized control over the entire system.” The study, which focuses on Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), was carried out by the security research firm Trail of Bits under the direction of the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). According to the report:...

Specifically, a professional crypto trader known by his Twitter handle @CryptoDonAlt, has expressed his belief that Bitcoin could be in for a considerable move upward, setting $30,000 as the target support level to watch out for, according to his tweet published on July 6. In the tweet, DonAlt said that this didn’t necessarily spell the end of the bear market, but possibly “a sizeable mean reversion.” He also said that there was “still A LOT of work to do but I still very much like this chart....

An already unsettled sector has been given a new boost of unease as a result of a cryptic tweet sent out by one of the founders of Three Arrows Capital (3ac), a prominent hedge fund that has been liquidating its cryptocurrency holdings as prices have fallen. Zhu Su, a former trader with Credit Suisse Group AG, and co-founder of 3ac, tweeted from his verified account on June 15: It is notable that some prominent names in the cryptocurrency industry have expressed their full support in the comments section, appreciative of what the fund has done for the space....

As it happens, a Redditor known only by the username xk4rimx, made a post in the TelegramBots subreddit on the popular social news aggregation and discussion website on June 2, declaring that: How it works In addition, the user attached a video to the post, illustrating the use of the “Crypto Predictor Bot,” adding in the comments that: With this, the user was referring to Heroku Dynos, which are the building blocks that power any app built on the cloud platform as a service (PaaS) Heroku....

As it happens, the metaverse project that has brought the highest returns to the early investors is a Pokémon-inspired blockchain-based Play to Earn (P2E) metaverse game Axie Infinity (AXS), according to data by the crypto market analytics platform CryptoRank published on October 13. RIO chart champions With a current ROI of 103.8x, Axie Infinity precedes The Sandbox (SAND), a virtual environment that allows users to as well as “create, control, and monetize their game experiences,” according to the developers, which is in second place with 85....

Ripple’s Q1 2021 report published on may 6th notes that during the quarter, the number of XRP whales surged 3.5% from 308 to 319. The wallets are holding at least 10 million XRP. Elsewhere, wallets holding between 1 million to 10 million XRP also increased from 1,125 to 1,196. In the report, Ripple acknowledged that the entry of institutional investors had had a significant impact on the cryptocurrency with investors accumulating more of XRP amid the rally....