Technology

A lawsuit claiming Ripple violated securities laws will be allowed to move forward – though with a caveat favorable to the San Francisco-based payments firm. In a ruling Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton, of the Northern District of California, allowed a putative class-action lawsuit by retail XRP (XRP) buyers to proceed. Hamilton said the

The crypto industry is taking aim at one of Wall Street’s oldest redoubts: investing in the $17 trillion market for U.S. Treasury bonds.  Arca Funds, a Los Angeles-based money manager specializing in cryptocurrencies, wants to create a fund to buy U.S. Treasury bonds and then use them to back a digital token created atop the

The spreading coronavirus sowed a new bout of fear among investors, triggering a stock market sell-off and flight to safe-haven assets like gold and U.S. Treasury bonds, with 47 countries now reporting infections amid widespread reports of travel cancellations, shipment delays and business interruptions. U.S. stocks fell for the sixth straight day, Treasury yields slid

Coinhako, a cryptocurrency exchange backed by Tim Draper, has restricted user withdrawals after falling victim to a “sophisticated attack.” The Singapore-based exchange told users Friday that account send functions for cryptocurrencies had been temporarily disabled. Although a spokesperson initially said this was for “network maintenance”, the exchange admitted Saturday it had been victim to an

An Iranian general is reportedly calling for the use of cryptocurrency to evade sanctions. Saeed Muhammad, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ “Army of Guardians of the Islamic Revolution” (or Sepâh for short), a branch of the Iranian Armed Forces, said in a speech Wednesday that Iran should look to cryptocurrencies to bolster international

Decentralized derivatives exchange Digitex has fallen victim to a significant data breach believed to have exposed the email addresses and possibly other information of more than 8,000 users. A former employee stole private information for more than 8,000 users, Christina Comben, who heads Digitex’s communications, said Friday. Comben told CoinDesk the exchange was “aware of

The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Small Business is set to discuss the benefits blockchain technology can bring to entrepreneurs. Slated for March 4 at 16:30 UTC, the “Building Blocks of Change: The Benefits of Blockchain Technology for Small Businesses” hearing will explore the ways in which some startups are utilizing blockchain technology to

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control has added 20 new bitcoin (BTC) addresses associated with two individuals to its list of sanctioned individuals. According to an update to OFAC’s “Specially Designated Nationals” (SDN) list, Jiadong Li and Yinyin Tian are accused of being linked to the Lazarus Group, a cybercrime group possibly

Researchers at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) are grappling with the future of payments – so much so that their newest quarterly report, released Sunday, is entirely dedicated to what that potential revolution holds. In its 138-page look at what lies beyond the financial horizon, the Swiss-based institution reckoned with coming trends that may

U.S. stocks continue to reel over coronavirus-related fears, and investors are increasingly betting the Federal Reserve will slash interest rates to stabilize the economy and markets. But whether those investors turn to bitcoin (BTC) as a crisis hedge remains to be seen. Such action by the Fed could, in theory, help bitcoin prices since lower

Distributed ledger tech provider R3 says it’s providing pension firms with the technology to build new blockchain-based identity solutions that could help savers reclaim some of the $48 billion in lost U.K. pension pots. According to Abbas Ali, the head of the New York firm’s digital identity unit, pension providers will be releasing their own

What happens to your bitcoin after you die? This is more than just a philosophical question: It could involve a substantial amount of currency. The question of crypto and the Great Beyond is what prompted about 20 or so developers to get together in London recently to experiment with repurposing the current lightning protocol to

Credits for LTB#428 – Decentralization Philosophy (Part 2) This episode of Let’s Talk Bitcoin! is sponsored by Brave.com and eToro.com. This episode featured Stephanie Murphy, Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Jonathan Mohan and Adam B. Levine for a hot minute. Today’s episode was produced by Adam B. Levine, edited by Jonas with music provided by Jared Rubens, From Ether Music and general fuzz. Would you like

Gigi Sohn has spent the last 30 years as a public interest advocate. Her main focus, nowadays? Getting telecommunications giants to take on fiduciary duty. Now that the internet has become “the essential communications tool of the 21st century,” Sohn thinks that broadband connection is a right, not a privilege. This doesn’t mean that she’s

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales said Friday he has not seen a single practical use-case to convince him to integrate cryptocurrencies or blockchain into the platform. Speaking at the CoinGeek Conference in London, Jimmy Wales said cryptocurrencies would not add anything useful to Wikipedia. In fact, he believed it would prove detrimental to its vision and

As crypto traders ask why bitcoin prices shot downward, the power and influence of exchanges are at the center of the conversation. After settling in at the $10,000 price level, bitcoin (BTC) suddenly and rapidly fell more than 5 percent in an hour on Wednesday. As the market discusses possible explanations, some floated the unexpected

CoinDesk reporter Leigh Cuen is joined by Isaiah Jackson, author of “Bitcoin and Black America” and co-founder of KRBE Digital Assets Group, to talk about financial discrimination in the United States and the unique value bitcoin can offer minority communities. According to a survey of 5,126 Americans conducted by Coinbase and Qriously, “Twice as many

Michael Casey is chief content officer at CoinDesk. The following is part of “The Token Economy,” an essay in Alex Tapscott’s new book “The Financial Services Revolution.” Blockchain technology, and the cryptocurrencies, tokens and other digital assets it has engendered, may be moving us toward a model of programmable money that incorporates an automated internal