Bitcoin Industry

2023-04-16 22:00:01 ​US Congress to introduce new draft bill for stablecoins.

Failure to register as a stablecoin issuer could result in up to five years in prison and a fine of $1 million.

A new draft bill providing a framework for stablecoins in the United States was published in the House of Representatives document repository a few days before a scheduled hearing on the topic on April 19. The draft puts the Federal Reserve in charge of non-bank stablecoin issuers, such as crypto firms Tether and Circle, respectively, issuers of Tether and USD Coin.

Stablecoins are a class of cryptocurrencies that attempt to offer investors price stability by being backed by specific assets or using algorithms to adjust their supply based on demand. Stablecoins were introduced in 2014 with the release of BitUSD.

According to the document, insured depository institutions seeking to issue stablecoins would fall under the appropriate federal banking agency supervision, while non-bank institutions would be subject to Federal Reserve oversight. Failure to register could result in up to five years in prison and a fine of $1 million. Issuers out of the United States would have to seek registration to do business in the country.

Among the factors for approval is the ability of the applicant to maintain reserves backing the stablecoins with U.S. dollars or Federal Reserve notes, Treasury bills with a maturity of 90 days or less, repurchase agreements with a maturity of seven days or less backed by Treasury bills with a maturity of 90 days or less, and central bank reserve deposits.

Additionally, issuers must demonstrate technical expertise and established governance, as well as the benefits of offering financial inclusion and innovation through stablecoins. Open / Comment

2023-04-15 20:00:02 ​AirDAO: 5 Million AirBonds Airdrop

AirDAO is holding an airdrop of 5 million BOND tokens to celebrate its blockchain’s fourth anniversary. The airdrop rewards its community for supporting AirDAO’s blockchain over the past four years since launching on April 16th, 2019.

AirDAO is a community-governed layer one blockchain and ecosystem of web3 dApps, powered by the native token, AMB. AirDAO brings the benefits of Web3 to a global audience with a suite of powerful products in an intuitive, all-in-one interface that makes DeFi more accessible to the average user.

The airdrop will start at 12 PM UTC on Sunday, April 16th, and end at 12 PM UTC on Wednesday, April 26th. Active users who’ve contributed to the ecosystem with on-chain activity will be eligible to claim airdrop rewards. AirDAO will reveal the five eligibility criteria throughout the airdrop period, with one announced to the community every two days. Users must hold at least 1000 AMB tokens in a self-hosted wallet to participate in the airdrop.

Eligible airdrop participants can claim BOND tokens — the native token of the upcoming AirBond Marketplace. BOND tokens are AMB that will be vested and made tradable for AMB on the marketplace when the beta version goes live, soon after the airdrop ends.

Join AirDAO’s airdrop here
DYOR: Twitter | Telegram Open / Comment

2023-04-14 15:00:04 ZesCoin started the 2nd stage of IEO (ZESC) on P2B Exchange

ZesCoin is an Ethereum blockchain-based smart contract token from Mongolia.
The ecosystem of the project includes trading bots, play-to-earn war games, own advertising networks, social platform, and wallet.

Company developing a play-to-earn game CRYPTO GENERALS, which will be released very soon!

The second round of IEO is a great opportunity to buy $ZESC token for those who didn't have time to participate in the first stage.

ZesCoin coin has impressive prospects for development!
Join IEO https://p2pb2b.com/token-sale/ZESC-532/
More information:

https://www.zescoin.mn/

https://twitter.com/zescoin_

https://t.me/ZesCoinGlobal Open / Comment

2023-04-13 21:02:15 Judge orders YouTuber ‘BitBoy Crypto’ to appear and address alleged harassment

Ben Armstrong was ordered to appear in a Florida court to address allegations he threatened and harassed lawyers behind a class-action lawsuit against him and other crypto influencers.

A federal magistrate judge has signed an order requiring BitBoy Crypto YouTuber Ben Armstrong to appear in Florida as part of a status conference related to a lawsuit involving several crypto influencers.

In an April 12 filing in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Judge Melissa Damian ordered Armstrong and his counsel to appear on April 20 along with the legal team representing the influencers. According to the order, the conference was aimed at bringing awareness of “Armstrong’s harassment towards plaintiffs’ counsel.”

Armstrong, along with several other YouTubers, were named in a $1-billion lawsuit filed on March 15 for allegedly promoting “FTX crypto fraud without disclosing compensation.” Adam Moskowitz, representing plaintiff Edwin Garrison and others in the class-action lawsuit, has claimed that Armstrong harassed the legal team with “endless phone calls, tweets and emails,” voicemails “full of vulgarities,” and social media posts suggesting threats. Open / Comment

2023-04-11 15:00:04 BlackRock and Alphabet Partnership

BlackRock, the world's largest asset management company, and Alphabet, a multinational conglomerate with a diverse range of businesses, have partnered, bringing together two leading companies in the finance and technology sectors.

This partnership has the potential to revolutionize the investment industry and drive innovation in financial technology.

Statistical Data:

- BlackRock's total assets under management (AUM) reached $9.49 trillion in Q4 2021.

- Alphabet's revenue in 2021 was $261.24 billion, up 32% from the previous year.

- BlackRock and Alphabet have a combined market capitalization of over $2.6 trillion.

Benefits of the Partnership:

The partnership will allow BlackRock to leverage Alphabet's expertise in AI and cloud computing to enhance its investment strategies.

The use of Alphabet's cloud technology will enable BlackRock to improve its data management and analysis.

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Lobstr:

https://lobstr.co/trade/ARMC:GDDJHOGCY7WPMTKRV3BQUQBG2JK47Y7PV3RSUVBVNIQM76CD4FIJC6OA Open / Comment

2023-04-10 23:00:00 ​Don't Mess with Texas Innovation' — Advocates criticize bill removing crypto mining incentives.

Lawmakers in a Texas Senate committee moved forward on Senate Bill 1751 on April 4, paving the way for a floor vote for the legislation some have labeled as against crypto miners.

Three crypto advocacy groups have launched a campaign in response to proposed legislation that would remove many incentives for miners operating in Texas.

In an April 10 announcement, the Texas Blockchain Council, Chamber of Digital Commerce, and Satoshi Action Fund called on Texas residents to reach out to lawmakers in opposition to the state’s Senate Bill 1751. The legislation, if passed, would amend sections of Texas’ utilities and tax code to add restrictions for crypto mining facilities.

The campaign, named “Don’t Mess With Texas Innovation” — a play on the state’s anti-littering slogan, which has been used by many lawmakers to describe government overreach — claimed many aspects of the mining bill were antithetical to free market principles. Currently, some crypto mining firms are allowed to participate in a program organized by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which compensates them for adjusting their load on the state’s power grid during periods of high demand.

“We need to send a strong message to policymakers that the people do not want protectionist policies that push innovation out of the market,” said Chamber of Digital Commerce founder and CEO Perianne Boring. “At a time when folks here are concerned with the economy, jobs, and a reliable energy grid headed into summer, this bill is the wrong proposal at the wrong time.”

Operations concerning Texas’ power grid have been under increased scrutiny from federal and state lawmakers and regulators since a massive winter storm in February 2021 left millions of residents without power — as well as running water — for days. Such conditions have also contributed to damage to certain miners due to burst water pipes.

Many experts said that it was unlikely crypto firms contributed to the energy crisis in Texas in 2021 due to them temporarily shutting down or scaling back operations as part of the ERCOT program. Open / Comment

2023-04-07 22:00:01 ​Here’s how much was lost to crypto hacks and exploits in Q1 2023.

BNB Chain had the most incidents during the quarter, while Ethereum saw the largest amount lost.

Hackers were able to gain access to more than $320 million in the first quarter of 2023 alone, according to on-chain data consolidated by blockchain security firm CertiK in its quarterly report.

The losses were significantly lower than in 2022’s first and fourth quarters, when hackers took around $1.3 billion and $950 million, respectively. According to CertiK, the low amount of losses may be linked to events happening off-chain that had an impact on the crypto industry as a whole, such as the issues with Silvergate Bank and the depegging of USD Coin at the height of the Silicon Valley Bank collapse.

Out of the funds stolen within the quarter, over $31 million was lost to 90 exit scams, while more than $222 million was lost in 52 flash loan and oracle manipulation exploits. Regarding incidents and the amount lost per blockchain, CertiK highlighted that BNB Chain had 139 incidents, the greatest number for the quarter. Meanwhile, despite having fewer incidents, Ethereum had $221 million in losses, the most lost in Q1 2023.

Despite being much lower than Q1 2022 and Q4 2022, the first quarter of 2023 was still met with hundreds of millions lost, with 60% coming from the recent Euler Finance hack. On March 13, the protocol was hacked through a flash loan exploit, leading to losses of over $195 million.

While the amount lost to hacking looks enormous at a glance, a huge chunk of the funds was recovered through negotiations with hackers. On April 4, Euler Finance announced that it was able to recover around 90% of the lost funds after almost a month of back-and-forth negotiations with the hacker.

This trend has been witnessed in the space more frequently with other hacks following Euler’s example. On April 6, lending protocol Sentiment also recovered around $870,000 after giving a bounty of $95,000 to those responsible for taking almost a million dollars from the platform. Open / Comment

2023-04-05 16:00:05 Former Coinbase Product Manager Nears Settlement in Insider Trading Case with SEC

https://theblockopedia.com/former-coinbase-product-manager-nears-settlement-in-insider-trading-case-with-sec/ Open / Comment

2023-04-04 22:00:01 ​Midjourney AI users find workaround amid ban on Chinese President’s images.

Midjourney AI bans the creation of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s images, but users find ways to create deepfakes.

Midjourney, an artificial intelligence (AI) service that generates images from natural language descriptions, recently banned the making of pictures of Chinese President Xi Jinping, much to the dismay of its users. However, the ban has not deterred its users from finding a workaround by creating deepfakes of Xi, which are manipulated digital representations produced by sophisticated machine-learning techniques.

Last week, Midjourney took action to prevent the proliferation of deepfakes on its platform by disabling access to its free trial version. Although the platform still allows the creation of images featuring world leaders, the Chinese President is notably excluded. Any attempt to generate an image with his likeness or even mention his name in a prompt is strictly prohibited by Midjourney.

According to a tweet by a user of the text-to-image AI generator, “ It is still possible with / imagine, if you provide the full URL of an existing photo of Xi in the prompt. Or you can use / blend with two existing photos.” Another user said there was the alternative of using MidJourney v5’s blend function between two images but expressed fear of it being policed eventually.

Critics, like Sarah McLaughlin, senior scholar at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), have argued that the ban constitutes a form of censorship, undermining the fundamental principles of free speech and expression.

In messages exchanged on the chat service Discord last autumn, Midjourney’s founder and CEO, David Holz, revealed that the firm had received complaints from local users about “various topics in different countries,“ prompting them to block numerous related words. However, according to chat logs examined by The Washington Post, Holz refrained from listing the prohibited terms to prevent unnecessary controversy. Open / Comment

2023-04-04 19:30:00 ​Firepot is coming in $HOTT with its second Retweet Competition!

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