Autor Cointelegraph By Prashant Jha

Brazilian central bank president confirms CBDC pilot will launch in 2022

The president of the Central Bank of Brazil confirmed that the country’s sovereign digital currency pilot will go live this year, Cointelegraph Brazil reported.The confirmation about the central bank’s digital currency came during an event on Monday, where Roberto Campos Neto, the president of the Central Bank of Brazil, noted that a pilot CBDC program could go live in the second half of this year.The value of the upcoming CBDC would be pegged against the national fiat payment system STR (Reserve Transfer System). Neto also confirmed that ‘Digital Real’ would have a fixed supply and only a certain amount of it would be minted, quite similar to Bitcoin: “This [using the STR in Real Digital] is a way of creating the digitalization of the currency without creating a rupture in the banks’ balance sheets. This project should have some kind of pilot in the second half of the year.”During his speech, Neto clarified that he still believes crypto is more prominent as a form of investment rather than a form of payment while adding that it could change if the adoption among the masses rises.Related: New crypto owners nearly doubled in 3 key regions in 2021: ReportThe confirmation of a CBDC pilot by the second half of the year comes after a month of the central bank’s partnership with 9 banks to assist with its CBDCs development. With confirmation from the central bank president, Brazil would be joining the growing list of countries working on their sovereign digital currency.Brazil is currently looking to cash on the cryptocurrency frenzy and digitization. Apart from its focus on CBDC development, Brazil also introduced a crypto bill in late February to regulate the crypto market. In the works for almost three years now, the bill defines various aspects of what constitutes a virtual asset (VA), a broker or exchange, and which arms of the Federal government would have jurisdiction over the matter.

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Indian crypto exchanges' volume plunges down as 30% tax goes into effect

Fresh data on Indian crypto exchanges’ trading volume reveals a significant decline in trading practices among Indians just ten days after the tax rule implementation. India’s new 30% crypto tax rule came into effect on April 1, despite many stakeholders and exchange operators warning against its ill effects. A research data report shared by Indian blockchain analytic firm Crebaco with Cointelegraph shows that trading volume on top Indian crypto exchanges has declined as high as 70% in the past 10 days.Crypto Trading Volume on Major Indian Exchanges Source: CreabacoThe trading volume on WazirX, the leading crypto exchange in India, declined from $47.8 million on April 1 to $13.2 million on April 10. CoinDCX’s trading volume dropped from $12.16 million to $5.76 million, followed by Bitbns with an overall decline of 41.29% in the past ten days.Apart from harsh crypto tax laws directly inspired by India’s gambling laws, many payment processing partners that offer Unified Payments Interface (UPI) accessibility have also severed ties with crypto exchanges. Related: Coinbase to invest in Indian crypto and Web3 amid tax regulation clarityCoinbase recently had to suspend the crypto payment option just a day after inaugurating its crypto trading services for Indians. While payment processors such as MobiKwik had cut ties with the likes of WazirX and other crypto exchanges after a recent warning from the government.Statement by NPCI as on 7th April 2022. With reference to some recent media reports around the purchase of Cryptocurrencies using UPI, National Payments Corporation of India would like to clarify that we are not aware of any crypto exchange using UPI. Please see attached document pic.twitter.com/lGTcaSLKeC— NPCI (@NPCI_NPCI) April 7, 2022Interestingly enough, even though crypto taxes have been based on the gambling laws, the fantasy sports and gambling apps in the country have full access to all forms of payment integration including UPI.Coinbase disabled UPI service in India few days after NPCI statement.This is not new, Indian exchanges have also been facing payment service problem since 2018.Weird fact – Actual gambling apps get proper payment service support while crypto exchanges are being alienated.— Aditya Singh (@CryptooAdy) April 10, 2022

Many stakeholders in the crypto community have warned that these impractical tax measures and added restrictions on crypto trading would do more harm to the thriving crypto economy in the country and the early effects are visible.

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Finance Redefined: Axie Infinity creator raises $150M, DApp daily users surge to 2.4M and more

The decentralized finance (DeFi) world saw another week of increased on-chain and developer activity even when the overall market cap took a slight dip amid overall market retrace. The creators of the popular play-to-earn nonfungible token (NFT) game Axie Infinity raised $150 million to reimburse hack victims of the Ronin bridge exploit.The decantralized application, o daily user count surged to 2.4 million in the first quarter of 2022, while SushiSwap (SUSHI) and Synthetix (SNX) were booted out of Grayscale’s popular Decentralized Finance Fund. The widely-popular DeFi protocol Yearn.finance announced its support for the newly-passed ERC-4626 tokenized vault standard.The price momentum of the majority of DeFi tokens remained in red over the past week, as the overall crypto market registered a retrace from new highs last week.Axie Infinity creator raises $150M led by Binance to reimburse stolen fundsSky Mavis, the creator of the popular play-to-earn nonfungible token game Axie Infinity has raised $150 million in a new funding round led by Binance. The fundraiser is aimed at reimbursing lost funds from the recent exploit on Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge, which resulted in the loss of over $600 million. The funding round also saw participation from Animoca Brands, Andreessen Horowitz, Dialectic, Paradigm and Accel.Apart from the $150 million raised funds, the remaining amount would be reimbursed from Sky Mavis and Axie Infinity’s balance sheet.Continue readingDApp daily users surge to 2.4M in Q1 2022 despite headwindsAccording to a new industry report published by DappRadar, the number of users engaging in decentralized applications, or DApps, every day surged 396% year-over-year to 2.4 million. This is only 5.8% below the same user activity level witnessed in Q4 2021.The overall growth was impressive, considering that the cryptocurrency sector saw a short-lived bear market during the quarter and experienced $1.19 billion in DeFi hacks and exploits.Continue readingSushi and Synthetix get the boot in Grayscale DeFi Fund rebalancingDigital asset management firm Grayscale has added three new cryptocurrency assets across three main investment funds while removing two other assets from its Decentralized Finance Fund as part of this year’s first quarterly rebalance. Grayscale removed tokens from crypto-derivatives decentralized exchange Synthetix and decentralized exchange SushiSwap, as well as from its decentralized finance (DeFi) fund after the two crypto assets failed to meet the required minimum market capitalization. No other cryptocurrencies were removed during the rebalancing.Continue readingYearn​.finance advocates for the adoption of ERC-4626 tokenized vault standardFollowing the successful deployment of 25 previous Ethereum Request for Comments (ERC) standards — including the industry-recognized ERC-20 for fungible tokens, ERC-721 for nonfungible tokens and the single smart contract multitoken ERC-1155 — the newly passed ERC-4626 is gaining traction within the Ethereum community due to its purported yield-bearing benefits.Referred to as the “tokenized vault standard,” ERC-4626 is set to be implemented at the next Ethereum fork upgrade following approval by the developers within Ethereum’s governance procedure.Continue readingDeFi market overviewAnalytical data reveals that DeFi’s total value locked has registered a $10 billion dip over the last week, reaching $130 billion at the time of writing. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView reveals that DeFi’s top 100 tokens by market capitalization bled in red over the past week, along with the rest of the crypto market.The weekly performance of the majority of the tokens remained on the bearish side, barring a few tokens that showed resistance against the trend. In the top-100 DeFi list, only Convex Finance (CVX) and Secret (SCRT) tokens traded in green, with CVX registering a 16% surge while SCRT rose by 4% over the past week.Before you go!The Ronin bridge hacker has started to move funds to coin mixers in a bid to launder the stolen Ether (ETH) and USD Coin (USDC). As per the latest report, the hacker account has sent out nearly $7 million to coin mixer services while moving another 2,018 ETH to a different wallet. While the creators of Axie Infinity have already raised $150 million and plan to utilize an additional $400 million from their balance sheet to reimburse users, the chances of getting back the stolen funds look thin at the moment.Thanks for reading our summary of this week’s most impactful DeFi developments. Join us again next Friday for more stories, insights and education in this dynamically advancing space.

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UFC to pay out fighter bonuses in Bitcoin for its upcoming PPV events

Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the popular mixed martial arts organization, will be paying out fan bonuses to its fighters in Bitcoin (BTC).The fan bonus will be paid out to the top three fighters of the pay-per-view (PPV) event in association with its official cryptocurrency platform partner, Crypto.com. There will be a total of three Bitcoin fan bonuses of the night ranging from $10,000 to $30,000. Fans from around the globe can vote for the BTC bonuses of the night on the official Crypto.com website on the day of the event.The first Bitcoin fan bonus will be introduced during the upcoming UFC 273: Volkanovski vs The Korean Zombie PPV event scheduled for Saturday. The Bitcoin fan bonus will be an addition to the traditional Fight of the Night and Performance bonuses awarded to UFC athletes.UFC president Dana White lauded the organization’s recent association with Crypto.com, saying:This new Fan Bonus of the Night is an awesome way to get fans more engaged in our events while rewarding the fighters for bad-ass performances.” Related: NFT-funded racing aims to disrupt sports sponsorshipsSports and crypto have shown one of the best synergies over the past couple of years, with several major sporting companies and events partnering with emerging crypto tech. As a global sporting brand, UFC was among the first to integrate crypto-based promotions and even inked a $175-million sponsorship deal with Crypto.com in July last year.UFC fighters, quite similar to United States National Football League stars, have also opted for BTC and crypto paychecks over fiat payouts. The major mixed martial art sports company has also bet big on nonfungible tokens (NFT) as the firm had launched its first official NFT in November last year.Apart from UFC, other major sporting organizations, such as Formula One, National Basketball Association and several professional soccer clubs around the world, have onboarded crypto companies as their major brand partners over the past few years.

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Axie Infinity creator raises $150M led by Binance to reimburse stolen funds

Sky Mavis, the creator of the popular play-to-earn nonfungible token game Axie Infinity has raised $150 million in a new funding round led by Binance. The fundraiser is aimed at reimbursing lost funds from the recent exploit on Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge, which resulted in the loss of over $600 million. The funding round also saw participation from Animoca Brands, a16z, Dialectic, Paradigm and Accel.As Cointelegraph reported earlier, the explorer behind the hack managed to drain out 173,600 Ethereum (ETH) and 25.5 million USD Coin (USDC) in just two transactions using hacked private keys. At the time, the creators behind the NFT game had promised that they would either try to recover all the lost funds or reimburse users with the help of their investors.Apart from the $150M raised funds, the remaining amount would be reimbursed from Sky Mavis and Axie Infinity’s balance sheet. The developers have also identified a small validator set on Axie DAO as being the root cause behind the exploit and have decided to increase the number of validator groups to 21 in the next three months.The developers behind the project estimate that it could take several weeks before the Ronin Bridge becomes active again, as they are working on the security update and subsequent audits before re-opening it for users. In the meantime, Binance is helping Axie Infinity users to deposit and withdraw ETH on the Ronin Network.Related: Axie Infinity (AXS) price reverses course with 50%+ gain ahead of Origin launchIf the stolen funds are not recovered within two years, the Axie DAO would vote for the next steps for its treasury. Binance and Sky Mavis didn’t respond to requests for comments from Cointelegraph at the time of publishing,Many in the crypto community believed that the hacker behind the Ronin Bridge exploit would eventually return the funds, quite similar to the exploiter of the Poly Network. However, until now, there hasn’t been any evidence of such communication between the game developers and hackers. The Axie Infinity exploiter account has started moving funds to coin mixer services such as Tornado Cash in a bid to launder the stolen funds. However, it is important to note that the Poly Network exploiter did the same, to begin with, but eventually decided to return the funds as it became increasingly difficult to launder such a high amount.The address of the hacker who stole $610 million in the Ronin_Network case began to move, transferring 1000 ETH to another address and then 200 ETH to TornadoCash. https://t.co/7RYHCmwght— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) April 4, 2022

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