𝐇𝐔𝐃𝐆𝐄 𝐆𝐋𝐎𝐁𝐀𝐋

Russian Court Recognizes Cryptocurrency as Means of Payment, Prosecutors See Precedent The City Court of St. Petersburg has recognized a large amount of cryptocurrency handed over by the victim in an extortion case as a means of payment, Russian media reported. The prosecutor’s office in Russia’s second-largest city describes the ruling as a precedent. Two Men Sentenced for Cryptocurrency Extortion in Russia Two Russian citizens have been sentenced to nine and seven years in prison under strict regime for extorting 5 million rubles (almost $90,000) in cash and 55 million rubles (close to $1 million) in digital assets from another man. In the course of the trial, the St. Petersburg City Court has recognized the cryptocurrency as a means of payment, the crypto page of Russian business news portal RBC reported. Prosecutors consider the ruling a first, as the government in Moscow is yet to determine the legal status of bitcoin and the like. Four years ago, one of the perpetrato...

Tether reduces commercial paper holdings to improve quality of reserves Stablecoin issuer Tether said it reduced its commercial paper holdings in the first quarter of this year to improve the quality of its reserves. Tether reported today that it had reduced its commercial paper to $19.9 billion from $24.2 billion the previous quarter, a 17% decrease. It also added U.S. Treasury bills, increasing them to $39.2 billion from $34.5 billion.  The company added that it planned to cut its commercial paper by another 20%, which would be reflected in its second-quarter report. Bloomberg said last October said that much of Tether’s commercial paper had been issued by big Chinese companies, causing some analysts to question the quality of the reserves. Tether has refrained from disclosing the names of those firms. Tether is the provider of USD Tether (USDT), the biggest stablecoin in the crypto market. It maintains the value of its centralized stablecoin by using a basket of asse...

Ethereum's main testnet set for proof-of-stake merge in early June Quick Take * Ethereum’s public testnet, Ropsten, is set to go through “the merge” as one of the final preparations for the switch to proof-of-stake. * This test merge of the current proof-of-work chain with the new proof-of-stake one is expected to take place on June 8. Ethereum's main public testnet, Ropsten, is set to undergo "the merge" next month in one of the final preparations before the main Ethereum blockchain can switch to proof-of-stake consensus.  Parithosh Jayanthi, who works in devops at the Ethereum Foundation, merged the pull request on GitHub today, meaning that this code is set to be implemented. The merge is Ethereum's long-awaited move to becoming a proof-of-stake blockchain, under which the current proof-of-work chain will merge with the new proof-of-stake one. It's a big change and there have been multiple tests to see whether it will work. The move to do so on ...

Bitcoin vs. Ethereum: Key differences between BTC and ETH Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) are arguably the two most popular cryptocurrencies out there and have greatly contributed to the sector’s growth. Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency ever to be created and is seen as digital gold or “gold 2.0,” while Ethereum can be seen as a decentralized computer for the world.  Bitcoin is seen as digital gold because it is scarce and durable like the precious metal, but it can be easily stored and divided. Ethereum is seen as a decentralized computer for the world because the network is used to run decentralized applications (DApps), meaning applications that aren’t under the control of a central authority. When measured in various metrics, Bitcoin and Ethereum are the top two cryptocurrencies. These metrics include market capitalization, unique wallet addresses and trading volume on cryptocurrency exchanges. Market capitalization, or market cap, refers to the total dollar va...

Amid the crazy week in the world of cryptocurrencies and the Bitcoin network’s mining difficulty reaching a lifetime high at 31.25 trillion, Ethereum’s hashrate tapped an all-time high on May 13, at block height 14,770,231. Cryptocurrency miners continue to dedicate large quantities of processing power toward the second-largest crypto network in terms of market capitalization. Ethereum’s Hashrate Continues to Climb Higher Proof-of-work (PoW) ethereum miners are working harder than ever before to mine ethereum before the upcoming Merge. While most of the attention was directed at the Terra blockchain meltdown this past week, Ethereum’s hashrate tapped an all-time high (ATH) on May 13, 2022, at block height 14,770,231. Ethereum hashrate on May 15, 2022. The network reached 127 petahash per second (PH/s) that day and the processing power is currently operating at 1.18 PH/s at the time of writing. Miners have been hashing away at the Ethereum network and plan to do ...

UAE’s Emirates Airline planning to employ ‘Bitcoin as a payment service’ As part of its ambition to engage with customers in a manner that is both faster and more flexible, Emirates, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, intends to use cutting-edge digital technologies such as blockchain, metaverse, and cryptocurrency. The Chief Operating Officer of Emirates, Adel Ahmed Al-Redha, has said that the airline intends to employ Bitcoin as a payment service while simultaneously introducing non-fungible tokens, also known as NFT collectibles on the company’s websites for trading purposes, making these remarks while attending the Arabian Travel Market reports Arab News on May 11. Al-Redha also stated to a media gathering that the airline headquartered in Dubai will hire new staff for the metaverse and NFTs, in an effort to develop applications to monitor customer needs. “NFTs and metaverse are two different applications and approaches,” he discussed and said that the ai...

Like much of the cryptocurrency market, Bitcoin (BTC) has been caught in a bearish streak for the past several days, but this doesn’t seem to have affected the token’s transaction volume, which has recently recorded a multi-month high. Indeed, the transaction volume of the flagship digital asset (according to its seven-day moving average) has just reached a seven-month high of 293,520.059 BTC, according to the data by on-chain metrics platform Glassnode, tweeted by its alert account glassnode alerts on May 9. Source: glassnode alerts Taking into account its current price, this means that $9.7 billion worth of Bitcoin has been traded between market participants in the observed time frame. According to the tweet, Bitcoin’s recent 7-month record beats the previous one it reached only one day before – on May 8, 2022, when it reached 293,348.968 BTC. High BTC transaction volume despite market slump The recent development comes as Bitcoin is facing a dramatic drop in ...

After difficulties keeping the financial products off the market for two weeks, Australia’s first cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are due to go live on the country’s CBOE exchange on Thursday, May 12th, 2022. Fund managers Cosmos Asset Management and ETF Securities are behind the funds, which are called Cosmos Purpose Bitcoin Access ETF, ETFs 21Shares Bitcoin ETF, and ETFs 21Shares Ethereum ETF. All assets for the 21Shares products will be kept in cold storage, and investors will be able to trade cryptocurrency ETFs. The three funds were scheduled to debut in late April, however, the launch was postponed indefinitely due to last-minute brokerage issues. According to reports at the time, the delay was caused by an unidentified but “strong” prime broker who prevented the funds from being listed on Cboe, pointing to the volatile nature of cryptocurrencies. According to recent sources, Cboe and related market makers had to find a new broker during the tw...