Blockchain Financial News

2021 will be remembered as the year of nonfungible tokens (NFTs). In a year where names like Beeple and Bored Ape Yacht Club dominated the headlines, it’s estimated that NFTs have generated more than $23 billion in trading volume.

A young couple from India used nonfungible tokens (NFTs) to digitize their love for each other till eternity over the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain. 

crypto assets craze has been rising in India. Several investors, who are sceptical about direct crypto investments, are playing the theme via equities. Some of the top names from the sector include Nvidia, CME Group, Block, IBM, Mastercard, DocuSign, Amazon, Coinbase Holdings and GlobalX Blockchain ETF. The majority of these stocks are listed on Nasdaq. Once a frenzy, these spaces are now witnessing huge traction in 2022 after phenomenal returns in 2021, according to market experts.

While the organizational structure of a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) is fundamentally meant to be “decentralized,” some of the biggest DAO protocols including Uniswap are not. A lot of the day-to-day activities within DAOs still involve a few core members of the organizations to make major decisions. This raises the question as to whether DAOs are completely decentralized. And, if not, is complete decentralization even possible?

Scalability is one of the main hindrances within decentralized finance (DeFi) applications and has created huge barriers to entry. Closely linked to this has been the issue of high gas fees, which continues to be a major pain point for newcomers to the Web3 space. When Web3 goes mainstream, these gas costs will become minimal. For the user, the experience will become completely gas-less like how it is on Web 2.0 applications.

Rafael ‘Ted’ Cruz, the junior Republican senator from Texas, is putting his money where his mouth is.

The central bank of the United States, the Federal Reserve System, has been exploring policy responses to the rise of cryptocurrencies and digital currencies. For example, in his press conference after the FOMC meeting that concluded on Sept. 22, 2021, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged that the Fed is actively assessing whether it should create a central bank digital currency (CBDC), and a paper soliciting public comment reportedly will be released soon. 

The price of the digital coin Verge (XVG) skyrocketed Tuesday following news that adult entertainment giant Mindgeek, the owner of Pornhub and Brazzers, is now accepting payments in the form of the anonymous cryptocurrency. 

Coinbase customers may see some changes to their cryptocurrency wallets and transactions in the weeks to come. The largest cryptocurrency brokerage and exchange in the world announced this week that it would officially complete the process of integrating Segregated Witness (SegWit) by the end of February.

Although fake news has existed well before the 2016 election, the term has risen to new levels of prominence during the presidency of Donald Trump. The Collins Dictionary went so far as to make «fake news» its word of the year in 2017. Now, a new project hopes to utilize one of the latest and most powerful technologies to root out «alternative facts» in the media. Civil is a project based on blockchain technology and aimed at cleaning up journalism to remove lies and reestablish credibility where it may have faltered.

While the disruptive and innovative blockchain technology continues to find increasing use across multiple business sectors, a lot of patents are being filed for developing unique, new-age blockchain-based systems and applications to get the early mover advantage. A new study conducted by IPRDaily, a leading global intellectual property (IP) technology media firm which focuses on IP services and IP industry ecosystem, ranks the global companies based on the number of patents filed, according to CoinDesk.

In a recent wide-ranging chat on Reddit, the former CEO of Mt. Gox, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange until its crash in 2014, revealed that he did not think bitcoin would evolve from its current problems in the near future. “The technology is definitely here to stay, but Bitcoin may have trouble evolving and keeping up,” said Mark Karpeles. Even as bitcoin has come under sharp criticism from governments and industry leaders, blockchain — the technology underpinning bitcoin - has been embraced by them.

Leading cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has announced the acquisition of Distributed Systems, a San Francisco-based startup that is working on decentralized identity solutions. As a part of the acquisition, the five-person team at Distributed Systems will join the group at Coinbase involved in building identity solutions. Coinbase did not reveal the terms of the deal.

Besides their seemingly enormous potential for profit by everyday investors, cryptocurrencies and blockchain networks also have a seedier appeal as well. The anonymity provided by decentralized networks has enticed criminals of various sorts; some currencies and exchanges have been plagued by hacks and other nefarious activity. Now, a report by Cointelegraph suggests that a study from Germany's Goethe and Aachen Universities has unearthed eight files that show or link to sexual content, hidden within the blockchain for bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency. There have been allegations that some of these image might link to child pornography, but Bitcoin Core developer Peter Todd told Cointelegraph that any links to child porn sites were found to be dead links.

Alphabet Inc.’s Google (GOOGL) is working on a blockchain-related technology that is aimed at supporting cloud business, according to Bloomberg News. 

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has issued an interpretive letter allowing federally chartered banks to use stablecoins, or cryptocurrencies with relatively stable prices, for standard banking transactions like payment activities. The letter further states that banks can participate in validating stablecoin transactions or Independent Node Verification Networks (INVN) in a blockchain.

ICOs, or initial coin offerings, are now old news. Just months ago, the novelty of crowdfunding via the blockchain and a booming cryptocurrency market was enough to attract new investors, but things have changed. Previously, startups with little to offer the marketplace but a decentralized spin on an old concept could generate millions of dollars in minutes, but investors are now intensifying their scrutiny. Their motivation used to be quick profit, though as markets wise up to new trends, they must invest (and not speculate) based on merit.

The revolutionary technology blockchain began with cryptocurrencies like bitcoin but has since expanded beyond the worlds of finance and banking. With a slew of new businesses and applications built on the technology, these industries now represent a mass decentralization that will soon impact the whole world. Blockchain helps distribute the cost of running a platform to its various participants, but rewards them for it in equal measure.

Everybody in the crypto sector has heard the cliche that proof-of-work blockchains destroy the earth, while proof-of-stake blockchains preserve it. However, the world isn’t so simple and neither are the rules so clear-cut.

After eight years of guesses, discourse, and conflicting reports, China’s digital yuan CBDC made a rather low-key debut at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics on 4 February.

Welcome to the latest edition of Cointelegraph’s decentralized finance newsletter.