Stories by Tim Copeland
What is the Lightning Network? Bitcoin's Scalability Solution.
Bitcoin has been hampered by its own popularity. Thanks to the way the blockchain is designed, the speed of transactions is slow and the cost of transactions has increased. Researchers, developers, and the Bitcoin community have been trying to come up with a way of allowing Bitcoin—and other cryptocurrencies—to accommodate more transactions. Their best efforts to date have focused around something called the Lightning Network. Can it fix the cryptocurrency's scaling problems? Speed and cost A bl...
GBTC: Everything You Need To Know About The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust
Grayscale's two-year battle to launch a Bitcoin spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) may finally be turning a corner. On August 29, 2023, the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit sided with Grayscale over the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the crypto firm's quest to launch a Bitcoin ETF. The price of Bitcoin rose significantly following the news. Bitcoin Surges After Grayscale Wins Appeal Against SEC The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), which was launched in 2013, enable...
What is Bakkt? Everything You Need to Know (2023)
The owner of the New York Stock Exchange wants to make Bitcoin mainstream. What counts as mainstream? Traditional and financial institutions. If you can get the old money to feel comfortable trading new money, you can bring a huge new wave of investors to the cryptocurrency game—and maybe even stabilize it. That’s the promise of Bakkt, which hopes to become the on-ramp of the institutional investor. We learn more about it below. What is Bakkt? At its core, Bakkt is a custody service that stores...
European Investment Bank Sold $121 Million in Two-Year Notes on Ethereum
The European Union’s investment arm, the European Investment Bank, has sold €100 million worth ($121 million) of digital bonds on the Ethereum blockchain, according to a report by Bloomberg Law, citing anonymous sources. The bonds were priced on Tuesday, according to the report, and consist of two-year notes, which have a zero percent coupon. Investment banks Goldman Sachs, Societe Generale and Banco Santander were also involved in the process. Today was not a slow day at the office... 🙂 Thank...
Sonic the Hedgehog Creator Sega Is Launching its Own NFTs
Sega, the video game giant behind Sonic the Hedgehog, is making a move into the NFT industry. According to a Twitter post by Sega, the Tokyo-based developer is partnering with blockchain startup double jump.tokyo to create NFTs based around Sega's IP. Per Ledger Insights, double jump.tokyo has received an investment from Sega's holding company for the development of the NFTs. Sonic boom Sega is a Tokyo-based game developer best known for creating the game Sonic the Hedgehog. First launched on t...
NJ County Sells Bitcoin Seized in Drugs Bust for 250% Gains
A county in New Jersey has liquidated Bitcoin seized over two years ago in a drugs bust, netting 250% profits. In 2018, Monmouth County seized the Bitcoin after having determined that it had been obtained through illegal drugs sales, according to data provided to NBC. At the time, the value of the seized Bitcoin was around $57,000. In 2019, the county filed a forfeiture complaint after the suspect pleaded guilty and was sentenced on multiple drugs charges—putting the Bitcoin in the hands of the...
Korea’s Bitcoin Premium Returns After Falling to Zero
Korea’s so-called Kimchi Premium has returned after falling to zero last week, with Bitcoin currently selling 6% higher in South Korea than in the rest of the world. The Kimchi Premium is the difference between the price of Bitcoin in Korean markets and the average price across all other countries. The reason behind this discrepancy is the tight Korean capital controls that make it hard to arbitrage the difference. A few weeks ago, the premium was as high as 22%, according to data from CryptoQu...
A Small Group of Investors Spent $24.5 Billion on Bitcoin in the Last Few Months
More than 1,000 wealthy investors have accumulated large sums of Bitcoin over the last three months, wrote Chainalysis chief economist Philip Gradwell yesterday in his weekly market intelligence report. In the report, Gradwell used blockchain data to analyze the prices at which Bitcoin was bought and held. His analysis considered how long the investor held onto their Bitcoin after they acquired it. Gradwell found that, when Bitcoin was worth around $54,500, a group of 1,200 investors bought 450...
Bitcoin’s Share of Crypto Market Drops to 51%
It’s been a tough day in the cryptocurrency markets: Bitcoin’s price has fallen below $50,000 and almost every other cryptocurrency is deep in the red, too. Most coins are down between 10 and 30%. But beyond the current price crash, Bitcoin’s share of the cryptocurrency market has also fallen slightly. It’s part of a trend that’s persisted throughout the year: Bitcoin’s dominance has dropped from 69% at the start of the year to its current value of 51%—its lowest value since April 2019. While B...
Citi Analyst: Bitcoin Could Lose Out to Other Digital Currencies
While the digital asset industry is set to grow as a whole, Bitcoin could see its dominance decline over the next decade, according to an analyst at investment bank Citi. “Bitcoin’s value is going to be buffeted, is going to be affected by the usefulness of other cryptocurrencies,” Ronit Ghose, global head of banks at Citi, told Decrypt. Ghose’s comments come on the heels of Citi’s newly released "Future of Money" report. The report analyses how cryptocurrencies and fiat money might evolve in t...
Deutsche Boerse to Delist Coinbase Shares Due to Admin Error
German marketplace organizer Deutsche Boerse is delisting shares in crypto exchange Coinbase from both the Xetra trading system and the Frankfurt stock exchange. The shares are being delisted because of "missing reference data for these shares," Deutsche Boerse told Reuters. Coinbase shares were originally listed on both systems when the exchange went public last Wednesday. But an incorrect reference code was used, one that was required to list the shares and that Coinbase does not have approva...
50 CryptoPunks NFTs Go Fractional in New Collection
A collection of 50 CryptoPunks has been fractionalized into millions of tokens, each representing part of the collection. CryptoPunks are one of the earliest forms of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Ethereum blockchain. NFTs are unique tokens that represent digital content such as images, audio or video. Created by Larva Labs, there are 10,000 CryptoPunks, each showing a pixelated face; either men, women, apes, zombies, or aliens. CryptoPunks have relatively few sales, especially compared to...
NBA Prospect Jalen Suggs Sells Epic March Madness Shot as NFT
Top NBA prospect Jalen Suggs is selling a clip of the greatest moment from his college career as a non-fungible token, or NFT. “This moment was just the beginning. As I officially turn pro, The Shot is now a 1-of-1 NFT, accompanied by my signed, game-worn shoes from the semis,” Suggs tweeted yesterday. This moment was just the beginning. As I officially turn pro, The Shot is now a 1-of-1 NFT, accompanied by my signed, game-worn shoes from the semis. The auction is live now on @opensea: https://...
WeWork Now Accepting Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies
Real estate company WeWork has become the latest in a string of companies to start accepting Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies through crypto payments provider BitPay. It will now let its customers pay for co-working spaces or fixed offices in cryptocurrency, according to a press release. Crypto exchange Coinbase will be the first customer to pay for its WeWork membership. The exchange went public last week via a direct listing, temporarily hitting a valuation of $100 billion. WeWork will acce...
Binance.US Hires Former Comptroller of the Currency Brian Brooks as CEO
The former acting Comptroller of the Currency, Brian Brooks, will become the CEO of crypto exchange Binance.US, according to the Wall Street Journal. Brooks, who will begin his role at Binance.US on May 1, will replace Binance.US’s current CEO Catherine Coley, who joined the exchange in July 2019 from cross-border payment company Ripple. A voice for crypto at the OCC Brooks was formally nominated by former President Trump to serve a five year term as the head of the Office of the Comptroller of...
Would Coinbase Ever Launch a COIN Token?
Coinbase went public last week, meaning retail investors can now buy its stock on the Nasdaq. Meanwhile, crypto enthusiasts can also buy tokenized versions of the stock on specialty exchanges like FTX and Binance—the token is backed by actual shares of the stock. But one thing would-be investors still can’t do is buy a tokenized version of the stock issued by Coinbase itself. This is a frustration for many: not only would a native Coinbase token delight crypto fans, but it would also improve li...
Britcoin? Bank of England, UK Treasury Launch Digital Currency Task Force
The Bank of England and HM Treasury have launched a task force to coordinate the exploration of a central bank digital currency (CBDC), according to a statement. The joint project will explore how a potential digital currency would work and the possible risks associated with it. The UK government and the Bank of England have not made a decision on whether they want to introduce a CBDC, although the joint project is the biggest move they have made in this regard. The Bank of England has also ann...
Bitcoin Core Dev: Miners Upgrading Network is "Attack on Bitcoin"
A programme that activates a major privacy upgrade for Bitcoin is primed and ready. But it has reignited a debate about who's allowed to press the launch button: the miners that process Bitcoin blocks or the node operators that validate transactions. The privacy upgrade, called Taproot, makes it harder to distinguish between different Bitcoin transactions, such as multi-signature transactions or opening payment channels on the Lightning Network. The programme, that launches Taproot, Speedy Tria...
Here's Where You Can Watch the New SEC Chair's MIT Blockchain Course
Yesterday, Gary Gensler was approved by the United States Senate to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This happened to be the same day that Coinbase went public on the Nasdaq, ending the day with an $87 billion valuation. As Chair of the SEC, Gensler will be tasked with leading the agency on enforcing securities law in the US, while making headway on hot topics—such as cryptocurrency. But this particular technology won’t come as anything new to him. In December 2020, he wrote a...
'Bad Idea': The Response Brian Armstrong Got When He First Pitched Coinbase
Yesterday, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase went public, ending the day with an $87 billion valuation—higher than that of any conventional stock exchange. As a result, the exchange’s CEO and co-founder Brian Armstrong is now able to sell on the open market, if he wishes, his roughly $900 million worth of shares. But it wasn’t always a guaranteed success. In fact, when Armstrong was first trying to build Coinbase—at a time when Bitcoin was in its infancy—he came up against a wall of resistance an...
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