BTCNews

Tennis Star Naomi Osaka Says Dogecoin Piqued Interest in Crypto, NFTs Naomi Osaka has already dominated the tennis world, racking up four Grand Slam singles titles over the last three years and achieving the rank of the world’s top women’s tennis player. Now she’s potentially looking for success in another field: cryptocurrency investing. Osaka is considering investing in crypto, and she told Bloomberg that her interest was piqued by Dogecoin , the popular meme coin. According to the story, Osaka’s agent pitched her the idea of investing in cryptocurrency, but she had already seen some of the social media buzz around Dogecoin. She’s reportedly “exploring” the space now. “I was actually just talking with my agent about cryptocurrencies,” said Osaka. “I know that online, everything is getting bigger. I remember reading about Dogecoin … there’s going to be something new and interesting that’s going to pop up.” Osaka already has one foot in the crypto industry through NFT collectib...

Brave Users Have a New Way to Cash Out Their BAT After Viewing Ads Privacy browser Brave has long believed that if web users are subjected to ads, they should be compensated. While using Brave, each ad that customers agree to watch nets them a small amount of Basic Attention Token (BAT), Brave's own cryptocurrency. You can recirculate that BAT to content providers you enjoy or, being the greedy crypto user you no doubt are, you can trade it for cash or other assets. A new integration makes both easier. Gemini, the crypto exchange founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, announced today that Brave Rewards users can get the BAT tokens they earn deposited straight into their Gemini accounts via the Gemini User Wallet.  How to Use the Uncensorable Web on Privacy Browser Brave According to today's announcement, you can either link your Gemini account or create a new one from the Brave Rewards page. Your BAT balance will show up in your Gemini account, just as if you purchased i...

Doge NFT to Be Broken Up Into Billions of Pieces for Investors Dogecoin fans will tomorrow be able to get their hands on a portion of a very valuable Doge-inspired NFT.  The NFT is linked to an image of a Shiba Inu, the mascot of the meme coin turned seventh-most valuable cryptocurrency in the market. It sold in a June auction to investment collective PleasrDAO, which snapped it up for $4 million.  But now, PleasrDAO is splitting the artwork NFT into billions of pieces and putting them on the Ethereum blockchain so anyone can buy a slice and invest in the iconic NFT.  An NFT is a crypto token that functions like a digital deed of ownership that can be connected to just about anything—in this case artwork—but also audio or video content. They are usually minted and stored on the Ethereum blockchain, though other networks like Solana have recently seen a surge in NFT activity as well. These tokens can also then be fractionalized and resold, as PleasrDAO is d...

CryptoPunks Go Hollywood as Larva Labs Signs With Major Talent Agency CryptoPunks is one of the biggest things in NFT crypto collectibles, with the Ethereum -based pixel avatars—released in 2017, well before this year’s NFT market boom—recently surpassing the $1 billion mark in total transaction volume to date. What’s the next potential stop for the CryptoPunks, then? Hollywood. Today, United Talent Agency (UTA) announced that it has signed Larva Labs, the development duo behind CryptoPunks, along with fellow NFT projects Meebits and Autoglyphs. The agency will represent Larva Labs as it pursues projects based on its original properties in film, television, video games, and other entertainment platforms, along with publishing and licensing opportunities. “We are excited to work with UTA for the benefit of the entire community connected to our projects,” Larva Labs co-founder Matt Hall told The Hollywood Reporter . “Not only for the exciting opportunities to bring them wide...

Fake Banksy NFT Sells for $338K in Ethereum, Scammer Returns Funds Early this morning, the official website of the elusive artist Bansky promoted the sale of an NFT artwork, which was then promptly auctioned for 100 Ethereum , worth $338,000 at the time. But the CryptoPunk-inspired artwork, “Great Redistribution of the Climate Change Disaster,” isn’t by Banksy, according to a statement by the artist’s authentication body Pest Control. It all happened too quickly, says NFT investor Pranksy, who purchased the fake Banksy NFT. So my bid of 100 ETH was accepted for the potential #Banksy first #NFT on @opensea . The link was removed from his website so it could have been a very elaborate hoax, my guess is that is what it will be, only time will tell! https://t.co/EEmElqIvBZ pic.twitter.com/Pbs5zrht05 — Pranksy (@pranksy) August 31, 2021 A pseudonymous user called yosefo contacted Pranksy this morning on messaging app Discord to tip him off about the auction, according to a...

FTX US to Launch Crypto Derivatives After LedgerX Acquisition FTX’s U.S.-based crypto exchange announced today that it would acquire LedgerX, a crypto derivatives trading platform regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The terms of the deal, which are expected to be completed by October 2021, have not been disclosed, and it will have no impact on LedgerX's operations as the exchange will continue to provide its current offerings to the existing customer base. Provided the acquisition is closed, FTX.US will have the ability to offer Bitcoin and Ethereum options and futures contracts for retail and institutional traders, leveraging LedgerX’s relationships with the CTFC. Many of the financial products offered by FTX, including derivatives, currently are not available to U.S. investors. “This is probably one of the most exciting announcements we've ever had,” Bankman-Fried, the founder and CEO of FTX, commented on the deal. 1) This is probably one of...

Genesis Digital Assets Buys 20,000 Bitcoin Mining Rigs Amid US, Nordic Expansion American Bitcoin (BTC) mining company Genesis Digital Assets has agreed to purchase 20,000 new BTC mining systems from blockchain hardware giant Canaan, according to a press release published today. Canaan also granted Genesis an option to buy up to 180,000 more machines in the future. “The Bitcoin mining machines from this latest purchase order are part of our on-going (sic) efforts to rapidly scale our Bitcoin mining operations in North America and the Nordics where we are focused on energy that comes from renewable sources,” explained Abdumalik Mirakhmedov, Genesis co-founder and executive chair. Today,we have secured a purchase order from Genesis Digital Assets Limited, for 20,000 of its Bitcoin mining machines. In conjunction with the Order, Canaan has granted Genesis an option to purchase up to 180,000 additional mining machines. https://t.co/DUBJgcwdmF pic.twitter.com/1HJn0fl2cX — Canaan (...

Instant DAO Creator Syndicate Raises $20M From Andreessen, Coinbase, Snoop Dogg and Others The team behind Syndicate , a new protocol that enables anyone to set up an investment DAO , today announced a $20 million Series A funding round raise with participants led by Andreessen Horowitz . Over 150 new and diverse investors were involved, including Bill Ackman’s Table Management; BNP Paribas Group-backed Atelier Ventures; Coinbase Ventures, Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures, and Snoop Dogg Ventures. “Syndicate is is creating a decentralized investing protocol that enables anyone to create an investment syndicate on the Internet for less than $10 in less than a minute,” the protocol’s cofounder Ian Lee said in June, while speaking on a panel on investment DAOs on Coinshares Conversations . He added that this was around a thousand times cheaper than any other way of setting up such a fund, and potentially a way for hundreds of thousands of people to participate in develop...

Topps Reveals New MLB NFT Cards Amid Move From WAX to Avalanche Leading trading card brand Topps announced today that it will launch a new series of Major League Baseball cards as NFTs in September. However, there’s a big change from the previous collection released this past spring: they won’t be released on WAX . Back in April, Topps released its first set of MLB cards as NFTs , dubbed the 2021 Series 1 baseball cards, and did so through the WAX blockchain . However, this time around, the new 2021 Topps MLB Inception NFT Collection will debut exclusively through a new Topps-centric NFT platform developed on the Avalanche blockchain. “We decided to create ToppsNFTs.com as a place for fans to buy and sell Topps NFT collections from a convenient centralized hub,” a company spokesperson told Decrypt via email. “We chose to partner with Ava Labs to develop ToppsNFTs.com due to their truly decentralized high-performing platform, compatibility with Ethereum , and commitment to l...

Salvadorans Protest President Bukele’s Bitcoin Project Salvadorans have taken to the streets in protest against the country’s acceptance of Bitcoin as legal tender, which will take place on September 7, 2021.  “No al lavado de dinero corrupto,” signs read during a protest in San Salvador last Friday—which means “no to laundering corrupt money.”  The protests are the latest in a long line of attempts by the Salvadoran public to sidetrack President Bukele’s Bitcoin Law, which will see the flagship cryptocurrency become legal tender next week.  “What El Salvador is trying to do is unprecedented and the country has the eyes of the world on it,” Jason Deane, Bitcoin analyst at Quantum Economics told Decrypt .  Deane added that these protests are an “inevitable part of the process,” and “it will still be many months before this normalizes and the true benefits are realized.” But not everybody in El Salvador is quite as optimistic. El Salvador’s Bitcoin oppositi...

Fantom Token Jumps 50% After Launching $315 Million DeFi Program The announcement of a new builder-centric incentive program gave a huge boost to Fantom’s native token, FTM, propelling its price by roughly 50% since yesterday. FTM trading started at roughly $0.57 on August 30, according to crypto metrics platform CoinGecko . However, the token quickly surged to a daily high of $0.88 soon after the Fantom Foundation revealed a new program aimed at supporting decentralized finance ( DeFi ) developers in its ecosystem. DeFi is a section of the crypto industry that offers many of the same financial services as banks and brokers. Instead of centralized companies, however, DeFi relies on lines of code to let users lend, borrow, trade, and more.  Announcing a 370 million FTM incentive program for builders! If you're a protocol team, we'll reward you for sustaining and increasing your TVL on Fantom. Start building today! #buildonfantom https://t.co/AFvAayhsEe — Fantom Founda...

Treasury Wants Crypto Reporting Rules in $3.5 Trillion Reconciliation Bill: Report Remember the giant kerfuffle this month around a crypto tax provision embedded within the U.S. Senate's $1 trillion infrastructure bill? Get ready for the sequel. The Biden administration wants to incorporate new crypto reporting requirements in an upcoming $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill, according to a report published in Roll Call today citing an anonymous administration official. The language would require American cryptocurrency firms, namely exchanges, to report data about non-U.S. users; that information could be exchanged with other countries to make sure crypto traders pay taxes. Treasury wants to add more crypto reporting requirements in the reconciliation bill, according to this report. https://t.co/umQy78BiYs pic.twitter.com/2kWvSoBT1L — Jerry Brito (@jerrybrito) August 30, 2021 None of this is in the spending package as it's currently constituted, which has be...

Bitcoin-Friendly Robinhood May Have to Abandon Main Revenue Stream Executives at stock and crypto trading app Robinhood have vowed to diversify its revenue sources in the coming months and expand its appeal to cryptocurrency users. Better get on that. In an interview with Barron's published today, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler said that the agency is considering banning a practice called payment for order flow. Trading in HOOD shares subsequently dropped, as payment for order flow has traditionally been responsible for the bulk of revenue. Payment for order flow, sometimes shortened to PFOF, entails outsourcing the execution of stock trades to third parties. When someone buys a stock on Robinhood, another company pays Robinhood fractions of a penny per share to match buyers and sellers. (Not bad when you consider Robinhood processes millions of trades in a year.) Using complex price data, these market makers can execute the trade more efficient...

Three Arrows Capital Bets Big on Ethereum NFTs With ‘Starry Night’ Fund The NFT market has surged since late July , and the rising prices for top collections like Art Blocks and CryptoPunks, as well as soaring trading volume across the board, suggests that investors see dollar signs in crypto collectibles. Singapore-based Three Arrows Capital apparently believes so, today revealing plans to invest heavily into premier NFTs. The cryptocurrency hedge fund today announced Starry Night Capital, a new fund focused on “assembling the world’s finest collection of NFTs,” according to its Twitter profile . To do so, the firm has partnered with pseudonymous NFT collector Vincent Van Dough , who has a considerable Twitter following and a significant personal NFT portfolio . “Our thesis is simple, we believe the best way to gain exposure to the cultural paradigm shift being ushered in by NFTs is owning the top pieces from the most desired sets,” Vincent Van Dough tweeted today . Three...