After initially seeking to ban Bitcoin in 2013, Thailand has since developed a permissive regulatory apparatus for digital currencies and cryptocurrency fundraising methods. Thai financial services firm Seamico Securities recently announced that it has received approval from the country’s Securities and Investments Commission (SEC) to operate its subsidiary, SE Digital, as a regulated initial coin offering (ICO) portal. In doing so, SE Digital obtained permission to launch the first legitimate ICO in Thailand, with the company announcing that it hopes to raise between 2 billion and 3 billion Thai baht (between around $66 million and $99 million) through the token …
The hotly anticipated “London” Ethereum hard fork now has a set block height for three testnets — a key penultimate step toward a full mainnet launch. In a blog post on the Ethereum Foundation’s website, Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko wrote that the Ropsten, Goerli and Rinkeby testnets now have set block heights at which London will go live, with Ropsten expected to be the first at block 10,499,401, or sometime on June 24. Goerli is expected to be next on June 30, and Rinkeby on July 7. A release schedule for the all-important mainnet upgrade is still being determined, …
The cost of using the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains is on the rapid decline, as evidenced by a 93%–95% reduction in average transaction fees over the past couple of months. Fees are paid to the miners who process transactions on a typical proof-of-work blockchain. The size of the fee depends on the size of the transaction in bytes and how many transactions a coin has gone through in the past (as these need to be checked every time a coin is moved). Supply and demand for space also dictate the size of a transaction fee since blockchains have limited capacity. …
New Ethereum (ETH) being generated through mining is at its lowest rate ever, Etherscan data reveals on Feb. 11. According to Etherscan, on Feb. 10, 13,370 new ETH have been created, down from over 20 thousand in December 2018 and an all-time-high of over 39 thousand reported on July 30, 2015. The recent sharp decrease in the quantity of newly mined ETH was evidently caused by a sudden increase in Ethereum mining difficulty, which Etherscan data revealed on Feb. 10. As Cointelegraph reported in September last year, Ethereum’s core developers decided on their regular meeting on August 31, 2018 to …
Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and cryptocurrency-linked stocks like MicroStrategy are seeing a sharp downturn after news broke that FTX announced filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and Sam Bankman-Fried stepping down as CEO. Crypto-linked stocks decline MicroStrategy (MSTR), led by the outspoken advocate of Bitcoin Michael Saylor, is down 32.57% on Nov. 11 in a 5-day period. MicroStrategy holds about 130,000 Bitcoin and, therefore, its stock price is heavily correlated with BTC/USD. Meanwhile, the tech-heavy NASDAQ has gained 0.79%. Mining stocks have seen losses today, with the Hashrate Index Crypto Mining Stock Index showing a 0.14% loss at midday Nov. 11. …