Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, has reportedly made a multi-million-dollar real estate purchase at the end of 2021. Armstrong bought a $133 million Los Angeles property from Japanese entrepreneur Hideki Tomita in December, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing anonymous people familiar with the matter. According to the WSJ, Tomita originally purchased the real estate for $85 million in 2018. The new deal allegedly marks the biggest home purchase ever completed in the L.A. area. Prior to being sold to Tomita, the Bel-Air estate was formerly owned by Ellen Bronfman …

Coinbase Chief Product Officer Surojit Chatterjee is the latest to publish his predictions for the crypto industry in 2022 and he foresees major advances in the scaling of Ethereum. Industry leaders, analysts, and investors are sharing their 2022 predictions for the crypto ecosystem, and Coinbase’s Surojit Chatterjee is confident that Ethereum will be at the forefront of Web3 and the crypto-economy as it scales. The CPO shared his predictions in a company blog post on Jan. 4 in which he stated that Ethereum scalability will improve but alternative layer 1 networks will also see traction. “I am optimistic about improvements …

Bitcoin's (BTC) price has been ranging between $46,000 and $52,000 for 26 days. Despite the large nominal $6.1 billion year-end options expiry, the bullish and bearish instruments were evenly balanced between $44,000 and $49,000. Therefore, it was no surprise that the $47,175 price at 8:00 am UTC on Dec. 31 brought little change to the price structure. Even the 3% rally to $48,500 following the event failed to sustain itself, signaling that bears are unwilling to cede their upper hand. Bulls might have interpreted the 9,925 BTC leaving Coinbase in 24 hours as a positive trigger, considering fewer coins are …

Almost 10,000 Bitcoin (BTC) left major United States-based exchange Coinbase on Dec. 30 in a sign that investor appetite is returning to the sphere. Data from on-chain monitoring resource Coinglass shows Coinbase’s professional trading arm, Coinbase Pro, shedding 9,925 BTC in the 24 hours to New Year’s Eve. Binance adds 66,000 BTC in December The buy-in, which runs in contrast to rising or flat balances on other major exchanges, marks a conspicuous short-term trend shift. The latter half of December has been characterized by platforms such as Binance and OKEx seeing increased inflows of BTC — something commentators feared could …

Sber, the Russian government-backed company and the largest bank in the country, is launching a blockchain exchange-traded fund (ETF) to track the performance of major crypto companies such as Coinbase and Galaxy Digital. Sber Asset Management officially announced the news on Thursday, stating that the new ETF is linked to various blockchain and crypto industry firms, including hardware and software providers for mining and issuing crypto assets. Called “Sber — Blockchain Economy,” the fund is set to trade under the ticker SBBE and will track the eponymous index developed by Sber’s investment subsidiary SberCIB. SBBE’s portfolio will include some of …

DeBank, a cryptocurrency wallet focused on decentralized finance (DeFi) solutions, has closed new funding led by major venture capital firm Sequoia China. The firm announced Tuesday on Twitter that it raised $25 million, bringing DeBank’s total valuation to $200 million. Apart from Sequoia China, the funding round featured major crypto investment firms like Dragonfly, Hash Global and Youbi. The raise also included strategic funding from Coinbase Ventures, Crypto.com exchange, stablecoin provider Circle and hardware wallet maker Ledger. DeBank is a cryptocurrency wallet designed to track DeFi data, including decentralized applications or exchanges (DEX) and DeFi interest rates. It also lets …

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), a body that oversees advertising in the United Kingdom, is cracking down on non-compliant crypto advertisements. Earlier this year, Arsenal became one of the many football clubs to collaborate with blockchain firm Chilliz and launch a fan token. On August 12 this year, the club promoted its fan token AFC on its official Facebook page, which the ASA has banned for allegedly violating its advertising rules. The agency stated that the post did not highlight the risks involved in the investment. In a different event, as per a BBC report, the monitor claims that the …

ResearchHub, a scientific research site founded and self-funded by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, is allegedly based on work stolen from its not-launched competitor, a new court filing suggests. Blockchain accelerator MouseBelt Labs filed on Dec. 17 a complaint with the Superior Court of the State of California, alleging that Armstrong’s ResearchHub has something to do with Knowledgr, a research platform in which MouseBelt had invested. The filing alleges that Armstrong was offering investment in Knowledgr while secretly working on his own competing project, ResearchHub, in order to steal some of the resources that MouseBelt put into Knowledgr. According to the …

The cryptocurrency and blockchain industry experienced explosive growth in 2021, particularly in its decentralized finance (DeFi) and nonfungible token (NFT) sectors. The year was also marked by continued price volatility, baffling behavior from China, a grand experiment in Central America, escalating institutional interest, and the rise of some faster smart-contract networks — all of which is reflected in this year’s list of industry “winners and losers.” Winners in 2021 Kazakhstan When China effectively banned Bitcoin (BTC) mining operations in May 2021, Kazakhstan rushed in to fill the vacuum, pitching displaced miners and others on its cheap and plentiful coal supply. …

As of today, Coinbase has 139 tradable assets. The exchange added a whopping 83 assets to its trading list in 2021, nearly double the number of assets it had accumulated in the eight years since its founding. Is this rapid expansion a simple cash-grab? Are any of these lesser-known tokens and coins securities? Is this irresponsible or overly ambitious? What does this rapid expansion of assets by Coinbase mean? A money grab? I feel the answer to the first question is an emphatic “No!” Coinbase is making a lot of money on trading fees, but its token list expansion is …

On Wednesday, Thirty Five Ventures, a venture capital firm co-founded by NBA star Kevin Durant and sports manager Rich Kleiman, announced a business partnership with Coinbase. Under the agreement, Thirty Five Ventures will work jointly with Coinbase to create nonfungible tokens, or NFT, drops, storytelling content about NFTs and crypto, as well as showcasing Coinbase's recent growth in the sector. According to the announcement, there will additionally be a philanthropic integration with the Kevin Durant Charity Foundation. Coinbase is currently the third-largest centralized cryptocurrency exchange in the world by trading volume. At the time of publication, there is currently a …

The Advertising Standards Authority, or ASA, the United Kingdom’s independent advertising regulator, has taken down another batch of cryptocurrency-related ad campaigns promoting several major industry firms. On Dec. 15, the advertising watchdog issued several rulings on ad violations involving six crypto-related firms including Coinbase, Kraken, eToro, Exmo, crypto broker Coinburp and Luno crypto exchange. The ASA also issued a similar ruling for pizza chain Papa John’s. All seven ads or promotions were banned for “irresponsibly taking advantage of consumers inexperience and for failing to illustrate the risk of the investment,” the rulings said. The ASA argued that Coinbase’s European branch …