The U.S. Treasury's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is expanding an outreach program designed to provide access to minority depository institutions, or MDIs. Per a Thursday announcement shared with Cointelegraph, the OCC's Project REACh is expanding to include a pledge of large and mid-sized banks partnering with MDIs. The pledge requires the partner bank to expand investment and support for executive development at the MDI that it works with. MDIs are simply banks or credit unions that are majority-owned by ethnic or racial minorities. They are seen as critical to expanding financial inclusion to minority groups left out …

Withdrawal contracts for Ether staked on Ethereum 2.0 could become available as early as Q1 2021 allowing decentralized Eth2 staking service Rocket Pool to launch. While Phase 0 of Eth2’s roll-out was launched with its Beacon Chain on Dec. 1, the 900,000 Ether deposited by stakers will not be available for withdrawal until Phase 1.5 — which is expected to arrive around early 2022. Last week, Ethereum developer Danny Ryan introduced a new proposal that would allow for “Simple (but expressive) withdrawal contracts to be written today”. Should the proposal be implemented, he estimates that “80% of withdrawal contract use …

The cryptocurrency space has undergone a number of bull and bear markets since its inception in 2009. The crypto bull run in 2017 was one of the biggest years for the industry, hosting soaring digital asset prices and growth. Blockchain markets look much different today than they did three years ago, however, based on regulation, adoption, and other factors. How will crypto’s current macro uptrend differ from 2017? Asset dispersion is a key differentiator, according to Pierce Crosby, general manager of asset charting platform TradingView. “The key here is to be looking at the distribution of accounts, i.e. the total …

Centre Consortium, the company behind USD Coin (USDC), has hired former State Street and JPMorgan Chase executive David Puth as its new CEO. Centre made the announcement early Tuesday in a Medium post that praised Puth for his leadership credentials. The new hire will help Centre expand its global partnerships across the fintech, crypto and traditional financial services industries. Puth said that he is excited to be joining Centre “at this critical time in the industry,” adding: “The growth of USDC over the course of 2020 is indicative of what I expect will be the path for Centre business activities …

Coinbase, the United States’ largest cryptocurrency exchange, announced that it facilitated one of the largest institutional Bitcoin (BTC) purchases in 2020. According to an official announcement, Coinbase was selected as the primary execution partner for MicroStrategy’s $425 million purchase of Bitcoin in September 2020. Brett Tejpaul, head of institutional sales at Coinbase, provided more details about the purchase as well as the company’s aim to facilitate institutional purchases in a Dec. 1 blog post. “Using our advanced execution capabilities, leading crypto prime brokerage platform, and OTC desk, we were able to buy a significant amount of Bitcoin on behalf of …

Bitcoin price officially reached a new all-time high above $19,892 on Dec. 1 after nearly three years, according to data from Coinbase and Tradingview. Despite the Thanksgiving crash last week, Bitcoin (BTC) price managed to rebound throughout the weekend. BTC then easily passed the $19,000 mark on Monday to reach its all-time high, albeit on a couple of exchanges. There are three key trends that fueled BTC's rise from sub-$3,600 in March to over $19,892. These include the rise in institutional demand, lower selling pressure and the resilience of BTC throughout 2020. Data suggests institutional demand propelled the rally Most …

U.S. digital currency exchange Coinbase has outlined plans for supporting Ethereum 2.0 staking rewards — possibly setting the stage for even wider adoption of the smart contract platform. In an official blog post, Coinbase says it plans to roll out Eth2 staking, trading and conversion services starting in early 2021. Once Eth2 is supported, existing Coinbase customers will be able to convert their Ether (ETH) tokens to ETH2 and earn staking rewards. The company said: "While staked ETH2 tokens remain locked on the beacon chain, Coinbase will also enable trading between ETH2, ETH, and all other supported currencies providing liquidity …

The motivation and time horizon for entering Bitcoin (BTC) will ultimately dictate whether investors succeed in this new asset class, according to crypto pioneer Mark Yusko. On Friday, the CEO of Morgan Creek Capital Management commented on the recent wave of negative headlines concerning Bitcoin. In a series of tweets, Yusko said financial institutions are justifiably concerned about Bitcoin’s disruptive impact and will use whatever means they have to slow its adoption. The normal response to Bitcoin’s threat is to “erect barriers to adoption and innovation,” Yusko said, adding: “When threatened, incumbents always turn to influence of governments to try …

Major United States-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is experiencing “elevated error rates on some backend systems due to an AWS service outage,” according to an official post on Nov. 25 shortly after 7:00 pm PST. In an announcement posted nine hours prior, Coinbase said that trading was not being impacted at the time. The following update removed this statement, stating: “You may encounter intermittent delays or errors while transacting, as well as accessing other parts of our applications. Customer support inquiries are also delayed.” The AWS issue has had a significant impact on the tech sector more broadly, with platforms such …

toMore than one dozen teams representing the mathematics and computer science departments of Oxford and Cambridge universities are competing to build crypto trading algorithms on major exchanges Coinbase Pro and FTX. According to a Nov. 25 announcement, the 15 teams will be assessed on their trading strategies, the technical design of their algorithms, and their overall return on investment. The competition launched on Nov. 16 and will run until Dec. 16. The strategies employed include arbitrage, predictions based on machine learning and neural networks, and trend investing based on time-sequence forecasting. APEX:E3 is the contest’s principal sponsor, with the institutional …

United States crypto exchange Coinbase Pro announced today that customers would not be able to use margin trading on the platform beginning on Wednesday. According to the Coinbase blog, chief legal officer Paul Grewal said that no new margin trades would be allowed starting on Nov. 25 at 2:00 PST. The exchange stated that it would take the product offline in December “once all existing margin positions have expired.” “We believe clear, common sense regulations for margin lending products are needed to protect and provide peace of mind to U.S customers,” said Grewal. “We look forward to working closely with …

XRP price spiked to over $0.90 on U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase on Nov. 24, only to crash back down by roughly 30% in seconds. This was the highest price level since May 2018. XRP frenzy driven by Coinbase users The rally was apparently driven by Coinbase users as the price of XRP did not see the same heights on other exchanges. Bitstamp and Binance, for example, saw a high of only $0.79 during the same spike. Shortly after the crash, the hashtag “Coinbase” began trending on Twitter in the United States. While Coinbase’s official status page currently says that everything …