Jared Tate, the founder of DigiByte (DGB), has announced he is stepping down from his daily operation, accusing the crypto community of becoming “co-opted [and] eroded by greed” and warning of centralization. Tate’s announcement comes shortly after DigiByte rallied by 900% in roughly six weeks. DigitByte founder stands down In a series of tweets posted on May 15, Tate took aim at the blockchain community for placing an emphasis on short-term profiteering. “All 90% of the people care for is cashing out when a coin moons,” he said. “It's a primal force. I get that. But everyday I see this …

In a bid to create a more user-centric social media platform — “a free frontier” — Reddit has introduced its new community points system built on top of the Ethereum blockchain. In a slide presentation shared Wednesday, May 13th, Reddit announced that Redditors will now be able to earn rewards in the form of ERC-20 tokens based on Ethereum blockchain for creating engaging content on the platform. This confirms claims that many users made in April about Reddit coming up with a blockchain-based reward system. Users will have the freedom to either save their community points or utilize them to …

Bitcoin’s (BTC) third block halving has finally taken place. The year’s most talked-about crypto event happened at 3:23 p.m. EST on Monday, May 11, as block number 630,000 was successfully mined. The Bitcoin block reward has now gone down from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC, which will likely have many repercussions on the industry. But here’s how the historic event went down. Bitcoin halving 101 First, the definition of Bitcoin's halving states that every four years producing BTC becomes more difficult, as block rewards get cut in half by a precoded blockchain protocol. As a result, miners begin receiving 50% …

Major cryptocurrency event, Consensus 2020, has officially kicked off in virtual mode. Consensus: Distributed, Coindesk’s first ever fully virtual conference, featured European Central Bank (ECB) key legal official, Yves Mersch, as the first speaker. On May 11, ECB board member Mersch delivered an exclusive keynote devoted to central bank digital currencies (CBDC), a central bank digital currency that can be used by consumers. Speaking at 6:45 a.m. ET, the ECB official outlined that the bank is mainly focused on a retail implementation of CBDC. The ECB voices its focus on retail CBDC implementation Opposing retail CBDCs to wholesale central bank …

As Telegram’s legal battle with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission continues to unfold, the U.S. authorities have convinced the judge to bar the company from issuing Gram tokens — at least in the near future. On March 24, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York judge said that the SEC “has shown a substantial likelihood of success” in proving that Telegram, the firm behind the eponymous open-source encrypted messenger, distributed unregistered securities.” As a result, the federal judge granted a preliminary injunction against the company, preventing it from delivering Gram tokens to investors. Telegram …

Over the past few days, the ex-Steem blockchain community has gained an upper hand over Justin Sun and his recently acquired Steemit startup. After blaming Sun for attempting to centralize their network, a substantial part of the original Steem community successfully launched a hard fork called Hive. Steem stakeholders are now actively migrating to the new chain. Its in-house token HIVE, which has been distributed among STEEM holders via an airdrop, is trading for a 20% premium over STEEM on some exchanges. Nonetheless, the network split hasn’t been without incident, as some complaints regarding the airdrop distribution were reported. What …

After successfully forking from the Steem blockchain, Hive (HIVE) secured a listing on Bittrex — where it is trading for a 20% premium over Steem (STEEM). In a blow to Justin Sun, the cryptocurrency market appears to have chosen which chain it believes to be more valuable after Hive forked off from Steem on March 20. HIVE trades for 20% premium over Steem On Bittrex, HIVE is currently trading for $0.193, while STEEM is changing hands for roughly $0.154 on the same platform. HIVE’s 24-volume on Bittrex of $28,500 equates to 60% of Steem’s $49,500. In just a few days, …

Consensus, a major global cryptocurrency and blockchain-focused event, is another industry conference that had to change its plans due to intensifying coronavirus fears. In line with the increasing number of industry events being delayed or canceled in response to the coronavirus outbreak, Consensus will not be hosting a conference in New York this year. Consensus 2020 will be hosted in virtual reality at no charge However, that doesn’t mean that Consensus 2020 will not happen. According to an official March 13 announcement by Coindesk, the industry publication that coordinates the event, Consensus 2020 will now be a “completely virtual experience,” …

A petition taking aim at Google for censoring cryptocurrency-related content across its platforms is gaining traction on Twitter. #ForkGoogle’s memorandum accuses Google and its subsidiary YouTube of waging “campaigns of suppression against Bitcoin and blockchain industry for years.” The post seeks to inspire a coming together of blockchain companies and stakeholders to push back against Google's censorship. Google’s silent war on crypto The memorandum accuses Google of censoring cryptocurrency content through a variety of means — including blocking ad campaigns and removing apps related to crypto from Google Play and deleting or restricting access to information about cryptocurrencies. The post …

The scandal surrounding the Steem blockchain continues to unfold. After juggernaut exchanges Binance, Huobi and Poloniex were heavily criticized by community members for allegedly mobilizing customer deposits to take over the network, two of those firms announced they were backing off. Meanwhile, Tron CEO Justin Sun, who has recently acquired Steemit — the startup behind the major blockchain-based blogging and social networking platform — has referred to the disgruntled voters who tried to reclaim control as “hackers” who have been “successfully defeated.” However, as the latest developments show, Sun intends to withdraw all of the orchestrated votes “ASAP,” while the …

According to a Feb. 3 press release, open source blockchain platform Waves established a non-profit organization called Waves Association in Frankfurt, Germany to provide effective governance for its own ecosystem, Web3, and to foster the development of DLTs, including public and private blockchain protocols. Uniting six countries The Waves Association will be represented by ten community members from six different countries: Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, and Russia. Waves founder Alexander Ivanov, who is also a member of the association, calls the launch of the Waves Association an important step for the company’s ecosystem: Through the Association, we will …

The digital currency space has seen rapid growth and expansion in 2019, with heightened interest from governments and global corporations. Cryptos recovered from the 2018 bear market, when with Bitcoin (BTC) crashed to as low as $3,800, leaving numerous experts to paint a gloomy picture of a longstanding bear market and call the downturn in the first half of 2019 the longest and harshest in the crypto history. While cryptocurrency markets were struggling to recover, corporate and central bank digital currencies have quietly become a focus of attention. The blockchain sector has seen exponential growth in 2019, as it became …