The House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee — an investigative governing body representing the economic interests of the United Kingdom — has released an official report assessing the pertinence of a government-issued central bank digital currency (CDBC). Titled “Central bank digital currencies: a solution in search of a problem?,” the 52-page publication covers a litany of areas in relation to domestic CBDC endeavours, and regularly cites the preliminary research taskforce established by Bank of England and HM Treasury in April 2020. Over 50 individuals, including financial experts, university professors from elite institutions, managing directors of large corporations, as well as …

What is a crypto honeypot and why is it used? Smart contracts programs across a decentralized network of nodes can be executed on modern blockchains like Ethereum. Smart contracts are becoming more popular and valuable, making them a more appealing target for attackers. Several smart contracts have been targeted by hackers in recent years. However, a new trend appears to be gaining traction; namely, attackers are no longer looking for susceptible contracts but are adopting a more proactive strategy. Instead, they aim to trick their victims into falling into traps by sending out contracts that appear to be vulnerable but …

On Thursday, HSBC and IBM announced the successful test of an advanced token and digital wallet settlement between two central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, in a cloud environment. The experiment consisted of transactions between CBDCs, eBonds, and forex. IBM's Hyperledger Fabric and enterprise technology provider R3's Corda served as the basis of the distributed ledger facilitating the transactions. The project was overseen by central bank Banque de France as part of a series of tranche projects to implement a digital Euro. Previously the French and Swiss central banks reported positive results on a pilot run of the digital Swiss …

Eventually, all museums will build their digital copy in the metaverse, according to Dmitry Ozerkov, the head of the Contemporary Art Department at The State Hermitage Museum. Ozerkov is currently developing the “Celestial Hermitage”, a digital version of the iconic Russian museum, which will be exhibiting NFT art. "We are all moving into the digital era and our digital twin will be following us everywhere", Ozerkov told Cointelegraph in an exclusive interview. The State Hermitage in Saint Peterburg, Russia, is the largest museum in the world by gallery space with around 3 million works of art. In September 2021, the …

Macro investor Dan Tapiero is launching another multimillion dollar fund intended to invest in mid- to late-stage companies in the digital asset ecosystem. According to a Notice of Exempt Offering of Securities filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, Tapiero and his 10T Holdings partners Michael Dubilier and Stan Miroshnik have given the regulatory body notice of a $500 million growth equity fund for crypto and blockchain firms. The filing shows the fund has not yet sold any of the original investment. The 10T DAE Fund 3.0 is the third to come from the growth equity firm …

Sber, Russia’s largest bank, is apparently struggling to obtain a regulatory approval for its digital asset issuance platform as the company continues delaying registration plans. Sber CEO Herman Gref announced Dec. 7 that the bank now expects to get its digital asset issuance platform registered with the Bank of Russia by the end of 2021, local news agency Prime reported. "We are in constant contact with the central bank, and we are discussing various issues. We really want to believe that the platform will be registered by the end of this year,” Gref said. The new comments come almost a …

Nonfungible tokens (NFTs) may have been a distraction from the COVID-19 pandemic, but now they are all the rage and a very key piece to pop culture. Each NFT exists as a one-of-a-kind asset minted on the blockchain, each being scarce in quantity and often high in value. While these assets may exist as collector’s items for holders to show off, they also act as a ticket into a fun and exciting community, where users can earn real rewards as they interact on an online medium. The thing is, many limit their imagination to only think of an NFT as …

The holiday season is approaching, an exciting time for some and an overwhelming one for others. When it comes to buying gifts, fancy dinners, decorations, costs can add up quickly, at times derailing one’s investing and savings plans. To ensure this unwanted stress doesn’t impact your financial future, advisors will often recommend automating your investment journey, so users can ensure contributions are continuous and they are taking full advantage of the compounding effect. Bitpanda is a platform helping to level this financial playing field by giving users access to several educational tools and simple-to-use financial products. In light of the …

The Bitcoin AUM market fell 9.5% to $48.7 billion in November, marking the year’s largest month-on-month pullback since July, according to a CryptoCompare report. On the other hand, altcoin-based crypto funds such as ETH saw their AUM rise 5.4% to $16.6 billion. While Bitcoin’s (BTC) position as a viable hedge against fiat inflation continues to attract investors, new data reflects a change in sentiment as Ethereum (ETH) and other cryptocurrency products pick up steam against falling Bitcoin assets under management (AUM). As shown in the above graph, the total AUM across all digital asset investment products has fallen 5.5% to …

American investment bank Goldman Sachs, a backer of major cryptocurrency firm Circle, is strengthening its tokenization efforts by partnering with the blockchain startup Digital Asset. The partnership enables Goldman Sachs to use Daml, a development framework created by Digital Asset to allow financial institutions to build and execute agreements on blockchain, the company announced Wednesday. One of core Digital Asset’s technologies, Daml will help Goldman Sachs develop its own “end-to-end tokenized asset infrastructure” that would support multiple asset classes on private and public blockchains, the announcement reads. Mathew McDermott, global head of digital assets at Goldman Sachs, said that Daml-based …

Now, more than ever, the crypto industry is seeing an influx of creators interested in minting nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and collecting them across various marketplaces. With this surge of enthusiasm for the industry comes unique opportunities but also increased security risk, scam hunters and technical challenges. Pastel Network is addressing this issue head-on with advanced duplication detection and secure storage solutions. Sense, a Near-Duplicate NFT Detection Protocol powered by the Pastel Blockchain, quantifies rareness of NFTs and proves authenticity. Cascade, Pastel’s distributed storage protocol, offers permanent storage and redundancy to make sure that creators’ works or collectors’ portfolios will never …

Blockchain technology enables value to be encapsulated and sent securely and efficiently around the world, the primary example being cryptocurrencies. However, the potential of this technology is only starting to be realized and is already impacting different industries. One sector ripe for such disruption is the gaming industry. With nonfungible tokens (NFTs), the rewards players earn on/with the items they buy are no longer siloed on a single platform with no real-world value. As these developments are still in their nascent stages, many gamers are relegated to merely buying digital property, interacting with digital neighbors, or battling digital creatures. Now, …