On Wednesday, centralized cryptocurrency exchange Binance launched its new TerraUSD (UST) staking program. Although Binance did not name the underlying decentralized finance protocol responsible for the staking rewards, Do Kwon — Terra Luna's (LUNA) co-founder — attributed the origins of the high yield to Terra's flagship Anchor protocol. Anchor rate is now available to 30M+ binance users The anchor yield of web3 is living up to its name. https://t.co/awubGdRJgP — Do Kwon (@stablekwon) April 6, 2022 Terra Luna's ecosystem consists of its algorithmic stablecoin UST and governance/equilibrium token LUNA. The Anchor protocol alleges that it operate as a "crypto savings …

When you think of a crypto-friendly U.S. state, Washington is hardly the first to come to mind. Yet, a lot has been happening on the ground in the Pacific Northwest lately. Washington Governor Jay Inslee signed a bill, SB5544, into law on March 30. The new legislation creates a working group of seven state officials and eight trade association leaders to examine “various potential applications of and policies for blockchain technology” and report to the governor in December 2023. Republican state Senator Sharon Brown, one of the sponsors of the legislation, said, “By creating the Washington Blockchain Work Group, we …

Cryptocurrency investments in Indonesia have seen considerable growth between 2020-2022, with 4% of the country’s population having invested in crypto. In 2021, crypto transaction volumes surpassed $34 billion, according to Indonesia’s Commodity Futures Trading Regulatory Agency. This growth has formed a new mindset toward crypto investment, especially in the mainstream media. One example of cryptocurrencies’ growing appeal in the mainstream is the participation of Indonesian celebrities and influencers. Crypto adoption among celebrities Celebrities and influencers in Indonesia seem to have become much more involved in Indonesia’s crypto investment industry since 2021. Many have become brand ambassadors for exchanges and crypto …

Crypto is the next big thing in Indonesia. According to the Ministry of Trade, transactions for currencies like Bitcoin (BTC) grew over 14 times from a total of 60 trillion rupiahs ($4.1 billion) in 2020 to a total of 859 trillion rupiahs ($59.83 billion) in 2021. It’s getting to the point where crypto is becoming more popular than traditional stock. Vice Minister of Trade Jerry Sambuaga stated that more than 11 million Indonesians bought or sold crypto in 2021. In comparison, according to the Indonesian Central Securities Depository, the total number of portfolio investors — indicated by the number of …

Visa announced the official launch of the Visa Creator Program, a one-year product strategy and mentorship program for entrepreneurs working in art, music, fashion and film who seek to accelerate their small business through nonfungible tokens, or NFTs. According to Visa, the goal of the Creator Program is to bring together a global cohort of digital creators and empower them via education of blockchain technology and NFT commerce. Originally announced in October, 2021, the program's first Visa Creator is Micah Johnson, creator of the Aku World NFT community. Johnson is a former professional baseball player who retired after multiple injuries …

On March 29, centralized cryptocurrency exchange Binance announced the rollout of Binance Bridge 2.0. The feature enables users to bridge assets from any blockchain, including from tokens not listed on the Binance app, to the BNB Chain. Bridged tokens listed on Binance will be stored in the Funding or Spot Wallet, while unlisted bridged tokens will be transferred to the Funding Wallet only. Users can bridge-in or bridge-out tokens between their native blockchains and BNB Chain via regular deposit and withdrawal functions. In the future, Binance also plans to create a better version of its mobile app to allow users …

Austria has been actively transforming into an attractive location for providers of blockchain-based products, with the government itself experimenting with the technology and trying to create a legal basis upon which companies can use it. With regard to blockchain-based applications in the economy, however, Austria is still in the experimental phase, with most firms still running pilot projects. Still, politicians and economists alike see potential for select industries. Public administration reform via blockchain The Austrian government is quite open to blockchain innovations, cryptocurrencies aside, and has supported various projects in the public and private sectors. In 2019, a consortium of …

What is an NFT? NFTs are nonfungible tokens. The adjective “nonfungible” is often used in economics to represent features such as uniqueness and non-interchangeability. In the crypto space, nonfungibility simply indicates that one item cannot be exchanged for another. A “token” as a unit of account is basically a certificate of validity stored on the decentralized blockchain, making digital assets traceable and accessible to everyone. As a result, NFTs are a one-of-a-kind virtual currency that can fall into pretty much any category and usually take the shape of paintings, videos, music, collectible items in video games or any other type …

On Monday, Euroclear, a securities clearing firm that claims it has over 37.6 trillion euros in assets under custody, announced an investment into Fnality, a consortium of financial institutions focused on the regulated adoption of tokenized assets and marketplaces, for an undisclosed amount. Meanwhile, Euroclear is also focusing on developing its distributed ledger technology, or DLT, to settle digital securities against digital cash through the partnership. The solution aims to increase the speed and efficiency of post-trade operations in areas such as market issuance, collateral trades, and servicing interest payments. Founded in 2019, Fnality International said that to seeks to …

On March 11, the United States Department of Labor warned employers that sponsor 401(k) retirement plans to “exercise extreme care” when dealing with cryptocurrencies and other digital assets, even threatening to pay extra legal attention to retirement plans with significant crypto investments. Its rationale is familiar to any crypto investor: The risk of fraud aside, digital assets are prone to volatility and, thus, may pose risks to the retirement savings of America’s workers. On the other hand, we are seeing established players in the retirement market taking steps toward crypto. For one, retirement investment platform ForUsAll decided last year to …

Kyash, a Tokyo-based digital wallet, announced a $41.2 million usd, or 4.9 billion yen, raise in a Series D round. Since launching in 2015, the cashless mobile app and corresponding credit card has grown its total funding to an estimated $108 million, or 12.8 billion yen. Both global investors and Japanese banks joined the round, including Japan Post Investment Corporation, Jack Dorsey's Block, which is formerly known as Square, as well as Altos Ventures Goodwater Capital and StepStone Group in the U.S. Additional investment came from Greyhound Capital in the U.K., SMBC Nikko Securities, JAFCO Group, Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Capital …

On Wednesday, Coinbase launched a new feature, dubbed "Coinbase Pay," that directly enables its clients to fund their Coinbase Wallets from a Chrome browser extension. According to its staff, Coinbase Pay intends to make it intuitive for anyone to participate in decentralized finance, or DeFi, swap tokens on decentralized exchanges, or DEXs, and purchase nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, in just a few clicks. Specifically, they wrote: "Before Coinbase Pay, users who wanted to add funds to their Coinbase Wallet from the browser extension needed to navigate to Coinbase.com, sign in to their account, copy-paste their wallet address, and manually transfer …