Cryptocurrency adoption continues growing in the Kingdom of Bahrain, with local companies enabling payments in crypto like Bitcoin (BTC). EazyPay, an online payment platform regulated by the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB), has partnered with Binance Pay to enable crypto payments in the country, EazyPay CEO and founder Nayef Tawfiq Al Alawi announced on Wednesday. The newly launched crypto payment option will be available in more than 5,000 point-of-sale (POS) terminals and online payment gateway across Bahrain, the CEO said. Major local merchants and firms, including Lulu Hypermarket, Sharaf DG, Al Zain Jewelry and Jasmi’s, will be able to accept …

Crypto exchange Binance received a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) license from Dubai's Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA), enabling the crypto exchange to offer a range of virtual asset services to qualified retail and institutional investors, the company disclosed on Tuesday. The development follows the issuance of the provisional license granted in March, that permitted the company to set up an office in the United Arab Emirates and provide digital asset exchange services to pre-qualified investors and financial firms. With the new permission, Binance will be able to offer a range of virtual asset-related services to qualified retail and institutional investors …

The sanctions imposed by the United States government on Tornado Cash have reignited a public debate on privacy. For many in the relatively young crypto community, such an intervention by the federal government seems groundbreaking. However, tussles between the private sector and the state on the issue of privacy are far from new and can provide compelling insights on what we might expect next for privacy in the crypto industry. In the 1990s, Phil Zimmermann released Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), one of the first openly available public-key cryptography applications that featured end-to-end (E2E) encryption. Zimmerman’s creation prompted a criminal investigation …

Elizabeth Rosenberg, the assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes at the United States Department of the Treasury, suggested sanctioning cryptocurrency mixers could help strengthen the government’s response to foreign entities looking to use digital assets for illicit means. In a Tuesday hearing of the Senate Banking Committee covering sanctions on Russia, Rosenberg said having the Treasury Department add crypto mixers like Blender.io or Tornado Cash to its list of Specially Designated Nationals could be an effective way to signal the U.S. government was acting to prevent entities from circumventing sanctions. “When [sanctions] can serve as a deterrent to …

The United States Department of the Treasury will be calling for comments from the public on digital assets, including their views on how regulations may address illicit uses of crypto. In a document set to be published in the Federal Register on Tuesday, the U.S. Treasury requested public comment on “digital-asset-related illicit finance and national security risks as well as the publicly released action plan to mitigate the risks” related to President Joe Biden’s executive order on crypto from March. The department invited the public to share their thoughts on what regulatory obligations the U.S. government had imposed that were …

The crypto market turmoil entered the third week of September as most of the cryptocurrencies started the week on a bearish note. The total crypto market cap dipped below $1 trillion again, with several cryptocurrencies recording a double-digit downfall over the past 24 hours. The ongoing bearish turmoil has led to nearly half a billion in liquidations for the leverage crypto traders over the past 24 hours. Data from Coinglass highlight that 130,087 traders were liquidated with a total liquidations value of $431.51 million. Bitcoin (BTC) leverage traders lost $44.5 million, followed by Ether (ETH) traders with a total liquidation …

Members of the crypto space and advocacy groups reacted to United States President Joe Biden’s administration releasing a regulatory framework on digital assets, with many suggesting the White House focused on the potential negative aspects of crypto. In a Friday announcement, the White House said that federal agencies and departments had submitted 9 reports as required by Biden’s executive order on crypto from March. Among the information in the fact sheet included policy objectives for a U.S. central bank digital currency, ways to mitigate the possible impact of crypto’s energy usage on the climate, and regulatory aims for enforcement actions, …

There’s never a good time for a crypto winter, but it would be difficult to envision a worse time than right now. Even before 70% of Bitcoin’s (BTC) value evaporated seemingly overnight, things were not going great in the court of public opinion. Negative sentiment was everywhere; a Twitter account documenting crypto bros taking it on the chin racked up hundreds of thousands of followers. Now the biggest crypto exchanges in the world are laying off full-time employees by the thousands, and the self-proclaimed “Cryptoqueen” has landed a spot on the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Ten Most Wanted …

With the Trade Ministry officially approving the use of cryptocurrencies for foreign trade, Iran will become the first-of-a-kind adopter in the world. The obvious problem with the news is that the country’s innovative policy obviously aims at circumventing financial sanctions that have been hampering its participation in the global economy for many years. These circumstances set an ambivalent tone for Iran’s experiment — while for some, it could prove crypto’s emancipating ability to shirk the all-too-real hegemony of the United States political will and international financial institutions that enforce it, hardline crypto skeptics could get the proof they need for …

Hyperledger Foundation, a global open source collaboration of enterprise blockchain technologies, has commenced its largest annual event, the Hyperledger Global Forum 2022. Ahead the event on Monday, the Foundation announced the addition of eight newest members to its international community, namely: CasperLabs, Realto Group, BCW Group, Banque de France, Central Bank of Nigeria, Digital Identity Laboratory of Canada, International Association For Trusted Blockchain Applications (INATBA) and DSR Corporation. Daniel Barbosa, Executive Director at Hyperledger Foundation, and General Manager of Blockchain, Healthcare, and Identity at the Linux Foundation, shared that: “Hyperledger technologies are playing an outsized role in reshaping existing markets …

Recently elected Conservative Party leader and prime minister of the United Kingdom Liz Truss has appointed Kwasi Kwarteng as the country’s newest chancellor of the exchequer, or chief financial minister. In a Tuesday announcement, Truss’ office named Kwarteng as the next U.K. finance minister, replacing Nadhim Zahawi, who served as chancellor of the exchequer for three months following Rishi Sunak’s resignation in July. Kwarteng was most recently the U.K. government’s secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy in addition to being a Member of Parliament since 2010. The Rt Hon Kwasi Kwarteng MP @KwasiKwarteng has been appointed Chancellor …

Russia's Finance Ministry has reportedly begun working with governments in “friendly” nations to establish a cross-border stablecoin-based payments platform. According to a Tuesday report from Russia state-owned news agency TASS, deputy finance minister Alexey Moiseev said the government was looking to create the settlement platform in an effort to avoid the use of U.S. dollars and euros. The finance minister reportedly said the Russian government would need to impose additional regulations to enact the platform between itself and friendly nations — possibly including China, Belarus, and North Korea. “We offer mutually acceptable tokenized instruments that will be used on these …