Trust is the cornerstone of socioeconomic success and geopolitical balance. Our current world is exhibiting a massive trust deficit. Distrust is resulting in socioeconomic failures and geopolitical angst. Blockchain’s superpower is trust. It is time to mandate blockchain businesses to rebuild trust, success and balance across global systems. Geopolitical agitations, the war in Ukraine and elsewhere, famine, climate crisis, inflation, supply chain problems, and financial market turmoil are a few of humanity’s many challenges today. Let’s talk about trust The world is in need of and must trust again. Blockchain is a technology built upon integrated trust. Where there is …

Crypto and Know Your Customer (KYC) guidelines seem to be an unhappy marriage — pseudonymity in the digital currencies’ DNA doesn’t match the old-school centralized protocols of traditional finance, but cohabitation is inevitable for the maturing industry. The tension never really goes away, but even before recent months’ market failures for crypto, the regulators have been clearly hogging the blanket, nudging the established platforms toward more strict authentication procedures and cutting the privacy-hardline players off the market. Cardano co-founder Charles Hoskinson expressed a popular opinion from the industry side in the United States Congress when he told legislators that no …

Web3 community members are fighting back against the United States Supreme Court’s ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade. On June 24, the landmark court case, which previously assured the right to have an abortion, was overturned, sparking a backlash among reproductive rights activists in the United States. Some activists have turned to Web3 solutions, creating decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and nonfungible token (NFT) projects focused on raising awareness for women’s reproductive rights. One of the earliest of these efforts was demonstrated by Nadya Tolokonnikova, a member of the performance activist group Pussy Riot. Tolokonnikova told Cointelegraph that about three weeks …

The United States Department of the Treasury has delivered to President Joe Biden a framework on crypto for U.S. government agencies to work with their foreign counterparts. In a Thursday announcement, the U.S. Treasury said it had reported on a regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies in consultation with the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Commerce, the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development and other government agencies as required by President Biden’s executive order on digital assets issued in March. According to the Treasury Department, the framework aimed to encourage the development of digital assets while respecting “America’s core …

Boris Johnson, who has been the prime minister of the United Kingdom since 2019, said he will step down as leader of the country’s Conservative Party but will remain head of state until a replacement has been found. In a speech in front of 10 Downing Street in London on Thursday, Johnson said “it is clearly now the will of the Parliamentary Conservative Party, that there should be a new leader of that party and therefore a new prime minister,” with a transition timetable set to be announced next week. The prime minister added that he would remain in government, …

Russia continues sending mixed messages about the legal status of cryptocurrency, with a parliament official urging the launch of crypto trading on the country’s largest stock exchange. The Moscow Exchange (MOEX) is the best match for hosting a regulated crypto exchange in Russia, according to Anatoly Aksakov, head of the Russian Banking Association and a financial committee within the State Duma. At a recent press conference, Aksakov stressed the importance of building a crypto exchange under the strict requirements of the Russian central bank, local news agency Prime reported on Thursday. The lawmaker pointed out that MOEX is likely to …

US government officials who privately own cryptocurrencies are now banned from working on regulations and policies that could affect the value of digital assets. A new advisory notice released by the US Office of Government Ethics (OGE) on Tuesday stated that the de minimis exemption — which allows for the owners of securities who hold an amount below a certain threshold to work on policy related to that security — is universally inapplicable when it comes to cryptocurrencies and stablecoins. “As a result, an employee who holds any amount of a cryptocurrency or stablecoin may not participate in a particular …

The Monetary Authority of Singapore, or MAS, has been “carefully considering” adding restrictions that could affect how retail investors handle crypto, according to one of the government’s senior ministers. According to parliamentary records published on Monday, Singapore senior minister and MAS chair Tharman Shanmugaratnam said the financial watchdog may consider “placing limits on retail participation” for crypto investors as well as introducing rules on the use of leverage for crypto transactions. Shanmugaratnam also called for regulatory clarity among financial regulators around the world, “given the borderless nature of cryptocurrency markets.” In January, the MAS barred crypto service providers from advertising …

The Central African Republic (CAR) has launched its new government-backed Sango crypto hub initiative to foster the development of the local digital asset sector. The Sango project follows the CAR’s adoption of Bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender in April. The initiative aims to attract businesses and global crypto talent/enthusiasts, ramp up local BTC adoption and oversee the rollout of crypto regulatory frameworks and infrastructure. A metaverse platform dubbed The Crypto Island and Sango Coin is also in the works. Speaking at the launch event on Sunday, President Faustin-Archange Touadéra outlined the vision for Sango is to have a “common cryptocurrency …

A new financial system; a more democratized, even more inclusive, financial sector; the future of the internet — the crypto ecosystem has been described as all of these things. However, as is evidenced by digital assets’ inherent correlation with the Nasdaq 100, most people fail to conceptualize blockchain as anything other than an extension of the traditional tech economy. While blockchain’s proponents laud its virtues and potential, they have been unable to make a comprehensive case for blockchain to everyday people. Many crypto natives anticipate “the decoupling,” in which digital assets become financially independent from traditional tech equities. But without …

Garry Kasparov, the Russian chess grandmaster and chair of the Human Rights Foundation, doesn’t appear at all bothered by the current crypto bear market. Kasparov, who is also a long-time Bitcoin supporter, told Cointelegraph during Consensus 2022 “so what” in regards to his thoughts on the bear market. Kasparov added that he thinks 99% of all coins are “crap,” yet he expressed that both Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) are already integrated into traditional financial markets due to recent price fluctuations. He said: “They'll lose a bit more, but they’ll also gain more, which shows that these are already being …

A new report has indicated that crypto exchange Coinbase has provided Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents with a “suite of features” intended for tracking the company’s customers. According to the report, ICE has been granted access to an intelligence-gathering application, called Coinbase Tracer, that provides a variety of forensic data tracking capabilities. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is an government agency under the Department of Homeland Security. The primary purpose of ICE is to protect the country from cross-border crime and illegal immigration. Coinbase Tracer’s intent is to assist ICE with tracing malicious and fraudulent transactions on blockchains. According …