Crypto cycles aren’t for the faint-hearted. As the industry continues to evolve from the cypherpunks into the mainstream, we can expect a lot of growing pains. The dumpster fire that was 2022 may have scared off many companies interested in exploring the sector. Case in point: Visa and Mastercard’s embrace of crypto may have hit a snag thanks to the bear market and unclear regulations. According to a new report by Reuters, the credit card giants are halting the launch of certain crypto products until market conditions and the regulatory environment improve. Cuy Sheffield, who heads Visa’s crypto division, wasn’t …

Twitter suffered another outage on March 1 as thousands of users flagged issues with Elon Musk’s social media platform. The outage took place as Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s new project, Bluesky, went into beta testing. Data from Downdetector showed thousands of issue reports from Twitter users from 9 am UTC, with issues slowly being resolved over a five hour period. 59% of the reported problems were from mobile app users while a further 35% of issues were flagged by website users. Twitter is yet to issue any updates on the cause of the outage, but various reports indicate that users …

Jack Dorsey, co-founder of the online microblogging service Twitter, is progressing with Bluesky, a decentralized Twitter alternative, as its mobile application is now being tested in private beta. Bluesky has hit the App Store as an invite-only app, allowing certain persons to try out the new social experience by creating an account via an invite code. According to a report by TechCrunch, the Bluesky iOS app debuted on Feb. 17 and has amassed about 2,000 installs as of Feb. 28. The app is reportedly not yet available for Android testers on Google Play. As one can see on Bluesky’s App …

Jack Dorsey’s payment company Block Inc. reported $1.83 billion of Bitcoin (BTC) revenue from its Cash App business unit in the fourth quarter, representing a 7% fall from the same time last year. In its Q4 and full-year results announced on Feb. 23, Block cited the fall in Bitcoin revenue to the decline in BTC price in the year — which fell approximately 65% throughout 2022. This fall in revenue led to a 25% year-on-year drop in Bitcoin gross profit for Cash App, which fell to $35 million in the quarter. Cash App is a mobile phone payment processing app …

Bitcoin’s Lightning Network (LN) capacity recently surpassed an all-time high of 5,000 BTC. The Lightning Network is a neutral protocol built on top of Bitcoin and currently it does not have a “native” token attached to it like many decentralized finance platforms. Although the Lightning Network’s total liquidity is less than 0.5% of the ETH in DeFi contracts, the uptrend in Bitcoin’s LN capacity versus a downtrend in the amount of ETH locked in smart contracts is encouraging for LN development. While the liquidity on the LN has been rising consistently, the number of channels on the peer-to-peer network dropped …

Decentralized social network Damus teased an upcoming feature in its app that would allow users to earn Satoshi — the smallest fraction of Bitcoin (BTC) — based on post engagement on the platform. In a Twitter post, the Damus team highlighted that there will be a feature that allows users to earn Satoshis in the next version that’s “coming soon.” The team did not provide any details after the announcement. Coming soon in the next version... earn sats directly on posts! This post earned 118k sats which is about $40. Pretty neat! pic.twitter.com/dAbWWD4i93 — Damus⚡️ (@damusapp) February 5, 2023 Damus …

Damus, a so-called “Twitter killer” built on a decentralized network has been approved on the Apple App Store. The Damus team confirmed the approval to its 11,500 Twitter followers on Jan. 31, following what it claims was at least three rejections from the Big Tech player. Shortly after, Twitter co-founder and Nostr contributor Jack Dorsey shared the news with his 6.5 million followers, with the entrepreneur labeling it as a “milestone” moment for open source protocols: a milestone for open protocols...#nostr is now officially on the Apple App Store with @damusapp:https://t.co/GQmvPE5nfX — jack (@jack) January 31, 2023 The app dubs …

The share price of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has surged by 69% since its all time lows and other crypto-related stocks including business intelligence firm MicroStrategy have recorded similar jumps with green candles all around since the start of 2023. The share price of Coinbase fell as low as $31.95 on Jan. 6, before shooting up to $54.14 by the close of trading on Jan. 17. The rising share price will likely be accompanied by a huge sigh of relief for Coinbase executives after a challenging 2022 saw it cut 20% of its workforce and decide to wind down its Japanese …

Digital payments company Block Inc. is pursuing legal action against Roger Ver’s Bitcoin.com over alleged trademark infringement involving its newly launched Verse token, which concluded a $33.6 million private sale in May 2022. In a letter addressed to Bitcoin.com CEO Dennis Jarvis and the company’s legal counsel Joseph Collement, lawyers representing Block claimed that Bitcoin.com’s use of “Verse” constituted trademark infringement under German trademark law. The letter, dated Aug. 10, 2022, was a follow-up to a July 4, 2022 notice in which Block’s legal counsel, Bird & Bird, first laid out its trademark infringement case in Germany. A person familiar …

It's barely been a decade since the launch of Web3, and some are already talking about the next generation of the web — Web5. The concept of Web5 first emerged earlier this year with Jack Dorsey’s announcement about plans to build a decentralized web on Bitcoin's blockchain through Block subsidiary TBD. According to Dorsey's TBD white paper, Web5 will be “a trustless, decentralized internet platform where users own their data” as opposed to Web3, which is mostly centered around Ethereum and a select few centralized blockchain networks. It's easy to see why there is a need for change, but is …

Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey have lifted the curtain on the latest iteration of its social protocol and a new Bluesky Social app — as part of its decentralized answer to Twitter. The Oct. 18 announcement comes nearly three years since the initiative was announced by Dorsey in December 2019, with the aim that social media users should have control over their data and be able to move it from platform to platform without permission. The new protocol has been renamed from “ADX” to “Authenticated Transfer Protocol” — or AT Protocol — and is described as a “protocol …

On June 10, many were surprised by the news that TBD, a subsidiary of Block, Twitter’s co-founder Jack Dorsey, announced the launch of the Web5 platform. Web 1, 2, 3 and now Web 5? But where is Web 4? Those who don’t care about number sequences can just downloaded Web 7. But first, so that no one gets behind in understanding this article, let’s quickly talk about the stages of Web evolution. If you already know the subject, you can skip to the next topic. From the static web to the collaborative web In the beginning, there was what we …