Australia’s Minister for Industry, Science and Technology announced 5.6 million Australian dollars ($4.2 million) in grants to two blockchain-focused companies, including traceability firm Everledger and technology consulting startup Convergence.tech. Everledger, a company focused on building a global registry for diamonds, has received 3 million AUD ($2.2 million) to investigate blockchain technology’s use cases for creating digital certifications for critical minerals through the extraction and movement phases. As previously reported, the firm was deploying blockchain technology by software giant IBM for a transparency platform for the diamond industry. Covergence.tech received $2.6 million AUD ($2 million) to apply blockchain technology for automatic …

A new team at the second-largest bank in the United States will reportedly be devoted entirely to researching cryptocurrencies. According to a Thursday Bloomberg report, Alkesh Shah from Bank of America’s data and innovation strategy group will be leading a team looking into digital assets. He along with Mamta Jain and Andrew Moss of Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s digital innovation group will be reporting to Michael Maras, who reportedly oversees global currencies and commodities research. “Cryptocurrencies and digital assets constitute one of the fastest growing emerging technology ecosystems,” said Candace Browning, Bank of America’s head of global research. “We …

According to a report from blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, unregistered securities offerings represent more than half of all crypto fines handed out by U.S. regulators. In Elliptic’s June 21 Sanctions Compliance in Cryptocurrencies report, the firm's co-founder and Chief Scientist, Dr. Tom Robinson writes that U.S. regulators have handed out $2.5 billion in fines for crypto-related violations since 2014. Out of the total $2.5 billion, unregistered securities offerings accounted for $1.38 billion worth of penalties, or 55.19% of all fines dished out. Fraud was the second biggest crypto violation found in the report, accounting for 37.12% or $928 million worth …

Analysts at thAmerican multinational investment bank Morgan Stanley have estimated the likely changes in eurozone banks’ deposits should a digital euro be widely adopted. According to the analysts, a European Union central bank digital currency (CBDC) could suck up 8% of customer deposits from eurozone banks, Reuters reported Wednesday. This share may be far higher in smaller countries like Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Greece, they said. The analysts’ estimates were based on a “bear case” scenario in which all eurozone citizens over the age of 15 sent 3,000 euros ($3,637) into a digital euro wallet controlled by the …

Munch, an up-and-coming decentralized finance (DeFi) project that lets investors give back a portion of their earnings to charitable causes, has officially partnered with The Giving Block — a move that could provide a significant boost to the rapidly growing crypto donations industry. The new agreement connects The Giving Block’s growing community of crypto-ready nonprofits with the Munch network, which allows users to easily donate to causes they care about. The partnership will also enable new nonprofits to accept Munch donations directly and t create a profile on The Giving Block’s fundraising platform. As Cointelegraph reported in early May, Munch …

The Blockchain Research Institute (BRI) has revealed plans to expand into several continents mid-year through partnerships with several banks, foundations, and organizations. The independent global think-tank for distributed ledger research already operates in Europe and Brazil, and will establish hubs of innovation and research in new regional centers. The goal is to educate and strategize how blockchain and other emerging technologies can be implemented across business, government, and society. The Blockchain Research Institute is opening up an African branch in collaboration with Standard Bank Group, a financial institution that offers banking and financial services to individuals, institutions, and corporations in …

Aleph.im, a blockchain-based storage and computing startup, has been selected to participate in the sixth season of Ubisoft’s Entrepreneurs Lab, offering further exposure to the emerging blockchain industry. The French video game developer has been running the Entrepreneurs Lab for the past six years, offering startups and entrepreneurs the ability to access company resources and expertise as they scale up and commercialize their products. This season’s focus is “blockchain and positive entertainment.” In addition to Aleph.im, 11 other startups from Canada, Europe and Australia have been selected to participate. “We are very proud to be welcoming all of these talented …

Decentralized finance has many of the hallmarks of previous cryptocurrency bull markets: incredible gains, extreme volatility and massive risks. In a new report, leading noncustodial cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift explains the four biggest risks facing DeFi investors and why the emerging field of decentralized insurance could offer a solution. The report, titled "Spreading the Risk: Decentralized Insurance," categorizes DeFi risk into the following “landmines”: custodial risk, smart contract risk, protocol risk and oracle risk. The history of crypto is filled with examples of centralized exchanges “losing or absconding with users’ funds,” argues report author Kent Barton. For smart contract risk, one …

In a recent investment thesis on Sora, the Cointelegraph Research team explored the current state of the decentralized finance, or DeFi, industry, highlighting the biggest challenges it faces right now. It found that the two largest problems are scalability and the segregation of multiple blockchains that exist independently and cannot share information. The Polkadot-based project tries to solve both of these bottlenecks by offering cross-blockchain transfers of any type of asset. It also provides transactional scalability by spreading transactions and validation across multiple parallel blockchains. Download the full investment thesis on SORA (XOR) here. Polkadot aims to ameliorate two pivotal …

In a newly released report, Swiss cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift explores the potential role of so-called “staking derivatives” in addressing some of the challenges posed by Proof-of-Stake, or PoS, protocols. Yield Unchained: Exploring Staking Derivatives shines the spotlight on existing challenges with POS protocols – namely, the opportunity cost that comes with locking up capital in a consensus mechanism. Staking derivatives, the report says, allows users to combine the benefits of staking returns and the ability to deploy their capital in DeFi and other protocols. “Staking derivatives offer a tantalizing, best-of-both-worlds approach where users can enjoy both staking returns and the …

Update 3.10.2021 Alpha Sigma Capital holds Celsius in its portfolio alongside more than a dozen other blockchain-focused projects. Crypto lending platform Celsius Network is worth three times its current market capitalization, underscoring the project's massive growth potential over the next five years, according to new research from Alpha Sigma Capital. Using 2020 financials obtained from Celsius, Alpha Sigma Capital has determined that the crypto company has an implied value of $3.13 billion, which is approximately three times greater than its current market capitalization of $1.1 billion. It appears that “Celsius is currently undervalued," Alpha Sigma Capital said in its analysis, …

A senior analyst at asset management firm Bridgewater believes that regulation could potentially make Bitcoin (BTC) a good asset for institutional investors. Bridgewater director of investment research Rebecca Patterson claimed that regulatory certainty around Bitcoin would solve some of the cryptocurrency’s biggest problems associated with high volatility and low liquidity. In a Feb. 24 interview with Bloomberg, Patterson said that issues like volatility and liquidity remain the main hurdles for Bridgewater’s potential move into Bitcoin. “Right now Bitcoin can move 10% on a tweet, that’s not exactly a store of wealth for most institutional investors. So the volatility of Bitcoin …