The Tron Foundation, a cryptocurrency firm that is known for hyping its long ledger of partnerships, appears to have entered a particularly important one today. The maintainer of major cryptocurrency Tron (TRX) has just partnered with Steemit, a major blockchain-based blogging and social networking website to provide its network for Steemit services. Steemit old token STEEM to move to the Tron blockchain, too As part of the strategic partnership, the Tron Foundation will work with the firm to move Steemit and other Steem blockchain-based decentralized applications (DApps) to the Tron blockchain, the firms said in an announcement shared with Cointelegraph …

Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted the newly added Bitcoin (BTC) emoji on Feb. 2 and tagged Unicode, the consortium managing the character standard, in an apparent suggestion to do the same. Dorsey’s tweet showed that, now, whenever a Twitter user writes the Bitcoin or BTC hashtag, an image showing its symbol appears next to it. Dorsey’s tweet showing the Bitcoin emoji. Source: Twitter Dorsey’s apparent suggestion that the symbol be included in the Unicode text encoding standard was appreciated by the community, with Lightning Labs co-founder Elizabeth Stark joining the request. After Twitter added the emoji to its …

LVC Corporation, the crypto subsidiary of messaging giant Line, will launch trading of its proprietary cryptocurrency Link in Japan in April. According to a press release on Jan. 30, LVC is also developing a system meant for Link’s debut in Japan on its local cryptocurrency exchange BitMax. Line already began Link trading on its international BitBox cryptocurrency exchange in mid-October 2018. Due to stricter national cryptocurrency regulations in Japan, LVC had to wait to obtain a license from local financial regulators in September 2019 before launching its BitMax cryptocurrency exchange in the country. According to its official website, Link allows …

Suspected crypto con artists are once again using the likeness of British financial expert Martin Lewis to defraud unsuspecting victims. In 2019, Lewis settled a defamation suit against Facebook for similar Bitcoin (BTC) scam adverts. Instagram says deceptive advertisements have no place on its platform and plans to continue improving its detection protocols for such content. Social platforms have been known to censor crypto-related content, instituting blanket bans on crypto ads on several occasions. However, Facebook has recently relaxed this policy amid the roll-out of its own digital currency project. The social media giant is one of the main backers …

Blockchain will be the most in-demand hard skill in 2020, according to a new study by the educational subsidiary of professional social network LinkedIn. A newcomer to LinkedIn’s annual list of top-demanded hard skills, blockchain now tops the list of the most-needed skills in 2020, according to a LinkedIn Learning blog post on Jan. 13. Blockchain to surpass cloud computing and AI in 2020 In 2019, blockchain-as-a-skill overtook major hard skills including cloud computing, analytical reasoning, artificial intelligence (AI), and user experience (UX) design, becoming the number one hard skill in demand among global employers in 2020, according to LinkedIn …

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the digital world needs oversight, mentioning government regulation as a potential solution but calling community self-governance “another and perhaps even better way.” “One of the big questions for the next decade is: how should we govern the large new digital communities that the internet has enabled,” Zuckerberg said in a Jan. 9 Facebook post. A post for the coming decade In a rather lengthy post on his social media site, Zuckerberg detailed his focus for the coming decade, singling out several topics, including digital governance — an area that also pertains to the digital ecosystem …

Bitcoin (BTC) scam ads featuring the likeness of Martin Lewis have continued to appear on social media despite Lewis’ previous efforts to prevent such illegal practices. After the British financial expert settled a defamation lawsuit against Facebook for showing unendorsed fake Lewis crypto ads in 2019, new scam adverts have now been spotted on Facebook-owned Instagram. Reported by Twitter user @peterfinn5252 on Jan. 7, the scam Instagram ad shows Lewis’ face to promote a fake article pretending to be published by major British national daily tabloid The Mirror. The fake article is titled “Martin Lewis Lends a Hand to British …

The basket of assets backing Facebook’s Libra stablecoin needs to change in order for the project to be accepted by regulators, according to Switzerland’s President. “Central banks will not accept the basket of currencies underpinning it” Reuters reported on Dec. 27 that Swiss finance minister and outgoing president Ueli Maurer said that Libra won’t be approved because central banks won’t accept the basket of currencies behind it. He concluded: “The project, in this form, has thus failed.” Libra’s conflict with regulators Earlier this month, Libra’s whitepaper was updated to remove dividends payable to those investors, aside from eliminating a potential …

Short-video sharing app TikTok has recorded its first viral Bitcoin (BTC)-related video as the firm’s owner reportedly launched a blockchain venture. Posted by TikTok personality The Wolf of Bitcoins, the video depicts a room in a house apparently equipped with dozens of cryptocurrency mining hardware units. The video displays a short caption, “this is why GPU prices went up,” and has a number of Bitcoin-related tags like “Bitcoin,” “explain Bitcoin” and “Bitcoin mining.” Allegedly first appearance of Bitcoin on TikTok feed At the time of this writing, the TikTok has amassed 1.2 million views and over 109,000 likes on the …

Owner of major social media app TikTok, ByteDance, has launched a joint venture with state-owned Chinese media group and ThePaper.cn operator Shanghai Dongfang Newspaper to develop business models that include blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI), Bloomberg reported on Dec. 14. TikTok may use blockchain and AI to fight Deepfakes The joint venture was launched in the capital of eastern China’s Shandong province, Jinan, on Dec. 10 with a registered capital of 10 million yuan ($1.43 million). ByteDance owns 49% of the venture while the rest is owned by the Chinese media group. TikTok sees 500 million monthly active users and …

The Bottle Pay service, which allowed users to send Bitcoin (BTC) via social media accounts, announced on Dec. 13 that it would be shutting down due to Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations. Funds will remain available for withdrawal until 13:00 GMT on Dec. 31, 2019. New user data collection would negatively impact user experience Bottle Pay, developed by United Kingdom-based company Block Matrix, enabled Bitcoin payments to any social media contact regardless of whether they had an account or not. Just two months ago, the company raised $2 million in funding, with the aim of increasing the user-base tenfold over the …

Tron (TRX) founder Justin Sun and Binance co-founder Yi He have had their Weibo accounts suspended. China’s major microblogging website, which is often referred as “Chinese Twitter,” has purportedly deleted the accounts of the two prominent crypto personas. Sources in China confirmed to Cointelegraph that content on Weibo accounts of Justin Sun and Yi He is no longer unavailable, with pages alert the violation of provisions of the Weibo Community Convention. Source: Dovey Wan on Twitter Binance’s Weibo account was similarly suspended about a month ago The news comes after Weibo blocked the account of major global cryptocurrency exchange Binance …