Cryptocurrency trading firm Amber Group, which had roughly 10% of its trading capital stuck on FTX at the time of the exchange’s collapse, has reportedly acquired cryptocurrency platform, Sparrow Holdings according to an announcement on Dec. 14. The Singaporean crypto platform Sparrow Holdings, which offers digital assets products and solutions, acquired its payments license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore in August, to provide Digital Payment Token (DPT) services in Singapore, under the Payment Services Act (PSA). Founded in 2018, Sparrow works with financial institutions and family offices in designing bespoke digital asset solutions to achieve customer-centric growth objectives, while …

The agricultural industry went through a major metamorphosis during the industrial revolution, and it might be set for another groundbreaking evolutionary stage now. With the rise of blockchain technology, the farming and agricultural sectors are witnessing a lot of innovation and improvements. According to the founders of AgTech company Dimitra, the opportunities for the agricultural sector to benefit from blockchain-based tech are endless. Find out more about the future of AgTech in the latest Cointelegraph Interview below. Agriculture and technology merge Q: Is the adoption of blockchain technology becoming more widespread across the agricultural industry? What are the main challenges …

According to data provided to Cointelegraph on Dec. 15, network growth still appears to be strong for blockchain indexer The Graph (GRT). Launched two years ago, The Graph Network allows developers to easily search, index, use and publish data from public blockchains. From Nov. 2021 to Nov. 2022, the total number of developers on The Graph (both active and inactive) increased by 145% to 38,000. During the same period, average GRT query fees per month increased by 1,191% to 354,000, while total lifetime GRT queries on the decentralized network increased by 984% to 5.2 billion. Finally, total subgraphs, or proxies …

Digital payments platform PayPal has teamed up with Metamask’s parent company, ConsenSys, to allow Metamask users to purchase and transfer Ethereum (ETH) via PayPal's platform. According to the announcement on Dec. 14, the service will initially be rolled out to only select PayPal users within the United States, since the US is one of Metamask’s largest markets, user-wise. Our US users will now be able to fund their wallet with ETH via @PayPal! Rolling out in the next weeks in the US, excl. Hawaii, through our mobile app (make sure to update to v5.13.0)https://t.co/392JwFYF3m — MetaMask (@MetaMask) December 14, 2022 …

Layer-1 blockchain platform Algorand has been chosen as the public blockchain to support an “innovative digital guarantees platform” to be used in Italy's banking and insurance markets. The Algorand-supported platform is expected to be launched in early 2023. According to Algorand’s Dec. 13 announcement, this is the first time an EU Member State will use blockchain technology for bank and insurance guarantees. A bank guarantee is when a lending institution promises to cover a loss if a borrower defaults on a loan. It's an alternative to providing a security bond or a deposit to a supplier or vendor. An insurance …

Only one of the following news items is real, but someday, all will sound equally comical. Headline, 1896: The owner of Wagoneer & Sons, a leading horse-drawn carriage maker, has announced the adoption of a new machine called the “internal combustion engine” to improve its manufacturing process. “Gas engines are powerful but dangerous,” the owner said. “We will use them to make better wagons. Headline, 1918: The American Association of Candle Makers has announced a new initiative to electrify its wax-making process. It believes that electricity is too dangerous to use for lighting but can be utilized to make cheaper …

Within the past 24 hours, the Binance cryptocurrency exchange has seen outflows of over $1.14B due to rising fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) within the crypto ecosystem. According to Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the exchange has seen this before and believes “it is a good idea to ‘stress test withdrawals’ on each CEX [Centralized Exchanges] on a rotating basis”. We saw some withdrawals today (net $1.14b ish). We have seen this before. Some days we have net withdrawals; some days we have net deposits. Business as usual for us. I actually think it is a good idea to “stress …

According to a new blog post on Dec. 13, Web 3.0 ecosystem developer ConsenSys unveiled its zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) network for private beta testing. Designed and operated by ConsenSys, developers can deploy and manage decentralized applications using tools such as MetaMask, Truffle, and Infura as if they were using EVM directly. In addition, users can bridge assets between the Goerli testnet and the zkEVM to test their smart contracts and decentralized applications, or dApps. "Testnet participants can also bridge tokens, transfer tokens, and interact with deployed dApps listed on our upcoming ecosystem portal page. We intend to learn …

According to a new Twitter post by SushiSwap CEO Jared Grey, the decentralized exchange, or DEX, experienced a $30 million loss in the past 12 months on incentives for liquidity providers, or LPs. As explained by Grey, SushiSwap currently employs a token-based emission strategy to incentivize LPs, but the current rate is "unsustainable." "We commissioned Flipside to build dashboards to showcase these results; we'll make them available by EOY." Moving forward, Grey plans to rework SushiSwap's tokenomics so that LPs are no longer subsidized with emissions and redesign the entire model of bootstrapping liquidity on the exchange. " In Q1 …

With decentralized finance (DeFi) being a hub for various hacks and exploits, some may feel discouraged or wary of entering the space. However, professionals within the crypto space are confident that DeFi will have broader adoption in the future. From educating institutional investors to eliminating user experience barriers for retail investors, Web3 executives shared their thoughts on how broader DeFi adoption can be achieved. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Anton Bukov, the co-founder of 1inch Network, believes that recent events in centralized finance (CeFi) have highlighted the importance of DeFi. The executive believes it’s just “a matter of time” before the financial …

The internet — arguably the greatest invention in human history — has gone awry. We can all feel it. It is harder than ever to tell if we are engaging with friends or foes (or bots), we know we are being constantly surveilled in the name of better ad conversion, and we live in constant fear of clicking something and being defrauded. The failures of the internet largely stem from the inability of large tech monopolies — particularly Google and Facebook — to verify and protect our identities. Why don’t they? The answer is that they have no incentive to …

Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend, but unfortunately, the billion-dollar diamond industry is rife with scandal and fraud. There have been a number of cases where lab-grown diamonds have been graded as natural diamonds. An example of this was seen last year when the International Gemological Institute analyzed and graded a 6.18ct lab-grown diamond, which was previously claimed to be a natural diamond on its Gemological Institute of America (GIA) report. It was also reported in 2005 that the Gemological Institute of America — which is one of the most trusted sources for evaluating gemstone quality — was accepting …