Blockchain network Stellar (XLM) stopped confirming transactions for two hours on May 15, executives confirmed following a user post on social media. Stellar, whose lumens token is currently the eighth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, went down entirely for around 110 minutes Wednesday. The cause, it appears, was a mass offlining of Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) nodes, which the majority of the network trusts. Accordingly, other participants failed to find consensus for blocks, and no transactions were validated until developers resolved the issue. “I really hope we’ll get a real debate about decentralization after this event. And about the strategies to …

Mike Novogratz, ex-Goldman Sachs partner and founder of Galaxy Digital, has said that he expects cryptocurrency to “flip next year” in an interview published by Financial Times (FT) Nov. 23. During the interview, Novogratz said that “this year has been challenging” for Galaxy Digital – a company that he hopes will become “the Goldman Sachs of crypto” – adding that “it sucks to build a business in a bear market.” According to FT, Novogratz predicted that financial institutions will transition from “investing in cryptocurrency funds to investing in cryptocurrencies proper in the first quarter of next year.” As FT reports, …

The Financial Times (FT) news outlet published an article Wednesday, Apr 25, detailing allegations levelled by several people against IOTA. According to FT’s report, some members of IOTA’s team have resorted to threats of legal action or violence when dealing with critics of their project online. When asked to comment on the report, Ralf Rottmann, a member of the IOTA Foundation’s board of directors, told Cointelegraph that he “joined the Board of Directors just recently and [is] not personally aware of any of the alleged incidents”: “What I do know: IOTA Foundation continues to win renowned corporate partners and advisors, …

Numbers blogger Tim Swanson recently used Bitcoin blockchain data graphs generated by John Ratcliff to declare that 70% of existing bitcoins have not been spent in six months. He wrote that the data provides a “sobering chart” for those who want Bitcoin to grow. In his opinion, if all currency is not being spent like a hot potato—quickly hopping from one person to the next—this is a bad sign for a currency’s future value prospects. For anyone familiar with economics, Swanson’s prescription is reminiscent of the claims of the famous but now largely discredited economist John Maynard Keynes. When Richard …

Tim Swanson is a researcher who writing has appeared in Business Insider, CoinDesk, Let’s Talk Bitcoin, Cryptocoins News, Bitcoin Magazine and recently Cointelegraph. We reached out to Swanson earlier this week to get his thoughts on what he calls cryptoledger technology, China and Bitcoin itself. Cointelegraph: Can you tell us a bit about your background and what you are currently working on? Tim Swanson: Over the past six years, I worked in East Asia and primarily China. While I was initially an instructor at a couple of colleges, I ended up doing a lot of business development and market research …