The Russian central bank continues disclosing more details about its upcoming digital currency, now reportedly planning to take commissions for the digital ruble transactions. The fees for Russia’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) transactions will be lower than those of wire transfers, Bank of Russia’s director of financial technologies department Kirill Pronin reportedly said. Pronin elaborated that the CBDC transactions’ commissions will not be higher than those implemented within Russia’s Faster Payments System (FPS), a service that lets individuals make instant interbank transfers, the local publication Prime reported Wednesday. The FPS system was launched in 2019, allowing users to transfer …

Rapper Post Malone is the latest celebrity to move into nonfungible tokens (NFT) by promoting a major NFT project and a cryptocurrency firm. In his latest collaboration with The Weeknd, a music video for One Right Now, Malone purchased an NFT from Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), one of the world’s biggest NFT collections featuring 10,000 unique digital collectibles living on the Ethereum blockchain. In the video, Malone buys the NFT via MoonPay, a fintech startup focused on providing cryptocurrency payments infrastructure. The firm reportedly plans to reach a valuation of $3.4 billion after conducting its first-ever venture capital round. …

Climate and environmental issues are only increasing in severity, with temperatures rising and natural disasters occurring in one place after another. Rather than turn a blind eye towards these conditions, the population has become more conscious of their consumption habits, pushing towards finding more sustainable ways to meet their needs. Likewise, brands have also committed to reducing their footprint. While most businesses have taken a more sustainable stand, the payment industry has fallen behind. As many new actors and payment methods have joined the race, their mindset has been set on making a profit without a sense of social, environmental …

The top cryptocurrencies by market capitalization keep changing over time as the industry matures. Solana (SOL) has seen its value skyrocket so far this year and has been consistently processing over 2,500 transactions per second. The cryptocurrency’s price, according to TradingView data, is up nearly 13,000% year-to-date as the year started with SOL trading slightly below $2. Solana is now changing hands-on exchanges for around $240. Solana is a blockchain platform that aims to achieve high transaction speeds at a low cost without sacrificing decentralization. To do so, it relies on a number of unique features, including a “proof-of-history” mechanism. …

Nonfungible token-based projects like Loot and The N Project have helped spike interest in the Metaverse to an all-time high, raising hopes again that blockchain will finally break through to the masses. Will it, or is history doomed to repeat itself? The problem is that the very things that capture the imagination of the public are the very same things that ultimately degrade the performance of the underlying platforms and raise barriers to entry higher than ever. In this article, I’ll explore the fundamental issues responsible for creating this dynamic with the goal of helping address these issues once and …

High transaction fees have been a persistent thorn in the side of investors and blockchain projects since at least 2014 when Ethereum Network co-creator Vitalik Buterin stated in reference to Bitcoin, “The ‘Internet of Money’ should not cost $0.05 per transaction. It's kind of absurd.” Fast forward to November 2021 and the simple act of approving a token so that it can be transacted on Uniswap can cost as much as $50 worth in Ether (ETH) depending on the time of day. Even layer-2 solutions, which were billed as the protocols that would help solve the fee issue, have been …

The Ethereum network has seen its first consecutive week of negative supply issuance as bubbling markets drive persistently high transaction fees. With the highly anticipated London upgrade introducing a burn mechanism into Ethereum's fee market in early August, a small quantity of Ether has since been destroyed with every transaction executed on the network. With gas prices sustaining at high levels, Ethereum has seen seven consecutive days of deflationary issuance for the network, meaning that more ETH has been removed from supply than created through mining.In order for Ethereum to consistently produce deflationary blocks, gas prices must consistently remain roughly …

The share price of the Intercontinental Exchange-backed crypto services company Bakkt ($BKKT) has surged as it unveiled two partnerships with major global payments firms. On Monday 25 Oct., Mastercard announced it would be working with digital asset platform Bakkt to allow its customers based in the United States to buy, sell and hold digital assets through custodial wallets. On the same day, global payment provider Fiserv also announced a strategic collaboration with Bakkt to offer merchant-facing digital asset services. The news drove a bullish day of trading for BKKT, with the stock rallying by more than 50% outside of regular …

Wally Adeyemo, the Deputy Secretary of the United States Department of the Treasury, said the department would likely be enforcing more sanctions on companies involved in illicit transactions related to ransomware payments. Speaking at an online event hosted by the Center for a New American Security with former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Ambassador Paula Dobriansky, Adeyemo said the U.S. government would likely be dipping into its toolbox by employing sanctions when criminals threaten national security interests. He specifically mentioned “crypto exchanges or mixers that are fundamentally in the business of furthering cybercriminals” as possible targets. “Our view is that …

Ethereum is an open-source blockchain-based software platform with thousands of decentralized applications (DApps) that powers its native cryptocurrency, Ether (ETH), that can be sent and received globally without any third-party interference. First conceptualized in 2013 by Russian-Canadian programmer Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum was designed as a platform for self-executing, permanent and immutable DApps with use cases varying from finance to gaming and art. DApps are often referred to as smart contracts which are Ethereum transaction protocols that automatically carry out certain functions and actions like transaction processing with predetermined conditions and agreements. Sending a transaction, canceling it, or resolving a pending …

The age of digital transformation has arrived, leading traditional industries to adopt new technologies to accommodate a fully digital future. As such, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the trillion dollar oil and gas industry has quietly started to leverage blockchain technology for business success. Douglas Heintzman, chief catalyst at the Blockchain Research Institute, told Cointelegraph that the oil and gas sector is particularly ripe for blockchain development due to its uniquely positioned supply chain: “There are many participants in downstream and upstream operations within the oil and gas industry.” He added further: “The industry must now look at …

Digital analytics firm Chainalysis reported that the growth in North America’s crypto market has been driven by the rise in popularity of decentralized finance. In its 2021 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report, Chainalysis said the monthly crypto transaction volume across North America grew by more than 1,000% from July 2020 to June 2021. The monthly volume reached a peak of $164 billion in May 2021 before dipping to just over $100 billion in June. According to the report, decentralized finance, or DeFi, was largely responsible for North America continuing to maintain its position as one of the largest crypto markets worldwide. …