Digital asset lending platform Nexo has purchased a stake in a holding company that owns a federally chartered bank in the United States — a move Nexo said will enhance its ability to serve retail and institutional clients. Nexo disclosed Tuesday that it had acquired a stake in Hulett Bancorp, a holding company that owns the federally chartered Summit National Bank, which is regulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The terms of Nexo’s acquisition and its ownership stake in Hulett Bancorp were not revealed. The acquisition gives Nexo and its customers the ability to open bank …

The electricity mix of Bitcoin (BTC) has drastically changed over the past few years, with nuclear energy and natural gas becoming the fastest growing energy sources powering Bitcoin mining, according to new data. The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) on Tuesday released a major update to its Bitcoin mining-dedicated data source, the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI). According to the data from Cambridge, fossil fuels like coal and natural gas made up almost two-thirds of Bitcoin’s total electricity mix as of January 2022, accounting for more than 62%. As such, the share of sustainable energy sources in the …

Adding to the existing regulatory hurdles for the crypto ecosystems, California Governor Gavin Newsom refused to sign a bill that would establish a licensing and regulatory framework for digital assets. Assembly Bill 2269 sought to allow the issuance of operational licenses for crypto companies in California. On Sept. 1, California State Assembly passed the bill with no opposition from the assembly floor and went on to the governor’s office for approval. Opposing the notion, Newsom recommended a “more flexible approach” that would evolve over time while considering the safety of consumers and related costs, adding: “It is premature to lock …

The long-awaited cryptocurrency regulation framework released by President Joe Biden’s Treasury Department this month attempted to outline a plan for managing the burgeoning crypto industry. Unfortunately, the department’s assessment failed to embody more substance than a mere mission statement. While Biden’s administration appears to be taking a “whole-of-government approach” toward overseeing the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector and its ripple effects on the traditional economy, they are focused predominantly on defending against negative events — such as financial crime — and failing to facilitate positive events, such as the wealth-building opportunities that crypto offers to Americans excluded from the traditional big-banking …

Members of the United States House of Representatives and Senate as well as Supreme Court justices currently trading cryptocurrencies may have to stop HODLing while in office should a bill get enough votes. According to a framework released on Thursday, chair Zoe Lofgren of the Committee on House Administration — responsible for the day-to-day operations of the House — said she had a “meaningful and effective plan to combat financial conflicts of interest” in the U.S. Congress by restricting the financial activities of lawmakers and SCOTUS justices, as well as those of their spouses and children. The bill, if passed …

Chain, a blockchain infrastructure firm that offers developers Web3 services to build and maintain blockchain-based applications, will sponsor the New England Patriots football team as well as other venues and sporting clubs controlled by the Kraft Group. In a Thursday announcement, Chain said it will be the official blockchain and Web3 sponsor of the Patriots, the New England Revolution soccer club, Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts, and the shopping center Patriot Place as part of a multi-year partnership deal with Kraft Sports + Entertainment, the marketing and events division of the Kraft Group. Chain will work to develop Web3 experiences for …

With the crypto community growing bigger and as trading volumes reach new highs, the United States is also making more effort to ensure that its Internal Revenue Service (IRS) could properly collect cryptocurrency tax. U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, Deputy Assistant Attorney General David Hubbert and IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig announced that US judge Paul Gardephe authorized the IRS to issue a "John Doe summons," a term used when the IRS investigates unknown taxpayers. The summons compels the New York-based M.Y. Safra Bank to submit information about taxpayers that might have failed to report and pay taxes on their crypto transactions. …

Crypto mixer Tornado Cash has returned to the software development platform GitHub after several weeks of being banned on the website. Ethereum developer Preston Van Loon took to Twitter on Thursday to report that GitHub has partly unbanned the Tornado Cash organization and contributors on their platform. The developer suggested that Tornado Cash’s code repositories are now in read-only mode, which means that GitHub is yet to restore full functionality. “But that is progress from an outright ban. I still encourage GitHub to reverse all actions and return the repositories to their former status,” Van Loon stated. According to GitHub …

In this week's episode of Market Talks, we welcome Yashu Gola, a Mumbai-based financial analyst and technology journalist with a strong focus on bitcoin, smart contracts, exchange assets, NFTs, commodities, and global stocks. Yashu has been covering the cryptocurrency industry since 2014 and does not expect to stop anytime soon. First things first, the Fed has just announced a 75 basis point increase in the interest rates after which the markets took a tumble. Why did this happen and what difference does it make to you and why should you be concerned? We ask Yashu to break it down for …

The United States-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase continues its aggressive expansion in Europe, with the latest regulatory approval coming from the land of tulips. Coinbase officially announced on Thursday that it had received registration from De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), the central bank of the Netherlands. The regulatory approval allows Coinbase to offer its retail and institutional crypto products in the Netherlands. According to the official DNB records, Coinbase is one of the major international exchanges approved by the Dutch central bank to operate cryptocurrency services alongside smaller local crypto firms. Coinbase Europe Limited and Coinbase Custody International are listed on DNB’s …

The sanctions on cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash has left a vacuum for illicit fund mixing services, but more time is needed before we’ll know the full impact, according to Chainalysis’ chief scientist. During a demo of Chainalysis’ recently launched blockchain analysis platform Storyline, Cointelegraph asked Chainalysis chief scientist Jacon Illum and country manager for Australia and New Zealand Todd Lenfield about the impact of the Tornado Cash ban. Illum said whilst there is still some usage of the mixer, more time was needed to “see what's happening” and how the ”world responds to that designation,” adding that people are trying …

The sanctions imposed by the United States government on Tornado Cash have reignited a public debate on privacy. For many in the relatively young crypto community, such an intervention by the federal government seems groundbreaking. However, tussles between the private sector and the state on the issue of privacy are far from new and can provide compelling insights on what we might expect next for privacy in the crypto industry. In the 1990s, Phil Zimmermann released Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), one of the first openly available public-key cryptography applications that featured end-to-end (E2E) encryption. Zimmerman’s creation prompted a criminal investigation …