Artifacts recovered from the wreckage of the Titanic are set to be tokenized using blockchain technology through a partnership driven by the company that acts as the steward of the sunken vessel. A three-way partnership involving RMS Titanic Inc. (RMST), Hong Kong-based Venture Smart Financial Holdings and Web3 firm Artifact Labs will begin tokenizing precious artifacts from the Titanic to unlock a myriad of Web3 functionalities. Select artifacts from the sunken Titanic will be preserved as nonfungible tokens (NFTs), which is aimed to open up shared ownership to the wider general public. RMST holds the exclusive rights to recover artifacts …

The mainstream adoption of crypto and crypto-based services continues, as more companies are bridging traditional financial (TradFi) solutions with decentralized financial (DeFi). In an announcement on Feb. 22, a new pilot program launched between Binance and Ingenico payment solutions now allows in-store crypto payments via Binance Pay. Currently, the initial test of this offering is only available on Ingenico AXIUM payment terminals in France. According to the announcement, more than 50 cryptocurrencies will be accepted with this program. Initially, merchants will be paid in cryptocurrency. However, a crypto-to-fiat solution in which merchants are paid in fiat is set to pilot …

Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko announced the Shapella (Shanghai/Capella) upgrade is scheduled for Feb. 28. The Shapella network upgrade will activate on the Sepolia network at epoch 56832. Shanghai and Capella are the names of the upcoming Ethereum hard fork. Shanghai is the name of the fork on the execution client side, and Capella is the upgrade name on the consensus layer client side. Some of the key Ethereum improvement proposals (EIP) changes on the execution layer include Warm Coinbase and Beacon chain push withdrawals. The push withdrawals will make way for validator withdrawals from the beacon chain to the …

Bitcoin (BTC) wicked to five-day lows on Feb. 22 as a comedown for United States equities continued. Analyst on Bitcoin: "Waiting for a bit lower" Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView recorded lows of $23,871 on Bitstamp, with S&P 500 futures slipping under 4,000 ahead of the Wall Street open. Bitcoin bulls had lost ground after the U.S. holiday weekend, which ended in weakness across equities and a failed attempt to flip $25,000 to support. For Cointelegraph contributor Michaël van de Poppe, who was hoping that the correction would be short lived, it was nonetheless time to wait and …

Cardano is a proof-of-stake (PoS) platform launched in September 2017 by Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson. In September 2021, Cardano added support for smart contracts, which paved the way for developing decentralized finance (DeFi) and nonfungible token (NFT) applications. NFTs landed on Cardano’s blockchain in 2022, with Cardano’s native cryptocurrency ADA (ADA) utilized to buy and sell them. The deployment of smart contracts on Cardano allowed the creation of NFT marketplaces, including CNFT.IO and Jpg.store. These marketplaces facilitate NFT projects on Cardano in a cost-effective and scalable way, attracting many enthusiasts seeking a user-friendly platform for creators and traders with low-cost …

Payments giant PayPal and investment management firm Galaxy joined hands to raise $20 million in seed funding for Chaos Labs, a New York-based cloud platform for securing blockchains and protocols. Chaos Labs protects crypto protocols against external exploits and risks with an automated risk management platform. The platform does this by offering agent- and scenario-based simulations, which in turn, helps secure protocols against economic vulnerabilities and market manipulation events. The seed funding is aimed at helping Chaos Labs further automate on-chain risk optimization. 1/ We are thrilled to announce we have secured $20M in seed funding led by @galaxyhq and …

The United States Congress needs to take control of crypto legislation to make it a more “open process” where the entire marketplace is looked over “comprehensively,” suggests the chief of the prominent U.S. crypto industry body. In a Feb. 22 Bloomberg interview, Blockchain Association CEO Kristin Smith said the industry needs U.S. lawmakers to lead crypto legislation despite it making the process “very slow” and regulators “stepping in” in the interim. Smith noted that despite regulators “moving very quickly,” progress on legislation is happening “behind closed doors,” suggesting it's vital for more industry involvement in an “open process” which would …

The co-founder of the social media website Reddit, Alexis Ohanian, reportedly bought 50,000 Ether (ETH) for just $15,000 during the cryptocurrency’s presale in 2014, a cost of just 30 cents per coin. Ohanian, who left the social media giant in 2020, told Forbes in a Feb. 21 article that he found the idea of a decentralized store of value to be very attractive partly due to his Armenian heritage, prompting him to take an early gamble on Ethereum. “Any group of people who have in their consciousness, or in their collective history, some idea of persecution, especially by a state, …

The decentralized autonomous organization (DAO)-operated golf startup, LinksDAO, may soon put in an offer to purchase the newly marketed Spey Bay Golf Club in Scotland worth about $900,000. LinksDAO — self-described as a “global group of golf enthusiasts” that is on a mission to build the “world’s greatest golf community” — officially opened the proposal vote on Feb. 20, which came after a few weeks of informal deliberation. It would be the DAO’s first ever golf course purchase. few things in life are more fun than doing what you said you were going to do, regardless of adversity i will …

A self-confessed crypto trading addict and father of two is facing the dire prospect of losing his family forever after secretly racking up $180,000 in debt from his crypto trading habits. Posting his story on the r/relationship advice subreddit on Feb. 21, Reddit user “Leather_Opposite2135” said he started dabbling in cryptocurrency trading around 2021. Fast forward two years to the present day and he’s been kicked out by his wife and is at least $180,000 in debt. “It started just dabbling,” said Leather. “It’s a tech space so I found it very interesting. Joined a bunch of online spaces (discord) …

Attorneys working on behalf of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried have agreed to pay for a security expert to assist the federal judge overseeing his fraud case in navigating modern encryption technology to aid in possibly modifying Bankman-Fried's bail terms. Bankman-Fried’s lawyers Christian Everdell and Mark Cohen sent a letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan on Feb. 21 agreeing with his proposal for a technical professional to aid him. According to the letter, “the defense has already begun researching and contacting possible experts and anticipates being able to propose one or more potential candidates to the court by the end of …

The staking services offered by cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase are “fundamentally different” to what was offered by its peer exchange Kraken — which recently came under fire from the United States securities regulator — according to Coinbase's head lawyer. Paul Grewal, Coinbase’s chief legal officer, made the comments in his response to a shareholder question regarding its staking services during a Q&A session on the exchange’s fourth-quarter results, noting: “The staking products that we offer on Coinbase are fundamentally different from the yield products that were described in the reinforcement action against Kraken. The differences matter.” The first point of difference …