Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has attempted to quell speculation that his exchange’s staking products should be classified as securities — upping the ante in the ongoing debate around crypto regulations with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC. In a televised interview with Bloomberg on March 1, Armstrong said, “Our staking product is not a security,” referring to cryptocurrencies that can be staked directly on the exchange to generate yields. He continued: “Customers never turn their assets to Coinbase for instance. And we really just are providing a service that passes through those coins to help them participate …

Bitcoin (BTC) was marginally positive in February even though the S&P 500 index (SPX) fell by 2.61%. On the first day of March, Bitcoin has started on a positive note while the United States equities markets are struggling. This shows that Bitcoin is trying to decouple from the U.S. equities markets. A positive sign is that retail traders seem to have made the most of the crypto bear market. Instead of panicking and selling their holdings, traders have purchased at lower levels. Glassnode data shows that wallets holding at least one Bitcoin have consistently risen and are nearing the 1 …

The price of Ether (ETH) declined 9.8% between Feb. 19 and Feb. 25 after the price resistance at $1,725 proved stronger than expected. Still, the correction was insufficient to break the 6-week-long ascending channel and did not cause Ether derivatives metrics to turn bearish. Ether's price resilience can be partially explained by the operational failure of some of its smart contract blockchain competitors. For instance, Solana (SOL) faced a 20-hour-long outage on Feb. 25, which was only resolved after a network upgrade coordinated by validators. The network restart also involved purging some of the latest slots, although Solana developers said …

Bitcoin (BTC) moved just 0.03% last month in U.S. dollar terms, making February 2023 likely its least volatile in history. Data from Coinglass from after the monthly close confirms that BTC/USD went practically nowhere for four weeks straight. Bitcoin monthly candle barely leaves a trace To say that Bitcoin is less volatile than it was is something of an understatement when it comes to February. Despite its ups and downs, mostly due to macroeconomic data, BTC price action finished the month almost exactly where it began at around $23,500. That means that Bitcoin was more stable than a raft of …

A conventional treasure hunt is a game where players use hints or a map to find hidden objects, which are typically tangible items, such as coins, toys or other rewards. The game typically takes place outdoors and calls for both physical effort and problem-solving abilities. However, blockchain treasure hunts are becoming increasingly popular as blockchain technology gains wider adoption and people become more interested in exploring new and innovative ways of using this technology. A blockchain treasure hunt uses the security and transparency of blockchain technology to create a new type of game that can be played by anyone, anywhere …

Stablecoins are entering a period of great uncertainty following the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission labeling BUSD an unregistered security and ordering Paxos to stop minting new tokens. Do these moves signal a wider war by U.S. regulators on stablecoins? Could the SEC declare all stablecoins securities, or is BUSD a special case? Independent crypto reporter Amy Castor, who has been covering cryptocurrencies since 2016, believes the BUSD crackdown is aimed squarely at the worlds largest crypto exchange, Binance: Going after Paxos-issued BUSD is part of a much broader crackdown on crypto. They are going after the jugular, and they …

Repeated outages of one of the most popular blockchains believed to have the potential to dethrone the Ethereum network sparked a conversation among community members about the future of those carrying the burden of being called an “Ethereum killer.” A member of the cryptocurrency forum on Reddit opened a conversation on Ethereum killers and questioned their ability to succeed in the current crypto space. According to the community member, those dubbed as Ethereum killers are not likely to succeed because they do not get the same adoption that Ethereum does. In addition, the community member argued that even if a …

Opportunity cost, explained Opportunity cost is a concept in economics that refers to the value of the next best alternative that is forgone when making a choice — i.e., the cost of the best alternative that is not chosen. Consider the scenario when you have a limited budget and are debating between buying a new laptop or going on vacation. The value of the vacation you could have taken with the same amount of money would be the opportunity cost if you decide to buy the laptop. Similarly, if you decide to take the vacation, the opportunity cost would be …

A central focus for many in the Web3 community has been improving identity solutions available to consumers. Last year the emergence of soulbound tokens (SBT) introduced a new way for users to define themselves. Although the SBT hype quieted over the last months, they have not disappeared off the scene. On Mar. 1, the SBT protocol Masa Finance announced that it will deploy on the carbon-negative Celo blockchain to create a new identity solution. More than 10 million wallets active in the Celo ecosystem will be able to generate a Masa “Prosperity Passport.” This new Web3 identity solution allows users …

Twitter suffered another outage on March 1 as thousands of users flagged issues with Elon Musk’s social media platform. The outage took place as Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s new project, Bluesky, went into beta testing. Data from Downdetector showed thousands of issue reports from Twitter users from 9 am UTC, with issues slowly being resolved over a five hour period. 59% of the reported problems were from mobile app users while a further 35% of issues were flagged by website users. Twitter is yet to issue any updates on the cause of the outage, but various reports indicate that users …

2022 was a rather challenging year for the crypto sector, and the prevalence of Ponzi schemes, decentralized finance scams, nonfungible token rug pulls and questionable centralized exchange bookkeeping put the issue of ethics in the space on blast. Of course, the negative news of last year wasn’t an outlier or a one-off — generally, “good” ethics have been an issue in crypto for years, and it’s probably safe to assume that challenges will continue to dot the landscape for the foreseeable future. Within the context of media, it’s important to recognize that objective, unbiased news reporting and transparency are paramount …

The blooming blockchain sector is tightly reliant on crypto exchanges. The trade of crypto assets keeps the industry flowing, and exchanges are a vital link. However, as the blockchain sector strives for constant development with decentralized transparency, exchanges have a long way to go. Moreover, recent history has shown many problems related to the stability and even the safety of these exchanges. So what can be done to bring exchange technology to the next level? Decentralized exchanges for increased safety Crypto exchanges are distributed into two camps: decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and centralized exchanges (CEXs). Besides the difference of two letters, …