Despite once ranking as the fourth-most popular app in Venezuela, pioneering crypto wallet provider BRD, formerly BreadWallet, attributes its success in the country to local demand for crypto assets. Speaking with Cointelegraph on the topic of BRD’s success in Venezuela, CEO Adam Traidman stated that local demand for crypto assets has been the principal driver of the app’s popularity in the country. “In all honesty, I would love to be able to tell you it was a result of our brilliant marketing team and great advertising strategies and all that — it was none of those things,” he said. “At …

Goldman Sachs will host a conference call on May 27 titled US Economic Outlook & Implications of Current Policies for Inflation, Gold, and Bitcoin. On May 23, Mike Dundas, the founder of crypto media outlet The Block, posted a screenshot of the invitation for the call, revealing that the event will be hosted by Sharmin Mossavar-Rahmani, the CIO of Goldman’s Investment Strategy Group, alongside Harvard economics professor Jason Furman, and Goldman Sachs’ chief economist Jan Hatzius. Goldman Sachs appears to be warming to Bitcoin The news has been heralded as a milestone for the institutional adoption of crypto assets, appearing …

Ravaged by crippling hyperinflation, Iran’s Parliament has sanctioned the redenomination of its fiat — the rial — by replacing it with a new currency called the toman. According to the plan, each toman will be worth 10,000 rials. The redenomination plan effectively removes four place values (four zeros) from the Iranian national currency as part of efforts to kickstart an economic recovery from the country. It is a move that echoes steps taken by other countries like Venezuela and Zimbabwe amid huge inflation. With the United States exiting its nuclear deal with Iran and reintroducing sanctions, the country’s economic situation …

Paul Tudor Jones, a legendary hedge fund investor, triggered massive excitement in crypto markets yesterday by revealing that Bitcoin (BTC) is part of his portfolio. Traders and industry players like BitMEX’s CEO expect that the move will bring more big investors to the market. Arthur Hayes, CEO of the world’s second largest crypto exchange, BitMEX, says that Jones has just removed career risk from investing in cryptos like Bitcoin. “Expect a lot of beta fund managers to begin cooking some copypasta,” Hayes tweeted May 7. Jones paves the way for other hedge fund managers to get into Bitcoin Hayes is …

In a recent interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, Elon Musk bashed inflation — a problem that Bitcoin (BTC) fixes. Some of the current United States population sees the economy as an ever-flowing gift basket that will continue providing essentials even while the country is shut down from its regular workflow, Musk told Rogan on Thursday. "This notion though, that you can just sort of send checks out to everybody and things will be fine, is not true," Musk said referring to stimulus money the U.S. government sent to citizens. The government cannot logically sustain its money printing efforts In an …

Amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, inflation is collapsing all over the world. In order to hedge against the inflation risks, some billionaire investors are buying Bitcoin (BTC). Paul Tudor Jones, the billionaire founder of hedge fund, Tudor Investment Corporation, reportedly revealed that Bitcoin is part of his portfolio. “If I am forced to forecast, my bet is it will be Bitcoin.” According to a May 7 report by Bloomberg, Jones is buying Bitcoin to protect his investments from the inflation coming from the money-printing by central banks. In a market outlook note titled “The Great Monetary Inflation,” the billionaire investor …

Per a May 4 report from local outlet Mehr News, Iran’s new ‘Reforming Monetary and Banking Law’ has passed in parliament. The new law dictates the transition from rial to the toman — valued at 10,000 rials — within the next two years. Hyperinflation and the BTC connection in Iran Back in 2018, Iranian authorities set an official exchange rate at some 42,000 rial to the dollar. Many currency exchanges still show this as the going rate. At the same time, peer-to-peer Bitcoin exchange LocalBitcoins is seeing prices of 1,445,658,900 rials per BTC — according to the official exchange rate, …

In its latest documentary, Cointelegraph reached out to crypto industry leaders all around the world to find out how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected their businesses. While large sectors of the world economy have been grinding to a halt due to the pandemic, the crypto industry was well prepared to face the crisis. Thanks to a fully digital and decentralized way of doing business, crypto companies have been adapting rapidly to these changes, shifting to fully remote operations without losing productivity. The only exception is the crypto event business: major events scheduled for the first half of 2020 were cancelled …

In an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph, Anthony “Pomp” Pompliano explained why Bitcoin is the best asset to preserve wealth in the upcoming future. Pompliano reconfirmed his bullishness on Bitcoin, revealing he bought more if it right after the latest market crash, when most investors sought refuge in the U.S. dollar. When asked whether there may be more investment-worthy cryptocurrencies on the market, Pomp pointed out that “money is a belief system, and until now the market believes that Bitcoin is more valuable than everything else”. The halving can’t be priced-in Discussing the possible impact of the imminent Bitcoin halving on …

Several Venezuelan leaders recently came under fire for alleged criminal acts, although, contrary to initial impressions, the situation did not directly involve cryptocurrency usage. “Maduro and his co-defendants are not alleged to have been involved with crypto, directly,” Ashok Ayyar, counsel at Experience Legal, told Cointelegraph. A number of Venezuelan officials, including former president Maduro, faced a slew of charges from U.S. governing bodies, according to a March 26 statement from the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ). Despite the press release announcing the charges touting the Homeland Security Investigations’ ability to track cryptocurrency transactions, a close examination of the DoJ’s …

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, the country’s central bank, is considering a regulatory sandbox for crypto companies in an apparent change from its previous anti-cryptocurrency stance. The proposed sandbox is reportedly part of a broader agenda by authorities in Zimbabwe to revamp the nation’s financial sector, which has seen massive hyperinflation since 2007. Meanwhile, Zimbabwe’s government is also partnering with Apollo Fintech to develop a gold-backed cryptocurrency for the country. The collaboration is expected to allow Zimbabweans to have access to the Apollo wallet for digital-currency payments. Despite the government’s 2018 crypto ban, peer-to-peer trading of cryptocurrencies continues to thrive …

The U.S. government has extended its daily trillion-dollar repo mission until the end of March, making the entire crypto market cap seem even smaller by comparison. “The Federal Reserve Bank of New York announced it will further extend its daily repurchase agreement operations (also known as ‘repo’) to $1 trillion for the rest of March,” CNBC said in a March 20 news update. “Repos are when banks submit high-quality collateral, such as Treasurys, in exchange for reserves from the Fed,” the news outlet explained. “Banks then use the money to fund their short-term operations.” The Fed keeps ramping up funding …