Meta-DeFi protocols are becoming increasingly popular following the success of Yearn.finance. The project is essentially a yield farming hedge fund that lets people participate in complex strategies to farm the governance tokens, or GTs, of other protocols. Yearn is just about business — it sells any tokens it obtains through its activity. But a new project wants to reverse that concept to focus completely on the governance power offered by these tokens. PowerPool is a meta-governance protocol project that seeks to concentrate governance tokens of all platforms under one roof. Developed by a group of anonymous developers, it is quickly …

The art world has had a tough time lately. The coronavirus pandemic has forced many galleries and museums to close, with sales of premium pieces also affected. But there could be a solution that helps the industry get back on its feet and achieve much-needed digitization: blockchain. Here, we talk to Niko Kipouros, founder and CEO of 4ARTechnologies, about how this technology could transform the way we purchase and own artwork — and even ensure that the provenance and authenticity of masterpieces are never doubted. 1. What are the biggest challenges facing the art industry right now? The surge of …

Nifty Gateway, a leading marketplace for nonfungible tokens with the backing of the Winklevoss brothers, recorded its largest-valued auction to-date on July 23 when the digital artwork and NFT “Picasso’s Bull” sold for $55,555.55. The milestone comes as benefits of fractionalized ownership, decentralized provenance verification and the global liquidity pool enabled by blockchain technology are enticing both art creators and investors to explore NFTs. A surreal couple of days. #NFT art records broken by Picasso's #Bitcoin Bull. Huge excitement & now followed on Twitter by people like @JWilliamsFstmed @tylerwinklevoss @APompliano 🤯 I do enjoy a challenge but I'm feeling the …

Crypto-focused institutional trading desks are lately springing up. While Wall Street investment banks and hedge funds are still in the early stages of involvement, a class of crypto-native funds founded by institutional pros is by now well established. Cointelegraph interviewed the co-founder of one of these funds, CMS Holdings’ Dan Matuszewski, to learn more about his views on the crypto market. Before involving himself in crypto in 2012, Matuszewski worked for some years at Bay Hill, an institutional hedge fund. Most of his career was nevertheless tied to crypto, with a brief stint at Kraken and a longer tenure as …

Cointelegraph Markets spoke with Wall Street veteran and host of the Keiser Report, Max Keiser, who explains the increasingly important role of Bitcoin in geopolitics amid potential “hash wars” and why he believes Paul Tudor Jones will become the biggest holder of BTC within two years. Your 200K+ follower Twitter account @maxkeiser went silent for a few months. What happened? Max Keiser: It was a software bug that froze the account for nine months. I believe it was a database contention problem. My friends at SwanBitcoin took on the challenge and sorted it out. I also sent two-dozen roses and …

Cointelegraph spoke with Konstantin Kladko, the CTO of the Skale Network, a blockchain platform based on Ethereum (ETH). Kladko holds a PhD in Physics from the Max Planck Institute and a Masters in Computer Science from Stanford. Over the course of a long career that includes the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sun Microsystems, he also contributed to the making of Java. While Kladko is undeniably an Ethereum fan and believer — referring to it as “an unstoppable bulldozer” — he often goes against popular community narratives, especially regarding “layer-two” scaling. As Cointelegraph previously reported, in 2019 the Ethereum community …

Trezor and Ledger, two of the most prominent hardware wallet manufacturers, have long been locked in a rivalry. As part of Cointelegraph’s interview with Charles Guillemet, the CTO of Ledger, he revealed that the relationship is more complex than it may seem at first. Despite the rhetoric, cooperation and respect can be found as well. A collaborative rivalry Guillemet said that he doesn’t know who started the rivalry, as it goes back to the “very beginning of the Ledger and Trezor companies.” “I think things got more serious when I created the Donjon, which is our internal security team,” he …

Cointelegraph interviewed the CTO of Ledger, Charles Guillemet, to learn more about the best practices in securing cryptocurrencies for average users. Ledger is a major producer of hardware wallets, which store cryptocurrency seeds on a dedicated device. As Guillemet explained, hardware wallets protect against possible malware on the user’s computer or mobile device. Both storage and transaction signing are performed on the wallet, which makes sure that the seed is never seen by the device it’s connected to. Ledger uses a chip based on Secure Element technology, which he says is an ideal protection against physical tampering. Recent moves by …

After talking about Hedera’s Consensus-as-a-Service model in the first part of Cointelegraph’s interview, Hedera CEO Mance Harmon mentioned one specific use case of enterprise blockchain to organize industry cooperation. Like with public blockchains, enterprise-based solutions are a way of coordinating participants of an ecosystem who cannot rely on trusting each other. When asked about specific examples of industries benefiting from blockchain, Harmon referred to one of their clients, the Coupon Bureau. Blockchain-secured coupons The Coupon Bureau is a non-profit organization that Harmon called “the heart of the coupon industry in the United States.” Through various other corporate associations and committees, …

The British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar, a pioneer of blockchain-friendly regulations, will introduce a new regulatory principle for the DLT sector addressing market manipulation risks in the coming months. In an interview with Cointelegraph, Albert Isola, Gibraltar’s minister for digital and financial services, discussed his jurisdiction’s regulatory position regarding blockchain in detail and shared how the government applied many of the policies it developed in pioneering a robust legislative apparatus for gaming at a time when no other countries wanted to touch the industry. The minister also revealed that Gibraltar’s government is exploring applications for blockchain technology. Cointelegraph: What informed …

As part of the most recent edition of Cointelegraph Talks on May 5, Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino, TradeBlock director of institutional research John Todaro, and Poolin mining pool VP Alejandro De La Torre came on today's panel, bringing a bevy of insights on Bitcoin's (BTC) upcoming halving, the COVID-19 pandemic and more. The current pandemic causes uncertainty Although Bitcoin largely lies outside the mainstream financial ecosystem the asset has still reacted to COVID-19 and its related mayhem. "COVID-19 has definitely had an impact on the space," Todaro said of crypto on May 5, noting the presence of uncertainty and increased …

Jay Hao, the CEO of the digital asset exchange OKEx, took part in Cointelegraph China HUB, an online interview column, hosted by Vadim Krekotin, co-founder and CEO of Cointelegraph China and Kristina Lucrezia Cornèr, managing editor of Cointelegraph. Hao has recently stated in an AMA that blockchain will eliminate transaction barriers, improve efficiency and ultimately impact the development of the global economy. But what does he think about the world of blockchain now? Vadim Krekotin: As you said, the cryptocurrency industry itself brims with uncertainties, and it is OKEx's innate mission to be prepared to meet new challenges on all …