The former CEO of Bitmain, one of the largest bitcoin (BTC) mining pools globally, has launched a crypto-related financial services startup, according to a Bloomberg report on July 8. Following reports on the initiative in early June, Bitmain co-founder and former CEO Wu Jihan officially launched a new crypto trading platform today that purportedly offers over-the-counter (OTC) trading, lending and custody. Named Matrixport, the Singapore-based firm reportedly hired dozens of former Bitmain employees that were laid off from Bitmain as a result of the bear market of 2018. While Wu is a major Matrixport shareholder, the company has a number …

Scottish craft beer brewery BrewDog has extended its latest crowdfunding to allow investors to buy shares in the form of cryptocurrency, the company tweeted on July 4. BrewDog’s crowdfunding project, so-called “Equity for Punks” now accepts ten cryptocurrencies to become a shareholder. The supported cryptos include bitcoin (BTC), bitcoin cash (BCH), bitcoin SV (BSV), ether (ETH), litecoin (LTC), ripple (XRP), OmiseGO (OMG), Qtum (QTUM), Augur (REP), and 0x (ZRX), as BrewDog stated in a recent blog post. Launched back in 2010, Equity for Punks program allows investors to buy a small stake in the company, providing an alternative to shares …

Sina Finance, a finance-focused website owned by China’s major tech company Sina Corp, has added crypto index into its mobile app, China-focused online Twitter resource Cnledger reported on July 3. The new index on China’s major financial news channel provides data on prices and performance of major cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin (BTC), bitcoin cash (BCH), litecoin (LTC), XRP, and ether (ETH), according to a mobile app screenshot provided by Cnledger. Screenshot of Sina Finance’s Crypto Index on Mobile. Source: Cnledger The new crypto index is only available on the Sina Finance’s mobile app, but not its desktop version, as Chinese …

The potential interest rate cut by the United States central bank is apparently one of the reasons for the recent surge of bitcoin (BTC), Deutsche Bank exec Jim Reid said in an interview with CNBC on June 26. Reid, the head of global fundamental credit strategy at Deutsche Bank, stated: “if central banks are gonna be this aggressive, then alternative currencies do start to become a bit more attractive." Reid referenced a recent speech by Fed’s chairman Jerome Powell, who said yesterday that the central bank is considering a cut of interest rates amidst the current economic uncertainty and inflation …

Bitcoin (BTC) rewards shopping app Lolli has expanded its business by adding major booking service Hotels.com to its partners, the company announced in a blog post on June 25. With the new partnership, the New York-based firm now has two of the world’s top three travel websites including Booking.com and Hotels.com, Lolli said in the announcement, citing data from traffic analytics service SimilarWeb. Founded in March 2018, Lolli allows users to earn Satoshis (sats), the smallest unit of bitcoin currency worth of 0.00000001 BTC, while shopping online. The firm claims to be the first bitcoin rewards application with over 500 …

More than 98% of transactions on the Bitcoin SV blockchain over the past 30 days have been used for writing data from a weather app, Twitter personality Painted Frog noted today, June 24. Citing data from bitcoin cash (BCH) blockchain visualiser Trends.cash, Painted Frog noted that the vast majority of BSV transactions have been implemented so far for sharing weather data through bitcoin sv-powered app WeatherSV. Performed actions on BSV blockchain over the past 30 days. Source: Trends.cash According to the website, other BSV implementations over the past 30 days included bitcoin cash-based social network Memo, an incentivized BDV tool …

Major global crypto exchange Binance has listed trading pairs for USDSB, a Binance Chain-based version of StableUSD (USDS), the firm announced on June 24. As noted in the statement, Binance has launched trading for two trading pairs, including USDSB against major stablecoin tether (USDT), as well as the USDSB-to-USDS trading pair today at 10:00 AM UTC. Derived from StableUSD, a stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the United States dollar and developed by crypto startup Stably, USDSB was issued on Binance’s BEP2 token standard in early June 2019. As previously announced, USDSB has become the first stablecoin to be launched on Binance …

Data from Google Trends’ search analytics resource indicates that internet googling of ‘bitcoin’ (BTC) is approaching a monthly high as of today, June 24. According to the data, searches for bitcoin are continuing their ascent in the week after the unveiling of Facebook’s new cryptocurrency and blockchain-powered financial infrastructure project, Libra, even as searches for Libra itself have tapered off since June 18 — the date the white paper for the forthcoming token was published. Google trends data for search terms ‘bitcoin’ vs. ‘libra.’ As of June 24 2019 As Cointelegraph noted yesterday, from a wider perspective, the number of …

Australia’s central bank said bitcoin (BTC) and cryptocurrencies would remain outside mainstream payments in a dedicated article issued on June 20. Titled ‘Cryptocurrency: Ten Years On,’ the document from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) appears to commemorate the past decade of bitcoin’s existence while admitting zero faith in its future beyond a niche asset. “Despite achieving some name recognition, cryptocurrencies are not widely used for payments,” its abstract summarizes. “This article examines why Bitcoin is unlikely to become a ubiquitous payment method in Australia, and summarises how subsequent cryptocurrencies have sought to address some of the shortcomings of Bitcoin …

Cryptocurrencies will not receive wide use in Australia as long as the local financial system is efficiently working, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) stated in an official document issued on June 20. According to the notice authored by analysts from RBA’s payments policy department, there is "little likelihood of a material take-up of cryptocurrencies for retail payments in Australia in the foreseeable future" due to a number of reasons. In the document, authors outlined the so-called "scalability trilemma,” which means that crypto can at best solve only two out of the three basic features such as decentralization, scalability, and …

Facebook’s newly announced cryptocurrency, libra, may not be available in India due to the current ban of blockchain-based currency transactions, as stated in a report by local publication The Economic Times on June 20. Citing people familiar with the matter, the report says that the social media giant has not applied for approval with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to operate its digital currency in the country. As Cointelegraph reported yesterday, a Facebook spokesperson has underlined that Facebook’s digital wallet, Calibra, “won’t be available in U.S.-sanctioned countries or countries that ban cryptocurrencies,” potentially preventing its use in some of …

Crypto analytics firm Coin Metrics partnered with Social Market Analytics (SMA) to collaborate on a feed of real-time sentiment towards cryptocurrency based on social media data, according to a press release on June 17. The new partnership intends to collect and analyze data posted by crypto community on social media in order to provide a new tool to help crypto traders to track social media sentiment data to build their portfolio strategies. The new product will initially target sentiment data solely on social media giant Twitter, Coin Metrics CEO Tim Rice confirmed to Cointelegraph, adding that the firms are currently …