The cryptocurrency market has experienced a turbulent period as of late, with several firms filing for bankruptcy or shutting down. Voyager Digital announced its bankruptcy on Wednesday, becoming the second crypto lender to default following Three Arrows Capital. In the light of present market circumstances, Circle has sought to reaffirm its commitment to openness and user security in a blog post published on Tuesday. Jeremy Fox, the chief financial officer of Circle, said that his firm's priority is to preserve the financial integrity of the system — robust, trustworthy and safe. He added that other financial institutions offer fraudulent promises …

Despite the Chinese government banning all kinds of cryptocurrency transactions last year, some firms apparently still use stablecoins like Tether (USDT) to pay their employees. Beijing’s Chaoyang District People’s Court has ruled that stablecoins like USDT cannot be used for salary payments, the local news agency Beijing Daily reported on Wednesday. The Chinese court stated that virtual currencies like USDT cannot circulate in the market as a currency, which requires all employers to only pay their workers using the official currency, renminbi (RMB). The ruling came as part of a court case involving a staff member at a local blockchain …

The growth of Circle's native stablecoin USD Coin (USDC) in the last two months compared to its $66-billion rival giant Tether (USDT) is nothing short of spectacular. USDT, USDC market cap ratio hits the lowest on record Notably, USDC's market capitalization has grown by 8.27% since May, reaching its highest level of $55.9 billion on July 2. In contrast, USDT has suffered an over 19% drop in its market valuation, currently treading around $66.14 billion. This is the closest USDC has come to challenging USDT's supremacy in the stablecoin sector based on the diminishing gap between their market caps. In …

Argentina, a country with one of the highest crypto adoption rates in the world, saw the price of United States dollar-pegged stablecoins surge across exchanges on Saturday after the abrupt resignation of its Economy Minister, Martin Guzman. The minister’s shock exit, confirmed on his Twitter account on Sunday via a seven-page letter, threatens to further destabilize a struggling economy battling high inflation and a depreciating national currency. According to data from Criptoya, the cost of buying Tether (USDT) using Argentinian pesos (ARS) is currently 271.4 ARS through the Binance exchange, which is around a 12% premium from before the resignation …

Tether is reducing its commercial paper holdings on pace with plans, the stablecoin company reported Friday. It has reached the target sum of $8.4 billion in commercial paper, as per intentions first disclosed last month, and will continue to reduce its holdings in the immediate future. On July 31, $5 billion of Tether’s commercial paper holdings will expire, leaving the company with $3.5 billion dollars’ worth in its portfolio. As a result, treasury reserves will make up a larger proportion of the company’s reserves, the report emphasized. Tether stablecoin USDT had about $20.1 billion in commercial paper backing as of …

Officials from the European Union have agreed on a landmark law that will make life tougher for crypto issuers and service providers under a new single regulatory framework. Stefan Berger, European Parliament member and rapporteur for the MiCA regulation — the person appointed to report on proceedings related to the bill — broke the news on Twitter, saying that a “balanced” deal had been struck, which has made the EU the first continent with crypto-asset regulation. MiCA Trilog: Durchbruch! Europa ist der erste Kontinent mit einer Krypto-Asset Regulierung. Parlament, Kommission & Rat haben sich auf ausgewogene #MiCA geeinigt. Für mich …

Terra's $40-billion experiment to create a functional "algorithmic stablecoin" project has failed drastically following its collapse in May. Nonetheless, its native stablecoin TerraClassicUSD (USTC), earlier called TerraUSD (UST), has been thriving in the past week. Dead stablecoin walking To recap, UST lost its U.S. dollar peg in May following mass withdrawals from Anchor Protocol, a lending and borrowing platform offering up to 20% yield to clients on their UST deposits. As of June 15, the token was almost worthless, trading at $0.005 at the Kraken crypto exchange. But USTC started recovering afterward, insomuch that its value per token almost reached …

The price of Terra (LUNA2) has recovered sharply nine days after falling to its historic lows of $1.62. On June 27, LUNA2's rate reached $2.77 per token, thus chalking up a 70% recovery when measured from the said low. Still, the token traded 77.35% lower than its record high of $12.24, set on May 30. LUNA2's recovery mirrored similar retracement moves elsewhere in the crypto industry with top crypto assets Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) rising by approximately 25% and 45% in the same period. LUNA2 price rally could trap bulls The recent bout of buying in the LUNA2 market …

Swiss National Bank Deputy Head Thomas Moser talked to Cointelegraph editor Aaron Wood and discussed the ongoing trends in central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), stablecoins and regulations during the recently concluded European Blockchain Convention 2022. Moser talked about the innovation and adoption of private stablecoins and central banks’ plans regarding CBDC launches, saying both could co-exist. He said that the function of CBDCs would be very basic and that private stablecoin issuers could add services on top of them to meet retail customers’ needs. When asked about the recent collapse of Terra’s TerraUSD (UST) and its subsequent impact on regulations, …

Amid the Chinese government continuing to celebrate the massive decline of cryptocurrency markets this year, one key local blockchain expert has referred to crypto as a Ponzi scheme. Yifan He, CEO of Red Date Technology — a major tech firm involved in the development of China’s major blockchain project called the Blockchain Service Network (BSN) — has penned a new article devoted to various kinds of cryptocurrencies and their supposed Ponzi-like nature. Published in the local newspaper The People’s Daily on Sunday, the piece refers to private cryptocurrencies as the “biggest Ponzi scheme in human history.” The author mentioned the …

ANZ’s stablecoin A$DC has been used to buy Australian tokenized carbon credits, marking another critical test of the asset’s use cases in the local economy. In March, the “Big Four” bank became the first major Australian financial institution to mint its own stablecoin after overseeing a pilot transaction worth $20.76 million, or 30 million Australian dollars (AUD), between Victor Smorgon Group and digital asset manager Zerocap. ANZ’s stablecoin is fully collateralized by AUD held in the bank’s managed reserved account. So far, A$DC transactions have primarily been conducted over the Ethereum blockchain. According to a Monday report from the Australian …

Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) do not pose any direct threat to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) but are still associated with risks in relation to stablecoins, one industry executive believes. According to Mikkel Morch, executive director at the digital asset hedge fund ARK36, a state-backed digital currency like the U.S. dollar doesn’t necessarily have to be a competitor to a private or a decentralized cryptocurrency. That’s because the use cases and value proposition of the decentralized digital assets “often go beyond the realm of simple transactions,” Morch said in a statement to Cointelegraph on Thursday. The exec referred to Federal …