Gold and cryptocurrencies are often seen as oil and water by investors — but a new project enables consumers to gain exposure to both asset classes at the same time. AABBG is a token that is fully backed by gold, and this ensures that the asset’s value is pegged to the current spot price of the precious metal. This is coupled with a crypto wallet that allows these digital assets to be stored securely, giving users the freedom to effortlessly make transfers to friends, family and businesses. The project, developed with Core State Holdings, Corp (CSHC), says anonymity is a …

Bullish sentiment is on the rise on Sept. 14 as the price of Bitcoin (BTC) climbed higher throughout the morning and now takes aim at the $47,000 level. The building momentum also had a positive effect on altcoins and a handful of tokens posted double-digit gains. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the biggest gainers over the past 24 hours were Rari Governance Token (RGT), Curve (CRV) and Synthetix Network (SNX). RGT holders vote on the project's first DAO proposal The Rari Governance Token is the native token of Rari Capital, a non-custodial decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol …

Amid massive growth of the stablecoin market, the United States Treasury Department has reportedly discussed potential regulation for private stablecoins. The Treasury conducted several meetings last week to examine the risks of stablecoins for users, markets or the financial system as well as to learn about their benefits and consider potential regulation, Reuters reported on Sept 10. “The Treasury Department is meeting with a broad range of stakeholders, including consumer advocates, members of Congress and market participants,” Treasury spokesman John Rizzo said. Citing three anonymous sources familiar with the matter, the report notes that one of the Treasury’s meetings took …

In the last 24 hours, Terra (LUNA), a blockchain protocol focused on building a global payments system powered by the UST stablecoin, rallied to a new all-time high at $45. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that, since bottoming at a low of $5.61 on July 20, the price of LUNA has ripped 720% higher to a record high of $45 on Sept. 10. The swift rally also lifted the total value locked (TVL) on the Terra protocol to a new all-time high at $7.83 billion on Sept. 5, making Terra the fourth-ranked blockchain platform by TVL, according …

Facebook’s ambitious digital currency payment project Diem is yet to get off the ground despite concerted attempts to win over financial regulators. According to The Washington Post on Friday, Diem is facing difficulties smoothening regulatory wrinkles with senior policymakers in the Biden administration. Even with the full weight of Facebook’s significant lobbying power in Washington, the digital currency project is yet to get off the ground. Reports indicate that David Marcus, Facebook Financial (F2) head, met with regulators in Washington earlier in September. According to anonymous sources reportedly present at the meeting, Marcus argued for the importance of crypto in …

Real-world adoption is what really matters when it comes to being a successful blockchain project and one project that benefited from a recent uptick in adoption is Algorand (ALGO), a pure proof-of-stake protocol aiming to become the go-to base layer for the global financial industry. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that since bottoming out at $0.67 on July 20, the price of ALGO has rocketed 268% to a daily high at $2.47 on Sept. 9 as its 24-hour trading volume surged to a record-high $4.83 billion. El Salvador builds on Algorand The sudden surge in price and …

A sharp sell-off across the cryptocurrency market on Tuesday — that saw top tokens Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Cardano (ADA) and Solana (SOL) fall by double-digital percentages — created a venue for stablecoins to prove their worth. The fixed-price cryptocurrencies offered interim protection to traders from the notorious crypto price volatility. They did so by almost maintaining their one dollar-peg and offering sufficient liquidity to traders who looked for a safety net during the market decline. Blockchain analytics service CryptoQuant reported dramatic spikes in stablecoin transfers as the cryptocurrency market capitalizati fell from $2.38 trillion to $2.103 trillion on Tuesday. …

Australian buy now pay later (BNPL) giant Afterpay — now part of Jack Dorsey's Square — has said that it is likely to pursue cryptocurrency services once the regulatory framework is clear. Following Afterpay’s submission to the Senate inquiry into “Australia as a Technology and Financial Center,” which posited that merchants could slash payment costs by utilizing cryptocurrencies, representatives spoke to the inquiry on Sept. 8. Afterpay’s vice president for public policy and communications Damian Kassabgi said that “this idea of being able to exchange currencies from person to person or to a merchant without going through the traditional rails …

In Cointelegraph's latest video report, we discussed the systemic risks posed by stablecoins to the stability of both crypto and traditional markets. Stablecoins have become the backbone of the crypto ecosystem, as they play a crucial role in the functioning of crypto trading and decentralized finance. Their market capitalization has grown fourfold since the start of 2021. But the lack of transparency around the reserves backing stablecoins have left many wondering whether their growth is actually sustainable. Major stablecoins' recent disclosures showed that only a portion of their reserves is made up of cash, while a significant amount is kept …

Australian buy now pay later (BNPL) firm Afterpay believes that local merchants can slash payment costs by utilizing cryptocurrencies. In a submission to the Senate inquiry into “Australia as a Technology and Financial Center,” Afterpay stated that the use of blockchain-based transactions could cut the fees associated with traditional payment methods, including card issuer, network operator and banking fees: “Merchants stand to benefit considerably from the cryptocurrency model, as card network fees are entirely removed from the equation and the customer/payer bears the transaction costs.” Under the crypto model, the customer would front the cost of validating the payment on …

United States Senator Elizabeth Warren, one of the most vocal cryptocurrency skeptics in the U.S. government, has called the cryptocurrency industry the “new shadow bank.” In a Sunday interview with the New York Times, Warren said that the cryptocurrency industry offers “many of the same services” as shadow banks but still lacks “consumer protections or financial stability that back up the traditional system.” Warren expressed concerns over the rapidly growing market for stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency whose value can be pegged to that of other assets, including fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar, the euro or commodities like gold. …

Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), said all cryptocurrencies, including stablecoins and speculative assets, “are not currencies at all.” In a Sept. 1 interview with World Economic Forum founder and executive chair Klaus Schwab, Lagarde said cryptocurrencies “present themselves as currencies,” but she still considered them as assets to be regulated and “supervised by asset regulators.” Under this definition, the ECB president claimed fiat-pegged digital currencies were also considered assets. “Stablecoins are pretending to be a coin, but in fact it’s completely associated with an actual currency,” said Lagarde. “For instance, some of them are saying that …