Decentralized finance transaction combination tool Furucombo will compensate the victims of a recent “evil contract” exploit that cost the protocol $15 million in stolen funds. Following an internal call with affected users last week, Furucombo released a compensation plan Tuesday, announcing that they will issue 5 million iouCOMBO tokens to the victims of the breach. Issued in the form of ERC-20 tokens, iouCOMBO tokens will represent the rights to claim Furucombo’s COMBO tokens in the recovery pool. Out of a total of 100 million COMBO tokens, 5 million coins have been allocated to the recovery pool, and are subject to …

Back in June 2019, social media giant Facebook released the details for a much-talked-about digital currency platform dubbed “Libra.” These days, Libra is known as Diem, with the project undergoing a significant rebranding in a bid to smoothen regulatory wrinkles. A year and a half later, the Diem Association has yet to launch a digital token with regulatory approval from Swiss authorities yet to materialize. Even if Switzerland’s Financial Market Supervisory Authority, or FINMA, does grant a payment license to the digital currency project, Diem will be debuting its offerings to a global landscape that is significantly more fractured in …

In an announcement on Wednesday, VersaBank said it plans to launch a digital currency called VCAD, which will reportedly be backed by Canadian dollars deposited with the bank. The Canadian bank claimed that VCAD would effectively be "the first digital currency to represent a fiat currency" issued and backed by a North American bank. VersaBank said it had partnered with Canada Stablecorp, a joint venture between investment fund manager 3iQ and blockchain firm Mavennet, to launch the "stablecoin." The bank plans to make VCAD available to the public “in the coming months” by issuing the digital currency to its “financial …

Veteran cryptocurrency investor Polychain Capital has joined a funding round in DFX Finance, a new decentralized finance exchange protocol optimized for non-U.S. dollar stablecoins. DFX raised more than $5 million in seed funding from Polychain and True Ventures to create a new blockchain-powered market for stablecoins and open up DeFi applications to a global audience. Announcing the news Wednesday, DFX said that other investors included industry players like Hex Capital, CMS Holdings, Castle Island Ventures and DeFi Alliance. DFX is currently being developed by contributors from major crypto projects and firms like the Ethereum Foundation and ConsenSys. The platform is …

The European Central Bank has finally sent its formal opinion on crypto regulations to the European Commission. According to Reuters, the ECB has asked EU lawmakers for veto powers concerning private stablecoin projects like the Facebook-backed Diem. An excerpt from the ECB opinion document reads: “Where an asset-reference arrangement is tantamount to a payment system or scheme, the assessment of the potential threat to the conduct of monetary policy, and to the smooth operation of payment systems, should fall within the exclusive competence of the ECB.” As part of the demand for veto powers on stablecoins, the ECB has urged …

New Ethereum-backed stablecoin RAI hopes to be the savior of the DeFi sector by providing a truly decentralized stablecoin alternative. Developed by blockchain startup Reflexer Labs, RAI is not pegged to any fiat currency and its monetary policy is managed by an on-chain, autonomous controller. It's a fork of Maker's DAI. RAI co-founder Ameen Soleimani explained: “RAI is an asset backed only by ETH, governance-minimized, and programmed to maintain its own price stability without needing to peg to an external price reference like the USD.” Soleimani believes that RAI, which he dubbed “A Money God,” has far greate potential than …

As decentralized finance continues to increase it hold on the wider cryptocurrency market, Binance Smart Chain (BSC) is beginning to emerge as a suitable option for traders looking to escape from high transaction fees on the Ethereum (ETH) network. With more attention being paid to BSC, DeFi projects operating on the chain have also seen an influx of buying activity in recent weeks as token holders rush to supply liquidity for recently launched protocols. One such project is Venus (XVS), an algorithmic money market and synthetic stablecoin protocol designed specifically for the BSC. Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView shows …

Amid the meteoric rise of decentralized finance in 2020, there was persistent interest in a class of coins popularly dubbed “algorithmic stablecoins.” Some of the more famous ones include Ampleforth (AMPL), Based, Empty Set Dollar (ESD) and Dynamic Set Dollar (DSD). While these tokens are commonly considered algorithmic stablecoins, the teams involved have their own definitions. For MakerDAO, an algorithmic stablecoin is one that uses total supply manipulations to maintain a peg. The founders of Empty Set Dollar and Neutrino, a Waves-backed stablecoin project, believe Dai is also an algorithmic stablecoin due to its programmatic mint-and-burn mechanics. Ampleforth’s team, on …

The Diem Association is progressing toward launch with a new technical upgrade that reportedly allows more financial institutions to connect with the payment network. Crypto security specialist Fireblocks and First Digital Asset Group, a Diem payment provider, announced Tuesday that they’ve developed a secure wallet and infrastructure that allows financial institutions to facilitate transactions on the Diem network. Founded in 2017, First Digital Asset Group enables merchants and other institutions to accept and process both Diem and stablecoin payments. The Diem network appears ready to begin onboarding new clients, provided they qualify as a Virtual Asset Service Provider, or VASP. …

Bitcoin (BTC) has already hit $50,000 on some exchanges but needs to get whales on its side to flip it to definitive support, data suggests. In a tweet on Feb. 16, Ki Young Ju, CEO of on-chain analytics service CryptoQuant, highlighted the so-called "Coinbase premium" as one of the final hurdles for BTC/USD. Negative premium slows upward grind On Tuesday, a clear battle was emerging within Bitcoin trading as $50,000 stayed de facto out of reach for bulls. Analyzing the premium, which pits the Coinbase BTC/USD price against the Binance BTC/USDT pair, Ki argued that the until it neutralized, higher …

In the past few months cryptocurrencies have become a frequent topic of discussion among the mainstream media and traditional investors partially because of the Bitcoin evangelism of well-known influencers like Elon Musk, Mark Cuban and Michael Saylor. One platform that has benefited from increased attention on the cryptocurrency sector is Algorand (ALGO), a scalable, secure, and decentralized digital currency platform. Since the start of 2021, ALGO price has steadily grown from $0.33 on Jan. 1 to $1.84 on Feb.12, its highest level since July 2019. Its trading volume also increased from $70 million to $1.1 billion during that same period. …

Mastercard has announced plans to support cryptocurrencies in 2021, paving the way for its nearly one billion users to spend digital assets at more than 30 million merchants. The firm believes this may open merchants up to new customers and build loyalty with existing customers who are already migrating to digital assets over traditional fiat options. “It’s about choice. Mastercard isn’t here to recommend you start using cryptocurrencies. But we are here to enable customers, merchants and businesses to move digital value” While the global payments giant noted it is planning to support stablecoins due to their “reliability and security,” …