The Guardian - Cryptocurrency News Sites

Executive was found to be buying artworks shortly before they were promoted on site’s front pageA non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace has introduced policies to ban insider trading, after an executive at the company was discovered to be buying artworks shortly before they were promoted on the site’s front page.OpenSea, one of the leading sites for trading the digital assets, will now prevent team members buying or selling from featured collections and from using confidential information to trade NFTs. Neither practice was previously banned. Continue reading... […]

Last year, three cryptocurrency enthusiasts bought a cruise ship. They named it the Satoshi, and dreamed of starting a floating libertarian utopia. It didn’t work outOn the evening of 7 December 2010, in a hushed San Francisco auditorium, former Google engineer Patri Friedman sketched out the future of humanity. The event was hosted by the Thiel Foundation, established four years earlier by the arch-libertarian PayPal founder Peter Thiel to “defend and promote freedom in all its dimensions”. From behind a large lectern, Friedman – grandson of Milton Friedman, one of the most influential free-market economists of the last century – laid out his plan. He wanted to transform how and where we live, to abandon life on land and all our decrepit assumptions about the nature of society. He wanted, quite simply, to start a new city in the middle of the ocean.Friedman called it seasteading: “Homesteading the high seas,” a phrase borrowed from Wayne Gramlich, a software engineer with whom he’d founded the Seasteading Institute in 2008, helped by a $500,000 donation from Thiel. In a four-minute vision-dump, Friedman explained his rationale. Why, he asked, in one of the most advanced countries in the world, were they still using systems of government from 1787? (“If you drove a car from 1787, it would be a horse,” he pointed out.) Government, he believed, needed an upgrade, like a software update for a phone. “Let’s think of government as an industry, where countries are firms and citizens are customers!” he declared. Continue reading... […]

The government’s failure to act over the need for more drivers came under fire from an unexpected quarterThe most interesting intervention in the hot debate over skills shortages came last week from Simon Wolfson, chief executive of Next, who, as a pro-Brexit businessman, might be expected to have a sliver of sympathy for the government’s apparent view that companies should stop whinging and train British workers to address strains in supply chains.In fact, Wolfson’s sympathy was less than zero. “It strikes me as being insane that, despite the fact that everyone knows that we desperately need drivers, the Home Office is still preventing people coming to this country to work as drivers,” he said. Continue reading... […]

US TV star posted paid advertisement for Ethereum Max cryptocurrency token on InstagramThe City watchdog has issued a warning about the risks of buying crypto assets promoted by social media influencers such as Kim Kardashian West, and said people with little understanding of the risks were buying into digital currencies for fear of missing out.In a warning that appeared to be targeting younger investors, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) cautioned against buying into the “hype” of cryptocurrencies, particularly new tokens backed by celebrities that may end up being fake. Continue reading... […]

Country will be first to adopt cryptocurrency as legal tender next month – but economists are sounding warnings over risksLitha María de Los Angeles slaps two cheese-filled pupusas – the El Salvadoran cornmeal flatbread – on the griddle. With a camera click on the QR code, she receives her payment: four hundred-thousandths of a Bitcoin. Then, as the rain pelts the corrugated iron roof and a gust of wind lifts the blue plastic table cloths, the power cuts out.A tumultuous few weeks awaits El Salvador as it prepares to become the first country to adopt Bitcoin, the world’s most popular decentralised digital currency, as legal tender on 7 September. With that deadline looming, a host of challenges – technological, financial and criminal – threaten to sink the plan of the president, Nayib Bukele, to ride the Central American economy out of its current choppy waters on the back of a cryptocurrency wave. Continue reading... […]

One was abducted and never fancied football afterwards, while the latest waxes eloquently about bitcoin and Elon MuskI used to go to a barber who believed he had once been abducted by aliens. Regular in-the-mirror conversation starters – “been away this year?”, “did you see the match last night?” – would generally return to that formative moment when the “grey figures” appeared at the foot of his bed.“To be honest, I’ve found flying quite tough since the abduction,” he would say over my shoulder, with hangdog matter of factness. Or, breaking off from his clipping: “It’s strange but I’ve not been so into football since I was ‘taken up’.” Continue reading... […]

Benyamin Ahmed’s Weird Whales sell in cryptocurrency and ownership is stored on blockchainA 12-year-old boy had made about £290,000 after creating digital pictures of whales and selling tokens of their ownership which are stored on blockchain.Benyamin Ahmed’s collection of pixelated artworks called Weird Whales went viral during the school holidays. His success may be a harbinger of the digital business models that could disrupt the banking sector. Continue reading... […]

Payment platform offers service for bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin and bitcoin cashPayPal is to allow users in the UK to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies through the payment platform for the first time.The firm said it would allow customers to choose from four types of cryptocurrency – bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin and bitcoin cash – and that the service would be available via the PayPal app and its website. Continue reading... […]

YouTube, Instagram and TikTok are full of finance ‘experts’ promising riches to the young and credulousDepending on where you look on social media, making money seems to be straightforward. Learning how to buy a property in the UK with no money, or getting the basics of being a day trader in 30 minutes, are both lessons on YouTube, along with a plethora of advice on how to earn from cryptocurrency. Meanwhile “finfluencers”, with varying degrees of knowledge, have blossomed on Instagram and TikTok.But the standard of advice varies widely from grounded, sage information on how to invest, to unregulated personalities offering shallow quick takes without fully setting out the pitfalls of what might happen to your money. Continue reading... […]