On July 1, 2019, Blockstream announced that it has launched a Liquid Swap Tool on its platform. This tool allows users to execute atomic swaps for crypto assets on the Liquid Network, Blockstream’s federated Bitcoin sidechain. Atomic swaps are trustless exchanges of cryptocurrencies between two parties based on a smart contract. The transactions can happen…
These are not the best of times for cryptominers in Iran. On Tuesday, June 26, 2019, Mahsa Alimardani, a researcher at Oxford University, tweeted an image indicating that cryptocurrency miners in Iran have moved their operations to religious centers across the country, which receive free energy in the country. According to the post, this move…
Bitcoin adoption is on the rise in the U.S. as an increasing number of investors are turning to digital assets to add diversity to their investment portfolios, according to new research by Coinbase. For the research, published as “The United States of Crypto,” the leading cryptocurrency exchange pulled data from a combination of public sources,…
A report by Chainalysis estimates that $1 billion dollars will be spent on illegal businesses on the dark web in 2019, but that the proportion of bitcoin transactions that involve illegal activity has declined. This analysis was delivered in the form of a webinar, laying out some of the basic terminology, methodology and results of…
On today’s episode, Dave and Grahm chat with the one and only John McAfee, who is currently living in exile in Cuba. They talk about freedom, Bitcoin, McAfee’s new McAfee Magic trading platform, as well as his 2020 presidential campaign, the McAfee movie starring Michael Keaton, death threats and more! Resources: McAfee Magic The McAfee…
At a conference in Osaka, Japan, on June 28 and 29, 2019, the leaders of the G20 economic bloc formally announced their support of the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) cryptocurrency guidelines as laid out in late June. The FATF is an international regulatory organization with the set task of making formal policy recommendations to…
A new partnership is creating an anonymous identity scheme to meet regulators and users in the middle when complying with KYC/AML regulations. FATF’s Crypto Guidance The Bitcoin community and friends flipped their sats over the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) latest nonbinding guidance for keeping tabs on cryptocurrency activity (essentially, the report recommends that cryptocurrency…
On June 29, 2019, Arthur Hayes, BitMEX’s co-founder and CEO, posted a tweet revealing that the exchange has seen over $1 trillion in trading volume over the past year. In another illustration of BitMEX’s dominance, according to data from market analysis platform Austerity Sucks, the exchange holds 53 percent of the total exchange market share,…
State media in the Islamic Republic of Iran has claimed that the local government has seized more than 1,000 bitcoin mining devices from two separate factories. Reuters reported on this development, adding that local officials have claimed that the operations running this hardware used subsidized power. There has been a large amount of interest in…
Ian Foley Ian Foley is a cartoonist, writer, serial entrepreneur and investor focused on enterprise software. Living in Silicon Valley, he has founded or led sales at four startups, all at the forefront of new data technologies. Read More