Cryptocurrency exchange Okcoin, along with the Stacks Accelerator and Stacks Foundation, announced on Thursday the start of the “Bitcoin Odyssey,” a one-year commitment among investment firms to invest $165 million in inventive solutions to help drive Bitcoin (BTC) adoption. The Bitcoin Odyssey is funded by Digital Currency Group, GBV Capital, White Star Capital and GSR, among other organizations, to respond to the rise in interest in decentralized finance (DeFi) and new technological capabilities made possible with Stacks. Alex Chizhik, head of listings at Okcoin, and Kyle Ellicott, partner at Stacks Accelerator, will co-lead the initiative. The money and assets will …

On Oct. 14, bulls flexed their muscles and showed their intent to push the price of Bitcoin (BTC) closer to its $65,900 all-time high. One reason for the move is the steady chatter about the possibility of a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) being approved by the end of October. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that after hitting a low of $54,103 on Oct. 13, the price of Bitcoin rallied 8.2% to an intraday high of $58,532 on Oct. 14 as the ETF discussion made fresh rounds on Crypto Twitter. The spike above $58,500 is also significant because …

On Friday, blockchain projects Cosmos and Blockstack both announced winners of their respective HackAtom V and HackDeFi hackathons, each offering a glimpse into the coming wave of DeFi development — a vision including marked advances in tooling, interoperability, and composability. While the overwhelming majority of decentralized finance (DeFi) development remains concentrated on Ethereum, where over $16 billion in digital assets are currently locked by various DeFi Protocols, Cosmos and STX are currently the #25 and #59 ranked projects by marketcap and look to be fast risers eager to take a slice of Ethereum’s DeFi pie. On the Cosmos side, the …

Blockstack may be about to go where no token has gone before, by metamorphizing from a security to a non-security, as far as U.S. regulators are concerned. In a Monday blog post, Blockstack CEO Muneeb Ali published a legal memorandum in which the firm argues that its Stacks (STX) tokens will no longer qualify as securities once the new blockchain launches. The firm predicts that Stacks Blockchain 2.0 will be live "at the end of 2020 or the beginning of 2021." But what does the new blockchain have to do with securities law? Blockstack held its initial coin offering under …

Proof-of-stake blockchain protocol Algorand and blockchain software firm Blockstack have launched a joint open-source project to support the development of a smart contract language dubbed “Clarity.” Both claim that existing smart contract languages are neither secure nor predictable enough to meet the growing needs of the emerging industry. As of this February, $1 billion in value was locked in decentralized finance (DeFi) markets, where smart contracts are used to innovate financial services such as credit and lending. In their announcement on June 10, Algorand and Blockstack emphasized the need for an alternative smart contract language that would be: “Purpose-built for …