Ethereum’s upgrade to proof-of-stake (PoS) may make it more vulnerable to government intervention and censorship, according to the lead investigator of Merkle Science. Speaking to Cointelegraph following the Ethereum Merge, Coby Morgan, a former FBI analyst, and the Lead Investigator for crypto compliance and forensic firm Merkle Science expressed his thoughts on some of the risks posed by Ethereum’s transition to PoS. While centralization issues have been broadly discussed leading up to The Merge, Moran suggested the prohibitive cost of becoming a validator could result in the consolidation of validator nodes to the bigger crypto firms like Binance, Coinbase, and …

The Ethereum network will be able to withstand censorship risks both in the short and long term, according to Ethereum community member and investor, Ryan Berckmans. The ban of Ethereum-based privacy tool tornado Cash by U.S. authorities earlier this month left many wondering whether Ethereum transactions could be also at risk of censorship, especially after Ethereum’s imminent transition to a proof-of-stake system. A widely spread concern is that entities controlling a large chunk of staked Eth, such as Coinbase or Kraken, would start censoring transactions in order to comply with U.S. sanctions. That is an unlikely scenario according to Berckmans, …

The Ethereum (ETH) community has been divided over how to best respond to the threat of protocol-level transaction censorship in the wake of the United States government sanctions on Tornado Cash-linked addresses. Over the last week, Ethereum community members have proposed social slashing or even a user-activated soft fork (UASF) as possible responses to transaction-level censorship on Ethereum, with some calling it a “trap” that will do more harm than good and others stating its necessary to provide “credible neutrality and censorship resistance properties” on Ethereum. The heated debate comes after Ethereum miner Ethermine elected not to process transactions from …

Decentralized blockchain technology has been around for a relatively short period of time, in the grand scheme of things, but its decentralized nature has the power to keep data and information out of the hands of censors looking to create a “safe” and “faultless” version of history. Blockchain is permissionless and literally owned by no one. So, while we can’t save the Alexandria libraries of the past, we can make sure the future is well equipped with the tools necessary to preserve historical records. Here we’ll look at some of the ways nonfungible tokens (NFT) and blockchain technology have been …

The city of Shanghai has been in a month-long mandated quarantine, which confines its 25 million residents to their homes. Initially, the latest COVID-19 outbreak began in March of this year and developed into the worst infection zone since the beginning of the pandemic. As the virus infected hundreds of thousands of people, the extremely lockdown prevented residents from leaving their homes for weeks on end. In addition to the spike in infections, the lockdown prevented people from obtaining food and medical treatment, and introduced other austerities. This led to frustrated citizens taking to the internet for solidarity and venting. …

The Bank of New York (BNY) Mellon has announced a partnership with blockchain-data platform Chainalysis to help track and analyze cryptocurrency products. BNY Mellon is the world’s largest custodian bank, currently overseeing $46.7 trillion in assets. Chainalysis is a blockchain-data analysis platform that offers services to traditional financial institutions, allowing large firms to manage the legal risks that come with cryptocurrency more easily. As part of the partnership, BNY will utilize Chainalysis software to track, record and make use of the data surrounding crypto assets. The risk management software offered by Chainalysis includes KYT (Know Your Transaction), Reactor, and Kryptos, …

Amid the barrage of last week’s regulatory news, from rumors of Joe Biden’s upcoming executive order on digital assets to another round of the Russian government’s crypto tug of war, the storyline that was arguably the most consequential for the mainstream narrative on the social effects of crypto has been the one around the Canadian government’s standoff with the Freedom Convoy. The government’s invocation of emergency powers to put down a protest movement — combined with the movement’s financial infrastructure being one of the main attack vectors — has led many observers to appreciate with renewed vigor Bitcoin’s capacity to …

Progressive International, a global organization supporting progressive left-wing activists and organizers, is moving into cryptocurrencies in response to getting de-banked by major payment and banking firms. The organization took to Twitter on Monday to announce that it now accepts donations in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) in order to defend itself against attempts to shut them out of the global financial system. Last week, several companies blocked donations to the @progintl campaign of solidarity with Cuba and its ambitions to help vaccinate the world. To defend against attempts to shut us out of the global financial system, we …

Shortly after Meta, formerly Facebook, officially gave up on its stablecoin Diem, some of the key people in the project have become increasingly vocal about the uncensorable nature of Bitcoin (BTC). David Marcus, a co-founder of Diem, originally known as Libra, took to Twitter on Tuesday to predict that Bitcoin will be the number one asset in the next two decades. It’s become clear to me that #Bitcoin will be the one asset and L1 still around in 20+ years with increased compounding relevance over time. The #2 slot (for a different use case) is still tbd. #Ethereum is in …

As new technology becomes available to more and more end-users, our world is only becoming more interconnected. However, as the spread of such technology progresses, so does the reach of big tech. Many of these companies now hold vast amounts of personal user data — information that includes a user’s location, their activity on third-party websites and even the contents of users’ emails — this is astonishing for those in a liberal democracy where concepts of freedom and social responsibility were both built upon expectations of privacy in one’s own communications. As a result, your personal data may be subject …

Last week, Facebook rebranded to Meta and announced its plans to kickstart the development of the Metaverse — an entirely new way of interacting and navigating the internet. Now, the Metaverse landscape has a multi-billion dollar corporate behemoth vying for the helm, which has made its future all the more uncertain. Whether we like it or not, major corporations will likely play a major role in how the Metaverse develops and evolves. But will it be plagued by the same problems faced by today’s social media giants, or will decentralized platforms and services take center stage? Related: New industry, new …

Traders and the market are showing extreme optimism on Oct. 15 after rumors and an assortment of documents suggest that the path toward a Bitcoin ETF approval has fewer obstacles lying ahead. Following the positive news, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) rallied to nearly $63,000 for the first time since April and multiple altcoins saw their prices book triple-digit gains. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the biggest gainers over the past 24 hours were NuCypher (NU), Keep Network (KEEP) and Orchid (OXT). NuCypher partners with Keep Network NuCyper is a protocol focused on creating decentralized encryption, …