Google Finance has added crypto prices to the finance.google.com domain. The section, titled “Crypto,” now appears in the “Compare Markets” category alongside conventional stock and currency markets. The section provides key pricing information for various cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Google's parent, Alphabet, also owns video platform YouTube — which has consistently irked crypto users by banning educational and news content, often seemingly at random. Cointelegraph and CoinDesk, the two largest publications in the crypto news space, have both been subject to suspensions that have subsequently been overturned after the video streaming platform …

On Jan. 26, the internet came to a screeching halt along much of the East Coast. Email services went down; YouTube videos flickered out midstream; millions were likely affected, if only temporarily. But the outage, attributed to a surge in traffic, underscores the metastasizing vulnerabilities surrounding the way most of the world conducts commerce, consumes entertainment and communicates. The implications of such outages should be seen as particularly alarming for those in cryptoland: namely, for the ever-growing numbers of participants in an emerging decentralized ecosystem for transferring peer-to-peer value with Bitcoin (BTC) who build smart contracts on Ethereum or launch …

A major decentralized finance protocol’s SEO metrics just spiked through the roof. In a tweet today, cryptocurrency investment fund Future Fund announced that it had acquired the “sushi.com” domain name on behalf of DeFi platform SushiSwap. Happy to announce we’ve acquired https://t.co/Hjsm7MOIYY for @sushiswap A strong domain will greatly increase internet traffic and exposure to the sushi brand for their forthcoming new projects. 2021 will be a big year for $SUSHI pic.twitter.com/NWWkgTldWq — Future Fund (@FUTURE_FUND_) February 19, 2021 SushiSwap’s online presence is notoriously scattered, including domains like “sushiswap.fi” and “sushiswapclassic.org.” In the announcement, Future Fund noted that the simplicity …

Big Tech has been in the news a lot over the last decade. Initially, the coverage focused on the new possibilities that were created around communication and information sharing and the benefits that these would bring. New tech networks offered unprecedented tools, offering everything from reuniting families separated by emigration to assisting in the overthrow of autocratic regimes and restoring power to the people. Next, we heard about the tremendous value Big Tech was creating, bringing billions of dollars to founders and workers, as well as the pension funds that invested in them. We knew they were a force for …

A global chip shortage is affecting various sectors of industry from gaming to automotive and cryptocurrency mining. Amid Bitcoin's (BTC) ongoing bull run, the crypto mining industry became massively profitable. Many miners started aggressively stacking mining hardware —by sometimes unconventional methods— which led to shortages in other sectors. The COVID-19 fueled surge in gaming consoles, computers and TVs has even had knock-on effects for car manufacturers, who are major consumers of silicon semiconductors. Chip shortages have even led General Motors to shut down three plants and slow production at others. Amid this shortage, Chinese internet giant Baidu is reportedly raising …

Decentralized finance has exploded over the past 12 months. The swapping, staking and yield farming successes have been well touted. The DeFi market cap has reached $45 billion, and there’s over $28 billion total value locked in DeFi today. That’s up from $600 million in January 2020 — a 4,300% increase. As with all nascent technology, new money flowing into a sector attracts talent, innovation and the best entrepreneurs. Whether we like it or not, the record-high token prices will also attract the attention of mainstream media and Wall Street. This cocktail of factors, coupled with the glitz and glam …

What was blockchain technology originally intended for? It’s generally presumed that it was created in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto as part of his white paper, creating Bitcoin (BTC). Since Bitcoin would be built on decentralized ledger technology, a blockchain needed to be established as the foundation for the cryptocurrency. Since 2008, blockchain technology has expanded well beyond cryptocurrency usage and is now being applied in a variety of use cases from healthcare to finance to green tech and more. But blockchain tech didn’t start with Satoshi’s white paper. It was actually invented in 1991 as a way to verify and …

GameStop and Twitter are both a mirage and an iceberg — but don’t try tweeting that. Not because you won’t own the tweet (because you won’t), but because the only completely true expression that Twitter is capable of delivering as a platform is unlocking the ugly truth about the internet itself. Or as Elon Musk recently tweeted: In retrospect, it was inevitable — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 29, 2021 Let me explain. In the midst of Robinhood halting trading for its supposed users, Jack Dorsey has been talking about decentralizing Twitter and social media in general. But other than a …

India has more than 65% of its population below the age of 35, with the average age nationwide being 29 years old. Additionally, out of India’s 1.3 billion people, only half currently use mobile phones, and less than half of this number are smartphones. Even though India is one of the world’s most populated countries, internet usage remains at 41%, with 700 million Indians currently connected to the internet. This leaves incredible room for growth in India, which lags behind other emerging economies when it comes to both internet access and smartphone ownership. This large, underserved population has long been …

In a single purchase, Jehan Chu, co-founder of Hong Kong-based crypto investment firm Kenetic Capital, has bought the ability to issue a seemingly unlimited number of "NFT" subdomains on the Handshake blockchain. According to Kenetic, Chu purchased the .NFT domain extension for $84,000, or roughly 680,000 Handshake (HNS) tokens at the time, brokered through the Namebase marketplace. The crypto investor reportedly owns more than 1,300 Handshake domains. He said he bought the extension while observing a rising interest in nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, across the crypto ecosystem. “I believe NFTs are the true missing link between online and offline objects, …

Decentralized identity is a function of blockchain technology that delivers real-world benefits to users quickly and easily, allowing them to benefit from things such as easier logins, faster credit checks and an overall smoother online experience. The proliferation of websites, e-commerce hubs and social media platforms means we can all have a huge database of logins, passwords and usernames to remember. As these increase, the use of password managers has become commonplace (as has the use of one-time passwords and two-factor authentication) to effectively allow websites and services to double-check our identity. The result is that the end-user now faces …

When Bitcoin (BTC) launched in 2009, it was motivated by the distrust of financial institutions and their fees and the inflationary practices by central banks during the Great Recession. Bitcoin was supposed to usher in an era of decentralization, financial inclusion and democratization. Yet more than a decade later, with Bitcoin prices surging, we’re witnessing the digital asset being hoarded by large, centralized financial institutions, risking the principles behind its creation. Bitcoin is now in danger of being predominantly in the domain of the financially included — exactly the types of institutions that the creators sought to avoid in the …