Amid El Salvador reporting on cases of the positive impact of the country’s Bitcoin (BTC) adoption, a government official in Mexico has once again urged that the country should follow El Salvador’s example on Bitcoin. Indira Kempis, a senator representing Nuevo León state, is confident that Bitcoin should be legal tender in Mexico because Bitcoin adoption can potentially drive global financial inclusion. The senator is now developing a cryptocurrency bill based on El Salvador’s “Bitcoin Law.” She expects to introduce the bill to the Mexican Congress this year, Kempis said in an interview with El Salvador In English publication after …

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 …

California State Senator Sydney Kamlager, representing the 30th Senate District including parts of downtown Los Angeles, has introduced a bill which would amend the state’s code to allow for the acceptance of cryptocurrencies for certain payments. According to Senate Bill 1275 introduced in the California Legislature on Feb. 18, Kamlager proposed authorizing a state agency “to accept cryptocurrency as a method of payment for the provision of government services.” The modification of the current state law, which allows for the establishment of state agencies to provide services to residents which require payments, would add crypto to the list of acceptable …

Russia’s Ministry of Finance has upped the stakes in its drawn-out showdown against the country’s Central Bank by formally introducing a bill that proposes to regulate digital assets rather than banning them. On Feb. 21, the Ministry introduced a draft of the federal law “On digital currency” to the government. This stage of the legislative process precedes the bill’s introduction to the parliament for consideration. The agency cited the “formation of a legal marketplace for digital currencies, along with determining rules for their circulation and range of participants” as the rationale for the initiative. Emphasizing that the bill does not …

Unlike some of my peers in the technology space, I don’t see the Metaverse as a virtual world in which we work, socialize and shop. Rather, I see it as a point in time, reached in 2020 and into this year because of the global pandemic, when the digital world became as important as the physical world. It’s a shift away from the idea that physical reality is superior and preferred over digital reality. Work for many has turned into a series of Zoom meetings, people are buying virtual real estate, and children are spending time with their friends in …

2021 has been a significant year for crypto with no fungible token (NFT) being awarded word of the year, decentralized finance (DeFi) trending in the mainstream media and crypto companies making headlines for a variety of announcements. This is, no doubt, in part due to the effects that COVID-19 has had on the economy, with many looking for new ways to diversify their finances and a move to working from home giving people the free time to research new interests. And, many chose to get involved in crypto. As conversations began to move on from Bitcoin (BTC) to other larger …

One of the main themes among the crypto community in 2021 was China’s aggressive policy toward mining, which led to a complete ban on such activities in September. While mining as a type of financial activity has not gone away and is unlikely to disappear, Chinese cryptocurrency miners had to look for a new place to set up shop. Many of them moved to the United States — the world’s new mining mecca — while some left to Scandinavia and others to nearby Kazakhstan, with its cheap electricity. Mining activities can’t stay under the radar forever, and governments around the …

On Feb. 18, the Russian Ministry of Finance kicked off public consultations on the rules of cryptocurrency issuance and transactions. While a welcome development, it is less than the country’s crypto space had expected to get. Earlier in the week, the government announced that by Feb. 18, a bill containing the finance ministry and central bank’s consolidated position on crypto regulation would be drafted. Updated estimates suggest that it will take at least another month for draft legislation to see the light. The main reason for the delay appears to be the central bank’s renewed resistance, which just several days …

Four members of the Wyoming Legislature have sponsored a bill which would allow the state treasurer to issue a stablecoin. On Thursday, Wyoming State Senators Chris Rothfuss and Tara Nethercott with House Representatives Jared Olsen and Mike Yin introduced Senate File SF0106, titled the “Wyoming Stable Token Act.” If signed into law, the bill would authorize the treasurer to issue a U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin redeemable for fiat held in an account by the state. The state treasurer — Curtis Meier at the time of publication — would consult with the department’s Investment Funds Committee and have the authority to hire …

Protesting anti-vax truckers blockading downtown Ottawa, Canada had their fund-raising platform shut down because their host fears the “promotion of violence.” The protesters move to a Bitcoin crowdsourcing funding service. It quickly raised $900,000. Russian troops gather on Ukraine’s borders. Ukrainian NGOs and volunteer groups embrace cryptocurrencies to help defend their country in the event of a coming war, according to a Feb. 8 investigation by Elliptic, a blockchain analytics firm. Recent reports like these raise the question: Are Bitcoin and other cryptos becoming the preferred fundraising platform for political protesters and social movements — given that cryptocurrencies don’t respect …

The Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation has officially initiated work on the country’s cryptocurrency regulation bill, filing the first public notice on the federal legal portal. Russia’s finance ministry on Thursday filed two development notices announcing the start of the process of developing a legal framework for activities related to transactions with digital currencies and their issuance. The first notice, called “On Digital Currency,” informs about the government launching a public consultation on rules for digital asset transactions, inviting proposals from financial market participants, citizens and legal entities. The second notice details a similar process for possible amendments …

Ripple’s court battle with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission has recently seen new developments that, according to some observers, could foreshadow an impending resolution of this massively consequential case. Feb. 17 marks the deadline for Ripple to unseal a series of 2012 documents whose contents will likely sway the opinions of both the court and the public toward either one side or another. In another plot twist, the court’s decision to treat some of the SEC’s documents as open to discovery could set a groundbreaking precedent for similar cases involving U.S. executive agencies. Here is where things stand …