Eos (EOS) parent company Block.one has disclosed that it is a client of a lobbying firm in a disclosure form registered in May. In the document, Block.one is cited as the client of international law firm Holland & Knight LLP, whose offices globally work on over 200 different practice areas including regulatory and government affairs, blockchain technology and e-commerce. In the Specific lobbying issues (current and anticipated) field Block.one indicated “policy related to blockchain.” Block.one has apparently contributed $30,000 for lobbying activities. The document also reveals that Scott Mason and Norma Krayem will act as lobbyists for Block.one. Before joining …

Former United States Senator Rick Santorum has joined the board of a Catholic community-oriented cryptocurrency project, according to a press release published on June 4. The former senator and Republican presidential candidate is now a board member of the Catholic community-oriented cryptocurrency project dubbed Cathio. The platform is designed to address the needs of the Catholic economy by ensuring lower costs, greater transaction visibility, and improved security for the community. Santorum was a noted cultural conservative in U.S. politics, who strongly opposed abortion and same-sex marriage on his failed presidential campaigns in 2012 and 2016. Santorum argued that Cathio will …

Crypto is on the march, and not just in terms of market price. Not only does data indicate that the number of ID-verified users of cryptocurrency doubled over 2018, but there are various other metrics that suggest that adoption is gaining traction. As many as 84% of companies worldwide are involved with blockchain-based technologies in some way, while cryptocurrency ownership is twice as high among young Americans than among the general United States population. And at a time when there's plenty of talk about the need for crypto to standardize and regulate itself before adoption can really take off, it …

The biggest cryptocurrency, bitcoin (BTC), has hit an all-time high versus the Argentine peso amid the ongoing decline of the currency, Financial Times (FT) reports on May 27. According to the report, the bitcoin price has soared to as high as 394,000 pesos ($8,762.95 at press time) per coin, exceeding prices versus the Argentine peso not seen since the bubble in late 2017. Bitcoin price against Argentine peso since 2017. Source: BitcoinAverage The new all-time high of bitcoin versus the peso takes place amid a crypto bull market this year, along with the ongoing depreciation of the Argentine peso against …

Between May 23 and 26, 2019, the European Union’s citizens are renewing their continental parliament. Among the countries that will participate in the poles is Italy (voting on May 26) — one of the founding members of the EU, alongside France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg. Due to the very nature of cryptocurrencies, it's tough to get a correct figure of the actual penetration of these technologies in a single country. However, relying on some proxies — as in the chart below — it is likely that the Bel Paese (the Beautiful Country) would fall outside the leading European group. …

Major United States-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has filed to close its political action committee (PAC) on April 3. According to a filing with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) — the regulatory agency in charge of enforcing election laws — Coinbase’s PAC received no funds nor made any disbursements, and is seeking to terminate the PAC. Per FEC regulations, a PAC must file a termination report in order to cease operations once it no longer intends to make or receive contributions or expenditures. In the U.S., PACs are independent organizations, often representing different business, labor, or policy interests, that collect and …

North Korean political dissident group Cheollima Civil Defense (CCD) is selling Ethereum-based (ETH) visas for entering the country once it is supposedly liberated. The CCD’s website advertises a “Limited issuance of 200,000 anonymous blockchain visas to visit Free Joseon (previously North Korea) upon liberation” Free Joseon is seemingly a reference to the Joseon Kingdom, a five century long dynasty that was succeeded by the Korean Empire. The visas are emitted in the form of non-fungible ERC-721 tokens dubbed G-VISA on the Ethereum blockchain. The price, for the first one thousand visas, will be 1 ETH. Per the announcement, the issuance …

On March 7, news broke that Denver is slated to become the second United States jurisdiction to pilot a blockchain-powered mobile voting platform in its upcoming municipal election. Absentee voting will start on March 23 and will run until the Election Day, May 7. The announcement came almost exactly one year after the first initiative of this kind — deployment of mobile voting solution in West Virginia primaries and then midterm elections — was made public in March 2018. Once again, it was the Tusk Philanthropy foundation that spearheaded the effort, while Boston-based technology company Voatz took care of the …

Last week, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) claimed that the growth of blockchain in Malta has created major risks of money laundering and terrorism financing in the island’s economy, as per the local media. Malta is renowned for its crypto-friendly politics, whose efforts in the field have earned it the moniker of “blockchain island.” However, its push for becoming the international crypto hub has attracted criticism from both global watchdogs and local opposition. Crypto-friendliness is one of the main priorities for the Maltese government On Jan. 24, the Times of Malta reported on preliminary findings that the IMF allegedly presented …

On Jan. 25, United States (U.S.) President Donald Trump ended the partial government shutdown, albeit temporarily. As a result of the funding package he signed on Friday, the government will be open for three weeks. While the future still seems unclear for U.S. government facilities, which are now returning to work after the 35-day standoff between Trump and the Senate, it is time to reassess how regulatory agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) were affected, and what that means for the crypto market. Trump failed to get money for his border wall, …

On Jan. 23, the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA), the domestic financial regulator, released a 50-page-long consultation paper dubbed “Guidance on Cryptoassets.” As the U.K. seems to be moving closer toward rolling out a definitive regulatory framework, it is time to reassess how other crypto markets, specifically the major ones, are dealing with cryptocurrencies on the juridical level. “Guidance on Cryptoassets,” reviewed: How the U.K. is going to deal with virtual currencies Given the tone of the new FCA paper, the U.K. government seems to be leaning toward a rather neutral approach for cryptocurrencies. The primary goal of the …

Cryptocurrencies were never apolitical. The fateful 2008 Satoshi Nakamoto treatise did not appear in an ideological vacuum: Notions of online privacy, proactive use of cryptography for protecting individual freedom, and denationalization of currency that informed the Bitcoin creator’s vision had been brewing for at least two decades, at least since the rise of the cypherpunk movement in the early 1990s. The libertarian spirit of individual sovereignty and suspicion of governments and central banks has dominated the intellectual milieu where the concept of digital cash was forged and developed into a working technology. As cryptocurrencies went more mainstream, the core community’s …