Nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, haven’t quite reached the level of awareness to take over the human race — yet — but at least one of them contains the chemical building blocks of life. A crypto user known as "Cybex_Dreamer" recently listed their personal genome as an NFT for sale on OpenSea's digital marketplace. The anonymous seller is auctioning off three NFTs, each containing one-third of their complete DNA sequence, based on identifier, chromosome number, base pair position and genotype. A small sample of the user’s genetic code shows the data is “intended for genealogical research only,” with the bidding for …

The European Central Bank has published the results of a public consultation on a potential digital euro as the institution inches closer to deciding whether to formally study such an initiative. According to a Wednesday announcement, the ECB received more than 8,200 responses to its public digital euro consultation — a personal record for the bank regarding participation in a public consultation. Of the total responses, 47% came from Germany, with a significant amount also coming from Italy and France, accounting for 15% and 11% of total responses, respectively. The majority of respondents said that privacy was the most desired …

Privacy-focused messenger app Signal has posted early user feedback from the United Kingdom-based beta launch of its payments integration with MobileCoin’s MOB token. A blog post by Signal head of growth and communication Jun Harada revealed the top four user complaints about its new cryptocurrency integration so far — with a major complaint from many users about the entire concept itself because “cryptocurrency is the worst.” He reassured such users it was an optional feature. Signal announced on April 6 that it’s aiming to extend its privacy protection features to payments in an attempt to replicate the success of PayPal-owned …

The Oasis Foundation, an offshoot of Oasis Network developers Oasis Labs, announced in a blog post on Friday that decentralized finance (DeFi) insurance and coverage provider Tidal Finance will be implementing a version of their platform on the Oasis Network. The blog post noted that insurance will be important for users of the platform as Oasis scales its DeFi offerings, and that by working with Oasis’ “confidential smart contracts” Tidal will be able to deploy new claims methods, such as “anonymous, democratized voting” that preserves voters and user privacy. The move mirrors similar ones being made in Ethereum’s DeFi ecosystem, …

Over the last 12 months, the remarkable growth in decentralized finance has been driven by one thing: the ability of users to earn strong yields on their crypto assets by lending, staking and providing liquidity. Depending on your risk appetite, gains from DeFi investments can run tens or even hundreds of times higher than standard returns in the traditional markets. Even if those kinds of yields don’t last forever, DeFi offers significant promise to transform the financial markets in the long term. At the start of this year, former U.S. acting comptroller of the currency Brian Brooks predicted (I think, …

A platform that vows to make cryptocurrency and decentralized finance trading available to the masses is gearing up to launch its decentralized autonomous organization. Mute says that Voice Control is the first DAO to boast a dual-token system. The project aims to ensure that it is as simple as possible for enthusiasts with varying degrees of technical understanding to get involved — and this is being achieved through simple language and a visually unique decentralized application. Voice Control enables members to have their say — or delegate their votes to a trusted community member. This distinctive configuration helps ensure the …

Facebook is no stranger to data hacks and leaks, with the company having been on the receiving end of many high-profile security breaches in recent years. For example, back in 2018, the social media giant revealed that it had inadvertently exposed the personal information of more than 50 million users due to a small error in its platform coding, thus allowing miscreants to gain access to its users’ accounts. Similarly, in 2020, the Mark Zuckerberg-led firm was embroiled in another major controversy when it came to light that thousands of developers had been able to access data from inactive platform …

Encrypted messaging app Signal has begun testing a payments feature that allows users to send cryptocurrency to other users privately. Signal announced on Tuesday that it is integrating support for MobileCoin for a new peer-to-peer payments system in the beta version of its apps. The new system called Signal Payments has been launched for beta testing on Android and iOS platforms for United Kingdom-based users only at the current time. Additionally, it only supports MobileCoin’s MOB cryptocurrency, which has been designed to be used on smartphones. Signal was mulling private crypto payments in January as reported by Cointelegraph. Signal head …

Lee Hsien Loong, Prime Minister of Singapore, claims someone set up a profile on the social token platform BitClout to sell tokens using the information from his Twitter account. In a Facebook post Friday, Loong urged Singaporeans to “to remain vigilant when dealing with cryptocurrency platforms.” He said that someone had used BitClout to create one of the platform’s Creator Coins using his name, Twitter account bio, and photo. According to the screenshot Loong posted, there were 27.4088 of his tokens with a market capitalization of more than $9,800, with at least one user holding $4.77 worth. “I have discovered …

A blockchain application platform that aims to make this technology accessible for everyone has unveiled a high-level view of its cutting-edge solutions for interoperability. Lisk says its approach is based on the paradigm of cross-chain certification — with information submitted between networks utilizing a signed object known as a certificate. According to the platform, this approach delivers several crucial advantages compared with other methods in the market. It is scalable — meaning there are no limits on the number of sidechains that can be connected to the Lisk mainchain — as well as flexible because cross-chain update transactions can be …

A federal judge has implied that an individual may not have the right to force the Internal Revenue Service, or IRS, to expunge financial records it obtains from crypto exchanges. In granting a motion to dismiss filed in December, Judge Joseph DiClerico in the District of New Hampshire suggested the Internal Revenue Service has no obligation to honor requests to purge crypto transaction records it received from Coinbase or other exchanges regarding information for federal taxes. Dismissed in part for lack of jurisdiction, the civil rights case filed by plaintiff James Harper against IRS commissioner Charles Rettig, the agency, and …

In this hyperconnected world, where personal data is a precious commodity, privacy has become a hot-button topic. Now more than ever, many consumers are craving confidentiality — especially when it comes to the transactions they make and the digital trails they leave behind. And that’s what the anonymous team behind a peer-to-peer ecosystem called Utopia say they provide. The platform has been built out of “fundamental respect for, and protection of, individual freedom and liberty online” — and is designed to eliminate surveillance and censorship. Its goal is to ensure that financial transactions, user data and personal communications are kept …