Blockchain innovation is surging throughout Southeast Asia, as the region is home to a number of fintech firms and global crypto companies. In particular, Singapore has become one of the world’s most crypto-friendly countries. This was recently highlighted in a report conducted by crypto exchange Gemini, which found that 67% of 4,348 respondents currently own crypto. The report further noted that Ether (ETH) is the most popular cryptocurrency in the region, with 78% of surveyors claiming to own the digital asset. Interestingly enough, the Ethereum blockchain may also be the network of choice for financial institutions based in Southeast Asia. …

What is Mimblewimble? Mimblewimble is a privacy-oriented decentralized protocol that uses a novel way of structuring and storing transactions on the blockchain. It was designed and introduced by an anonymous developer who went by the name Tom Elvis Jedusor, who was a French counterpart for “Voldemort” in mid-2016. How does Mimblewimble work? Taking its name from the Harry Potter books series’ well-known tongue tying spell that ties the victim’s tongue to prevent it from revealing specific information, Mimblewimble protocol literally works like a spell. It provides a framework for a blockchain that offers a new realm of potential in terms …

In her monthly Expert Take column, Selva Ozelli, an international tax attorney and CPA, covers the intersection between emerging technologies and sustainability, and provides the latest developments around taxes, AML/CFT regulations and legal issues affecting crypto and blockchain. The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), where I exhibited my art, took place in Glasgow, Scotland and ended with the adoption of the Glasgow Climate Pact, bringing nearly 200 countries closer to keeping global temperature rise by 2100 under 1.5 degrees Celsius. The conference remained more focused on emission reductions than on developed countries’ provisions of support to developing countries, …

If the words “derivatives trading” conjures up images of men in suits with disheveled white sleeves rolled up to the elbows and exacerbated expressions on their faces — like something out of The Big Short — then the word decentralized exchanges (DEXs) must conjure up, well, nothing. There are no offices, no floor traders waving papers and certainly no men in suits. DEXs are managed automatically or semi-automatically with the involvement of platform participants in the process of making mission-critical decisions. DEXs are a bulb of a system that is sprouting groundbreaking opportunities for many, but they are not yet …

At present, your DeFi product needs to be multichain to be competitive — this is the hard (and exciting) truth of 2021. Whether you’re building a wallet, a lending service or a DeFi game, your target audience knows that there is more to the crypto space than Ethereum. And they expect you to provide the best of all worlds. It seems there will always be a debate about which blockchain makes for the best foundation for projects. Enhanced security, low transaction costs and formidable speed — there will always be a chain that offers bigger advantages. As the speculators argue …

Jack Dorsey, co-founder, and CEO of both Square and Twitter, released a white paper Friday detailing plans for Square's decentralized Bitcoin (BTC) exchange tbDEX. Unlike most decentralized exchanges, or DEXs, tbDEX will not utilize a trustless model, and therefore will not feature its own governance token. Instead, it is a message protocol designed to facilitate trust relationships without relying on a federation to control access. The tbDEX also intends to include many features that make it far less decentralized than a DEX in the truest sense of the word. For starters, the protocol requires that all participants to pass background …

In an email quoted by Reddit users, Kraken, the world's eight largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, announced it would be delisting privacy coin Monero (XMR) in compliance with regulations in the United Kingdom. The platform will cease all XMR trading activities, set XMR wallets to withdraw-only, and force-liquidate any existing XMR margin positions after the 26th of November. Through advanced cryptography, privacy coins like Monero obscure participants' public wallet addresses and payment amounts when their transactions appear on the blockchain, making it improbable, in the context of current technology, for forensic entities such as Chainalytics to digitally trace the …

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols have gained significant traction in the cryptocurrency sector, with a total value locked surpassing $271 billion, based on data from DefiLlama. One exceptionally popular category of DeFi services is that of decentralized borrowing and lending, where users can pledge their crypto as collateral and take out stablecoin loans (or vice versa) to pay for everyday expenses while their investment continues to grow. Such protocols typically charge a spread or difference between deposit and lending rates as a service fee. But then there are protocols like Minterest that seek to distribute a vast majority, if not all, …

On Thursday morning, Acala, a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol operating on the Polkadot (DOT) network, announced it had won the first-ever Polkadot parachain auction. Acala raised a total of 32.5 million DOT, worth roughly $1.28 billion, from 24,934 contributors via an initial coin offering (ICO) structured as a crowdloan. As the proceeds are classified as 'crypto debt,' Acala would eventually need to pay back the DOT it had solicited from investors. Users' DOTs are locked for the duration of the rental agreement for Polkadot's parallel chains up for sale. It’s a testament to the strength of @Polkadot that so many …

As outlined in a prepared statement obtained by Cointelegraph, Game7 is an upcoming $500 million blockchain ecosystem acceleration decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, with the goal of onboarding gamers worldwide to the blockchain ecosystem. Entities backing the proposal include BitDAO, Forte, Alameda Research, Mirana Ventures, Warner Music Group, Aleo, Avalanche, Interchain Foundation, Offchain Labs, OP Games, Polygon Studios, and Solana Ventures. Meanwhile, Forte Labs and Magnus proposed its creation. 1/ BIP-5 has passed! @Game7_Official will be established by a diverse group of gaming and technology industry veterans, and will help create a future where blockchain and gaming unites! https://t.co/dZxqjMwpIk pic.twitter.com/Nxd5L4fgyD …

Without a doubt, 2021 has been a momentous year for nonfungible tokens (NFT). The nascent market has seen unprecedented growth as sales volume from January to date nears $10 billion — a 14,500% surge from 2020. The NFT marketplace OpenSea is responsible for processing a great chunk of that. OpenSea controls a majority of NFT sales and has processed more than $10 billion worth of transactions since launching in December 2017. Its 2021 volume alone even topped the revenue earned by Etsy and is comparable to the revenue generated by eBay. But despite this, it appears as though OpenSea and …

Boson Protocol is a decentralized commerce protocol that seeks to enable the sale of physical goods, services and experiences in the Metaverse as nonfungible tokens (NFTs), and hopes to provide an infrastructure layer for exchanging assets of non-monetary value. For example, an NFT of a pair of sneakers bought using the Boson Protocol in the Metaverse would then be redeemable for that physical pair of sneakers in the real world, and vice versa. Ahead of the launch of its first Metaverse commerce experience in Decentraland, called Boson Portal, Cointelegraph spoke with Justin Banon, co-founder of Boson Protocol, to learn more …