Blockchain browser Brave is testing a new tipping function for social media platform Twitter on its Nightly version, it announced in a tweet on May 23. The post reads that users of Brave Nightly — the testing and development version of blockchain-based browser that blocks ads and website trackers — will have access to the browser’s new feature for tipping tweets with the Brave Rewards program. The feature is designed to award content creators with Brave native digital tokens, basic attention tokens (BAT). A related announcement on the project’s website provides a detailed explanation of the tipping feature: “When you …

Canadian exchange Kraken has published a paper arguing against proposed regulation of crypto assets by the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) and the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC). The exchange shared its comments in an official twitter post on May 16. Kraken says that the proposed framework considers the contractual arrangement between an exchange and an exchange user as a security. Kraken denies that these contracts constitute securities: “...most reputable exchanges operate as custodians or bailees. As such, the assets are legally owned by the customer and not the Exchange operator. This means, critically, that the customer’s interest is …

American rapper Lil Pump has started accepting bitcoin (BTC) payments through his merchandise store Unhappy, according to his website. Fans of the 18-year-old, known for his catchphrase “Esskeetit” and his most recent album Harverd Dropout, can select crypto as a payment option at the checkout. The rapper has 17.8 million followers on Instagram, 1.2 million followers on Twitter and 2.3 million likes on Facebook. Shoppers can either choose to pay off-chain using a BTC Lightning Network wallet or on-chain through a standard bitcoin wallet. Selecting one of these options generates a QR code, which can then be scanned to complete …

Disclaimer. This article has been updated to specify that SBI Holdings has made an announcement about the delisting of BCH, and not mentioned listing BSV. Bitcoin SV (BSV) — the altcoin that emerged during the bitcoin cash (BCH) hard fork last November and which took the moniker “Satoshi’s vision” — has been on the periphery of crypto news this week. BSV is famously backed by Craig Wright, an Australian entrepreneur, chief scientist at his startup called nChain and self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto. After Binance, one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, decided to delist BSV amid Wright’s campaign to deanonymize one …

After crypto exchange Binance’s decision to delist Bitcoin SV (BSV), anonymous exchange ShapeShift has also decided to drop the cryptocurrency, with Kraken considering to follow suit. In a tweet posted on April 15, ShapeShift CEO Erik Voorhees revealed that the company came to a decision to stop listing BSV: “We stand with @binance and CZ's sentiments. We’ve decided to delist Bitcoin SV #BSV from @ShapeShift_io within 48 hrs.” The announcement drew a negative response from some community members, with one commentator saying that “this action by you smacks of PayPal cutting off Wikileaks. As a BTC maximalist I don’t like …

Charity-focused organization Bitcoin Venezuela tweeted on April 10 that the so-called Lightning Torch had reached its final destination, with all accumulated Bitcoin (BTC) donated to the group. By the time it got to the organization, the Lightning Torch had grown to exactly 0.4108021 BTC, which is currently equivalent to over $2,000. The Torch is an experiment first initiated by anonymous Twitter user Hodlnaut. The Lightning Torch is passed by sending the same BTC from user to user adding a little every time via the scalability solution, Lightning Network (LN). Bitcoin Venezuela is reportedly responsible for the humanitarian initiative “Bitcoin for …

Facebook is controversial, if nothing else. The world's fifth-biggest company by market cap, it's also the biggest social network by a comfortable margin. Yet, despite the fact that most of us use it, we've become increasingly suspicious of what it's been doing with our personal data. Ever since the Cambridge Analytica scandal (and probably long before), we've feared that such data isn't particularly secure or private, so we've been pushing back against the social media giant, as witnessed with last year’s #DeleteFacebook campaign. But at the same time, those with an interest in cryptocurrency also have an appreciation that, for …

United States cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has become the only cryptocurrency business to make it into LinkedIn’s list of the most popular companies for 2019, results confirmed on April 3. The yearly rundown, which ranks company popularity among employees, placed Coinbase at 35 out of a total of 50 shortlisted. LinkedIn ranks contenders according to interest in the company, employee engagement by executives, demand for available jobs and employee retention rate. Different lists are issued for different countries, with Coinbase correspondingly appearing in the U.S. edition. The exchange has previously made it onto LinkedIn lists, such as in September last year, …

A critic of cryptocurrency mining giant Bitmain, BTCKING555, said that a group investors are preparing a class action lawsuit against the company in a tweet on March 26. BTCKING555 said in the post that a number of Bitmain’s investors are going to file a class action lawsuit against the company in Hong Kong, seeking to recover their investments after the expiration of Bitmain’s initial public offering (IPO) bid. The post reads: “...already in august I warned many investors and prevented them from investing. Those that did not listen, good luck recovering your moneys. I hear there is class action in …

Over the last few weeks, Bitcoin’s (BTC) second-layer scaling protocol, called the Lightning Network (LN), has gained a lot of traction, steadily proving to become a viable solution to BTC’s infamous scalability problem and even potential competitor to American payments giant Visa. Thanks to the community-driven Twitter experiment called “the Lightning Torch,” the LN has now been co-signed by Jack Dorsey, who says that integrating the protocol on Square’s popular Cash App is a question of “when, not if.” On top of raising awareness, the social media campaign has also shown what the LN technology is ready to offer in …

United States-based payment platform Square is hiring cryptocurrency engineers and is offering to pay them in digital currency, according to a tweet published by Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey on March 20. In the tweet, Dorsey announces that “Square is hiring 3–4 crypto engineers and one designer to work full-time on open source contributions to the Bitcoin/crypto ecosystem. Work from anywhere, report directly to me, and we can even pay you in Bitcoin!” Dorsey further commented that the decision to pay employees in digital currency is based on the intention “to make the broader crypto ecosystem better,” thus contributing …

Top Stories This Week Research: ‘Free’ Electricity for Students Makes College Campuses Major Crypto Miners According to research from tech conglomerate Cisco, college campuses are the second-largest crypto miners across industry verticals. The researchers investigated crypto mining activities across a variety of industries, finding that university campuses are ranked the second-biggest miners of digital currency at 22 percent, with the energy and utilities sector in first at around 34 percent. According to the research, the increasing mining difficulty for many cryptocurrency means that a higher amount electricity is needed, making it profitable for students to mine since the university pays …