If we want to democratize finance, we need to start with practical initiatives. As women in the industry, what can we do to expand our reach to end-users or entrepreneurs who would be the last to embrace this technology? How can we improve our search for talent to cover universities and geographies that we wouldn’t normally look to? Comparatively, there are relatively few women and people of color in the C-suite of blockchain companies or inside institutions leading their blockchain journey. According to a report by Deloitte, the global fintech founder community is still dominated by men, with women making …

Publicly listed mining company Argo Blockchain has finalized its acquisition of a new 320-acre land plot in West Texas in the United States, which it plans to use for the construction of a new 200-megawatt cryptocurrency mining facility. News of the planned acquisition first broke in mid-February after Argo entered into a letter of intent with DPN LLC of New York. Details of the deal indicate that the acquisition was completed at an initial price of $5 million, satisfied by the issue of roughly 3.5 million new shares of Argo to DPN shareholders. A further payment of shares worth up …

Major cryptocurrency tax compliance startup TaxBit has raised $100 million as it expands into Europe. According to a March 3 blog post, TaxBit has secured the funds in Series A round led by Paradigm and Tiger Capital. Additional investors included PayPal’s venture arm, major industry firms like Coinbase and Winklevoss Capital, as well as individual investors like Bill Ackman, Ryan Smith, Anthony Pompliano and others. According to the announcement, the new investment round comes in response to the increasing global demand for crypto services amid the crypto industry’s parabolic surge to hit a $1.5 trillion market capitalization. “The importance of …

BCB Group, a global digital financial services firm, is planning to help corporations navigate cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) by launching a dedicated service. According to a Feb. 19 announcement, BCB Group has launched BCB Treasury, a new service designed for corporate treasury departments seeking to get involved in Bitcoin à la Tesla. The new service aims to provide a specific solution enabling access to treasury management for companies willing to invest their capital into Bitcoin and other digital assets. With BCB Treasury, executives can enter, hold, manage, and report on a Bitcoin-focused treasury strategy, the announcement states. BCB Group founder …

A new poll carried out by Piplsay has found that 41% of Brits now believe there is an equal amount of risk to investing in cryptocurrencies as the stock market. The survey of 6,070 British residents above the age of 18 suggests that adults based in the U.K. are starting to view cryptocurrency and the stock market on equal footing. That said, 45% of respondents still see crypto as the riskier of the two. More than 40% of participants described cryptocurrency as being safe compared to 31% who did not, while the remaining 27% of respondents stated they were unsure …

Global banking institutions have been expressing more interest in Bitcoin (BTC) as the cryptocurrency consistently breaks new all-time highs, according to a new report. Tom Robinson, co-founder of major British crypto firm Elliptic, told The Telegraph on Wednesday that his company saw a massive surge in Bitcoin-related inquiries from global banks. The executive noted a wave of Bitcoin-associated demand from United States-based banking institutions over the past two months. According to Robinson, several financial institutions in the U.S. “are seriously considering launching some type of cryptocurrency service.” British banks were the most reserved in terms of the demand’s uptick, the …

London-based cryptocurrency exchange Exmo suffered a distributed denial-of-service attack on Monday, causing the platform’s servers to become unavailable. In a tweet on Monday, Exmo reported that hackers had targeted the exchange with $75 million in trading volume in a distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attack. These cyberattacks typically overload a system with numerous requests from multiple virus-infected servers. Important: DDoS attack on EXMO ❗️ Please note the EXMO exchange website is now under the DDoS attack. The servers are temporarily unavailable. We are solving this issue right now. Please stay tuned. — EXMO (@Exmo_Com) February 15, 2021 The attack comes two …

Residents of the United Kingdom will be the first people outside of the U.S. who are able to use PayPal for buying and selling crypto. According to journalist Carl Quintanilla, the payments platform is planning to expand its crypto offerings to the U.K. in the coming months. PayPal also plans to make crypto available for Venmo wallet holders before the end of Q2 2021. Other non-crypto services include expanding Venmo internationally before 2026 and a broader rollout of the app’s credit cards. * PAYPAL WILL ADD CRYPTO TO VENMO WALLETS IN FIRST HALF $PYPL (h/t @JohnSpall247) pic.twitter.com/ETsgKqXC6V — Carl Quintanilla …

Nick Boles, a former Member of Parliament for Grantham and Stamford from 2010 to 2019, took to Twitter Tuesday to criticize Bitcoin over its negative environmental impact. He retweeted a post from BBC correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones showing that Bitcoin has overtaken Argentina in annual energy consumption. The data was compiled by the University of Cambridge and presented in the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index. Boles commented: “Central banks should ban the trading of it, and force anyone who holds Bitcoin and wants to use it in any transaction, to exchange it for another currency that does not have such a …

Bitcoin (BTC) is likely to hit $60,000 in 2021 amid the growing mainstream adoption, according to an analyst at major financial publication Investing.com. Jesse Cohen, a senior financial analyst at Investing.com, predicted that Bitcoin will likely reach a $60,000 level in the first half of 2021. According to Cohen, Bitcoin’s growth in 2021 will be fueled by support from institutional investors combined with the “flush of ultra-cheap money being pumped into the global financial system” by global central banks like the United States’ Federal Reserve: “After a record-breaking year in 2020 that saw it jump more than 300%, Bitcoin looks …

United Kingdom-based Ruffer Investment Management has made more than $750 million from its Bitcoin investment in less than two months, but it has decreased the size of its holdings. According to a report from British news outlet The Telegraph, Ruffer saw “immediate fireworks” after investing roughly 2.5% of its assets into Bitcoin (BTC) in November 2020, resulting in millions of dollars in gains as the price of the crypto asset rose past $20,000 and on to a new all-time high of more than $42,000 in January. Rather than HODLing it all, however, the firm reported that it had sold roughly …

A recent United Kingdom-wide survey on attitudes toward cryptocurrency shows that almost a third of respondents are curious about investing in digital assets. Crypto trading platform Ziglu commissioned the survey through OnePoll, a market research firm that polled 2,000 Britons. However, of the 31% who expressed an interest, 62% have held back because they do not understand the market, and 43% say that they do not know a safe way to buy crypto. This lack of quality information doesn't hold back all potential investors though. Of the 14% of those surveyed who had already bought cryptocurrency, 13% claimed to have …