Anti-crypto technology experts urged United States lawmakers to resist the influence of pro-crypto lobbying efforts. Bruce Schneier, a lecturer at Harvard, reportedly said that blockchain advocates’ claims are “not true.” He added that the technology is not secure and not really decentralized. According to Schneier, systems where you can “lose your life savings” when you forget your password is “not a safe system.” Along with other computer scientists and academics, Schneier signed a letter criticizing crypto and blockchain and sent it to U.S. lawmakers in Washington. Software developer Stephen Diehl supports the idea and also signed the letter. Diehl noted …

On Tuesday, the United States Federal Reserve released a study on the possible effects of a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) on U.S. monetary policy implementation. The study, dated April, was a staff working paper titled “Retail CBDC and U.S. Monetary Policy Implementation: A Stylized Balance Sheet Analysis.” The paper considered four scenarios that illustrate the potential effects of a retail CBDC on monetary policy from the perspective of three stakeholder groups: the Fed, commercial banks and U.S. households. The first scenario involved exchanging cash for CBDC, which affected the categorization of assets at the Fed and in the …

Crypto volatility is nerve-wracking, and it may not be over yet. The turmoil may make crypto investors and crypto-related businesses less enthusiastic than when prices seemed ever to be climbing. With the market falling off a cliff, there will be big losses to claim on your taxes, right? Not necessarily. As your United States dollars shake out in the digital world, it is worth asking whether there is any lemonade you can make by claiming losses on your taxes. First, ask what happened from a tax viewpoint. If you’ve been trading and triggering big taxable gains, but then the floor …

The insurance industry has a long history of providing vital support for major leaps in innovation. It’s no coincidence that the modern insurance industry and the industrial revolution arose in parallel. Indeed, it has been convincingly argued that the invention of fire and property insurance — in response to the Great Fire of London — lubricated the gears of capital investment that powered the industrial revolution and is likely the reason why it started in London. Through that first and each subsequent technological revolution, insurance has offered innovators and investors a safety net and served as an outside, objective validator …

Lawmakers in the United States are moving to protect the country from the potential undesirable impacts of the global adoption of China’s national digital currency. Three Republican senators, Tom Cotton, Mike Braun and Marco Rubio, introduced a bill on Wednesday, aiming to limit the use of China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the United States. The bill is referred to as “Defending Americans from Authoritarian Digital Currencies Act” and proposes to prohibit the use of China’s digital currency payment system, e-CNY, for U.S. app stores and other purposes. The term “app store” covers all publicly accessible websites, software apps …

Bill Miller the billionaire founder and chief investment officer of investment firm Miller Value Partners, has said he considers Bitcoin (BTC) an “insurance policy against financial catastrophe.” Appearing on an episode of the “Richer, Wiser, Happier” podcast on May 24, Miller backed the cryptocurrency as a means for those caught in conflict to still access financial products. He used the collapse of financial infrastructure in Afghanistan after the United States withdrawal in August 2021 as an example. “When the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan, Western Union stopped sending remittances there or taking them from Afghanistan, but if you had Bitcoin, …

ARK Investment Management, an investment firm founded by veteran investor Cathie Wood, is taking another try to launch a spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the United States. ARK Invest submitted on May 13 yet another application for its physical Bitcoin ETF, the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The application includes a proposed rule change from the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) BZX Exchange. According to Bloomberg ETF analyst Henry Jim, the latest deadline for approval or disapproval of the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF is January 24, 2023. …

If all goes to plan, Wednesday’s SpaceX rocket launch in Florida will blast a “crypto-satellite” into low Earth orbit, paving the way for secure blockchain-related cryptography in space. Cryptosat, as the name hints, is the company that created Crypto1, a crypto-satellite module hitching a ride aboard a Falcon 9 rocket for SpaceX’s Transporter 5 mission. The blockchain satellite technology has already been trialed on the International Space Station. “We’re basically joining the Uber of spaceflight,” co-founder of Cryptosat Yonatan Winetraub told Cointelegraph, “Everybody goes into the same orbit and we’re one of the passengers.” “SpaceX launch a bunch of satellites, …

The billionaire founder and CEO of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, Sam Bankman-Fried, has revealed he intends to spend anywhere between $100 million and $1 billion to help influence the 2024 United States presidential election campaigns. In a podcast interview on Tuesday, Bankman-Fried was asked how much money he might donate during the next presidential election cycle, answering he’d give “north of $100 million” with a “soft ceiling” of $1 billion if he were to bankroll the person running against former president Donald Trump: “I would hate to say hard ceiling because who knows what’s going to happen between now and …

It’s been two weeks since the shock of the TerraUSD (UST) depegging, but the long waves of this event are still coming in. The Congressional Research Service described the UST crash as a “run-like” scenario and claimed that the crypto industry has not reached the same level of “adequate regulating” as the traditional finance market. Michael Barr, former advisory board member of Ripple Labs and United States President Joe Biden’s pick for a vice chair for supervision at the Federal Reserve, definitely agrees with that. During the confirmation hearing, he mentioned “some significant risks” that innovative technologies and cryptocurrencies, in …

United States President Joe Biden’s executive order on digital assets has kickstarted an interagency mission to support financial innovation while protecting American consumers and interests. While many industry leaders welcome the constructive tone, some critics hope for a crackdown. We don’t blame them. Many cryptocurrency projects operate behind thin veils of decentralization. In public, they’re sold on the premise that they distribute power. Behind the curtains, leaders pull the strings. In the recent case of Wonderland, a serial scammer and felon directed a $1 billion treasury. Many projects secretly pay influencers to shill their tokens. The price pumps. Insiders dump. …

Fallout from the collapse of the Terra ecosystem continues to unfold with the United States-based yield generation application Stablegains facing potential legal action over its losses from the event. Users believe that Stablegain has allegedly lost up to $44 million worth of deposited funds, based on a post on a Terra forum by co-founder Kamil Ryszkowski asking for relief funding. He disclosed that a day before TerraUSD (UST) had lost its peg with the U.S. dollar, its users’ funds totaled over 47.6 million UST from 4,878 depositors. Currently, the price of UST is trading at $0.075, according to data from …