The United States Air Force has filed a trademark application hinting at the military branch potentially expanding into the metaverse. According to a Thursday application submitted to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the Department of the Air Force trademarked the word "SpaceVerse," defined as “a secure digital metaverse that converges terrestrial and space physical and digital realities and provides synthetic and simulated extended-reality (XR) training, testing and operations environments.” It’s unclear if the initiative is connected to the U.S. Space Force, which according to its website is “organized under” the Air Force, but operates as a “separate and distinct …

Robinhood, a major cryptocurrency-friendly stock trading app, is pushing global expansion by acquiring the United Kingdom-based crypto asset firm Ziglu. Robinhood officially announced Tuesday that it had signed a deal to acquire Ziglu, subject to regulatory approvals and other closing conditions. The firm declined to disclose the size of the deal to Cointelegraph. “Subject to regulatory approval, in the near term, nothing will change for current Ziglu customers. Longer-term, we’ll integrate Ziglu more fully into Robinhood, bring the Robinhood brand overseas and work to expand operations beyond the U.K. into Europe,” the spokesperson for Robinhood said. The acquisition aims to …

The cost of running a crypto business in New York is about to rise with the state government gearing up to require companies holding a BitLicense to pay assessment fees to ensure they’re complying with regulations. The rule was included in New York State’s FY2023 budget signed into law on April 9 by Governor Kathy Hochul, giving the state’s Department Of Financial Services (DFS) a “new authority to collect supervisory costs from licensed virtual currency businesses,” according to a statement by the DFS. DFS superintendent Adrienne Harris said the fees would bring digital currency businesses in line with those already …

Protect Our Future, a political action committee set up in January, with backers including FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, has spent more than $9 million to support candidates running for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. According to expenditures reported to the U.S. Federal Election Commission, as of April 14, Protect Our Future has used $9,024,317 toward supporting the campaigns of Carrick Flynn, Lucia McBath, Shontel Brown and Jasmine Crockett to represent separate districts in Oregon, Georgia, Ohio and Texas, respectively. McBath and Brown are incumbent candidates, while Crockett currently represents Texas’ 100th District in the state’s House of Representatives. …

Major developer platform GitHub has reportedly blocked more than a dozen accounts of Russian developers associated with organizations sanctioned by the United States government. The sanctioned accounts include some of the largest banks in Russia — Sberbank and Alfa-Bank — alongside individual developers with links to the sanctioned firms. However, many individual accounts with no links or ties to sanctioned firms were also blocked in the process. Researcher Sergey Bobrov, who reportedly has no current links to any such firm, claimed on April 15 that his account was suspended and then restored. My github account is unlocked, thanks everyone. The …

Where I grew up, on the southern border in Texas, a tremendous number of people have come to the United States to work and send money back home. They don’t make much money, but they pay considerable fees on their transfers. Their focus is not on getting rich, but on supporting those back home in their native country. They support their families as they do hard labor day in and day out. It costs them too much to do so. Truth be told, my father was a migrant worker. He picked fruit in the fields. We sent money back to …

The feeling in the crypto and decentralized finance space has been shifting and evolving. The industry is also becoming more scrutinized and, inevitably, more organized. Some weeks ago, United States President Joe Biden signed an Executive Order to expedite and focus regulatory oversight of the $3-trillion industry. The order will spur the government to examine the risks and benefits of cryptocurrencies, with a particular focus on consumer protection, financial stability, illicit activity, U.S. competitiveness, financial inclusion and responsible innovation. While the results of this order have yet to unfold, this moment helps to set the table for more clarity, predictability, …

Following the withdrawal of former Federal Reserve Board governor Sarah Bloom Raskin, United States President Joe Biden has announced his intention to nominate former Obama administration official and law professor Michael Barr as the central bank’s vice chair for supervision. In a Friday announcement, the White House said Barr was Biden’s pick to supervise the Federal Reserve and set the regulatory agenda for its leadership. Barr was on the advisory board of Ripple Labs from 2015 to 2017, served as the Treasury Department’s assistant secretary for financial institutions under former President Barack Obama, and taught courses on financial regulation at …

The world of digital assets saw a significant rise last year. The total cryptocurrency market cap reached $3 trillion, making more people, governments and universities take a closer look at the asset class. The presence of crypto in the world’s major economies has created a big opportunity for diverse startups in the industry, leading to a massive demand for digital assets. This newly born market has helped develop more working and educational opportunities, among other things. Furthermore, some of the world’s top universities and educational institutions including MIT, the University of Oxford and Harvard University, have added pieces of the …

Major cryptocurrency hardware wallet provider Ledger is moving to help crypto investors keep track of their taxes by integrating a new crypto tax-related solution. Ledger has partnered with cryptocurrency tax software ZenLedger to integrate its crypto tax reporting solution into Ledger’s interface application, Ledger Live, the firm announced to Cointelegraph on Thursday. The new tax feature is immediately available on Ledger Live and can be found in the discover section of its catalog. The software tool allows users to automatically aggregate the history of all transactions completed via Ledger Live and track losses and earnings. Jean-François Rochet, Ledger’s vice president …

A virtual, Cyprus-registered casino Sand Vegas Casino Club faced an emergency cease and desist order from Texas and Alabama state securities regulators. The company is ordered to “stop a fraudulent investment scheme tied to metaverses”. On April 13, the Texas State Securities Board reported issuing the order, accusing Sand Vegas Casino Club, Martin Schwarzberger and Finn Ruben Warnke of illegally offering nonfungible tokens (NFTs) to fund the development of virtual casinos in metaverses. Allegedly, Sand Vegas offered 11,111 NFTs to raise funds for its metaverse casinos. The firm offered those who purchased Gambler NFTs and Golden Gambler NFTs a share …

Virgil Griffith, a former Ethereum (ETH) developer has been sentenced to 63 months in prison and will pay a fine of $100,000 for attending a conference and assisting North Korea use blockchain technology in contravention of economic sanctions imposed by the United States. On Tuesday, April 12, U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel of the Southern District of New York handed down the decision. Judge Castel stated that “what you see here is intentionality, a deliberate, willful intent to violate the sanctions' regime,” adding that the crime was made worse because Griffith had a “desire to educate people on how to …