To decrease wealth inequality, one passionate financial adviser argues why financial education needs different content, from different voices, delivered through different channels. Financial education and financial literacy are at crisis levels in this country. Financial advisers spend billions on advertising but a fraction of that on education. The resources that are available tend to be

Unidentified attackers exploited a Ravencoin vulnerability to mint extra RVN “beyond the coinbase of 5000 RVN per block,” Ravencoin lead developer Tron Black wrote in a Medium post on Thursday. According to Black, members of Ravencoin’s CryptoScope team, who developed Solus Explorer, reached out to the Ravencoin developer team recently with their findings.  The vulnerability

A Bitcoin Core dev and her exchange partner discuss Bitcoin and privacy and how to incentivize more developers to contribute to the protocol. OKCoin and BitMEX recently came together to provide a $150,000 grant to Bitcoin Core developer Amiti Uttarwar.  In this conversation, Amiti and OKCoin CEO Hong Fang discuss: Amiti UttarwarTwitter: @amizi Disclosure The leader

Oxfam Ireland, a Belfast-based charity fighting global poverty, has received a €1 million ($1.1 million) grant to fund the next phase of a blockchain aid distribution project. Disclosure The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers praised stablecoins, but said he would be surprised if a global digital currency became a reality in his lifetime. During a special episode of Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire’s podcast, “The Money Movement” last week, Summers said he foresees more innovation in the blockchain space but a global

Germany’s accounting watchdog reportedly had only one person checking Wirecard’s books in the months before the company admitted to the massive accounting irregularities that led to its insolvency. Disclosure The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies.

We might be entering into the era of genetically modified yield farming. Or maybe decentralized finance (DeFi) just doesn’t make sense anymore. There are currently far more DAI in supply on Compound than there are DAI in the world, at least according to the numbers reported by Compound’s website. Assuming that nothing has gone awry

Bitcoin broke below $9,000 Thursday afternoon as the leading cryptocurrency has continued to trade in a tight range just above $9,000 for several weeks. Despite the brief 3% afternoon drop, however, the cryptocurrency markets continue to stay eerily calm as volatility drops and traders continue to expect a big move. Bitcoin was changing hands at

J.P. Koning, a CoinDesk columnist, worked as an equity researcher at a Canadian brokerage firm and is a financial writer at a large Canadian bank. He runs the popular Moneyness blog. Understanding bitcoin is difficult. And so we cast around for the perfect metaphor. Bitcoin is email. Digital gold. eCash. Here’s a new one. Bitcoin

Bitcoin broke above $9,250 for the first time since Friday as the leading cryptocurrency continues to trade in a tight range just above $9,000 for several weeks. But cryptocurrency markets have stayed quiet as traders expect a big move. Bitcoin was trading hands around $9,250 as of 20:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET).  Ether, the second-largest

The top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee plan to introduce legislation this week that would direct the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to study virtual currency’s role in illicit online activity.  Disclosure The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a

Curv, a company that provides increased secrecy when it comes to holding crypto assets, has closed a $23 million Series A funding round.  Announced Wednesday, the crypto custody tech provider, which uses a technique called multi-party computation (MPC), received investment from CommerzVentures, Coinbase Ventures, Digital Currency Group (DCG), Team8 and Digital Garage Lab Fund. Curv

Deutsche Boerse has listed an exchange-traded product (ETP) that tracks the value of bitcoin. 21Shares, a Swiss-based product provider formerly known as Amun, said its bitcoin ETP had been officially accepted Wednesday to list on Xetra, Deutsche Boerse’s electronic trading venue. “The listing on Xetra not only strengthens our current position in Germany but also

Quiet is the best word to describe the bitcoin market. Tuesday’s trading stayed within the same price range maintained over the past several weeks, with bitcoin remaining inside a tight $200 range for much of the day.  Bitcoin stays in a tight range above $9,000 Ether up less than 1% Bitcoin volatility continues to drop

Blockchain analysis company Elliptic has added two privacy coins to its monitoring platform. Announced Tuesday, the addition of zcash (ZEC) and horizen (ZEN) will provide exchanges and institutional investors insight into when a transaction trail ends so they can take additional due-diligence measures. Privacy is a core tenet of crypto, and firms looking to shine

Miner Hut 8 said last week it had raised a total of $8.3 million from selling a 6% equity stake to investors, approximately $800,000 more than the original $7.5 million funding target. The Toronto-listed mining company says the funding will keep it competitive as smaller entities with older equipment feel the pinch from last month’s

Guests from the crypto investor Ari Paul to Harvard prof Dr. Vikram Mansharamani discuss bitcoin, the economy and social unrest. June 2020 will go down in the history books as an extremely chaotic and confusing period.  In this “Best of the Month” retrospective, we look at some of the best guest conversations from The Breakdown,

Bitcoin chalked out minor price gains on Sunday, ending its longest run of daily losses for half a year. The leading cryptocurrency by market value jumped 1.2%, having suffered losses in each of the preceding five days, according to CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index. Prices last took a beating for five consecutive days in early December

Matic Network announced Sunday that the first iteration of its staking solution was now live. Launched in stages, direct staking will initially be restricted to the Matic Foundation, the non-profit behind the Ethereum-based scaling solution, which will stake tokens on users’ behalf, the company said in a press release. The Matic Network is a dapp-ready

Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn is assistant professor of International Political Economy at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. He is editor of the book Bitcoin and Beyond. Moritz Hütten is researcher on blockchains and the future of work at Darmstadt Business School, in Germany.  The Travel Rule officially extends to ‘virtual asset services providers’ (VASPs) this

As states shutter economic activity because of preventable COVID-19 outbreaks, it’s deja vu all over again.  This is a movie we’ve seen before: Disclosure The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating

Mutual fund giant Vanguard has completed another blockchain pilot that aims to change the risk profile of foreign exchange (FX) transactions. The Valley Forge, Pa.-based investment firm ran the pilot on Symbiont’s Assembly blockchain with participation from State Street, BNY Mellon and investment firm Franklin Templeton. Vanguard and Franklin Templeton acted as dealer banks and

After the largest options expiry in history, bitcoin ended its fifth week of bouncing around the $9,000s price range. Bitcoin (BTC) was trading around $9,180 as of 20:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET), slipping almost 1% over the previous 24 hours. At 00:00 UTC on Friday (8:00 p.m. Thursday ET), bitcoin was changing hands around $9,300

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Compound saw its governance token, COMP, skyrocket in price when it launched last week. Now, decentralized options marketplace Opyn has launched put options on COMP that will provide a safety net of sorts by helping holders mitigate some of the risk should COMP’s fortunes take a turn for the worse in

Tuur Demeester of Adamant Capital joins for a conversation about what the Protestant Reformation and the French Revolution can teach us about bitcoin. Today on the Brief: A consumer spending rebound A new crypto regulatory regime in Europe A bitcoin warning from a famed investor Our main discussion with Tuur Demeester: Tuur Demeester is the

The future of the U.S. federal securities regulator, and perhaps the direction of cryptocurrency policy, is up in the air. Last week, President Donald Trump announced his intention to nominate Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton to the post of U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, asking Congress to approve the

Crypto.com has confirmed to CoinDesk it is moving to refund customers as the U.K. regulator orders Wirecard’s card issuer to cease all operations immediately. Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek told CoinDesk they were refunding 100% of customer funds as the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) suspended the activities of Wirecard Card Solutions, a subsidiary of the Wirecard

The number three decentralized finance (DeFi) application, Synthetix, is also enjoying the current boom times in bankless banking. (Warning: This post is going to go a lot of places so buckle in.) To recap, Synthetix is a platform for minting and exchanging synthetic tokens that mirror the price of other assets. On June 19, Synthetix

Scam sales, a big win for privacy from Apple, new jobless claims in the “whack-a-mole” economy and the biggest BTC options expiry ever. Today’s edition of The Breakdown is an extended version of the Brief, this time covering five topics. Disclosure The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the

The Norwegian Seafood Association has teamed up with IBM and Atea, a technology firm focused on the internet of things (IoT), to create a blockchain-based track-and-trace system. The project aims to prove the provenance of sustainably farmed salmon in Norway. Following a successful pilot, five high-quality fish farming operations are now ready to start running