Category: Reviews

Alleged Crypto Capital Operator Faces New Wire Fraud Charge

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Reginald Fowler, an alleged operator behind payment processor Crypto Capital, was charged with wire fraud Friday, on top of existing charges of bank fraud, operation of an unlicensed money transmission business and conspiracy. According to an indictment filed Friday, Fowler allegedly created a scheme to obtain money “by means of false and fraudulent pretenses” and directed the funds to a professional sports league. While the indictment does not name the league, Fowler was previously the primary investor in the Alliance of American Football, a short-lived alternative to the National Football…

‘Bullish’ Comments on Reddit a Potential Bitcoin Signal

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In the never-ending search for signals to give traders an edge, could bullish comments on Reddit serve as a momentum indicator for bitcoin? That’s what a recent graphic by startup ChartStar suggests.  The data visualization company graphed comment data over the past several weeks for the term “bullish” from several popular cryptocurrency Reddit channels (“subreddits”), each with varying degrees of moderation. One thing these subreddits have in common is that discussion about trading is clearly allowed. Also, each comment entry was tallied only once; posting “bullish bullish bullish” would count…

Binance Is Not Under Our Jurisdiction, Says Malta Regulator

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Binance is neither licensed to operate nor is it regulated in Malta, the country’s chief financial watchdog has said. The Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) issued a statement Friday denying that it has ever regulated Binance or that the exchange has ever had leave to operate in the island nation’s fledgling cryptocurrency industry. Citing reports in the media that referred to Binance as a “Malta-based cryptocurrency company”, the regulator announced that “Binance is not authorised by the MFSA to operate in the crypto currency sphere and is therefore not subject…

Insolvent Exchange FCoin Had Bitcoin Outflow Problems Just Two Months After Launch: Report

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Cryptocurrency exchange FCoin, which revealed its insolvency this week, may have already been leaking bitcoin as early as July 2018 – just two months after its debut. On-chain analysis and security startup PeckShield released a report on Friday, suggesting FCoin’s bitcoin (BTC) wallets had a significant outflow of nearly 10,000 BTC between July 19 and Aug. 31, 2018 – a time that coincided with the occurrence of the fatal “data error” that FCoin founder Zhang Jian mentioned in his tell-all post on Feb. 17. While announcing that FCoin was insolvent, the…

Oil Prices Are Now More Volatile Than Bitcoin

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For skeptics and traditional market investors, bitcoin (BTC) is synonymous with extreme bouts of price volatility. However, in recent times, oil has become a relatively risky asset.  The West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil price’s one-month realized, or historical, volatility stood at 105.3 percent on Feb. 10, after having hit a four-month high of 119.6 percent at the end of January. Meanwhile, bitcoin’s historical volatility recently dropped to 42.3 percent, the lowest level since September, according to Skew Markets.  Historical volatility measures how much prices have varied in the past and…

$100K in Early Prizes Looks to Lure the NFT-Curious to Decentraland

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Decentraland opened for gameplay on Thursday and anyone who thinks they might like it is better off playing now rather than later, because free stuff. For regular gamers, Decentraland may be a new kind of experience, what they call a “metaverse” where different game properties can meet in a shared virtual world. There’s a potential that it could evolve into a new platform for games and social experiences. And since it’s on the ethereum blockchain, the “stuff” in that world is transferable (and sellable) beyond it. Either way, there’s an…

Never Mind Hodlers, Crypto Needs More Opportunist Investors

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Jeff Dorman, a CoinDesk columnist, is Chief Investment Officer at Arca where he leads the investment committee and is responsible for portfolio sizing and risk management. He has more than 17 years of trading and asset management experience at firms such as Merrill Lynch and Citadel Securities. Carl Icahn is famous for moving in and out of asset classes. This is quite different than how most asset managers and professional investors invest, who are generally locked into an asset class based on specific mandate, and are therefore forced to try to…

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the DeFi ‘Flash Loan’ Attack

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There’s now a case study for how DeFi can go awry. bZx, the eighth-largest decentralized finance project according to DeFi Pulse, suffered two attacks last weekend following the introduction of “flash loans,” a new DeFi feature that limits a trader’s risk while improving the upside.  Led by CEO Tom Bean, the bZx team was attending ETHDenver, a major ethereum conference in Colorado’s capital, on Friday when an unknown attacker drained about $350,000 worth of ether from Fulcrum, the startup’s lending platform. As a post-mortem from the firm describes, the attacker…

Chainlink’s Sergey Nazarov on What DeFi Can Learn From Early Exchange Hacks

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Sergey Nazarov joins today’s episode of The Breakdown to discuss the role of price oracles in the recent DeFi attacks, plus what DeFi can learn from early exchange hacks. The DeFi world continues to dissect the recent attacks on bZx. To most, the amount lost in the attacks is far less relevant than what the attacks suggest about how DeFi applications need to be designed.  Within that, one key topic of conversation is the role of price oracles – the systems by which DeFi applications check the prices of assets…

Tim Draper Buys 2.5% of Aragon Tokens, Becomes Governance Whale

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Venture capitalist Tim Draper has taken a 1 million ANT stake (worth about $760,000 at press time) in Aragon, a decentralized governance project that began on ethereum.  The move, disclosed in a press release Wednesday, gives Draper control of about 2.5 percent of Aragon’s total token supply. Draper is a long-time crypto evangelist and serial project backer. The Switzerland-based Aragon Association is attempting to build a digital judicial system for decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and its own Aragon network. Any ANT holder with 1,000 tokens can participate in “Aragon Court,”…