It’s All About Crypto Blog
SWIFT Discovers Blockchain. Now What?
SWIFT recently announced on its website that it is preparing to launch a new infrastructure for international transfers - one that will be built on blockchain technology. That immediately brings to mind how blockchain was originally positioned as an alternative to SWIFT. And not just because blockchain transfers are faster and cheaper. There were other important points of...
How KYC Harms Business and Violates Consumer Rights
Ordinary everyday businesses - grocery stores, restaurants, or beauty salons - can freely serve customers without establishing their identity. A cashier does not ask you to show your ID to sell you a loaf of bread, and certainly does not inquire about the origin of the funds you use to pay for a haircut. Moreover, in most...
When "Safe" Assets Drop 40%: Rethinking Bitcoin Volatility
At Rabbit.io, we aim to offer our users the best possible exchange rates, so I keep a close eye on crypto market pricing. At the same time, it’s hard to miss the headlines about oil prices rising amid the conflict in the Middle East. But lately, I realized I’d been overlooking traditional safe-haven assets like gold and silver. If you haven’t been tracking them...
Institutions Want Crypto Exposure - Just Not Crypto Itself
Ernst & Young, one of the world’s largest professional services firms (audit and market analysis), recently conducted a survey of major institutional investors - funds, banks, and similar players - to understand how they view cryptocurrencies. You can read the full results here. I’d like to highlight a few takeaways. First, 73% of respondents plan to increase their...
Opera Walks Away from Cash - Toward CELO
Opera, the company behind the browser, has asked the developers of the Celo blockchain for 27% of the circulating supply of CELO tokens. That’s a highly unusual move. Let’s break it down to understand what makes it so unusual. Opera comes in several versions, and the lightest one is Opera Mini, designed for low-end mobile devices. Like other versions of the browser...
Who Is "the System"? A Closer Look at HTX DAO Governance
HTX DAO recently announced that HTX tokens can now be staked to participate in DAO governance. That caught my attention because the HTX ecosystem has already been involved in one of the most striking cases of “decentralization in name only” that I’ve written about before: the shutdown of the HECO blockchain. At the time, the developers simply announced that the chain...
One Token to Rule TRON: The 96% Dominance of USDT
For a long time, I assumed that the TRON ecosystem owes much of its position in the crypto industry to USDT. But I didn’t realize just how extreme that dependence really is - until I came across some statistics today. The numbers are honestly staggering. The screenshot I’m referring to comes from Tronscan. It shows that 96% of all volume is attributed to USDT. The site...
AI vs Bitcoin: Why Laos Probably Won’t Choose Mining
Five months ago, Reuters reported that Laos was considering cutting off electricity supplies to cryptocurrency miners in the first quarter of 2026. The end of that quarter is now approaching - and today an optimistic tweet by Vivek Sen began circulating online, claiming that Laos has announced plans to mine Bitcoin in order to pay down its debt. Unfortunately, it is...
A Simple Way to Avoid AML Problems in Bitcoin
This article continues the discussion started in "AML Terrorism: The Dark Side of Transaction Monitoring". In that piece I examined how commercial AML systems work, why their methodologies are opaque, and how their "terror" affects ordinary users. Here I will not repeat those arguments but instead develop one specific idea that has recently turned into a daily operational...
Did USDC Really Overtake USDT in Transaction Volume?
Can you believe that USDC has surpassed USDT in annual transaction volume? That claim started circulating in the media yesterday. The source was said to be the Japanese investment bank Mizuho Financial Group. But none of the articles actually linked to the original source. Today I spent quite a while trying to track it down, and it looks like most of the references...
