One of the oldest Bitcoin educational websites, 99Bitcoins, has been tracking headlines about Bitcoin’s “death” in mainstream English-language media since 2010. In 2024, only two entries were added to their "Bitcoin Obituaries" list - and one of them seems to have been a mistake. This means there was just one notable declaration of Bitcoin’s death in major media this year: an article on...
What if I told you that the cryptocurrency services you’ve come to consider decentralized aren’t actually decentralized? It may sound strange, but in many cases, decentralization turns out to be nothing more than an enticing buzzword. Let’s figure this out. WHAT DECENTRALIZATION MEANS IN THE CONTEXT OF CRYPTOCURRENCIES TODAY One day, a customer reached out to Rabbit...
U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has published a rule that targets front-end providers of DeFi services - like liquidity pools, lending platforms, and overcollateralized stablecoin protocols. While DeFi smart contracts operate autonomously without human involvement (making it impossible to demand transaction data directly from them), users rarely interact with these contracts directly. Instead, they...
Trading for BIO tokens is currently underway in the pre-market phase on Mexc and Bybit. The official Binance listing is set for January 3, 2025. BIO is the first token from the DeSci segment to debut on major centralized exchanges. Here’s what’s interesting: until now, BIO tokens were only available as rewards for directly funding DAOs within...
People use cryptocurrencies for various purposes, including charity. One such initiative was the launch of the MIRA token to raise funds for a critically ill girl. The creator transferred 50% of the token supply to the girl’s father, accompanied by a campaign focusing on compassion and mutual support. Today, MIRA’s price spiked, only to fall back within hours...
The Bank of Italy has published a report highlighting the growing popularity of P2P exchanges, which the authors describe as "crime-as-a-service." The report explains that with P2P exchanges, crime organizers no longer need to cover the financial tracks of their illicit activities themselves; instead, P2P brokers and other market participants handle that for them. As...
Coinmetrics presents a chart showing the market share of low-cap stablecoins, collectively valued at $10 billion. Among these, one stands out: PYUSD. 1. It’s issued by PayPal, a financial giant with decades of reputation and an enormous user base. 2. Despite this, PYUSD’s share is invisible on the chart - it’s that small. Even PayPal, with its massive...
Crypto exchanges Binance and Kraken have led a $10 million investment round in Usual Labs, the issuer of the USD0 stablecoin. At first glance, investing in a new stablecoin issuer might seem unprofitable. The stablecoin market is already saturated and divided among major players. But if giants like Binance and Kraken see potential, Usual Labs’ business model must offer something...
Recently, two F2Pool-mined Bitcoin blocks excluded transactions marked "sanctioned". HOW IT WORKS: Transactions enter a mempool, awaiting inclusion in a block. Miners typically choose those with the highest fees. But F2Pool's blocks 875575 & 875840 seem to actively exclude certain transactions, not just low-fee ones. These excluded txs were linked to sanctioned addresses. THIS RAISES CONCERNS:...
In 2024, spot ETFs for Bitcoin and Ethereum were launched in the United States. Each investment in such funds must be backed by actual cryptocurrency purchases. This means that every dollar flowing into these funds directly translates into crypto purchases. But what if these funds decide to sell their crypto? Will they be able to get back the...