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MONEY MATTERS: Stablecoin issuer Tether holds about $2.1 billion in cash and other liquid securities to back 2.8 billion USDT tokens, its general counsel Stuart Hoegner wrote in an affidavit Tuesday. The admission, coming days after the New York Attorney General revealed that Tether had lent $625 million and offered a $900 million line of credit to its affiliated crypto exchange Bitfinex, indicated that the stablecoin was not backed 1-to-1 with U.S. dollars as Tether once promised. Bitfinex apparently lost access to $850 million when bank accounts belonging to its payments processor, Crypto Capital, were seized, including by the U.S. government, and needed Tether’s reserves to make up the shortfall (though now it might just raise $1 billion in an IEO instead). Read the stories here, here and here
CRYPTO GROWTH: The bear market may have seen crypto usage drop in places, but bitcoin in particular is continuing to pick up traction in Istanbul, even as the Turkish lira’s price falls to six-month lows. Ozgur Guneri, CEO of crypto exchange BtcTurk, told CoinDesk that his firm has onboarded 30,000 new users in the past four months, with fluctuating inflation rates being a primary driver of crypto adoption in a nation already seeing relatively high usage rates. Full Story
TAX REFUNDS: U.S. taxpayers may be able to receive their federal and state refunds in bitcoin, thanks to a new partnership between payments processor Bitpay and tax services provider Refundo. Customers using Refundo’s services now have the option of receiving all or a portion of their tax refunds in bitcoin using the company’s CoinRT product, provided they pass know-your-customer rules. Full Story
XRP INDEX: Stock exchange operator Nasdaq is adding yet another cryptocurrency index – this time for the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency, XRP. The company announced Monday that, through its partnership with New Zealand-based blockchain data and research firm Brave New Coin, it will offer a “real-time” spot or reference rate for XRP – called the XRPLX – starting May 1. “Current constituent exchanges for the XRPLX include Bitfinex, Bitstamp, Poloniex and Kraken with Coinbase to be added in the next review,” Brave New Coin said. Full Story
SPOT MARKET: Aspiring crypto derivatives provider ErisX took one step closer to its ultimate goal Tuesday with the launch of a spot market. The exchange said it now supports dollar trading pairs with bitcoin, bitcoin cash, litecoin and ethereum, as well as bitcoin trading pairs with the other three cryptocurrencies. Chief strategy officer Matt Trudeau told CoinDesk that the launch was a “major milestone.” ErisX has also just raised $20 million in a third Series B round, backed by investors including Cboe Global Markets, Nasdaq Ventures and Pantera Capital. Full Story |
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| POSITIVE CLOSE: Bitcoin bounced up from the historically strong support of the 30-day moving average on Tuesday, weakening the bearish indicator divergence confirmed earlier this week. Prices also closed this month above the former support-turned-resistance of the 21-month EMA, solidifying the long-term bullish case. As a result, a rally to $6,000 could be seen in the next few weeks. Full Story |
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BEST OF THE BEST
BOTNET EXPANDS: Malicious actors have stolen some $4.6 million from users of the Electrum bitcoin wallet, reports cybersecurity firm Malwarebytes Labs. While this has been an ongoing issue, Malwarebytes identified two new campaigns to distribute malware, though they suspect there are “many more infection vectors.” What apparently began as a phishing campaign has now evolved into a fully-fledged Distributed Denial of Service botnet, with 152,000 infected hosts.
THE REST
TOP THAI TECH: One-third of Thai executives believe that blockchain may end up being the most valuable technology for their businesses over the next three years, reports the Bangkok Post. In a survey asking business execs to rank distributed ledger, artificial intelligence, extended reality and quantum computing technology, blockchain came out ahead at 35 percent of the total. AI was the second-most popular technology, with 32 percent of the overall vote, and quantum computing came in dead last with only 12 percent of the share.
NEW CHALLENGER: AMD’s new high-end graphics card, the Radeon VII, can reach a hash rate of 90MH/s with its stock performance, reports Tech Radar. This is nearly three times the best rate achieved by AMD’s RX Vega 64, and significantly higher than its competitor Nvidia’s Titan V graphics card (which has a top hash rate of 69MH/s). This makes the card extremely efficient at mining ethereum, mining the chain relatively cheaply when compared to its Nvidia counterpart. The fact that the Radeon VII is just over one-third the price of the Titan V is another advantage.
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WHO WON #CRYPTOTWITTER  |
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74% backed