Elizabeth Warren Questions Bitcoin Miner, Post-Brexit Crypto Advantage + More News
Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.
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Mining news
- US Senator Elizabeth Warren questioned the environmental footprint of Greenidge Generation’s Bitcoin (BTC) mining operation in New York state in a detailed letter to the publicly traded company’s CEO. She wrote to Jeffrey Kirt that she was concerned about the company’s energy usage and impact on the environment and consumers.
- Bitcoin mining company TeraWulf raised USD 200m in debt and equity financing from institutional and individual investors. The miner, which expects to mine Bitcoin powered by nuclear, hydro and solar energy, will use the funding to achieve mining power of 6 exahash per second by the second half of 2022.
- BTC mining company Riot Blockchain announced it has mined BTC 466 during November 2021, or an increase of 298% over its November 2020 production of BTC 117. Year to date through November 2021, the company produced BTC 3,387, an increase of approximately 262% over its BTC production during the same 2020 period of BTC 935.
Adoption news
- UK ex-chancellor Philip Hammond, who recently joined crypto start-up Copper, said the UK must move quickly on digital assets to secure its post-Brexit advantage in financial services, per City AM. He added that he hopes legislators will support the use of new technology to trade digital assets and create a tokenized financial services sector.
- Mercado Libre, Latin America’s largest e-commerce company by market value, is integrating Paxos (PAX) blockchain infrastructure to allow users in Brazil to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrencies. Starting later this month, users of Mercado Pago, Mercado Libre’s digital wallet, will be able to buy and sell bitcoin, ethereum (ETH), and the stablecoin Pax dollar (USDP), whereas the minimum amount required for a transaction will be BRL 1 (USD 0.18), it added.
NFTs news
- Crypto platform Blockchain.com has announced they are launching a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace in beta that will enable users to browse, buy, sell, and store NFTs without leaving their Blockchain.com wallet. They have also added a new NFT Explorer to provide insight into the most popular NFTs.
Investments news
- Bitcoin trading volumes into USDT continued to trend downward for the third month in a row, trading only BTC 3.2m (down 20.7% from October and 27.8% from a recent high in August), per a report from CryptoCompare. BTC futures volumes fell in favor of ETH futures on the CME exchange: in November, CME’s BTC futures volumes decreased by 30.5% to USD 48.8bn, whilst ETH futures increased 11.6% to USD 23.4bn.
- The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) officially disapproved asset manager WisdomTree’s spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) after deferring on a decision several times this year. The watchdog rejected a proposed rule change from the Cboe BZX Exchange to list and trade shares of WisdomTree’s Bitcoin Trust, as they state that any rule change in favor of approving the ETF would not be “‘designed to prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices” nor “protect investors and the public interest.”
- Asset manager WisdomTree has announced the creation of a new crypto index for US investors, called the RWM WisdomTree Crypto Index. The new index is made in collaboration with investment adviser Ritholtz Wealth Management.
- Blockchain and digital asset investment firm Maven 11 Capital closed a USD 120m fund, its second crypto-focused fund. The fund will back infrastructure protocols, decentralized finance (DeFi) open-source protocols, and Web 3.0 applications, they added.
- Crypto payments infrastructure provider Moonpay announced it has closed a USD 555m Series A financing to accelerate its growth and invest in its team. The company has now reached a valuation of USD 3.4bn.
- Coinbase Cloud announced that it has USD 30bn worth of cryptoassets staked on its platform as of November 2021. They also have support for more than 30 protocols, and more than 60,000 nodes across their products.
Economics news
- The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned of intensifying inflationary pressures, especially in the United States, and new uncertainties caused by the Omicron variant of COVID-19, and said US central bankers should focus more on inflation risks, per Reuters. While inflation is likely to remain elevated well into 2022 in several countries, measures of inflation expectations for the medium and long-term remained close to policy targets in most economies, the IMF said.
Stablecoins news
- Accountant firm providing auditing services Moore Cayman stated that Tether (USDT) stablecoins were fully collateralized, as of September 30th. According to the auditor, Tether had assets totalling at least USD 69bn as of September 30th, including USD 30.6bn in commercial paper and certificates of deposit, USD 7.2bn in cash, almost USD 1bn in money market funds, and USD 19bn in Treasury bills.
Legal news
- The US SEC charged a Latvian citizen with defrauding hundreds of retail investors out of at least USD 7m through two separate fraudulent digital asset securities offerings. The first was an ICO of Denaro, which claimed to have a crypto debit card, while the second he offered securities of Innovamine, which purportedly offered a cloud mining program.
