News

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed charges against the founders of NovaTech for running a Ponzi scheme that netted $650 million in cryptocurrency, the agency said on Monday. The SEC is accusing Cynthia and Eddy Petion of allegedly orchestrating the scam as a “crypto asset investment program” and multi-level marketing (MLM) company that, according to the agency, primarily targeted the Haitian-American community between 2019 and 2023. “NovaTech and the Petions caused untol...

Coinbase once again came out swinging Monday against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC’s) yearslong attempt to expand a bureaucratic definition of the word “exchange,” which if successful would bring the DeFi ecosystem firmly under the regulator’s purview.  In an eight-page comment submitted to the SEC on Monday, Coinbase Chief Legal Office Paul Grewal chastised the potential rule change as “arbitrary” and “irrational” in several respects, and urged the agency to “abandon its effo...

Growing excitement over the Kamala Harris presidential campaign may be contributing to Bitcoin’s recent price decline, analysts at Bernstein wrote in a report published Monday. Odds that Harris will win the election have shot up in recent polls, as well as on crypto prediction markets platform Polymarket since President Joe Biden backed out of the race for the Democratic candidacy in favor of his vice president. This is a bearish sign, according to analysts at the investment firm, due to how Dem...

Could crypto holders influence the result of this year’s U.S. presidential election? According to Paradigm, a prominent crypto venture capital firm, fresh polling data suggests yes. In a report released by Paradigm Monday, the company stated that “making inroads with crypto owners” could boost Vice President Kamala Harris’ victory odds come November. Specifically looking at Democrats, the company found that plenty of “crypto voters are up for grabs.”  Former President and current Republican cand...

In a notable shift from the previous quarter, venture capital (VC) funding in the cryptocurrency sector experienced a modest rise in total investment value during Q2 2024, even as the number of deals saw a significant decline. According to the latest PitchBook report, startups in the crypto space secured a total of $2.7 billion across 503 deals. The good news is that it represents a 2.5% increase in invested capital compared to Q1 2024, but there's been a 12.5% drop in deal volume. VC Sentiment...

Following Binance’s February announcement that it would delist Monero (XMR) and its finalization later that month, the exchange has now announced its last steps to get the privacy coin off its platform. In an August 12 blog post, Binance said it will convert the balances of 15 different tokens, including XMR, to USD Coin (USDC) on Sept. 2, 2024. The conversion will be complete and the USDC will be in users’ wallets by Mar. 1, 2025. The announcement explains that the conversion rate for the asset...

Bitcoin's (BTC) price dipped below $58,000 in early morning hours, as institutional investors appear to have temporarily halted their buying spree. At the time of writing, BTC is trading for $59,332.20. The dip comes as analysts noted a cessation in the transfer of Tether (USDT) from Tether Treasury to exchanges over the past two days. The halt in USDT transfers to exchanges suggests institutional investors are pausing their crypto purchases, likely contributing to the current price dip. The mov...