Many predicted that Binance would never embrace regulation — it would only pretend to comply in jurisdictions like the United States. No more. Binance pleading guilty to money laundering and other federal charges on Nov. 21 means it’s giving up its free-booting ways. It will also pay a $4.3 billion fine, the largest in the…
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The ghastly events of this past month raise again some troubling questions: Does crypto have a terrorist fundraising problem? Are its networks really being exploited by terrorists to wreak global havoc? If so, what must it do better? On the other hand, maybe the problem is one of perception — more appearance than reality —…
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The Bank for International Settlements’ (BIS) Project Atlas report offers yet another indication that the worlds of crypto and traditional finance may be converging. On the surface, this proof-of-concept project backed by some of Europe’s biggest central banks — like German central bank Deutsche Bundesbank and Dutch central bank De Nederlandsche Bank — seems modest…
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In a world increasingly anxious about privacy and exploitation of one’s personal data by governments, corporations, social media platforms and banks, zero-knowledge proofs may offer some relief. Indeed, this emerging cryptographic protocol could partially remedy two rapidly growing global deficits: privacy and truth. ZK-proofs have already found a home within the cryptocurrency and blockchain sector…
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Over the past 12 months, some investors learned the hard way why they needed to move their crypto offline. Those who kept Bitcoin (BTC) and altcoins on crypto exchanges like FTX lost control of their assets, sometimes forever. Events drew a red line under the storied crypto adage: “Not your keys, not your coins.” FTX’s…
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When it comes to cryptocurrency/blockchain regulation, considerable attention has been focused, this past year, on the United States’ action (or inaction). But the U.S. is not the world, just one important player, and crypto, from its beginnings, has been a global enterprise. Perhaps, then, it makes sense to step back and ask: What is going…
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British society is both civil and democratic, so it wasn’t unexpected that the government of the United Kingdom would “consult” the public before signing off on a digital version of the British pound. The response it received may have been surprising, though. The public canvassing conducted jointly by His Majesty’s Treasury and the Bank of…
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Traditional financial firms finally believe that digital assets are here to stay. Or so one might conclude from the slew of announcements last week from some of the world’s premiere financial players. Among them is BlackRock — the world’s largest asset manager with $9 trillion in assets under management (AUM) — filed for permission to…
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The crypto sector appears to have dodged another bullet. At the time of publication, the United States has reached a political agreement to raise its debt ceiling, avoiding a calamitous default on its obligations, and this resolution probably won’t include any new taxes on cryptocurrencies. But that doesn’t mean the question of U.S. crypto taxation…
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Most technological revolutions come with an unforeseen darker side. When Austrian-born physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch first split the atom in the late 1930s, they probably didn’t anticipate their discovery would lead a few years later to the atomic bomb. The artificial intelligence (AI) revolution is arguably no different. AI algorithms have been around…
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