On Jan. 25, the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) directors asked El Salvador to “narrow the scope” of its Bitcoin Law by “removing Bitcoin’s legal tender status.” Adopting a cryptocurrency as the Central American country has done “entails large risks for financial and market integrity, financial stability and consumer protection,” the fund wrote. Why did the…
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During Jerome Powell’s Jan. 11 United States Senate confirmation hearings, Sen. Patrick Toomey posed a question to the incumbent-and-future Federal Reserve chief: “If Congress were to authorize and the Fed were to pursue a central bank digital dollar, is there anything about that that ought to preclude a well-regulated privately-issued stablecoin from co-existing with a central…
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The cryptocurrency and blockchain industry experienced explosive growth in 2021, particularly in its decentralized finance (DeFi) and nonfungible token (NFT) sectors. The year was also marked by continued price volatility, baffling behavior from China, a grand experiment in Central America, escalating institutional interest, and the rise of some faster smart-contract networks — all of which…
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Puerto Rico recently announced that it may be looking for a blockchain solution to fight government corruption, particularly after a Puerto Rican mayor pleaded guilty to accepting a cash bribe of more than $100,000. But could a distributed digital ledger really make an impact in the unincorporated United States territory’s struggle against public fraud and…
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Back in August, there were some dire warnings about what the Biden Administration’s proposed infrastructure bill might do to the cryptocurrency and blockchain sector by driving crypto miners out of the United States, crippling America’s leadership role, etc. In response, the crypto industry mobilized a full-court-lobbying press on lawmakers. However, it was too late to…
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