South Africa is the latest country to come down on cryptocurrency investors, with the South African Revenue Service (SARS) sending audit requests to taxpayers, requesting them to disclose cryptocurrency trades and purchases. The audit request contains questions relating to the purpose for which the taxpayers purchased cryptocurrencies, with SARS also requesting a letter from theContinue reading “South Africa’s SARS accelerates crackdown on non-compliant Bitcoin traders”

A Mood of the Nation survey by India’s CoinDCX a few months ago had revealed that for 68% of the respondents, legal and regulatory clarity is a major concern. Thanks to recent developments, these concerns are likely to get even more compounded. According to a statement made by Anurag Thakur, Indian Minister of State forContinue reading “India: Minister dismisses possibility of introducing native cryptocurrency”

Grayscale has been at the head of a lot of Bitcoin-related developments over the past few months. It is in the news again today after its GBTC premium turned negative for the first time after its launch in 2013. The aforementioned premium represents an “overpayment” on behalf of mostly institutional buyers that seek Bitcoin exposure,Continue reading “Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust Premium turns negative for first time since launch”

PrimeXBT is the latest crypto-exchange to delist XRP after an announcement earlier today revealed the removal of the XRP/USD, XRP/BTC trading pairs. The delisting will take effect from Wednesday, 10 February 2021, at 15:00 UTC. Prior to this, the XRP pairs will be transferred to ‘reduce only’ status on Friday, 5 February 2021, at 15:00Continue reading “PrimeXBT to delist XRP trading pairs; cites ‘significant events surrounding Ripple’”

With the landscape for CBDCs heating up, many countries have accelerated their efforts to issue a central bank digital currency. China has had the most progress on this front, with the country conducting several test runs by distributing its digital yuan to its citizens through ‘red packets.’ According to a paper published by European policyContinue reading “Are CBDCs likely to be gigantic flops?”

It has been a little over 24 hours since Ripple released its official response to the SEC lawsuit. Since then, Ripple’s native crypto asset XRP has rallied by over 18% and was trading at around $0.33 at the time of writing. Among the many legal experts evaluating Ripple’s response was Attorney Jeremy Hogan who highlightsContinue reading “Ripple’s response to SEC has its merits according to lawyer”

Grayscale, one of the world’s largest digital asset managers, has reopened its Ethereum trust to investors. At 4 PM EST, an announcement confirmed that the Grayscale Ethereum Trust had resumed the private placement of its shares. The Trust’s private placement is offered on a periodic basis throughout the year and is now available to investorsContinue reading “Grayscale reopens Ethereum Trust ahead of CME ETH Futures launch”

Bitwise added AAVE and UNI to the Bitwise 10 Large Cap Crypto Index (BITX) that tracks the total return of the 10 largest crypto-assets, as measured and weighted by free-float market capitalization. These assets were added as part of Bitwise’s January month-end rebalance, in response to the growing demand for decentralized services. Bitwise CEO HunterContinue reading “Bitwise adds Uniswap and Aave to its large cap crypto index”

According to a recent research report by Bridgewater Associates, Bitcoin’s price could theoretically rise by at least 160% if allocations towards gold are diversified into Bitcoin instead. Exploring a hypothetical scenario where investors move some portion of their gold holdings into the cryptocurrency, the Bridgewater analysts concluded that this would hike the price of theContinue reading “Bitcoin could theoretically rise by 160%, IF this happens”

With Ethereum working towards transitioning to a complete PoS Layer 2 network, many in the community are concerned about when mass adoption may be incoming. This question was recently answered by Anthony Sassano, Founder of The Daily Gwei, during a recent interview when he said that it will be “soon incoming.” In an interview withContinue reading “Are ‘ETH killers’ reinforcing Ethereum’s lead and network effects?”

Binance, the world’s largest crypto-exchange by volume, has announced that it will be suspending withdrawals temporarily in order to address a large increase in “requests from new unique users.” In fact, while withdrawals did resume for a few minutes, they were suspended again soon. Binance CEO CZ was quick to take to Twitter to reassureContinue reading “Binance suspends withdrawals citing ‘increased requests from new users’”

Ripple has successfully completed an investment in Money Tap, according to a notice released by Japan-based SBI Holdings earlier today. Following the said investment, Ripple has now become the largest external shareholder of Money Tap with a 33% ownership stake in the company. Ripple first announced its plans to invest in Money Tap back inContinue reading “Ripple completes investment in SBI subsidiary Money Tap”