THE first LGBT+ cryptocurrency launched Friday, and its creators are hoping to start trading early this year.
The founders of Maricoin said they want the coin to be a means of payment at LGBT-friendly businesses and events, as have an aim of “changing the world.”
Meanwhile, Bitcoin is still below $50,000, which indicates that traders are not aggressively buying it.
The entire cryptocurrency market exploded in 2021, but experts predict that 2022 will bring even more excitement to the industry, and particularly Bitcoin.
This increased attention will also bring more risks and regulations to the crypto market.
Buyers beware, though, because a bigger market means bigger risks, especially from hackers and cybercriminals using hard-to-trace crypto payments for ransomware attacks.
Digital currency users should pay extra attention to their at-home cybersecurity, and not risk being subjected to hackers demanding Bitcoin, Solana or Ethereum ransoms.
Read our cryptocurrency live blog for the latest news and updates…
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Man loses $1.6million, part three
The app demanded $1.5million from the victim and threatened to freeze his account if he didn’t pay.
“I go look on the FBI site and lo and behold, there’s this public alert about this type of scam,” he told the news outlet. “I’m 52, my entire life savings, gone in a matter of a month.”
The common scam, which involves meeting someone on a dating app, depositing money into a fake investment app (which is constantly changed, renamed or deleted) then losing it all, is called the “Pig Butchering Scam,” KMGH-TV detailed.
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Man loses $1.6million, part two
The man said he successfully deposited funds into the account, including money from his retirement accounts.
He was reportedly able to withdraw cryptocurrency too, until he attempted to take out more.
A “customer service agent” with the app told him “you need to repay the loan before you can withdraw cash from your account,” KMGH-TV reported.
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Man loses $1.6million in scam
A man says he lost his life savings in a scheme dubbed the “Pig Butchering Scam.”
The 52-year-old told Denver ABC affiliate KMGH-TV that he met a woman on a dating app who appeared to have similar interests to him.
The conversation turned to cryptocurrency, something he’d made about $70,000 on in a few years.
The man told the news outlet that the woman he fell for online convinced him to invest on a mobile and web app that seemed legitimate to the software engineer.
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Robinhood prepares to launch cryptocurrency wallet
Robinhood announced a new partnership with a blockchain data analytics platform ahead of its planned cryptocurrency wallet launch.
Robinhood will use Chainalysis’ data, analytics, and software to meet compliance requirements and provide secure crypto transactions, Motley Fool reported.
The partnership comes ahead of the planned 2022 launch of Robinhood’s crypto wallet.
More than 1.6million people are on a waitlist for the new feature, according to Motley Fool.
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Banks embrace crypto, continued
Executives at large banks are beginning to hop on the cryptocurrency train as some invest their time in learning about the new payment method.
Bank of America spokesman Mark Pipitone told the New York Times, “The bank sees potential in blockchain, and we’re currently a leading patent holder in the space with more than 160 patents. But we still haven’t found a use at scale to make the financial lives of customers and clients better.”
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Banks embrace crypto
Banks are paying for slowly catching on to the future of cryptocurrency as they struggle to benefit and profit.
As cryptocurrency start-ups explode, they are starting to offer credit cards and loans while banks are left in the dust.
According to the New York Times, “Bank of America’s chief executive, Brian Moynihan, barred the giant company’s wealth managers from putting any client money into cryptocurrency-related investments.”
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Dogecoin spikes after Tesla news
Dogecoin saw a more than 20 percent jump after Elon Musk announced Tesla would start accepting it as payment.
He said in a Tweet that Tesla would allow purchases of some merchandise with Dogecoin and “see how it goes.”
Dogecoin went from a fraction of a penny in worth at the start of 2021 to a record-high price above 74 cents in May, CNBC reported.
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Elon Musk says Dogecoin is best for transactions
The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX says Dogecoin is the best cryptocurrency for transactions.
Elon Musk told Time Magazine that the meme coin is better suited to transact with over Bitcoin for two reasons.
He said the transaction volume of Bitcoin is low and the cost per transaction is high.
Musk said he believes Bitcoin is more suitable as a store of value while Dogecoin “encourages people to spend, rather than sort of hoard.”
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Crypto investments top $30billion
Investors contributed a record $30billion to the cryptocurrency industry in 2021, according to Fortune.
The news outlet cited data from Bloomberg News that reportedly showed $7.2billion came from investors based in the United States.
The $30billion is almost four times the $8billion that investors spent with companies in the crypto industry in 2018, Fortune reported.
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Crypto investor death mystery, continued
Cotton took with him to the grave the keys that allowed access to a digital vault containing cash investors ploughed into Quadriga CX.
Jilted investors have demanded his corpse be exhumed and tests run to confirm it is his body.
Criminal probes continue by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the FBI as leading digital investing publication Coindesk branded his death as “crypto’s biggest mystery”.
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Crypto investor’s mysterious death
A new documentary on rogue crypto trader Gerald Cotton, who took up to $215million in Bitcoin and other digital currencies to his grave, has sparked rumors he may have faked his death.
Cotton’s sudden death from complications of Crohn’s disease at age 30 shocked the crypto world – but some believe it may have been part of an elaborate “exit scam”.
One source in the documentary goes as far as to claim Cotton may have used a substance known as “Haitian zombie powder” to fake his death.
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The most valuable cryptocurrencies
Cryptocurrency prices hit record highs earlier this year amid interest from high profile individuals such as Elon Musk and more institutional investment in the sector.
The most valuable coins are Bitcoin and Ethereum but there are lots of alternatives or altcoins aiming to benefit from crypto interest.
Values can be volatile though and regulators have warned that investors could lose all their money.
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Apple plans for crypto
Cook continued by saying that although Apple was looking at cryptocurrency technology, it’s “not something we have immediate plans to do.”
An Apple Pay executive said in 2019 that the company sees “long-term potential” in cryptocurrency.
But it seems like crypto fans shouldn’t get excited, because even if Apple does introduce cryptocurrency products or services in the future, it doesn’t seem like it will happen anytime soon.
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Apple CEO Tim Cook owns crypto
Apple CEO Tim Cook recently revealed he owns cryptocurrency.
At the New York Times DealBook conference, Cook was asked if he owns Bitcoin or Ethereum and said, “I do. I think it’s reasonable to own it as part of a diversified portfolio,” according to CNBC.
“I’m not giving anyone investment advice by the way,” he noted.
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GYEN price predictions, continued
Wallet Investor expects the price of GYEN to add another zero and fall to $0.00845 in a year’s time.
Meanwhile, Digitalcoin expects GYEN to gain to around $0.022 in 2021.
Furthermore, Goldman Sachs expert Andrew Lokenauth is even more bullish on GYEN.
“From my prior experience, I feel it will be included on other exchanges due to demand,” he told The Sun.
“Also, due to current hype and mentions of GYEN on Reddit and Twitter, this can easily reach 10 cents.”
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Long-term GYEN price predictions
The price of GYEN has jumped thanks to becoming available to Coinbase pro members.
Where the price will wind up in the future is tough to predict – and it is yet to be included on other major exchanges like Robinhood.
Marie Tatibouet, chief marketing officer of crypto exchange Gate.io, told The Sun that stablecoins aren’t exactly supposed to surge in trading like this.
“It looks like the demand is so high that the peg has failed to hold,” she said.
“A good stablecoin shouldn’t surge or fail under scrutiny.”
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More than 50 countries place bans
51 countries have placed bans on cryptocurrencies, according to a report from the Global Legal Research Directorate of the Law Library of Congress.
To date, nine countries have a total ban, and 42 have an implicit ban. The implicit ban forbids financial institutions from using crypto.
The number of countries with bans has more than doubled since research first came out in 2018, according to Markets Insider.
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What is NuCypher, continued
This allows users to share private data with a number of others in a secure way.
Holders of its token NU can stake their tokens through the network to run a node, which is responsible for creating and sending information.
Interestingly, NuCypher token is an ERC-20, which means it is built on Ethereum.
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What is NuCypher?
NuCypher was founded by Michael Egorov MacLane Wilkison in 2015, but it wasn’t until 2019 when the public testnet for NuCypher’s network was launched.
NuCypher specifically operates as a decentralized key management system that uses blockchain technology.
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$7.7billion lost to scammers in 2021
More than $7.7billion worth of cryptocurrency was stolen worldwide in 2021.
The revelation came in a report by blockchain data firm Chainalysis, which also found scams involving crypto are up 81 percent over last year.
Scams were the largest crypto-based crime with fewer individual scam victims in 2021 but a higher average loss per victim, Yahoo Money reported.
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DogeZilla: The next meme coin
A newly-launched cryptocurrency, DogeZilla, exploded out of the gate.
Within its first eight days of existence, DogeZilla was said to have grown into a super microcap of $500million from just $50,000.
Billionaire Elon Musk also got involved with DogeZilla by posting a tweet.
Replying to a tweet about an underwater mud volcano, he wrote: “Cover story for Godzilla obv.”
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What is Dogezilla?
Founded by someone with the alias of 9ZEROES, DogeZilla models itself as a community-based project.
DogeZilla claims it aims to make the crypto space safer for users.
According to DogeZilla’s whitepaper, it has a vault that verifies crypto launches.
It says: “Obviously, it is not a 100% fool-proof method because that simply doesn’t exist in this space, but reducing risk to the highest degree is the purpose of Vault.”
Moreover, users can gather DogeZilla tokens by holding.
Specifically, “5% Holder Rewards are dispersed to all token holders relative to their holding percentages,” DogeZilla claims.
For upcoming projects, DogeZilla is planning to launch an NFTs Invasion Series in early 2022.
Its logo features an amused dog in what appears to be a dinosaur costume.
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Banks embrace crypto, continued
Executives at large banks are beginning to hop on the cryptocurrency train as some invest their time in learning about the new payment method.
Bank of America spokesman Mark Pipitone told the New York Times, “The bank sees potential in blockchain, and we’re currently a leading patent holder in the space with more than 160 patents. But we still haven’t found a use at scale to make the financial lives of customers and clients better.”
-
Banks embrace crypto
Banks are paying for slowly catching on to the future of cryptocurrency as they struggle to benefit and profit.
As cryptocurrency start-ups explode, they are starting to offer credit cards and loans while banks are left in the dust.
According to the New York Times, “Bank of America’s chief executive, Brian Moynihan, barred the giant company’s wealth managers from putting any client money into cryptocurrency-related investments.”
