Dollar up and renewable energy stocks down, while shares in president-elect’s media business rise by more than a third
Wall Street and bitcoin rallied to fresh record highs and the dollar soared after Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election, while renewable energy stocks fell.
Trump was declared the winner on Wednesday morning after securing the 270 electoral votes needed to take the presidency.
Continue reading...Craig Wright’s case referred for potential perjury and forgery prosecution after losing legal battle with crypto firms
The case of Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist who falsely claimed to be the creator of bitcoin, has been referred to the Crown Prosecution Service over a potential prosecution for perjury and forgery.
In March, Wright lost a legal battle with a coalition of cryptocurrency businesses who had pre-emptively sued to prevent him from enforcing his claim in the courts. In a sign of the extent of his defeat, the presiding judge, Mr Justice Mellor, took the unusual step of issuing an oral verdict within seconds of the case concluding.
Continue reading...CEO confirms once company has sold off remaining assets it will have more than amount required
The bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX has said it will be able to repay creditors the full $11bn (£8.8bn) it owes, as the boom-bust cycle repeats itself with a sharp increase in bitcoin prices.
John Ray III, who succeeded the disgraced Sam Bankman-Fried as the chief executive of FTX shortly after its collapse, said that once the exchange had sold off its remaining assets, it might have more than $16bn – well in excess of its debts.
Continue reading...Judge says evidence for his conclusion that Craig Wright did not create bitcoin is ‘overwhelming’
Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of bitcoin, is not the Australian computer scientist Craig Wright, a high court judge has ruled, ending a fractious two-month trial in London.
In a highly unusual decision, the presiding judge, Mr Justice Mellor, issued the verdict within seconds of the case concluding, promising to issue a “fairly lengthy written judgment” in due course.
Continue reading...Cryptocurrency rises as UK financial regulator says it will allow trading of crypto-backed securities
Bitcoin has reached a new record price of almost $73,000 (£57,000), as the UK financial regulator said it would allow the trading of cryptocurrency-backed securities.
The cryptocurrency hit a fresh high of $72,720 as of Monday evening having last week overtaken its previous November 2021 high of nearly $69,000.
Continue reading...Live, rolling coverage of business, economics and financial markets as exchange-traded funds help biggest cryptocurrency rally
The European Commission’s use of Microsoft email and office software broke its own privacy rules, an EU privacy watchdog has ruled.
Microsoft’s software transferred personal data outside the EU, breaching privacy rules, according to the European Data Protection Supervisor.
Continue reading...Australian attacks qualifications of his own expert witness during testimony at high court in London
Craig Wright, the Australian computer scientist who says he invented bitcoin under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, has denied forging documents to support his claim.
In his first day of giving evidence at the high court in London on Tuesday, Wright flatly denied any forgery or falsification and attacked the qualifications of his own expert witness who found otherwise. The hearing was part of a lawsuit brought by Copa, a coalition of cryptocurrency-linked tech firms that seek to invalidate his claims.
Continue reading...Hackers posted false news about a widely anticipated announcement that the SEC was expected to make about bitcoin
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said Wednesday that it is working with the FBI to investigate a fake message posted on its X social media account.
On Tuesday hackers posted false news about a widely anticipated announcement that the SEC was expected to make about bitcoin, leading the cryptocurrency’s price to spike and alarming observers. An SEC spokesperson confirmed to the Guardian in a statement that the unauthorized post on the @SECGov account “was not drafted or created by the SEC”.
Continue reading...Price of bitcoin briefly spiked more than $1,000, as ETF would have given way to invest without buying outright on a crypto exchange
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said Tuesday that a post sent from the agency’s account on the social platform X/Twitter announcing the approval of a long-awaited bitcoin exchange-traded fund was “unauthorized”, and that the agency’s account had been “compromised”.
The price of bitcoin briefly spiked more than $1,000 after the post on X claimed: “The SEC grants approval for #Bitcoin ETFs for listing on all registered national securities exchanges.” Cryptocurrency investors had already driven bitcoin’s price above $46,000 in anticipation of the approval.
Continue reading...Internal Revenue Service alleges Rodney Burton was part of a network that made ‘fraudulent’ presentations claiming high returns for investors based on crypto-mining operations that did not exist
A promoter of the HyperVerse crypto investment scheme has been arrested and charged in the US for his alleged role in the scheme, with court documents claiming he was part of a network that made “fraudulent promotional presentations” to investors and potential investors.
Rodney Burton, who goes by the name “Bitcoin Rodney”, was arrested in Florida on Friday and remains in custody pending transfer to Maryland, where the charges were laid. He has been charged with operating and conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business.
Continue reading...Binance and Coinbase are under investigation – but Bitcoin was trading at highest value in a year as FTX founder convicted of fraud
As the trial of the former crypto star and FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried began last month, headlines declared cryptocurrency was on trial too.
But when Bankman-Fried was found guilty on seven counts of wire fraud and money-laundering conspiracy Thursday evening, after less than five hours of jury deliberations, Bitcoin was trading at its highest price in a year.
Continue reading...Kristy Lynn Felkins of Nevada pleaded guilty in March to murder-for-hire charge as part of a deal to avoid trial
A Nevada woman who admitted to hiring a hitman on the internet for $5,000 in bitcoin to kill her ex-husband “and make it look like an accident” was sentenced to five years in prison.
Kristy Lynn Felkins, 38, of Fallon, Nevada, pleaded guilty in March to a charge of murder-for-hire as part of a deal with federal prosecutors that avoided trial, court records show.
Continue reading...President Nayib Bukele bet on bitcoin and its tumbling value has put the Central American country in a financially precarious spot
As crypto-Twitter cascaded with apocalyptic memes about the bankruptcy of cryptocurrency exchange FTX and the sharp drop in the bitcoin price, one account has remained notably silent on the topic.
Unlike in previous crashes, the president of El Savlador, Nayib Bukele, who made bitcoin legal tender a year ago, did not exhort his followers to “buy the dip”. The laser eyes, popular among crypto currency traders, have long since been removed from his Twitter profile.
Continue reading...The deal was conditional to due diligence of FTX’s balance sheet which raised enough concerns for Binance to back out
Cryptocurrency prices plunged for a second-straight day on Wednesday after crypto exchange Binance announced it was pulling out of its deal to purchase its failing rival FTX Trading.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were broadly lower on rumors and news reports that the Binance-FTX deal was in trouble. The CEOs of the two exchanges – Sam Bankman-Freid of FTX and Changpeng Zhao of Binance – had publicly agreed to a merger Tuesday, pending the ability for Binance to perform due diligence of FTX’s balance sheet.
Continue reading...New rules in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine cover all notionally valuable digital assets
Crypto exchanges must report suspected sanctions breaches to UK authorities under new rules brought in amid concerns that bitcoin and other cryptoassets are being used to dodge restrictions imposed in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Official guidance was updated on 30 August to explicitly include “cryptoassets” among those that must be frozen if sanctions are imposed on a person or company. As well as digital currencies, such as bitcoin, ether and tether, cryptoassets could include other notionally valuable digital assets such as non-fungible tokens.
Continue reading...An investigation revealed that companies use enough energy to power Houston, and contribute to growing carbon emissions
The largest US cryptomining companies have the capacity to use as much electricity as nearly every home in Houston, Texas; energy use that is contributing to rising utility bills, according to an investigation by Democratic lawmakers.
Cryptomining is a highly energy intensive process involving the use of specialized computers running constantly to solve complex math problems in order to create new virtual coins.
Continue reading...Value of assets dips below $1tn after Celsius Network halts withdrawals over ‘extreme’ conditions
The cryptocurrency market has endured another day of volatility as the Binance exchange temporarily suspended bitcoin withdrawals and the total value of the digital asset market dipped below $1tn (£820bn), after a cryptocurrency lender stopped customers from taking back their funds.
The cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius Network halted withdrawals because of “extreme market conditions”, prompting a sell-off.
Continue reading...Kryptovault’s operation is part of a fightback against criticism of the famously energy-intensive industry
A line of large blue skips full of chopped wood sit at the back of a site belonging to Norway’s biggest bitcoin mining operation, a 5,000 sq metre warehouse on the outskirts of Hønefoss, a small town 40 miles west of Oslo.
Hot air is being pumped into the 12 skips through bendy corrugated pipes curling out from the warehouse. Despite the snow, it will take a few days for the logs to be dried out, after which a local lumberjack, grateful for the free service, will take them away for sale.
Continue reading...Husband and wife, a rapper on TikTok, are accused in the US’s biggest-ever cryptocurrency theft case
The US justice department has announced the unraveling of its biggest-ever cryptocurrency theft case, seizing a record-shattering $3.6bn in bitcoin in a saga that has captivated the internet.
US officials said on Tuesday the recovered sum was linked to the hack of Bitfinex, a virtual currency exchange whose systems were breached by hackers nearly six years ago.
Continue reading...The cryptocurrency consumes more energy than Norway. As countries consider copying China’s ban, experts disagree on whether a greener version is possible
When bitcoin mining company Bit Digital started shipping its energy-intensive computers out of China in early 2021, eyebrows were raised. “A lot of people thought we were being overly paranoid,” says chief strategy officer Sam Tabar, who helped relocate all of the company’s machines to the US and Canada.
But the company’s paranoia paid off. China’s bitcoin mining ban last summer, driven partly by environmental concerns, sent the industry spinning into chaos. The announcement sparked a fire sale of the computers used to power bitcoin, with mining companies scrambling to ship more than 2m of the machines out of China. They arrived by the crateload in countries like the US, Russia and Kazakhstan.
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