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Dogecoin could do a better job at payment than Bitcoin and Ether, says Musk

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    Dogecoin could do a better job at payment than Bitcoin and Ether, says Musk

    Elon Musk has come out in favor of Dogecoin (DOGE) again after saying that the cryptocurrency would do a better job at payment than Bitcoin and Ether.

    Musk rates DOGE above BTC and ETH

    Elon Musk is probably the number one fan of Dogecoin. He has used his influence to talk up the meme coin on various occasions. He has done it again today after stating that he believes that Dogecoin would do a better job at payment than Bitcoin and Ether.

    Musk said this while replying to a tweet by crypto YouTuber Matt Wallace. Wallace was expressing his excitement for an upcoming Dogecoin upgrade, which he believes will make it one of the most widely used cryptocurrencies in the world. The Tesla CEO replied to the tweet, attacking the methods used by Bitcoin and Ether.

    Dogecoin Up By 5%

    The tweet by Musk didn’t push Dogecoin’s price higher as it used to in the price. DOGE is currently up by 6.5% and crossed the $0.2 mark earlier today. The cryptocurrency market is currently in a bearish trend, with the prices of most cryptocurrencies down by over 50%.

    Dogecoin reached an all-time high of $0.7 earlier this year. However, it has lost roughly 70% of its value since then but remains one of the top ten cryptocurrencies by market cap.

    Barclays blocks UK customers transferring funds to Binance

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      Barclays blocks UK customers transferring funds to Binance

      Barclays has stopped UK customers from transferring funds to Binance. The ban happened after the FCA said that the digital asset exchange was not authorized to undertake crypto business in the UK last month.

      A notification was sent to the British clients of Barclays that it has blocked debit and credit payments to Binance, which would start immediately and was intended “to help to keep your money safe”.

      Barclays’ decision comes after a period in which UK banks have struggled to decide whether to allow their customers to move funds to and from crypto exchanges, together with concerns about the lack of regulatory oversight in the sector.

      Barlcays is not the first bank blocking its customers from using Binance

      The UK-based bank TSB already decided to ban its customers from buying crypto from Binance. The bank claimed that exchanges have low-security standards, which enable scammers. Another bank that had these concerns was NatWest, and it banned its clients from using several exchanges as well

      Around 2.3 m people in the UK hold cryptocurrencies, according to the FCA. The vast majority of these people use offshore exchanges such as Binance.

      Binance has repeatedly been struggling with regulations

      The United Kingdom’s FCA had warned Binance last month over its activities in the UK, setting off a chain reaction of UK banks banning the exchange for its users. Binance itself stated that it is doing nothing wrong and has no activities in the UK. If you are interested in the whole story and our approach to the situation, Binance finds itself in. You can read our journal about it here.

      Popular digital artist Beeple launches an NFT platform

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        Popular digital artist Beeple launches an NFT platform

        The nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace has experienced one of the most amazing growth periods in the cryptocurrency space in the past few months. The sector continues to grow as more companies launch their services.

        Beeple launches an NFT platform

        Mike Winkelmann, popularly known as the digital artist Beeple, launched an NFT platform yesterday. The platform, WENEW, is expected to capture some iconic events in various entertainment and sports events.

        In a press release, the team said, “Today, pioneering digital artist Mike Winkelmann, more commonly known as Beeple, announces the launch of WENEW, a curator and provisioner of iconic moments as non-fungible tokens (NFTs).”

        The launch of the platform comes as Beeple seeks to change the way people interact with history-making moments and how they remember them. “By curating and releasing NFTs of the most memorable moments in music, fashion, sports, politics and more, WENEW unites the world’s most celebrated icons with savvy collectors of culture and legacy,” the press release added.

        WENEW is dubbed the memory palace of the metaverse. The platform is already partnering with renowned entities such as TIME Magazine, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Wasserman, and Endeavor.

        The first release to capture a tennis tournament

        The team has partnered with Wimbledon to capture and celebrate Andy Murray’s historic win in 2013. “Using blockchain technology, the platform will give creators a new way to immortalize their most influential events, starting with an unforgettable piece of tennis history, in collaboration with Wimbledon and Andy Murray,” the team added.

        The inaugural auction will take place from July 2 – 5, 2021, and will feature the moment Andy Murray won the Grand Slam tennis tournament in 2013. The captured moment will be put up for auction by Wimbledon and Murray, and the highest bidder will own Murray’s match-winning point and play tennis with the star on a court at Wimbledon.

        Beeple is popular within the digital art world. His piece “Everyday: The First 5000 Days” remains the most expensive NFT after it was sold for $69.3 million in March.

        Jay-Z plans to auction ‘Reasonable Doubt’ NFT at Sotheby’s

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          Jay-Z plans to auction ‘Reasonable Doubt’ NFT at Sotheby’s

          Jay-Z will celebrate the 25th anniversary of his debut album, Reasonable Doubt, by minting and selling his first non-fungible token.

          The new piece is  titled Heir to the Throne

          For the NFT, Jay-Z commissioned artist Derrick Adams to create a unique animated digital piece inspired by the Reasonable Doubt cover. The new piece is titled Heir to the Throne, which was originally intended to be the title of Reasonable Doubt. Heir to the Throne NFT will be auctioned online through Sotheby’s. Bidding starts at $1,000, and the auction runs from today, June 25, until July 2 at 10 a.m. ET. A portion of the auction proceeds will benefit Shawn Carter Foundation.

          Damon Dash, one of the co-founders of Roc-A- Fella Records along with Jay-Z and Kareem Burke, was sued for allegedly trying to sell the copyright of “Reasonable Doubt” at an NFT auction just days before the announcement. Dash later stated that he was actually trying to sell his entire stake in Roc-A-Fella as NFT, according to TMZ.

          Sotheby’s accepts cryptocurrency ETH and BTC as a payment option. The famed auction house said earlier this week that it would accept crypto payments for the upcoming sale of an ultra-rare 100-carat diamond.

          Jay-Z shows he owns a crypto punk on Twitter

          Another notable event today is that Jay-Z changed his profile picture on Twitter to a crypto punk. On his Twitter account @sc, he can be seen showing off CryptoPunk #6095, which he bought on OpenSea 2 months ago for 55 Ethereum.

          Ethereum London Hardfork is live on Ropsten Network

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            Ethereum London Hardfork is live on Ropsten Network

            The London Hardfork, also known as EIP 1559, went live on the Ropsten Testnet network this Thursday. The launch on Ropsten is the first of three proposed testnets that the London upgrade is expected to go live on before the launch of the mainnet.

            The launch only affects the Ethereum testnet and not the Ethereum mainnet

            The Ethereum blockchain is one of the most widely used networks for smart contracts and decentralized financial applications (DeFi). The current transaction fee model is considered unsustainable, as periods of high network activity can lead to users paying expensive fees. While Ethereum waits to move to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) network, better known as Ethereum 2.0, the EIP 1559 upgrade has been proposed to serve as a temporary solution to the fee challenge.

            For now, the rollout only affects Ethereum testnets and not the Ethereum mainnet, so users won’t notice anything different just yet, but the upgrade should follow the latest update known as Berlin, which was activated on the Ethereum mainnet just a few months ago.

            The upgrade has to be activated on two more testnets scheduled later this year

            Following the launch of the EIP 1559 upgrade on the Ropsten network, the upgrade will be activated on Goerli Network at block number 5062605, with commissioning scheduled for 30 June. The Rinkeby testnet is scheduled for July 7, after attaining block number 8897988. Ropsten miners and Goerli/Rinkeby validators will now have to expand their gas limits to double what they had before. This is because once London is live, the block size will be doubled and EIP-1559 will fill the blocks to about 50%.

            The reason the upgrade is called London is because Ethereum ran out of names for their planned network upgrades. At some point they got the suggestion to use Devcon city names for upgrades, and that led to it being called London since that’s where Devcon 1 was held.

            Bitcoin to become an official legal tender in El Salvador on Sept 7

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              Bitcoin to become an official legal tender in El Salvador on Sept 7

              El Salvador has adopted Bitcoin as a legal tender, but the move would become official in a few weeks. Thus, marking another remarkable achievement for the world’s leading cryptocurrency.

              El Salvador’s Bitcoin adoption will become official on September 7

              El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele announced yesterday that the recently passed law to make Bitcoin a legal tender would become official and take effect on September 7. The move would make El Salvador the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency a legal tender.

              Earlier this month, Cryptonary reported that The El Salvador parliament approved the bill to make Bitcoin a legal tender. The adoption has come with its challenges, with the World Bank refusing to support El Salvador with the technical aspect needed to implement Bitcoin as a legal tender.

              However, El Salvador is moving forward, and the bill will take effect on September 7. The Central American country said it would release an official digital wallet to support the Bitcoin use. The digital wallet, dubbed Chivo, will be connected to other Bitcoin wallets globally.

              Bitcoin will improve remittance

              To encourage the use of the Chivo wallet, President Nayib Bukele said the government would give $30 worth of BTC to users that download the app. He pointed out that adopting Bitcoin comes with numerous benefits, including the ease of cross-border transactions. President Nayib Bukele said remittance with Bitcoin is easy and can be done at any time of the day, with no restrictions.

              Some countries are already looking to make similar moves to El Salvador. Deputy Carlos Antonio Rejala Helman of the Hagamos Party in Paraguay has called on the government to make Bitcoin a legal tender.

              SEC refuses to approve a Bitcoin ETF yet again

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                SEC refuses to approve a Bitcoin ETF yet again

                The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has postponed a decision on whether to approve the first Bitcoin exchange traded fund (ETF), the regulator said on Thursday.

                The SEC has delayed a decision on VanEck’s planned Bitcoin product for the second time since April, when it said it needed more time to study the proposal. On Wednesday, the regulator postponed its decision again, this time asking for more comments on whether the product should be allowed to trade on public markets.

                The SEC needs to know whether the proposed ETF is vulnerable to manipulation and if any single market participant would be able to “buy or sell large amounts of bitcoin without significant market impact,” according to the press release.

                Why has the SEC refused to approve another ETF?

                It was predicted that SEC Chair Gary Gensler, who had lectured on digital assets at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), would be more open-minded. However, since he took office in April, the agency has continued to express concern about the lack of oversight of cryptocurrency exchanges. It has also issued new warnings about the risks of investing in mutual funds that invest in Bitcoin futures.

                The SEC has received a dozen bitcoin ETF proposals over the past eight years, but has not approved any of them due to investor protection concerns. In recent months, the regulator also delayed decisions on ETFs proposed by Kryptoin and WisdomTree.

                Bitcoin’s privacy-focused Taproot upgrade to launch soon

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                  Bitcoin’s privacy-focused Taproot upgrade to launch soon

                  Taproot is the most significant upgrade to the Bitcoin network in years and is expected to launch before the end of the year.

                  Bitcoin’s taproot upgrade will be active soon

                  Bitcoin remains the most valuable cryptocurrency in the marketplace by far. However, its network hasn’t undergone any major upgrade in years. The Taproot upgrade is expected to bring some privacy features and is set to launch before the end of the year.

                  This weekend, the Taproot upgrade was finally locked in after reaching a significant milestone as it draws closer to activation. Currently, 90% of the Bitcoin mining hashrate signaled for the network improvement. Data from Taproot.watch shows that the lock-in stage has been achieved.

                  Per the data, all recognised mining pools indicated the need for the upgrade, with Slush Pool leading the way. The leading two mining pools by hashrate, AntPool and F2Pool, were also amongst the earliest supporters of the Taproot upgrade on the Bitcoin network.

                  Bitcoin’s first upgrade in years

                  Bitcoin core developer Pieter Wuille explained that this is the first upgrade to the Bitcoin network in years. The Taproot upgrade is the first to be introduced to the Bitcoin network since the SegWit update in August 2017.

                  The Taproot feature “extends Bitcoin’s script capabilities in ways that make certain things cheaper (especially more complex applications like multisig and layer 2 things), and somewhat more private by often hiding what the exact spending rules were,” he explains.

                  The Taproot upgrade is expected to take place around November. However, Wuille said the real work begins afterward as they build the software to leverage the benefits of the network upgrade.

                  Thailand bans meme coins and NFTs from trading

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                    Thailand bans meme coins and NFTs from trading

                    The Thai Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued new regulations for cryptocurrency exchanges doing business in Thailand. Crypto exchanges are not allowed to trade certain forms of cryptocurrencies, such as meme coins, fan coins and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

                    Thailand Sets New Rules for Crypto Exchanges

                    Thailand sets new rules for Crypto Exchanges, The Thai Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced Friday that its board has approved new rules for cryptocurrency exchanges. Secretary-General Ruenvadee Suwanmongkol said its board meeting on June 9 passed a resolution approving the SEC Notification No. Kor Thor. 18/2564, which establishes the rules.  According to the SEC’s notification, digital asset exchanges are prohibited from “offering services linked to utility tokens or cryptocurrencies that have any of the following characteristics:” A meme token: a token with no obvious goal, content, or underlying value whose value is determined by social media trends; Influencers’ fame is used to create a fan token or a token that is non-fungible (NFT).

                    It is worth noting that exchange tokens have also been added to the list of banned tokens. This means that tokens like Uniswap or BNB may no longer be tradable on exchanges in Thailand.

                    Dogecoin and Shiba Inu will likely be affected by the new set of rules

                    Although, the SEC does not mention the name of any specific coins, meme cryptocurrencies, such as Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu coin (SHIB), are likely to be affected, just like currencies created around an influencer such as Akoin, which was created by the artist Akon, or other fan tokens such as Ac Milan Fan Token (ACM).

                    The risk of strict rules against meme coins is that coins with a use case that also leverage the meme culture of the cryptocurrency market could also be affected by these laws if the research is not done properly. NFT artists who have a user base in Thailand will also likely be affected by the new set of rules. Their art will no longer be tradable and could lead to a decrease in buyers for artists who have a following in Thailand.

                    Token issuers that fail to comply with their white papers are at risk of having their tokens delisted from exchanges

                    Crypto exchanges must also establish a requirement “to be imposed in the event that digital tokens issued by their own exchange or related persons are listed on the exchange.” Token issuers that fail to comply with their white papers and related rules risk having their tokens delisted from the exchange, the regulator warned.

                    The Thai SEC also noted that “After publication in the Government Gazette, the Notification has become effective from 11 June 2021 onwards without retrospective effect.”

                    Korean exchange UpBit delists 5 cryptocurrencies

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                      Korean exchange UpBit delists 5 cryptocurrencies

                      The popular Korean exchange Upbit has delisted 5 cryptocurrencies and flagged another 25 coins under “Investment Warning”.

                      The reason for the removal are new regulations

                      On social media, Korean traders are calling it “Bloody Friday” because many of the popular cryptocurrencies listed on Upbit have been removed. The delisted coins aren’t major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum or XRP, but alternative cryptocurrencies that are mostly traded in Korea. The reason for the removal are regulations that penalize exchanges for having too many coins on their exchange.

                      The cryptocurrencies that have been removed from the exchange are MARO, PCI, OBSR, SOLVE and QTCON. What these coins  have in common is that they were very popular in South Korea, but did not receive much attention in other countries. It is very likely that UpBit decided to remove these coins because they are considered less established and could be considered riskier than the coins UpBit decided to keep.

                      There is a good chance more exchanges will follow

                      There is a good chance that other Korean exchanges will follow and also delist similar cryptocurrencies to avoid being penalized by the banks. The reason why banks have decided to penalize exchanges for having too many cryptocurrencies is because of a warning released by the central bank stating that if Korean exchanges continue to list highly speculative assets, they will create a higher risk for Korean banks than if they only list established cryptocurrencies.

                      MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin holdings close to $3 billion after buying $177m worth...

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                      MicroStrategy is one of the largest corporate holders of Bitcoin, and the company has now added more bitcoins to its balance sheet. MicroStrategy purchases $177...