Aurelia Butler

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    in Cryptocurrency

    China’s Central Bank-Owned ‘Digital Yuan’ App Now Allows Gifting of Cash

    To drive the adoption of their Digital Yuan smartphone app, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) has introduced a new gifting feature. This allows users to send cash gifts to one another through ‘red envelopes.’ It is customary in China for friends and family to gift each other red envelopes containing money for significant events. These include birthdays, anniversaries, and graduations. Similarly, it is common to receive a red envelope for special celebrations like the Lunar New Year. This latest update allows Digital Yuan users to gift digital red envelopes to others via popular messenger services such as Tencent’s QQ and WeChat. The envelopes can even be sent via entities owned by Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) – a major Chinese commerce company. Users must download the Digital Yuan app to redeem the digital red envelope. Current users are also now incentivized to invite more users onto the platform. They will be rewarded with customizable avatars to use across the app itself. The more users invited, the more unique the avatar can be. Users who invite three or more people will receive ‘unique’ and ‘decorative’ customization options. Coming up almost a full year since its initial release in January, the app has undergone multiple improvements to its UI and functionality. These upgrades were implemented to encourage widespread adoption across the country.Global adoption of CBDCs is an important aspect for investors to consider. As 2023 is touted as the year of regulation by analysts, global action to regulate crypto and provide state-backed currencies will also likely affect the market.Additional crypto news in Asia: Kraken to Cease Operations in Japan, Cites a Weak Crypto MarketSee original on DailyCoin More

  • 138 Shares99 Views

    in Cryptocurrency

    Bulls in XRP Market Surrender After Facing Stiff Resistance at $0.3717

    Bears’ control of the XRP market was clear early on as its prices fell to an intraday low of $0.3562 before finding support. As of the time of this writing, the market has lost 2.76% of its value, dropping to $0.3585.During the slump, both the market capitalization and the 24-hour trading volume plummeted by 2.73% to $18,055,387,561 and 12.46% to $911,147,706 respectively, bolstering the bearish sentiment in the XRP market.The post Bulls in XRP Market Surrender After Facing Stiff Resistance at $0.3717 appeared first on Coin Edition.See original on CoinEdition More

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    in Cryptocurrency

    MicroStrategy adds to Bitcoin stake despite steep loss

    In a Bloomberg interview published earlier this year, CEO and blockchain personality Michael Saylor told reporters: “We’re only acquiring and holding Bitcoin, right? That’s our strategy. We’re not sellers.” Today’s filing represents the first publicly reported BTC sale by the firm in recent memory. In supporting the decision, MicroStrategy wrote: Continue Reading on Coin Telegraph More

  • 163 Shares149 Views

    in Economy

    Exxon sues EU in move to block new windfall tax on oil companies

    (Reuters) – U.S. oil major Exxon Mobil Corp (NYSE:XOM) is suing the European Union in a bid to force it to scrap the bloc’s new windfall tax on oil groups, arguing Brussels exceeded its legal authority by imposing the levy.Record profits this year by oil companies benefiting from high energy prices have boosted inflation around the world and led to fresh calls to further tax the sector. The windfall profits tax is “counter-productive,” discourages investments and undermines investor confidence, Exxon spokesperson Casey Norton said on Wednesday. Exxon will factor in the tax as it considers future multibillion-euro investments in Europe’s energy supply and transition, he said.”Whether we invest here primarily depends on how attractive and globally competitive Europe will be,” Norton said. GRAPHIC: Big Oil’s big profit (https://www.reuters.com/graphics/OILMAJORS-RESULTS/xmvjkgbzopr/chart.png) The Financial Times first reported the lawsuit on Wednesday.Windfall profit taxes imposed by Europe could cost at least $2 billion through the end of 2023, Chief Financial Officer Kathryn Mikells said in a call to analysts on Dec. 8. Exxon said it invested $3 billion in the past decade in refinery projects in Europe. The projects are helping it deliver more energy products at a time when Europe struggles to reduce its imports from Russia, the company said.”We will continue to work with EU leaders to address these issues. Thoughtful policy is critical,” the company said. Chevron Corp (NYSE:CVX) had also warned that taxing oil production would serve only to reduce energy supply by discouraging company investments.”That goes against the intent of increasing suppliers and making energy more affordable,” Chevron’s chief financial officer, Pierre Breber, told Reuters in October. More

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    in Economy

    U.S. pending home sales sag more than expected in November

    The National Association of Realtors (NAR) said on Wednesday its Pending Home Sales Index, based on signed contracts, fell 4% to 73.9 last month from October’s downwardly revised 77.0. November’s was the lowest reading – aside from the shortlived drop in the early months of the pandemic – since NAR launched the index in 2001.Economists polled by Reuters had forecast contracts, which become sales after a month or two, would fall 0.8%. Pending home sales dropped 37.8% in November on a year-on-year basis.”Pending home sales recorded the second-lowest monthly reading in 20 years as interest rates, which climbed at one of the fastest paces on record this year, drastically cut into the number of contract signings to buy a home,” said NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun. “Falling home sales and construction have hurt broader economic activity.”Contracts declined in all four regions, led by a 7.9% drop in the Northeast. All four regions also recorded double-digit declines on a year-over-year basis, with contract signings in the West down by 45.7%, by far the largest regional drop.”The Midwest region — with relatively affordable home prices — has held up better, while the unaffordable West region suffered the largest decline in activity,” Yun said.The overall decline in signed contracts suggested that existing home sales would continue to fall after posting their 10th straight monthly decrease in November. The housing market has suffered the most visible effects of aggressive Fed interest rate hikes that are aimed at curbing high inflation by undercutting demand in the economy. By the Fed’s preferred measure, inflation is still running nearly three times its 2% goal, having risen earlier in 2022 at its fastest pace in 40 years. This month the Fed raised rates again by half a percentage point, capping a year that saw its benchmark rate shoot from near zero in March to between 4.25% and 4.5% now – the swiftest rates have risen since the early 1980s. Fed officials projected rates would climb further in 2023, likely topping 5%. Unlike other parts of the economy – many of which have yet to show a significant impact from the Fed’s actions – the housing market has reacted in near real-time to the jump in borrowing costs engineered by the central bank. The 30-year fixed mortgage rate breached 7% in October for the first time since 2002, more than doubling in the span of nine months. This pulled the rug out from what had been a red-hot housing market fueled by historically low borrowing costs and a rush to the suburbs during the coronavirus pandemic. Data last week showed the combined annual sales rates of new and existing homes through November had slumped by 35% since January – among the fastest falls on record – to the slowest since late 2011. New single-family housing starts and permit issuance skidded to a two-and-a-half-year low last month as well. More

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    in Cryptocurrency

    2022: Cryptocurrency’s year to forget

    Investing.com – For crypto investors, 2022 will go down as a year to forget, and quickly. From a technology perspective, the industry made strides with major milestones such as the Ethereum conversion from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS), but price-wise, the major cryptocurrencies were on a never-ending slide.Bitcoin plunged from the $48,000 range to $33,000 in the first three weeks of the year. However, the subsequent recovery was not the beginning of a rally to a new all-time high, but merely a bear market correction from the preceding pullback.The main thing that hurt BTC and other cryptocurrencies was that more and more central banks were forced to take meaningful action against rampant inflation, with the Fed leading the way. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell already announced in Q4 2021 that inflation could no longer be called transitory, meaning the era of cheap money will soon be over. The mere thought of this froze many financial markets.What followed was something the markets had thought impossible, because there had not been such rapid interest rate hikes in 40 years. While the Fed Fund Rate was still at 0.25 percent at the beginning of the year, it reached 4.50 percent on December 14, 2022, a 15-year high.While the shift in monetary policy changed the rules of the game for financial markets in a fundamental way, the crypto market also had to contend with one homegrown scandal after another.Blockchain technology, which was so highly praised and touted as secure, proved to be a suitable target for digital heists on several occasions due to human error. Fraudsters and hackers may have had one of their most successful years, as the amount they were able to take from users in the crypto sector reaches billions of dollars.And as if that wasn’t enough to keep new investors away from this industry, some of the dazzling icons of the digital business turned out to be rotten eggs.The Terra blockchain kicked things off with its founder Do Kwon. Despite warnings against the idea, he chose to establish a stablecoin called TerraUSD, pegged to the value of the dollar. But instead of backing this with adequate dollar reserves, he chose the cheaper route of using an algorithmic stablecoin. Traders could not sell a TerraUSD for one dollar, but instead received Terra LUNA worth one dollar.TerraUSD was used on crypto lending platforms like Anchor Protocol to earn whopping returns. Up to 20% was possible, which sounded tempting not only for individual crypto investors in times of low interest rates, but also for institutional investors who forgot about the risks that come with high returns and even increased them by bringing leverage into play.Source: MediumIn early May, the house of cards supporting the stablecoin began to falter and then collapsed completely. To date, it has not been clarified what the actual cause was. What is certain is that billions of dollars disappeared into thin air, as did the founder Do Kwon – who is still wanted by Interpol.While thousands of retail investors had their dreams of quick crypto riches dashed, some of the troubled projects survived. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) rushed to their aid. He distributed or invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the industry, preventing a bankruptcy domino effect and gaining a reputation as something like a crypto-age JPMorgan.At that point, all players in the market assumed that FTX and SBF were the rock of the industry. A permanent fixture in the sector, pulling the cart out of the mud in times of crisis.But less than 6 months later the tide turned, and SBF and FTX experienced their own very personal Armageddon.It started with Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) accusing SBF of lobbying for policies that hurt the rest of the crypto industry. He announced that he would sell his holdings in FTX Token, as he no longer had faith in FTX’s balance sheet. This had the effect of withdrawing his support from SBF as well.This was the starting shot of a bank run on FTX, forcing the crypto exchange to suspend payouts due to a lack of liquidity. The FTX token rapidly lost value and it came to light that FTX had misappropriated and taken customer funds to finance other business lines.Binance and FTX then came to a memorandum of understanding in which Binance would take over FTX’s business. While this calmed the situation in the short term, it also led to accusations that this had been CZ’s intention from the beginning.But when it became clear that the capital hole that needed to be plugged was $10 billion, CZ pulled out of the potential deal. As a result, the entire crypto market collapsed and bitcoin hit a new cycle low at $15,500. The crypto sector had now squandered its last remaining shred of confidence.In the last chapter of the cryptocurrency sector’s sad 2022 story, SBF was arrested in the Bahamas and extradited to the US. There, he will face trial with the potential for a long prison sentence for fraud if found guilty. Business partners Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang have already turned on SBF and are cooperating with the SEC.While SBF’s story as an industry player looks likely to be over, what the next chapter for cryptocurrency as a whole is remains to be seen. It is hard to imagine it could get much worse than 2022. More