cryptocurrencies

In 2008, the backing reserve was basically houses. In cryptocurrency, I'm quite serious about this, the backing reserve is gullibility.It sounds like you’re saying, one, crypto is all nonsense, but, two, the nonsense will continue indefinitely, because as long as you can invent money out of thin air, you can find a sucker to buy it. Unless governments step in to say you can’t do certain things anymore.Yes. The good news is, there's regulation coming. Treasury is looking at this stuff very closely because they basically…

GameStop Corp. GME 0.34% launched a digital wallet for cryptocurrencies and nonfungible tokens, pushing further into a buzzy area as it looks to turn around its core videogame business. The company said Monday that the move will allow gamers and others to store, send, receive and use cryptocurrencies and NFTs across decentralized apps without having to leave their web browsers. The Wall Street Journal in January reported…

MicroStrategy Inc.’s new chief financial officer on Wednesday said its strategy to buy and hold bitcoin long term won’t change despite the recent selloff in the digital asset, which has dented the value of the analytics-software company’s holdings.Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have plummeted this month, in part due to investor concerns over persistent high inflation and the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin. Bitcoin’s price has slumped by 32% over the past year to $29,128.50 through…

Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz debuted a $600 million fund dedicated to gaming startups, stepping up its bets on so-called Web3 technology just as a broader market decline underscores the volatility of the cryptocurrency-based sector. The venture firm, known as a16z, said Wednesday the fund is its first dedicated to the games industry, pointing to the billions of dollars in annual revenue that hit games such as “Fortnite” and…

To its advocates, cryptocurrency is, at its heart, a libertarian project to free mankind from the shackles of government—most of all its power to debase a “fiat” currency by printing more of it. Do Kwon, the South Korean creator of the stablecoin TerraUSD, regularly equated fiat currency to “state violence.”So when inflation took off, crypto’s supporters were triumphant. Bitcoin’s value “is telling us that the central banks are bankrupt, that we are at the end of the fiat money regime,” venture capitalist and bitcoin…

I wanted to plunk down my $20, but OpenSea didn’t accept credit cards. I would need to buy some of the cryptocurrency Ether to complete the transaction. Okay! I’m game. Ether in hand (or wallet, more precisely), I went back to OpenSea and tried to make a purchase. Except by the time I was ready, those initial drops had already seemingly sold out. The price had gone up. Way up. Secondary sellers, who perhaps saw the same Twitter threads I’d seen, were now trying to flip their OG NFTs. With grim resignation, I bought some…

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin were meant to be used as digital cash. Instead, they've become popular as speculative investments.As well as being resource-intensive and inherently wasteful, cryptocurrencies are also incredibly volatile. Prices for the largest cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Ethereum, have both dropped by over 55 percent in six months, leading some to suggest that regulation is needed to contain the turmoil.  Some are blaming sliding prices on one specific contagion, a collapsing "stablecoin" called TerraUSD…

Traders’ flight from risky investments has halved the price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, wiping out more than $1 trillion worth of digital money since November. Wild swings are fairly common with cryptocurrencies, but even seasoned investors were left reeling as bitcoin dropped 29% over a seven-day losing streak that just ended as a stablecoin—one part of the crypto world that touted its stability—unexpectedly crashed. Investors are staring at an…

Facing pressure to cut all ties with Russia—Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made another such exhortation this week—some U.S. companies continue to employ information technology staff in the region, even as others have shuttered their operations.“Leaving the Russian market is a must,” Mr. Zelensky said, addressing The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Summit in London via videolink on Tuesday. “The aggressor has to be isolated. Full, complete economic isolation. That will allow Ukraine to…

The cryptocurrency TerraUSD had one job: Maintain its value at $1 per coin.Since it launched in 2020, it had mostly done that, rarely straying more than a fraction of a penny from its intended price. That made it an island of stability, a place where traders and investors could stash their funds in between forays into the otherwise frenzied crypto market. This week TerraUSD became part of the frenzy too, slumping by more than a third on Monday and then tumbling as low as 23 cents on Wednesday.…