Decentralization

Photo: Michael Smith/Newsmakers (Getty Images)Try to figure this one out: it would appear that somebody is installing antenna-equipped rigs all over the foothills of Salt Lake City. Local government officials are stumped as to who is responsible or what the rigs are for. They also seem to be pretty annoyed to have to keep taking the shit down. “We just don’t know enough at this point to speculate what they are,” Tyler Fonarow, the city’s recreational trails manager, told local news outlet KSL-5. According to Fonarow, the…

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has repeatedly spread the message that his exchange and company are both financially stable, but critics point out the company is too opaque to get a good picture of its finances.Photo: Marco Rosi - SS Lazio (Getty Images)Binance and its execs have routinely said they won’t follow in the footsteps of Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraudulent crypto empire, but they sure are taking plays straight out of the failed crypto founder’s playbook.On Tuesday, Binance announced it was hooking up with the Chamber of…

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has come out as an antagonist to the crypto industry, but her new bill will see pushback from the more pro-crypto members of Congress. Photo: Kevin Dietsch (Getty Images)There’s a new bill coming to Congress to deal with crypto, and this one’s not pulling many punches on the entire crypto ecosystem. On Wednesday, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Republican Sen. Roger Marshall announced they were introducing legislation that would extend current money laundering laws to cryptocurrencies. This…

Screenshot: YouTubeSam Bankman-Fried, the founder of hedge fund Alameda Research and crypto platform FTX, was a frequent guest on both mainstream financial news and more niche crypto podcasts. And while digging through his media appearances over the years, Gizmodo has stumbled upon a very weird analogy from SBF, as he was often known, where the now-former billionaire explained that massive fraud at Enron wouldn’t have been possible if the company used the blockchain.SBF appeared on the “Jax Jones and Martin Warner Show”…

Telegram has facilitated the sale of over $50 million worth of usernames in crypto auctions, and now it wants to auction off fake phone numbers to allow access to the platform.Photo: Mehaniq (Shutterstock)Telegram is not yet done finding new ways to monetize access to its platform. On Tuesday, the encrypted messaging app announced users will be able to sign up for its services without needing access to a SIM card. How, you may ask? By buying up a phone number with crypto, of course.In a blog post, Telegram said it was…

North Carolina Congressman Madison Cawthorn’s brief stint in the House has been rife with scandal. There’s the time he seemingly bragged about invites to alleged cocaine-fueled orgies. That’s on top of sexual misconduct allegations surfacing, which he’s denied. There’s also a leaked nude video as well asmultiple ethics committee investigations. Now, the politician is set to finally face some material consequences for his actions. The House Ethics Committee has determined Cawthorn violated multiple congressional rules…

CFTC chairman Rostin Behnam said they have performed 60 enforcement actions on crypto exchanges since 2015. The SEC has done more than 80 since 2017. Photo: Chip Somodevilla (Getty Images)The collapse of FTX has sent shivers down the spines of many once-crypto proponents, including those sitting in the halls of Congress. Now that FTX has proved itself as one of the biggest cases of fraud in the often-maligned history of cryptocurrencies, there seems to be a more immediate push to dig deeper into what ultimately went…

The European Central Bank came out with a scathing review against bitcoin, and by extension crypto in general.Graphic: Craig Hastings (Shutterstock)We can now add the European Central Bank to the ranks of high-ranking crypto skeptics, with high-ranking execs going further to say that crypto shouldn’t be legitimized by any government or major financial institution.In a blog post written by ECB execs Ulrich Bindseil, director general of market infrastructure, and Jürgen Schaaf, an ECB markets advisor, the pair said that…

In a historic regulatory step, New York has become the first U.S. state to bar certain types of cryptocurrency mining. Governor Kathy Hochul signed a bill on Tuesday that triggers an immediate moratorium on energy-intensive “proof-of-work” crypto mining powered by fossil fuels. For two years, no new permits for such mining operations will be issued and no existing permits will be renewed, according to the law (A7389C).The bill cites the heavy climate and infrastructure costs of crypto mining in its reasoning. On top of…

Things continue to look bad for the blockchain. Bank of America (BofA) analysts have downgraded Coinbase’s stock, citing the “fallout from the FTX collapse.” The bank moved Coinbase shares to “neutral” from “buy,” in a Friday note to the bank’s investment clients, according to multiple financial outlets. BofA also shifted the stock’s projected target value to $50, down from the $77 the analysts placed it at previously. The platform’s stock sits at just around $45 as of writing, and has fallen more than 7.5% today…