BTCNews.Today

Please tag @BTCNEWS_TODAY on Twitter to submit tweets.

Frustration has been building for weeks after a shortage of the newly designed naira notes led to a lack of cash. Some customers in southern Nigeria's Warri and Benin City reportedly set fire to two commercial banks. Nigerians have faced long queues at cash machines with some sleeping outside banks to try and be first in line to get some money. People say they have been forced to skip meals and work without cash to pay for food or transport to their jobs. Some banks were broken into while protesters looted their cash machines. In Benin City, customers attempted to invade the Central Bank of Nigeria's (CBN) local offices but security officers fired tear gas at them.

While CBDCs may seem like a modern and convenient solution, they come with a host of threats to individual freedom. The potential for government surveillance, financial exclusion, and cyber attacks, as well as negative interest rates, pose serious risks to your financial and personal freedom. As such, it's important to understand the dangers of CBDCs and weigh the risks against the potential benefits before embracing them.

Please tag @BTCNEWS_TODAY on Twitter to submit tweets.

Dozens of American University in Cairo (AUC) students have staged several protests against the rise in tuition fees, echoing outcries by other Egyptians against the toll the deterioration of the Egyptian pound is taking on their lives. They have called on other students to join in, complaining that the rise in education fees is far more than their families could handle. AUC's administration says it encourages students to express themselves freely, having approved the protests that are taking place on campus.

To steel man the case a little: The pro Ordinals and inscriptions case could broadly be understood as: “Come for the fun, rich art, stay for the decentralized digital money.” You could also agree with some of the critiques of shitcoin NFTs, and see this as a way of arguing that “Bitcoin does it better” e.g., Bitcoin inscriptions are immutable, always on chain, simpler and more secure than shitcoin NFTs. But even if they (ordinals) are not a short-lived fad, what’s the most likely outcome here? Low-value inscriptions will likely be priced out by financial transactions over time as Bitcoin gets adopted by more people. Over the medium to long terms, financial transactions will come to dominate in Bitcoin. Other uses of Bitcoin will be subordinate to its use as decentralized money for the internet.

Ordinals, the project that allows users to inscribe data into a satoshi, making them like NFTs, continues to be highly topical within the Bitcoin community. The project is still in its infancy, having officially gone live on the mainnet on January 20th, but its impact is already being felt and debated. The first effect of Ordinals has been a growth in Bitcoin’s “mempool.” The second impact of the launch of Ordinals is the growth in the average size of blocks. If the popularity of Ordinals continues to grow, these types of market and technical dynamics may become more pressing discussion items.

Please tag @BTCNEWS_TODAY on Twitter to submit tweets.

Bitcoin is becoming especially popular in countries like Nigeria and Kenya while African refugees are also turning to bitcoin when other cross-border tools fall short. Operations like Bitcoin DADA in Kenya and Bitcoin Mountain in Cameroon both of which started and ramped up their operations in 2022, show that the rampant growth of bitcoin adoption in Africa will be driven by grassroots initiatives, regardless of global bear market blues.

Please tag @BTCNEWS_TODAY on Twitter to submit tweets.

A filing added recently reveals additional details on DCG’s plan to sell Genesis as a part of the latter’s bankruptcy proceedings. The plan entails the Digital Currency Group turning over its Genesis Global Trading equity to the bankrupt Genesis Global Holdco in an effort to sell both companies. The company entered into restructuring in late November, after reportedly failing to secure $1 billion in rescue funds. Rumors of an imminent bankruptcy resurfaced at the beginning of 2023, and a chapter 11 filing was revealed on January 20th, days after the firm reduced its headcount by 30%.

The SEC’s enforcement staff issued a letter to Paxos known as a Wells notice, which the agency uses to inform companies and individuals of a possible enforcement action, according to the people. The notice alleges that Binance USD, a digital asset that Paxos issues and lists, is an unregistered security, according to the people. It couldn’t be determined if the SEC notice is specifically related to Paxos’ issuing of the coin, the listing of the coin or both. Firms that receive Wells notices are allowed to respond in writing and tell the SEC why it shouldn’t proceed with a lawsuit. Wells notices aren’t a final indication that the SEC will take enforcement action. The agency’s five commissioners must vote to authorize any enforcement settlement or litigation.

Kraken, the San Francisco based exchange, inked a ground-shaking settlement with the SEC on Thursday, with Kraken agreeing to shutter its U.S. staking services and pay a $30 million fine amid agency accusations that the services amounted to a sale of securities. That enforcement action likely marks a beginning of similar cases putting big exchanges in the spotlight. Insiders, experts and the rhetoric of officials suggest a reckoning with the government is inevitable for the big exchanges, and this week’s action against Kraken could be just the beginning.

Even though PayPal was allegedly planning to launch its stablecoin in mere weeks, a report from Friday revealed the firm decided to temporarily suspend the project. The decision is largely based on Thursday’s news that PayPal’s main partner in the effort, Paxos, is under investigation by the New York State Department of Financial Services.

Please tag @BTCNEWS_TODAY on Twitter to submit tweets.

The facility, which opens this year, will possess 30,000 crypto mining machines, hire 100 workers and consume 100 megawatts from the power grid. The mining center will enjoy a broad set of incentives, from zero land and property taxes to a lowered income tax rate. The electricity prices will be cut by half for the mining operator.

"Given the legal risks, fiscal fragility and largely speculative nature of crypto markets, the authorities should reconsider their plans to expand government exposures to bitcoin," the IMF said in a statement. The IMF's so-called "article IV" visit has been sharply critical in the past. El Salvador's move to make bitcoin legal tender in September 2021 effectively closed the doors to IMF financing.

Please tag @BTCNEWS_TODAY on Twitter to submit tweets.

Bitcoin changes our mental model and we can see it in a lot of people that get into Bitcoin. Many Bitcoiners start saving and not living paycheck to paycheck. Many start taking their lives more seriously and quit drinking alcohol and playing video games. Still others start investigating their diet and quit eating sugar, carbs, seed oils and other things they've been eating their whole lives. Some even get married and start having children. There are even some who start taking religion seriously. These results are pretty puzzling. What does a digital money have to do with any of these things?

LocalBitcoins has announced that the exchange will be closed for service by the end of February. The long-time Bitcoin trading service was the first peer-to-peer (P2P) transaction platform for many Bitcoiners. Launched in June 2012, the exchange is one of the oldest entities in Bitcoin, establishing itself as a primary P2P player in its hey-day with over $100 million in weekly trading volume of peer-to-peer transactions.Notably, the shutdown has arrived just as P2P Bitcoin merchants and individual sellers have come under heavy scrutiny from U.S. regulatory authorities.

Please tag @BTCNEWS_TODAY on Twitter to submit tweets.

lnurl-auth is very unique in the sense that it doesn’t even need a Lightning wallet to work, it is a standalone authentication protocol that can work anywhere. The basic idea is that each wallet has a seed, which is a random value (you may think of the BIP39 seed words, for example). Usually from that seed different keys are derived, each of these yielding a Bitcoin address, and also from that same seed may come the keys used to generate and manage Lightning channels. What lnurl-auth does is to generate a new key from that seed, and from that a new key for each service (identified by its domain) you try to authenticate with.

Regulators are effectively picking winners — with larger, more established crypto firms able to hang on to their bank relationships, while newer ones are shut out. Meanwhile, other jurisdictions are making a bid for their business. Hong Kong has adopted a friendlier tone once again, as has the UK. The UAE and the Saudis are looking to attract crypto firms. And US regulators can scarcely afford to forget what happened with FTX, in which they curtailed the business activities of onshore exchanges, effectively pushing US individuals into the waiting claws of SBF. If bank regulators continue their pressure campaign, they risk not only losing control of the crypto industry, but ironically increasing risk, by pushing activity to less sophisticated jurisdictions, less able to manage genuine risks that may emerge.

The inflated bitcoin prices may not reflect a heightened demand for the asset (bitcoin) but a continued demand for the U.S. dollar as the country’s local currency suffers. Nigeria’s bitcoin premiums are not a new phenomenon and they typically reveal the discrepancies between official and unofficial U.S. dollar exchange rates in the country. Although the government sets the official rate, thanks to the country’s chronic currency devaluation problem, the dollar sells for much higher on unofficial local forex markets.