The Central Bank of Brazil will focus its first digital real tests on determining the levels of privacy and security that can be achieved with the proposed central bank digital currency (CBDC) infrastructure. The tests will be conducted later this year and will set up a simplified operation to transact with a still-to-be-determined tokenized asset.

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe recently revealed that some 25,188 of its value-preserving gold coins were sold between July 2022 and Jan. 13. According to the central bank governor, John Mangudya, the gold coins “have proved to be an effective open market instrument for mopping up excess liquidity in the economy.” Gold Coins as Alternative

The collapse of FTX and related developments did more to pull up or push down the price of Bitcoin (BTC) throughout Q4, compared to macroeconomic events such as rate hikes, according to research. In a “State of Bitcoin Q4 2022” report published on Feb. 10, Messari research analysts Sami Kassab and Chris Collar found that

On Thursday, the fiat-to-crypto onramp business Moonpay announced a multi-year partnership with the non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace Looksrare. According to the deal, Looksrare will allow marketplace users to buy and sell crypto assets through Moonpay’s services. Moonpay and Looksrare Join Forces to Streamline NFT Transactions Moonpay, the fiat-to-crypto service founded in 2019, revealed that it

Bitcoin (BTC) mining firm CleanSpark is planning to continue its strategy of scooping up distressed mining company assets this year.  The Bitcoin miner released its fiscal Q1 earnings presentation on Feb. 9, where the company said it remained optimistic about the coming year and continued growth. Chief Financial Officer, Gary Vecchiarelli, said CleanSpark has seen

French luxury brand Hermes has won a lawsuit against an artist who depicted its famous Birkin bags in a non-fungible token (NFT) collection. The artist argued that NFTs should be covered under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment but the jury disagreed. Hermes Wins Lawsuit Against ‘Metabirkins’ NFT Creator French luxury design house Hermes has won

Several Federal Reserve governors and presidents say that more interest rate hikes are needed to curb inflation. “We are not done yet with raising interest rates,” Fed Governor Lisa Cook said. “We need to raise rates aggressively to put a ceiling on inflation,” Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari stressed. Fed Officials on Raising Interest

The bitcoin hardware wallet manufacturer Coinkite has announced the launch of a new product, the Coldcard Q1, which features a QWERTY keyboard and QR code scanner. Coinkite details that the battery-powered device utilizes the same security model as the Coldcard Mk4. Coinkite Introduces the Coldcard Q1 Over the past three months, companies have unveiled new

Aave Companies, the firm behind the decentralized finance (defi) project Aave, has announced the launch of a stablecoin called GHO on the Ethereum testnet network Goerli. The codebase is available on Github and has undergone audits by Open Zeppelin, Sigmaprime and ABDK. Aave Invites Programmers to Test GHO Before Mainnet Deployment On Thursday, Aave Companies

Kraken, a U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange, has agreed to wind down its cryptocurrency staking program as part of an arrangement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to settle for the unregistered offer of its staking services. The exchange will also pay $30 million in disgorgement, prejudgment interest, and civil penalties, as indicated by the

According to Lynette Zang, chief market analyst at ITM Trading, U.S. banks have the legal authority to confiscate people’s funds due to legislation passed by Congress. In a recent interview, Zang discussed how the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar has dwindled to “roughly three cents,” her belief that central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) will