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Celsius had been using the crypto custodian Prime Trust to store some customer assets since March 2020. This relationship ended in June 2021, when Prime Trust’s risk team expressed concern about Celsius’s strategy of “endlessly re-hypothecating assets ignition poker promo code… lending the same assets over and over and over again to juice yields”. Prime Trust founder Scott Purcell suggested that re-hypothecating “would be destined for failure as any sharp market movement in either direction would be catastrophic to such a ridiculously leveraged business model”. Celsius sued Prime Trust in August 2022, accusing the custodian of retaining $17 million worth of assets after the relationship ended.
Celsius generated revenue from token sales, lending, bitcoin mining, and discretionary trading of cryptocurrencies. Celsius claimed that up to 80% of its revenue was returned to its user community through interest payments on deposits made through its platform. The company did not charge any fees to its users.
Celsius filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on July 13, 2022, one month after pausing withdrawals. A declaration filed the following day reported a $1.2 billion deficit in the company’s balance sheet. Mashinsky said that the company had “made what, in hindsight, proved to be certain poor asset deployment decisions”. According to the bankruptcy filing, the company had $167 million in cash on hand, which it said would provide “ample liquidity” to support its operations during its bankruptcy. Of Celsius’s $5.5 billion in total liabilities at the time of its bankruptcy filing, the company owed $4.7 billion to its users, who were listed as unsecured creditors. Celsius’s choice of Chapter 11 bankruptcy would prioritize repayments to secured creditors first, then unsecured creditors, then equity holders.
On December 2, 2022, Celsius announced the sale of GK8, a digital asset custody platform, to the Michael Novogratz-founded company Galaxy Digital Holdings. According to a lawyer representing Celsius’s creditors, the proceeds from the sale are expected to go to Celsius’s legal fees and former customers.
What is crypto all about
With crypto assets, fundamental metrics such as a P/E ratio, dividend rate, or yield-to-maturity do not apply. Instead, HODLers may invest in the “scarcity value” of a finite crypto such as Bitcoin—similar to the way investors view gold and precious metals as assets that may hold their value amid inflation. Learn more about crypto HODLing.
The rise in the popularity of cryptocurrencies and their adoption by financial institutions has led some governments to assess whether regulation is needed to protect users. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has defined cryptocurrency-related services as “virtual asset service providers” (VASPs) and recommended that they be regulated with the same money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) requirements as financial institutions.
A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or colloquially, crypto, is a digital currency designed to work through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it.
Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies designed to maintain a stable level of purchasing power. Notably, these designs are not foolproof, as a number of stablecoins have crashed or lost their peg. For example, on 11 May 2022, Terra’s stablecoin UST fell from $1 to 26 cents. The subsequent failure of Terraform Labs resulted in the loss of nearly $40B invested in the Terra and Luna coins. In September 2022, South Korean prosecutors requested the issuance of an Interpol Red Notice against the company’s founder, Do Kwon. In Hong Kong, the expected regulatory framework for stablecoins in 2023/24 is being shaped and includes a few considerations.
Similar criticism was echoed by Auckland University of Technology cryptocurrency specialist and senior lecturer Jeff Nijsse and University of Otago political scientist Professor Robert Patman, who described it as government overreach and described it as inconsistent with international law. Since the Cook Islands is an associated state that is part of the Realm of New Zealand, Patman said that the law would have “implications for New Zealand’s governance arrangements.” A spokesperson for New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters confirmed that New Zealand officials were discussing the legislation with their Cook Islands counterparts. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown defended the legislation as part of the territory’s fight against international cybercrime.
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When it comes to cryptocurrency, there are some advantages to it versus traditional currency. An advantage of cryptocurrency is privacy. When you make a purchase with cryptocurrency, you don’t need to provide any personal information. This protects you from potential identity theft and other fraudulent activities. And no matter what happens to the government, your investment is secure.
The remittance economy is testing one of cryptocurrency’s most prominent use cases. Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin serve as intermediate currencies to streamline money transfers across borders. Thus, a fiat currency is converted to Bitcoin (or another cryptocurrency), transferred across borders, and subsequently converted to the destination fiat currency without third-party involvement.
A node is a computer that connects to a cryptocurrency network. The node supports the cryptocurrency’s network through either relaying transactions, validation, or hosting a copy of the blockchain. In terms of relaying transactions, each network computer (node) has a copy of the blockchain of the cryptocurrency it supports. When a transaction is made, the node creating the transaction broadcasts details of the transaction using encryption to other nodes throughout the node network so that the transaction (and every other transaction) is known.
Nvidia has asked retailers to do what they can when it comes to selling GPUs to gamers instead of miners. Boris Böhles, PR manager for Nvidia in the German region, said: “Gamers come first for Nvidia.”
When it comes to cryptocurrency, there are some advantages to it versus traditional currency. An advantage of cryptocurrency is privacy. When you make a purchase with cryptocurrency, you don’t need to provide any personal information. This protects you from potential identity theft and other fraudulent activities. And no matter what happens to the government, your investment is secure.
The remittance economy is testing one of cryptocurrency’s most prominent use cases. Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin serve as intermediate currencies to streamline money transfers across borders. Thus, a fiat currency is converted to Bitcoin (or another cryptocurrency), transferred across borders, and subsequently converted to the destination fiat currency without third-party involvement.
What is crypto currency all about
The market capitalization of a cryptocurrency is calculated by multiplying the price by the number of coins in circulation. The total cryptocurrency market cap has historically been dominated by bitcoin accounting for at least 50% of the market cap value where altcoins have increased and decreased in market cap value in relation to bitcoin. Bitcoin’s value is largely determined by speculation among other technological limiting factors known as blockchain rewards coded into the architecture technology of bitcoin itself. The cryptocurrency market cap follows a trend known as the “halving”, which is when the block rewards received from bitcoin are halved due to technological mandated limited factors instilled into bitcoin which in turn limits the supply of bitcoin. As the date reaches near of a halving (twice thus far historically) the cryptocurrency market cap increases, followed by a downtrend.
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An October 2021 paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that bitcoin suffers from systemic risk as the top 10,000 addresses control about one-third of all bitcoin in circulation. It is even worse for miners, with 0.01% controlling 50% of the capacity. According to researcher Flipside Crypto, less than 2% of anonymous accounts control 95% of all available bitcoin supply. This is considered risky as a great deal of the market is in the hands of a few entities.
A cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency secured by cryptography, which makes it nearly impossible to counterfeit or double-spend. Most cryptocurrencies exist on decentralized networks using blockchain technology—a distributed ledger enforced by a disparate network of computers.
In the United Kingdom, as of 10 January 2021, all cryptocurrency firms, such as exchanges, advisors and professionals that have either a presence, market product or provide services within the UK market must register with the Financial Conduct Authority. Additionally, on 27 June 2021, the financial watchdog demanded that Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, cease all regulated activities in the UK.