Bitcoin

Duncan Stewart, director of research at Deloitte Canada, last month noted Google Analytics data showing that almost all – 96.7 per cent – of the visitors to the bitcoin-related Coin Dance website are male. While an unscientific way of measuring the matter, the Coin Dance figures are “backed up by other surveys, attendance at conferences, and my own interviews with millennial investors in North America and Europe,” commented Stewart. “I have been to multiple bitcoin and cryptocurrency conferences, and they have all been around 95 per cent male.”

Online auctioneer Paddle8 is trying a new tack: merging with The Native, a Swiss technology and e-commerce company, and adopting the use of blockchain, the technology that underpins virtual currencies like Bitcoin, reports the New York Times.

Paddle8 announced on Tuesday that it had taken an investment from The Native, creating what the two say is a partnership meant to adapt online art sales – and potentially more – to an age of wealthy millennials well versed in virtual currencies.

Japan’s financial regulator has ordered Coincheck to get its act together after hackers stole $530 million worth of digital money from its exchange, jolting the nation’s cryptocurrency market in one of the biggest cyber heists.

The theft highlights the vulnerabilities in trading an asset that global policymakers are struggling to regulate and the broader risks for Japan as it aims to leverage the fintech industry to stimulate economic growth.

Some of Silicon Valley’s leading investors are lining up to buy into a much-hyped initial coin offering by Telegram, the encrypted messaging service that is seeking $1.2bn to build a virtual economy within its app.

As The Financial Times reported, Venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Benchmark and Sequoia Capital have each told the company they want to invest $20m, according to three people with knowledge of the deals. Sequoia and Kleiner declined to comment, and Benchmark did not respond to requests for comment.

Cryptocurrencies are a bubble and cannot function as actual currencies because of their volatility, legendary macro trader George Soros said from Davos, Switzerland. But he didn’t quite predict the crash that some naysayers have forecast.

“Normally when you have a parabolic curve, eventually it has a very sharp break,” Soros said Thursday. “But in this case, as long as you have dictatorships on the rise you will have a different ending, because the rulers in those countries will turn to Bitcoin to build a nest egg abroad.”

The CEO of Nasdaq has revealed that it is looking into how it can offer digital currency futures that are different to Cboe and CME offerings.

Speaking to CNBC, Adena Friedman confirmed earlier reports that the Nasdaq is looking into bitcoin futures, but did not give a timeline for a launch or if it will definitely happen. Though her comments suggest that the development of a product is indeed happening.

Johann Schneider-Ammann, Switzerland’s economics minister, has said that the landlocked country should strive to "become the crypto-nation" if experiences in the Canton of Zug, colloquially known as Crypto Valley, remain positive. He made the comment in an interview with the news outlet SRF, as well as in a speech to the Crypto Finance Conference in St. Moritz, where he spoke after receiving a so-called "crypto award."

Weiss Ratings, a U.S. independent rating agency, had announced that it will issue letter grades on cryptocurrencies, to be released Wednesday January 24.

They will include market leader Bitcoin along with a series of altcoins like Ethereum, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, Cardano, NEM, Litecoin, Stellar, EOS, IOTA, Dash, NEO, TRON, Monero, Bitcoin Gold, and many more.