The deal was announced in April and approved by the bankruptcy judge on May 4.

The deal was announced in April and approved by the bankruptcy judge on May 4.
Bitcoin (BTC) nudged $27,000 after the May 19 Wall Street open as the Chair of the United States Federal Reserve delivered comments on policy.
BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart on Bitstamp. Source: TradingViewData from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView followed BTC/USD as it attempted to reclaim the focal level in its short-term trading range.
All eyes were on Fed Chair Jerome Powell on the day, who was speaking at the Thomas Laubach Research Conference in Washington, D.C.
Market nerves had returned the day prior as other Fed officials, along with jobless data, had heightened expectations of interest rate hikes continuing.
“While the financial stability tools helped to calm conditions in the banking sector, developments there, on the other hand, are contributing to tighter credit conditions and are likely to weigh on economic growth, hiring and inflation,” he said.
Bitcoin (BTC) stares at potential losses heading into the third-quarter of 2023 after U.S. lawmakers will likely reach an agreement on raising the debt ceiling.
Raising the debt ceiling means the U.S. Treasury could issue new bonds to raise cash to meet its previous obligations.
As a result, the cash pile at the Treasury General Account could increase from $95 billion in May to $550 billion by June and to $600 billion in the three months afterward, according to the department's recent estimates.
U.S. debt limit increases over the years. Source: BloombergAri Bergmann, the founder of risk management firm Penso Advisors, estimates that the Treasury will cross $1 trillion by the end of Q3, 2023.
“My bigger concern is that when the debt-limit gets resolved — and I think it will — you are going to have a very, very deep and sudden drain of liquidity,” said Bergmann, adding:
Backed by industry heavyweights; this new blockchain game aims to get a foothold in the competitive arena.
Bitcoin (BTC) traded back below $27,000 on May 19 as analysis flagged large-volume trades pressuring price.
BTC/USD 1-day candle chart on Bitstamp. Source: TradingViewData from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD hitting lows of $26,380 on Bitstamp.
A modest recovery then took the pair to a range familiar from several days prior, this still in focus prior to the week’s final Wall Street open.
Downside overnight came courtesy of increasing market expectations of an interest rate hike by the United States Federal Reserve in June.
These came thanks to low jobless claims data for the week, with Fed officials adding a hawkish tone.
ASX abandons blockchain rebuild to explore conventional options to achieve the desired business outcomes as it sends RFP to potential software vendors.
Mastercard and Visa join Hong Kong’s CBDC pilot, new instalment in Justin Sun’s Huobi soap opera, and a GameFi token pumps on no news.
On May 18, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) announced the launch of the cyber Hong Kong dollar pilot project. According to officials, 16 selected companies from the financial payment and technology sectors will conduct the first round of trials this year on the feasibility of a Hong Kong dollar central bank digital currency (e-HKD). Companies included in the pilot include Alibaba Group’s Alipay Financial, Mastercard Asia, Ripple Labs, Visa, and HSBC.
The digital Hong Kong dollar will start off with six potential uses cases; comprehensive payments, programmable payments, offline payments, tokenized deposits, Web 3.0 transaction settlements, and tokenized asset settlements. The CBDC is scheduled for a three-stage approach, with the novel pilot program being an important aspect of the second stage.
However, the HKMA has not yet decided whether to officially launch the CBDC. It expects to share the results of the trials at Hong Kong Fintech Week 2023 in Q4. Yue Wai-man, chief executive of the HKMA, commented:
“Although the HKMA has not decided whether or when the CBDC will be launched, we are pleased to launch the Cyber Hong Kong Dollar Pilot Scheme. This is a good opportunity for the HKMA to join hands with the industry to explore innovative use cases and prepare for the possible launch of the CBDC in the future”
Back in Oct. 2021, Mastercard said that it would be preparing its payment infrastructure for integration with CBDCs. Likewise, Visa believes that stablecoins and CBDCs will play meaningful roles in payments and has an ongoing blockchain interoperability project related to the matter.
The Bitcoin Defense Legal Fund’s chief legal officer spoke out against an “extraordinarily dangerous” lawsuit initiated by Craig Wright, a person who claims to be Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto.
Coinbase’s new subscription service, “Coinbase One," is expected to roll out across 35 countries in the near future.
Bitcoin has been trying to break above the $27,500 resistance for the past week but to no avail. One of the reasons limiting Bitcoin’s (BTC) upside is the risk of an eventual United States default as the government struggles to get the debt limit increase approved in Congress.
Still, some analysts and investors argue that the U.S. debt ceiling standoff is merely a “show” because, ultimately, additional money will hit the markets.
Notice how MacroJack correlates Bitcoin’s digital scarcity to the next logical step: additional inflationary pressure. The stimulus measures, meaning increasing the government debt limit, might initially sound positive because they avoid default and favor more economic activity. However, the unintended consequences are future budget constraints as the debt interest payment increases.
Bitcoin’s gains above $27,000 happened while gold traded down 2.5% from May 15 to May 18, reaching its lowest level in 45 days at $1,970. Meanwhile, the U.S. Dollar Index, which measures the currency against a basket of foreign exchanges, reached its highest level in two months on May 18, meaning the U.S. currency gained strength relative to its global peers.
This data should not be interpreted as a vote of confidence in the government’s ability to avoid a shutdown, as the global economy would be negatively impacted in the event of a U.S. debt default. For instance, eurozone members hold $1.54 trillion in U.S. Treasurys, followed by Japan’s $1.1 trillion, China’s $860 billion and the United Kingdom’s $668 billion.
The answer to the question of what level stablecoin issuers are regulated on “need not be binary,” one witness said.
Wormhole is a cross-chain messaging protocol often used to transfer assets from one blockchain to another.
In the event of a conviction for wire fraud, Nevin Shetty could face up to 20 years in prison.
Bitcoin (BTC) has crossed a significant threshold this month — and while it does not involve price, it does involve “millions.”
Data from on-chain analytics firm Glassnode confirms that as of May 18, there are over 1 million addresses that hold at least 1 BTC.
It was a long time coming and received much attention on social media, and the time is finally here — there are 1 million entities that own a whole Bitcoin.
These “wholecoiners” have been steadily accruing since mid-2021, Glassnode shows, and the upward trend in 1-BTC wallets has seen almost no reversal since.
In 2022, however, the trend accelerated, having started the year with 814,000 wholesalers and finishing it with 978,000 — an increase of 20%.
Most technological revolutions come with an unforeseen darker side.
When Austrian-born physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch first split the atom in the late 1930s, they probably didn’t anticipate their discovery would lead a few years later to the atomic bomb. The artificial intelligence (AI) revolution is arguably no different.
AI algorithms have been around for decades. The first artificial neural network, the perceptron, was invented in 1958. But the recent pace of development has been breathtaking, and with voice recognition devices like Alexa and chatbots like ChatGPT, AI appears to have gained a new public awareness.
On the positive side, AI could dramatically raise the planet’s general education level and help to find cures for devastating diseases like Alzheimer’s. But it could also displace jobs and bolster authoritarian states that can use it to surveil their populations. Moreover, if machines ever achieve “general” intelligence, they might even be trained to overturn elections and prosecute wars, AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton recently warned.
“Enormous potential and enormous danger” is how United States President Joe Biden recently described AI. This followed an open letter in March from more than 1,000 tech leaders, including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, calling for a moratorium on AI developments like ChatGPT. The technology, they said, presents “profound risks to society and humanity.”
Experts are still divided on the real impact blockchain tech can have on solving some fo the problems that ail AI.
With a total artwork value of $24 million Trevor Jones is one of the Top 10 most successful crypto artists worldwide.
Trevor Jones’ journey to crypto art stardom started the same way as many crypto noobs: His portfolio went way up, he failed to take profits, and the price came crashing down wiping out the paper gains.
A traditional painter, Jones always wanted to explore the intersection of art and technology, and he experimented with QR code oil paintings in 2012 and dived into AR art in 2013.
But it was his 2017 investment in Bitcoin that sparked deep curiosity in what this new world of crypto and blockchain was about. After getting rekt in 2018’s crypto winter, Jones turned his attention from crypto trader to crypto painter. He says:
“I caught that bull run and made a lot of money and then lost a lot of money in 2018. It all went up and all came crashing down.
Trevor Jones creates NFTs fit for a King, he sold $4.3 million of NFTs in a day and he’s among the most celebrated crypto artists in the world.
Chainlink’s oracle network will welcome Coinbase Cloud as a node operator to improve high-quality data provision to several blockchain protocols.