Crypto Guides, Knowledge & Insights

Leading Smart Product Retailer Wellbots Now Accepting Bitcoin Payments

Wellbots, a U.S.-based smart product online retailer, has announced that its customers can now make payments for goods at checkout using six cryptocurrencies.　　 Wellbots Now Accepts BTC　　Announcing the development in a press release today, Wellbots said it will now accept Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and popular stablecoins Dai and USD Coin (USDC) for its smart products.　　Before this time, the online store only accepts traditional payment methods such as Shop Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, Amazon Pay, Credit Card, and Affirm.　　However, with the integration of six cryptocurrencies, Wellbots customers can pay for goods directly using the assets without converting the coins to fiat.　　Commenting on the development, Phil Berdugo, CEO of Wellbots, noted that the company is always poised to look for innovative ways to keep its customers happy.　　“We are excited to be among the early online retailers to let our customers pay with crypto,” Berdugo said.　　Since 2019, Wellbots has been ranked among the top 5,000 list of growing companies in the United States for three consecutive years, with its products ranging from robot vacuums to electric scooters and bikes.　　 Crypto Gaining Ground as a Payment Option　　The integration of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to the list of payment

2021-07-13Deep Dive

WTO DG Spells How Blockchain Tech Can Benefit Women

The first female Director-General of the World Trade Center, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, recently shed bright light on some brilliant ways blockchain technology could bring about financial breakthroughs for women. Speaking at the mid-year meeting of the G20 independent panel set up to finance and oversee pandemic preparedness and response across the globe, the former Nigerian Minister of Finance hailed the advent and adoption of blockchain technology as a pathway to empower financially disadvantaged women around the world.　　Vibrant and active, the former World Bank Executive who co-chaired the gathering, assuredly responded to the question of how blockchain technology could promote financial inclusion for women especially during and after the pandemic period – as raised by Cointelegraphs Editor-in-chief, Kristina Corner,　　Madam Ngozi was quoted as saying:　　“Of course, blockchain is something that brings more transparency in the way tht business is done and removes intermediaries”….“I think that particularly in the finance area, the ability to introduce this into transactions, I think could be particularly beneficial to women who are often excluded from access to finance. I think this is a good thing, something we should look into.”　　Response from the DG came on the backdrop of the WTOs declared commitment to empower women to own factors

2021-07-13Deep Dive

UAE to Develop Its Own Cryptocurrency

The United Arab Emirates has joined the growing ranks of countries that are working on their own digital currencies.　　The UAEs central bank announced Monday that developing a cryptocurrency is one of seven objectives included in its 2023-2026 strategy, Emirates News Agency reports.　　Aside from its pivot to crypto, it will also adopt other bleeding-edge technologies, such as big data and artificial intelligence.　　The effort is meant to bolster the UAEs global standing, with the countrys central bank aiming to enter the top 10.　　In February, the UAE joined forces with China to work on the m-CBDC initiative. Its aim is to develop a proof-of-concept prototype for exploring uses of central bank digital currencies and distributed ledger technology.　　Prior to that, the UAE had been testing blockchain-based digital currencies in collaboration with Saudi Arabia as part of Project Aber.　　A global CBDC race　　China, Sweden and some small island nations are thus far leading the CBDC race.　　As reported by U.Today, Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh urged the central bank to pilot a digital currency project earlier this month.　　The U.S. and EU are moving toward digital money—though not at a rapid pace. The Federal Reserve is expected to release a CBDC-focused research paper this summer. In March, European

2021-07-13Deep Dive

BITCOIN REMAINS STUCK, HOLDS $30,000

BITCOIN REMAINS STUCK, HOLDS $30,000　　BITCOIN price remains flat, and trading volume also remains low as price gets stuck between $30,000 and $40,000. There was low volatility in BTC/USD exchange last week as the price inches towards $35,000.　　$30,000 remains good support as it has rejected price more than four times since it was tested in May. That has made $30,000 a psychological support level, which, if broken to the downside, risks crashing the Bitcoin prices to as low as $20,000.　　Hodling Bitcoin is now a waiting game for investors as price readjusts itself for a fresh bullish move.　　Joel Kruger, a Forex strategist at London-based investment management group LMAX, noted that BITCOIN could revisit $20,000, for it remains under the pressure of global market sentiment.　　“It would be foolish to rule out the possibility for a drop back below the June low, and we think there would be a risk in that scenario where the Bitcoin price could revisit the old record high area around $20,000,” he said.　　“But at that stage, we see the market very well supported.” He added.　　As explained by Joel, there is a chance that BITCOIN could revisit its former high around $19,000 - $20,000. Its highest price before the massive

2021-07-13Deep Dive

Why Is P2P Lending an Accomplice of DeFi’s Liquidation?

DeFi has seen frequent liquidations recently and the term ‘P2P lending attack’ was born at the same time. It seems that P2P lending has become a major weapon for hackers in their attacks. Therefore, what is P2P lending and how do we feel about it rationally？　　Asset mortgage is not necessary for P2P lending. Instead, it only requires the lending and repayment to be completed in the same block. As a result, this process is less time-consuming, thus hampering investors to operate.　　As a great innovation in smart contracts, P2P lending minimizes the cost of using capital because tiny commissions are needed for handsome profits during the business with the absence of pledged assets.　　P2P lending is often used for many purposes, including an arbitrage based on price differentials among tokens on different trading platforms, the decrease in liquidation expenses caused by asset mortgage, and the change in mortgages. It can help traders maximize their returns when their assets are occupied.　　The reason for hackers using P2P lending to attack DeFi is that the amount of capital that can be loaned is unlimited. However, as for P2P lending itself, it is a creative financial application that deserves to be paid attention to continuously.　　As a

2021-07-12Deep Dive

Breaking:TikTok Bans Crypto Currency ads and other Ponzi schemes on Social media.

Breaking:TikTok Bans Crypto Currency ads and other Ponzi schemes on Social media.　　ABSTRACT:　　The popular social media platform TikTok has banned the running of Crypto currency ads, Ponzi schemes and other misleading financial investments advertisements on its platform. 　　The popular social media platform TikTok which has over 800 million active users worldwide has decisively banned the promotion of various financial service products such as: Crypto currencies, Ponzi schemes and other get Rich quick investment ads from advertising such through its platform subsequently.　　According to the management of TikTok, all branded content sharing including the promotion of all financial services and products not approved by the FCA is now globally prohibited within their platform.　　Further, the management of the platform reiterated that this new prohibition encompasses such deals as lending and management of money assets, cryptocurrency, foreign exchange, pyramid schemes, get Rich quick investment services, Ponzi schemes, etc.　　This measure have been forcefully adopted by TikTok after the Financial Conduct Authority has raised serious concerns and need for censorship on different social media platforms which vividly seemed to be misleading the young generation towards jumping-in to take financial advice from what they read on Social media especially regarding Crypto Currency, get Rich quick schemes and other

2021-07-12Deep Dive

Mass internet outage shows why we need deeper decentralization of web 3.0

Afflicting numerous state and non-state actors, the June 8th outage resulted in costly interruptions to business and drew attention to institutional level faults within present web distribution models. Experts warn that such incidents will remain a constant nuisance without a significant web infrastructure change/upgrade.　　The Fastly Outage　　A series of websites — including the White House, Gov.uk, Spotify, and Reddit — went down last Tuesday morning following a massive outage at Fastly, a content-delivery network.　　The outage further affected e-commerce sites, like Shopify, eBay, and PayPal, as well as Twitch and Vimeo. Shopify reported that sellers and customers were unable to access their online stores and checkout pages respectively. News and media outlets also encountered difficulties, with content from providers like the New York Times, BBC, and Guardian being interrupted.　　It wasnt long before investigators identified Fastly as the source of the trouble. Fastly is one of a number of companies that provides a service known as a content delivery network (CDN) via cloud servers distributed across 26 countries. Fastly allows customers — Amazon, Reddit, et al. — to store mirrors of their websites and data (videos, audio files, and photos) on servers for a fee. Using this service increases streaming speeds by moving

2021-07-12Deep Dive

Japanese Regulator Report Suggests DeFi Regulations Could Be Coming

The top Japanese financial and crypto sector regulator, the Financial Services Agency (FSA), has published a report on DeFi, blockchain and crypto – with its authors concluding that there may be a need for the nation to develop regulations for the decentralized finance sphere.　　The report was the second from the FinTech Innovation Hub, a working group created by the FSA in 2018, per Coin Post. The group‘s main aim is identifying new business avenues and trends in the fintech and blockchain space, rather than policy creation, per se – but the report is nonetheless likely to influence the thoughts of the FSA’s policy-forming executives.　　The reports main function is to sum up developments and meetings held in Japan or virtually over the past few months – creating a sort of executive summary of key meetings for regulators to access at a glance.　　But the group wrote that it was “proceeding with discussions and document formulation” in the DeFi space, and claimed that regulators should understand more about community trends, development of DeFi technologies, governance mechanisms and the prospects for the further progress of decentralization in the space.　　The papers authors also added that “future regulations” would likely be imposed and that discussions about

2021-07-12Deep Dive

Former pro sailer brokers tax-haven passports for wealthy crypto clients

Rich crypto investors are purchasing passports in tax havens for less than $200,000.　　A Russian expatriate and former professional sailboat racer, Katie Ananina, Plan B Passport — a firm that brokers citizenship through investment schemes for tax-haven nations that dont impose capital gains on crypto holdings to wealthy investors.　　According to a July 11 report from CNBC, Plan B brokers hundreds of passports for predominantly western clients each year. Customers select from one of seven jurisdictions: Saint Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Vanuatu, Grenada, Saint Lucia, and Portugal.　　“If the government starts affecting me, I will take all [my assets] into my hands and go elsewhere,” said Ananina, adding:　　“I was smart enough to figure out that $200 in bitcoin will be worth $100,000 at some point. I dont think the government should have 40% of that.”　　The safe-haven states offer citizenship through investment schemes requiring six-figure investments into local businesses, real estate, or government bonds. Some jurisdictions accept payment as donations, with Ananina estimating most passports cost between $100,000 and $150,000.　　“Its basically a donation into the sustainable growth fund of the country. So, clients make a $100,000 or $150,000 donation, plus some due diligence fees, government fees, and then $20,000 for my

2021-07-12Deep Dive

What Is The Avalanche (AVAX) Ecosystem And Why Should You Take Notice?

With the ever-increasing popularity of cryptocurrency and blockchain, there are also more and more ecosystems, infrastructures, and systems being developed to find their own niches in the universe of crypto. We‘ve heard about names like Ethereum, Cardano, Polkadot, and Solana. Today, let’s talk about a different platform, one that is called Avalanche.　　Based on their whitepaper, Avalanche is a high-performance, scalable, customizable, and secure blockchain platform. It targets three broad use cases, namely:　　Building application-specific blockchains, spanning permissioned (private) and permissionless (public) deployments.　　Building and launching highly scalable and decentralized applications (Dapps).　　Building arbitrarily complex digital assets with custom rules, covenants, and riders (smart assets).　　Of course, understanding all of this will take time, so for this article, let‘s touch on a few basic points. We’ll talk about a general overview of the Avalanche ecosystem, a little on how it works, and whats unique about it.　　Alright, so first, what is Avalanche？ In a nutshell, Avalanche, also known as AVA, is an open, programmable platform for decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. In short, it wants to be an umbrella platform of sorts for DeFi applications, as well as, hopefully, dethrone Ethereum as the most widely used smart contract platform. Avalanche has a high transaction throughput of 4,500

2021-07-12Deep Dive