Texas A&M, a major university for technological and medical innovation, has launched a cryptocurrency course set to start in January, tweets revealed on Friday.
Associate Professor Korok Ray of the university’s Mays Business School announced that over 74,000 students could access the Bitcoin Protocol course offered at the university.
According to his tweets, the Bitcoin Protocol will segue into a Programming Bitcoin course, allowing students to “build a Bitcoin library from scratch.”
He said in a statement: “It took months to get this class approved, but we made it! Getting Bitcoin into the curriculum is important for the long game.”
Crypto Class is in Session
The news comes amid a growing number of cryptocurrency courses at universities. This aims to develop a stronger educational system for fostering emerging technologies.
The Canes Connection facilitates name, image, and likeness (NIL) opportunities for students at the University of Miami. Spokespeople revealed in September the programme would integrate the Reserve Block Foundation’s blockchain protocol for non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
The Foundation will offer RBX masternodes to the Canes Connection organisation, allowing students at the university to join the RBX Network, earn blockchain rewards, and verify transactions.
Tuition Coin is a project aimed at boosting the Cardano blockchain via a Teach to Earn platform. This will create fresh partnerships with education technologies to increase awareness of cryptocurrencies.
Instructors can join the Tuition Coin initiative to earn cryptocurrency rewards and learn about cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies. Teachers can register on the platform to and use a Know-Your-Customer (KYC) procedure to validate their identities.
Alameda Research liquidators have faced numerous setbacks in their attempts to recover lost funds for creditors, crypto analytics company Arkham tweeted on Wednesday.
According to its analysis, liquidation staff failed to conduct procedures properly. Liquidators improperly withdrew funds from vesting recipient wallets after failing to extract $1.75 million USD in Lido DAO Coin (LDO).
Explaining, it said: “The LDO tokens were still vesting, and as such the liquidators had to resort to taking out 10K LDO at a time to the central wallet. This was, however, not before sending 9 different failed transactions”
Additional cryptocurrencies affected include Aave, where liquidators misplaced $72,000 in assets on Aave, a decentralised finance (DeFi) lending platform.
Staffers liquidated a loan twice, totalling 4.05 Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC). The funds cannot be recouped for creditors. The incident happened as liquidators attempted to pool funds in a single wallet, it added.
It explained further: “The existence of other DeFi positions still held in Alameda wallets suggests that this may be the case. Often, these positions are on alternative L1 chains. The screenshots below show spot assets on Ethereum, but all of these wallets hold positions on other protocols or chains.”
The developments come after Alameda liquidators lost $1.7 million to cyberattacks, forcing staff to move funds to a safe multi-signature wallet.
The news comes just a day after FTX attorney Andy Dietderich revealed FTX had “recovered $5 billion in cash and liquid cryptocurrencies.” He told courts in a statement on 11 January the bankrupt firm had been working to rebuild transaction history from the collapsed exchange.
Brett Harrison, FTX’s former president of operations in the United States, slammed disgraced chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried for threatening colleagues.
In a series of tweets on Saturday, Harrison slammed Bankman-Fried for verbally attacking the platform’s workforces that offered solutions for improving the firm’s US management.
He explained in the thread that, six months after working for FTX, “cracks began to form” in his relationship with the former CEO.
He initially believed that Bankman-Fried was a “sensitive and intellectually curious person.” He later stated he found “total insecurity and intransigence” after employees confronted the executive.
Further problems developed after Harrison recommended FTX US to establish separate branches for its teams.
He explained: “I saw in that early conflict his total insecurity and intransigence when his decisions were questioned, his spitefulness, and the volatility of his temperament. I realized he wasn’t who I remembered.”
He added he “wasn’t sure what accounted for the dramatic change,” adding that potential mental health issues could be a “contributing factor.”
Harrison continued, stating: “Sam was uncomfortable with conflict. He responded at times with dysregulated hostility, at times with gaslighting and manipulation, but ultimately chose to isolate me from communication on key decision-making.”
Additionally, Bankman-Fried allegedly threatened to “destroy [Harrison’s] professional reputation” if he failed to apologise formally. The verbal threat “solidified” Harrison’s decision to leave the firm.
He concluded: “I never could have guessed that underlying these kinds of issues — which I’d seen at other more mature firms in my career and believed not to be fatal to business success — was multi-billion-dollar fraud. If any one of us had suspected let alone learned the truth, we would have reported them immediately.”
Authorities slapped Bankman-Fried with eight criminal charges on 3 January after his arrest in the Bahamas. Following his extradition to the US, he posted a $250 million USD bail while pleading not guilty to charges.
According to recent news, FTX had spent $40 million on luxury hotels, catering, and other items just months before the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Twitter has begun expanding the number of its crypto price listings by adding roughly 30 tokens as part of its $Cashtags upgrade.
The news broke on its Twitter Business account in late December. It listed Bitcoin, Ether, and other cryptocurrencies on the platform.
According to the announcement, people can use the dollar sign to search for cryptocurrency listings and charts. Coin listings include XRP, Tether, Cardano, Solana, Polygon, Litecoin, Uniswap, and others.
Dogecoin and Shibu Inu have joined the initiative, sparking the former’s Twitter army. The news comes after the company’s chief executive Elon Musk has lauded the doggo-themed coin in recent years.
The feature will use data from TradingView along with links to trading firm Robinhood. The plans come as Musk aims to upgrade the social media platform with a trove of new features, including crypto payments.
The news comes after Dogecoin spiked roughly 40 percent over two days after analysts tweeted possible plans of a “wallet prototype” supporting “crypto deposit and withdrawal” features.
Samsung Asset Management Hong Kong (SAMHK) plans to launch its “Samsung Bitcoin Futures Active ETF” on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
The listing is set to take place this month, allowing investors to receive new pathways to buying and selling Bitcoin.
Samsung’s exchange-traded fund (ETF) tracks spot prices for cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin with futures. The securities are listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and will invest in CME Bitcoin and Micro-Bitcoin futures.
The news follows developments in the East Asian finance hub, where the government and numerous banks have voiced interest in adopting cryptocurrency.
Hong Kong is the only Asia-based trading hub for Bitcoin futures ETF and also hosts the Hong Kong Crypto Futures FTF, valued at $70 million last year.
Globally, the United States, Canada, Australia, and several European Union countries have Bitcoin futures ETFs.
Comment on Crypto Futures
According to Park Seong-Jin, Samsung’s chief of Asset Management in Hong Kong,
“Hong Kong is the only market in Asia where Bitcoin futures ETFs are listed and traded in the institutional market. It will be a new option for investors who are interested in Bitcoin as a competitive product that reflects their experience in risk management.”
The ETF will also offer investors in retail fresh opportunities to trade Bitcoin and attract people to crypto markets without the need to hold private keys, reports say.
The news comes just after Bitcoin rallied over $18,000 amid the ongoing bear cryptocurrency market. Numerous other digital coins have faced similar gains.
Despite ongoing concerns with the cryptocurrency sector and tightening regulations, many have begun seeing a rebound in BTC’s value. The digital coin began to climb amid strong data on job growth in the US, allowing the cryptocurrency to recoup its value.
Polygon has recently launched a new hard fork of its network, it announced in a blog post.
The news comes after Polygon’s proof-of-stake (PoS) chain launched to scale up Ethereum’s operations, leading to faster and cheaper transactions.
The chain has developed as a major platform for decentralised apps (dApps), the company said. Multiple Web3 platforms such as Aave and Uniswap, as well as Stripe, Robinhood, and Adobe, have leveraged its technologies.
Currently, the new hard fork aims to create “immediate steps to improve Polygon PoS performance and predictability,” it added. This comes amid long-term changes and upgrades to the platform, including parallelization and Polygon zkEVM for upscaling the technologies.
Hard Fork Ambitions
According to the firm, the new hard fork aims to “reduce severity of gas spikes” and “address chain reorganizations […] to reduce time to finality.” The hard fork is set to release on 17 January.
The company is set to change its BaseFeeChangeDenomintor from 8 to 16 to accommodate the platform when gas “exceeds or falls below the target gas limits in a block.”
This uses EIP-1599, which sets the base fee for block inclusion, the company explained. Polygon can flatten growth curves with the denominator changes and expects base gas fee rates to fall to 6.25 percent, down from 12.5 percent. This will potentially stabilise severe fluctuations in gas prices.
The news comes after Polygon Studios, the creative studio incorporating Polygon’s blockchain technologies, partnered with the Sensorium Galaxy metaverse.
Polygon’s Web3 tools aim to expand and build Sensorium’s metaverse platform, native tokens, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) among others. It will also back technologies for the SENSO dApp, Sensorium’s play-to-earn (P2E) community game for organising metaverse music events for SENSO tokens.
Alejandra Guajardo, an El Salvadorean model and actress, joined the Miss Universe 2022 pageant in New Orleans with a stunning Bitcoin-themed fancy dress.
She posted on Instagram on 12 January a photo of walking down the stage with a massive colón, a former currency of the nation. The beauty contestant also decorated the outfit with cocoa beans and held a large staff with a bitcoin at its top.
In the video, the announcer said: “This look represents El Salvador’s history of currency. For a long time, cocoa was used, and then the colón, until it was replaced by the U.S. dollar. In 2021, El Salvador became the first country in the world to use Bitcoin as legal tender. You don’t need a sash to walk around dressed as cash.”
Bitcoin: The People’s Currency?
El Salvadorean plastics sculptor Francisco Guerrero designed the costume, just a year after El Salvador adopted Bitcoin as a sovereign token. Despite this, national president Nayib Bukele was rumoured to have promoted the cryptocurrency to onlookers.
In January last year, Bukele tweeted his support for BTC after purchasing several rounds of the digital coin after the country adopted it for national use in 2021.
The news comes after El Salvador lost the top-third spot in the world for cryptocurrency ATMs after Australia and Poland knocked the country to 5th place. Currently, the latter two hold the third and fourth positions, respectively.
El Salvadorean lawmakers recently approved a bill to outline plans for bonds using the digital asset. Many hope to pay off sovereign debt and use volcanic geothermal energy to mine cryptocurrencies, similar to Tonga and Fiji’s respective government Bitcoin ambitions.
The Miami Heat arena is set to remove branding logos for FTX from its façade after bankruptcy judges in Delaware received approval, reports revealed on Wednesday.
Miami-Dade County authorities earned a $135 million USD agreement with the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange. It allowed the county to rename the stadium from the Miami Heat Arena to FTX Arena up to 2040.
Branding covers multiple parts of the facility, including courts and the building itself. However, new filings the county filed with courts will effectively end the deal.
The Miami Heat expected to earn $2 million yearly from the agreement from June 2021, but payments stopped in January this year. It expected FTX to pay $5.5 million on 1 January.
The news comes after FTX struck a major partnership with the Forumla-1 global racing team. The crypto firm received the right to rename Berkeley, California’s Cal Memorial Stadium.
Legendary National Football League (NFL) quarterback Tom Brady also inked a deal with FTX to promote the brand. Team SoloMid (TSM), a professional esports organisation, renamed its company to TSM FTX in June 2021, but dropped its $210 million USD deal with the collapsed crypto firm.
According to a recent hearing, FTX “recovered $5 billion in cash and liquid cryptocurrencies” but still holds $8.8 billion USD in liabilities.
Ongoing FTX Scandal
The news comes after FTX, research firm Alameda Research, and 130 affiliates filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on 11 November last year, citing a liquidity crisis.
The collapse rocked cryptocurrency markets, triggering several additional bankruptcies and sparking governments to tighten regulations on digital assets.
Following his arrest in the Bahamas, authorities extradited Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX’s ex-CEO, to New York courts. He currently faces roughly 115 years on eight counts of fraud, misappropriation of funds, and other offences. Caroline Ellison, Alameda Research’s ex-chief, struck a plea deal to serve just one of eight of the charges totalling 110 years.
Gemini Co-Founder Tyler Winklevoss slammed regulators on 12 January after facing charges of issuing unregistered securities. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) slapped the firm with charges linked to its “Earn” programme, stating it was “optimizing for political points”
In a Twitter thread, he lambasted the charges as “super lame” and stated they were a “manufactured parking ticket.”
1/ It’s disappointing that the @SECGov chose to file an action today as @Gemini and other creditors are working hard together to recover funds. This action does nothing to further our efforts and help Earn users get their assets back. Their behavior is totally counterproductive.
— Tyler Winklevoss (@tyler) January 12, 2023
He continued that the SEC’s charges were “totally counterproductive” and that it had ongoing talks with the watchdog for over 17 months.
Winklevoss said: “They never raised the prospect of any enforcement action until AFTER Genesis paused withdrawals on November 16th.”
His comments come after the SEC released its statement, which said,
“The complaint further alleges that, in November 2022, Genesis announced that it would not allow its Gemini Earn investors to withdraw their crypto assets because Genesis lacked sufficient liquid assets to meet withdrawal requests following volatility in the crypto asset market. At the time, Genesis held approximately $900 million in investor assets from 340,000 Gemini Earn investors. Gemini terminated the Gemini Earn program earlier this month. As of today, the Gemini Earn retail investors have still not been able to withdraw their crypto assets.”
Gemini-Genesis Crypto Crisis
The news comes after Gemini’s Earn programme kicked off in February 2021 and ended on 8 January. This led to a major partnership with Genesis, a Digital Currency Group (DCG) subsidy, allowing customers to earn additional yield.
Genesis later halted access to the programme, blocking over $175 million in assets. The incident came amid the ongoing FTX collapse, leading to further issues.
Earn Update: An Open Letter to the Board of @DCGco pic.twitter.com/eakuFjDZR2
— Cameron Winklevoss (@cameron) January 10, 2023
According to reports, Genesis must pay roughly $900 million USD to around 340,000 Gemini Earn users. Gemini co-founder Cameron Winklevoss revealed the details in an open letter.
Bitcoin has marked a notable surge this week as the cryptocurrency surpassed $20,000 in the first month of the year, YChart data has revealed.
The crypto coin entered this week at roughly $17,000 after a dismal performance in November and December last year. The current BTC value is under a third of its $65,000 high in November 2021.
Currencies such as Ether (ETH) have also gained more than 20 percent of their value year-to-year. According to reports, the second-ranked cryptocurrency could see prices around $1,500.
The optimistic news comes amid the ongoing bear market across the crypto industry. The ongoing FTX collapse and rise in global fraud cases have prompted governments to tighten national regulations.
Bitcoin Trends in the New Year
News of the short rally comes amid a bearish market performance from 2022’s scandals involving FTX, Alameda Research, and 130 affiliates.
On 11 November, the companies filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States. The developments sparked a huge bank run on the company’s native FTT token, which also sent BTC, ETH, and others tumbling to historic lows.
Despite challenges from FTX, Voyager and Three Arrows Capital (3AC) collapses, BTC began trading higher this week due to strong US jobs data. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) figures showed a yearly 3 percent job growth for the country, boosting cryptocurrency values globally.
Glassnode data also revealed seven-month lows for Bitcoin outflows around the Christmas season. Outflows peaked around 143,000 BTC but dropped to one-tenth of previous figures near 25 December.