Stories by Ben Munster
Reddit's mysterious influence on tether's market cap
Sentiment toward dollar-pegged stablecoin tether (USDT) tends to foreshadow shifts in the asset’s market capitalization by up to 12 days before surges. A new study said those price movements a...
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Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and Monero linked with fentanyl trafficking
Online criminals hawking lethal substances like fentanyl are demanding payments in Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and Monero, according to a new White House report. The report, intended to ra...
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Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
Maximalists can’t meme
Over the weekend, a mob of unruly Bitcoin Maximalists took to Twitter to assail Mike Dudas, the CEO of cryptocurrency trade publication The Block. Dudas had been singled out for his loose asso...
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Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
Ripple signs remittance firm Xendpay onto RippleNet
London-based remittance company Xendpay has signed up for cross border payment startup Ripple’s global settlement platform, RippleNet, according to a press release issued today. Joining Rippl...
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Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
Tether launches yuan-backed stablecoin — report
Tether, the issuer of the stablecoin USDT, is preparing to launch a new stablecoin pegged to the Chinese yuan. According to Chinese news site ChainNews, the token, CNHT, will be launched soon...
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Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
ICO Rating hit with SEC fine after failure to disclose paid reviews
Russian cryptocurrency ratings site ICO Rating has agreed to pay a hefty fine over its allegedly illegal token shilling, according to a statement today from the SEC. The US Securities and Exch...
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Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
Erik Finman, teen Bitcoin millionaire, plans to launch “Libra competitor”
Erik Finman, the teen who made his millions betting on bitcoin as a 12-year-old, appears to be launching a “competitor” to Facebook’s Libra project. Finman, who bills himself as “TIME’s most i...
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Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
Binance announces globe-spanning Libra competitor, ‘Venus’
Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, is calling on governments, companies, and entrepreneurs around the globe to develop “localised stablecoins” on its proprietary Binance Chain netwo...
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Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
Call it a summer bargain: pay-for-play ICO reviews are selling at juicy discounts
Faking reviews for seedy ICOs used to be a lucrative little business. On supposedly impartial review sites like ICObench, for instance, startups were once offered glowing reviews on their pro...
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Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
Augur, the oracle of web3, plans its rise from the ashes
Joey Krug, the co-founder and now intermittent advisor of utterly unregulated betting platform Augur, has some serious complaints about...Augur. “It’s too slow both on the Ethereum and UI sid...
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Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
Judge finds Craig Wright’s testimony “not credible”
A Florida federal judge has denied self-proclaimed Bitcoin inventor Craig Wright’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit concerning the alleged theft of several billion dollars’ worth of Bitcoin from a ...
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Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
IBM staffers file patent for blockchain-powered domain name service
Several IBM staffers are looking to patent a blockchain-powered domain-name system (DNS), according to a filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office yesterday. It’s unclear whether IBM it...
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Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
Why was ‘dollar-pegged’ stablecoin BitUSD trading at $34?
A “stablecoin” called BitShares (BitUSD) was trading at an impressive premium yesterday. On the exchange OpenLedger, lucky traders could sell their BitUSDs for a whopping $34, a 3,400 percent ...
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Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
BitMEX Times ad misled investors says UK watchdog
Remember when 100X leverage-offering crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX bought a double-page ad spread in the Times of London to mark the ten year anniversary of the Bitcoin white paper? The a...
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Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
The Bitcoin bull is causing a spike in Twitter scams
As the price of Bitcoin goes up, so too do the Crypto Twitter scams, according to a new report by MyCrypto cybersecurity researcher Harry Denley. And the accounts associated with the scams hav...
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Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
Coinbase drops Zcash for UK users, despite apparent regulatory approval
Updated with comments from Zcash. Coinbase is pulling support for Zcash for UK customers, according to emails to investors made public on Twitter. The privacy coin, which contains provisions...
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Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
The price of XRP falls to 2019 lows
Bitcoin’s frenetic run over the past few months hasn’t been enough to buoy the price of XRP. The cryptocurrency, focused on cross-border payments, has fallen below $0.30 after reaching recent...
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Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
Peter McCormack calls Craig Wright 'wholly discredited' in legal defense
Remember when podcaster Peter McCormack called self-proclaimed Bitcoin inventor Craig Wright a "fraud" earlier this year, and Wright sued him for defamation? McCormack's lawyers have bitten b...
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Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
Institutional investors are powering Bitcoin’s bull run, says new report
A new class of “institutional investors”—spurred by large financial institutions such as Fidelity— is fueling this year’s dramatic bull run, according to the first biannual report from digital...
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Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
Kik denies (almost) everything
Messenger startup Kik came back swinging today against the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s claims that it ran an $100 million, unregistered securities offering in late 2017. In an 130-...
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Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster