Stories by Ben Munster
Facebook reveals Libra, its momentous new crypto, to the world
After two years of speculation, Facebook has finally unveiled “Libra,” a cryptocurrency that it says will empower billions of users around the world by giving them access to financial services...
News>Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
Facebook appoints fellow Silicon Valley oligarchs as rulers of future crypto economy
Facebook’s upcoming cryptocurrency will be run by a consortium of around a “dozen” companies—each paying Facebook $10 million for the privilege—that will include Uber, PayPal, Mastercard and V...
News>Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
Binance launches ‘initial DEX offering’
We’ve seen initial coin offerings, initial exchange offerings and now…initial DEX offerings? Today a thing called Raven Protocol—a “fully decentralized” blockchain/AI startup which hopes to “...
News>Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
Bitfinex sister exchange wants to fully decentralize amid regulatory fears
Ethfinex, the sister exchange of troubled crypto exchange Bitfinex, plans to cede operational control to a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) built by DAOstack, in an effort to foster...
News>Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
Company behind Zcash sued for $2 million
Zcash inventor Zooko Wilcox’s Electric Coin Company—formerly the Zcash Company—is being sued for $2 million in damages by Simon Liu, a former employee who alleges the company skimped him out o...
News>Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
Fewer than five percent of GitHub crypto contributors are female, says study
Exactly who is building the tools for a more open, free financial future? Mostly men, it turns out. Ex-Breaker reporter Corin Faife trawled the data on 1,026,804 commits across the 100 most p...
News>Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
Google lowers the boom on crypto sites
After a recent core upgrade, Google is sending noticeably less traffic to crypto sites than others, reportedly causing one site, CCN, to shut its doors for good. Google put out its periodic “...
News>Business
Ben Munster
Abrupt EOS block producer demotion sparks concerns over centralization
On June 7, one of the EOS network’s most consummately professional block producers—the companies that run nodes to validate the network—was unceremoniously voted out after nearly a year of ste...
News>Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
Bittrex to wall off 30 tokens from US investors, including Enigma and Storj
Bittrex, a large cryptocurrency exchange that offers upwards of 200 cryptocurrencies to its traders, announced Friday that it was walling off 30 tokens from customers based in the United State...
News>Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
Building a better DAO
Call it the revenge of the DAO. Three years ago, one of the boldest experiments in decentralization—a distributed, user-owned incubator known as the DAO—suffered a humiliating and expensive ha...
News>Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
MakerDAO reports 20 percent growth per month in DAI
MakerDAO, the organization behind Dai, reports that adoption of the stablecoin has grown at a monthly rate of 20 percent since February, citing data drawn exclusively from “analysis of public ...
News>Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
Four of Kik’s most high profile supporters aren’t actually giving it any money
Updated to include comments from Circle. Kik might have dared the SEC to do it, but that won’t make a potentially ruinous lawsuit sting any less. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission s...
News>Business
Ben Munster
Kik says SEC’s charges are based on “flawed legal theory”
Earlier today, the US Securities and Exchange Commission sued messaging app Kik for failing to register what the regulators say was a $100 million securities offering. The Commission claimed t...
News>Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
Securities and Exchange Commission sues Kik for securities violations
Updated with comments from Kik CEO Ted Livingston. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced today that it has filed suit against Canada-based messaging startup Kik over its unreg...
News>Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
Facebook in talks with CFTC over GlobalCoin
Facebook is conducting talks with the Commodities Futures and Trading Commission, according to the Financial Times. The commission is reportedly seeking to understand whether Facebook’s upcomi...
News>Business
Ben Munster
Blockchain journalism startup Civil loses banking services at First Republic
First Republic, a major US lender, is apparently shutting off services to blockchain startup Civil next month, according to documents obtained by Decrypt. The San Francisco-based bank will be...
News>Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
There’s another Bitcoin copyright filing, and Craig Wright is…happy about it?
A new and conflicting copyright registration on the Bitcoin whitepaper has been filed with the U.S. Copyright Office. This is good for Craig Wright, says Craig Wright. “Now we can both show ou...
News>Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
Augur warns traders: close betting positions ending after September
Augur, a decentralized prediction market platform, and one of the most closely watched dapps on the Ethereum mainnet, has posted a warning to traders: don’t place bets on markets that will exp...
News>Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
Apple stocks for all as Abra launches Bitcoin-powered investment platform globally
Abra, an online investment platform that allows non-accredited investors to make ersatz, “fractional” investments in high voltage stocks, is now available to investors outside of the United St...
News>Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster
The battle for Craig Wright’s Wikipedia page
Craig Wright’s Wikipedia page has become a deadly battleground. Last week, the self-proclaimed Bitcoin inventor announced that he had been awarded a copyright registration of the Bitcoin whit...
News>Cryptocurrencies
Ben Munster