Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: People, Culture and Tech
As the crypto business matures, a robust—some would say never-ending—series of industry conferences has arisen to provide reasons for players in the space to gather in person. Perhaps the most elite of these is the yearly Cumberland Global Summit.
WASHINGTON—For the last year or so, people who follow digital currency have been wondering why Coinbase, the largest American digital currency exchange, doesn’t list the XRP token. And now that XRP has cemented its place as the world’s No. 2 digital currency, its absence on Coinbase is even more eyebrow-raising. With the departure of a key executive, gossip has begun to swirl, with at least one Coinbase insider speculating that the omission is based on crypto politics more than business. The crypto world has begun to wonder if the reason for XRP’s omission has been driven by personal politics rather than business prudence. Let’s review a bit. For almost all…
The issue of how to classify and regulate cryptocurrency and blockchain technology is one that has stumped decision makers in Washington. This is unsurprising, given that offices in the Department of Defense were still using 8-inch floppy disks as recently as 2016. But while regulators in DC wring their hands over who has jurisdiction and whether certain coins are securities or not, many crypto observers fear that China, able to move with the speed and certainty of a dictatorship, is emerging as the gatekeeper of crypto. And that dominance is finally starting to rouse Beltway regulators who fear surrendering America’s digital future. Though China has a ban on trading digital…
Square, a company best known for its popular point-of-sale and payment processing suite, announced on Monday that it would be expanding Bitcoin services offered in its Cash app. Thus the No. 1 finance app in the iOS App Store will allow users to buy and sell the cryptocurrency in all 50 U.S. states. This is huge news for the crypto world as it represents a sort of mainstream acceptance after the blow it was dealt in January when Stripe announced it would no longer support Bitcoin payments. To be clear, there is a distinction between the types of services Stripe offered and those that Cash will offer vis-à-vis Bitcoin. Stripe’s…
