• Ivan Soto-Wright, CEO of MoonPay, speaks with Michael Gronager, CEO of Chainalysis, November 17, 2022. (Photo: Village Global/Flickr)
    Media,  People

    MoonPay Founder Revealed as Mystery Suarez Funder

    Ivan Soto-Wright gave half mil to Miami Mayor’s presidential PAC

    August 1, 2023 /

    Ivan Soto-Wright is capable of excellent timing. The cherubic, celebrity-adjacent founder and CEO of crypto payment app MoonPay moved to Miami just before Covid shut down most of the country. And also before Florida’s hands-off approach to the pandemic attracted a wave of liberty-loving crypto enthusiasts. And then, in a further burst of excellent timing, he and other top MoonPay executives sold $150 million in shares of the company at the end of 2021, near Crypto’s mid-pandemic sugar high. But he’s also displayed some less fortunate timing. In April 2022, just as NFTs were ending their brief and idiotic reign as the flavor of the month, Soto-Wright told the audience…

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  • Prophetic 2020 tweet by Ethereum inventor Vitalik Buterin
    Bitcoin,  Bridging solutions,  Ethereum,  Protocols

    Multi-year effort to improve Bitcoin-to-DeFi bridging crosses Threshold

    Network announces redemptions for tBTC

    July 30, 2023 /

    Threshold Network announced this week that it has completed a multi-year effort to upgrade its Bitcoin-to-DeFi bridge tBTC from its original structure and security model launched in 2020. Specifically, the protocol added redemption capability – that is, the ability for customers to not only put their bitcoin in escrow and mint tBTC (an ERC-20 token) but also reverse the process and “unmint” back to BTC.  This is the latest in a string of Threshold announcements beginning in January with tBTC minting, an integration with interoperability protocol Wormhole in May and four subsequent partner launch announcements, three involving Ethereum “Layer 2” (L2) scaling juggernauts Polygon, Arbitrum and Optimism.   The reason given…

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  • Photo by DrawKit Illustrations on Unsplash
    Education,  Ethereum,  Technology

    Multi-Signature Ethereum Wallets Explained

    Benefits include enhanced security, control and flexibility

    July 25, 2023 /

    Security is essential in the brave new world of cryptocurrency. It is crucial to safeguard digital assets from possible dangers and weaknesses, as along with the myriad benefits crypto offers, each owner takes on a large, and often quite challenging, responsibility in the absence of a company or entity to turn to for support. Not to mention that there is generally zero opportunity for restitution in the case of user error or malfeasance. The phrase “not your keys, not your coins” has long meant both that if you allow an entity to hold your crypto-assets they have ultimate control over them, as well as that the assets are truly in…

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  • Crypto & AI
    (Photo: Pixabay)
    AI,  Bitcoin,  Venture capital

    Crypto & AI: Competition, Convergence or Both?

    Part one: AI-based Trading

    July 20, 2023 /

    The convergence of cryptocurrency with artificial intelligence (AI) is attracting significant attention from builders and investors alike. “We’ve never been more excited about crypto and we continue to invest across all stages,” Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang said in a recent tweet, adding, “We’re also a group of curious nerds and the developments in AI are too interesting to ignore.” As one example, AI-metaverse startup Futureverse raised a $54 million in Series A funding this month, with growth equity fund 10T Holdings leading the round, joined by Ripple Labs. Naturally, it has also caused pundits to speculate on an exponential increase in crypto values. Arthur Hayes, BitMEx co-founder and former CEO,…

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