Bitcoin’s rapid-fire ascent to $44,000 comes on the back of roughly 25% gains in the last week. The grandfather of all cryptocurrencies has had an even more lucrative 2023, rising 158% from its year-ago levels, according to CoinMarketCap data. Given how long the crypto world has been dealing with a downturn, what’s driving Bitcoin’s price…
Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, and welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Our Monday show covers the latest in tech news from the weekend and what’s making headlines early in the week. And we had a lot to…
Welcome back to Chain Reaction. To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important crypto stories delivered to your inbox every Thursday at 12 p.m. PT, subscribe here. Last week we didn’t publish a Chain Reaction newsletter, thanks to Thanksgiving. But we’re back at it this week and saying goodbye to November after a…
As the layer-1 blockchain Ethereum continues to grow and evolve, layer-2 blockchains like Optimism are working to alleviate issues of scaling, speed and costs. “We’ve been working on the same thing since 2017,” Jing Wang, Optimism’s CEO and co-founder, said on TechCrunch’s Chain Reaction podcast. “We’ve all been trying to solve the same problem for…
The Bank of Korea (BOK) rolled out details on its pilot program for its retail central bank digital currency (CBDC), stating that 100,000 selected Korean citizens will join the trial in the fourth quarter of next year. The participants will be able to buy goods with tokens in the form of CBDC issued by commercial…
We knew it was coming, but stock-trading platform Robinhood is finally open for business in the U.K. — its first international market since debuting in the U.S. more than a decade ago. Robinhood is granting early access to the app starting today for those who join the waitlist, with things gradually opening up to everyone…
As part of an international law enforcement investigation, the FBI and the Dutch Financial Intelligence and Investigation Service have seized the websites of a crypto mixer that was allegedly used by North Korean hackers and several cybercriminals to launder stolen funds and obfuscate transactions. On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign…
Acctual has raised $3.85 million in seed funding at a $15 million post-money valuation to help crypto startups manage their money, the company’s co-founder and CEO Atikh Bana exclusively told TechCrunch. “At a high level Acctual is just a better way to manage invoices and bills in crypto,” Bana said. “It’s like a true accounts…