Two United States senators have penned a letter asking Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to halt a plan to allow young adults to access the firm’s metaverse platform, Horizon Worlds. In a March 1 letter, Senators Edward Markey and Richard Blumenthal said that Meta’s reported plan to “invite young users into a digital space rife with potential harms” should not be implemented if the strategy was driven by profit. According to the two lawmakers, allowing teenagers between 13 and 17 years old access to the virtual environment posed “serious risks”, citing privacy concerns, eye strain, and online bullying. “Meta’s plan to …

Moscow Credit Bank has issued a blockchain-based bank guarantee denominated in Chinese currency, claiming the product is the first in the country. The bank guarantee exceeds 100 million Chinese yuan — or nearly $144,600 USD at time of publication. According to a statement, the transaction was performed through the Masterchain blockchain platform, andthe Russian national blockchain network created to transfer digital assets between its participants. As one of the advantages of performing the transaction on-chain, the financial institution mentioned that "the beneficiary does not need to wait for the paper version and make a separate request to the bank to …

The United States Treasury Department is continuing to consider design decisions relating to the introduction of a central bank digital currency. Under Secretary for Domestic Finance Nellie Liang gave an audience at the Atlantic Council a rundown on March 1 of technical and policy issues the Treasury-led CBDC Working Group is looking at. Liang looked at both wholesale and retail CBDC (wCBDC and rCBDC), saying wCBDC raised more technical questions, whereas an rCBDC involved access issues. She mentioned in particular that “institutions not currently eligible for central bank accounts” could be granted access to a wCBDC. A wCBDC could be …

The decentralized application (DApp) NEAR protocol is releasing a new blockchain operating system, focusing on improving user experience on Web3 through a common layer for browsing and discovering open web resources, the company disclosed at the Web3 and innovation festival ETHDenver 2023. In an interview with Cointelegraph's Turner Wright during the event, NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin spoke on how the ecosystem is moving closer to user's needs and the release of the Blockchain Operating System (BOS). According to the NEAR's team, the system works with any blockchain or Web2 backend, allowing users to have the experience of using a single …

Several crypto firms have announced they will scale back or outright terminate their relationship with Silvergate Bank following an announced investigation into its alleged involvement in the FTX collapse. Amid news that crypto exchange Coinbase would no longer accept or initiate payments with Silvergate, companies including stablecoin issuers Paxos and Circle and Mike Novogratz's Galaxy Digital have announced similar actions regarding their partnerships with the crypto bank. Galaxy Digital announced on March 2 that it had stopped accepting or initiating transfers to the bank “out of an abundance of caution”. In separate posts on Twitter on March 2, Paxos said …

Legislation has been introduced in the American state of South Dakota to amend the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) to limit the definition of money to exclude cryptocurrencies. Central bank digital currencies (CBDC) would still be considered money under the proposed new definition. The 117-page amendment, introduced into the state house of representatives by Republican Mike Stevens, defines “money” as “a medium of exchange that is currently authorized or adopted by a domestic or foreign government. The term includes a monetary unit of account established by an intergovernmental organization or by agreement between two or more countries.” The bill continued: “The …

The Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia in the United States is moving forward on a lawsuit against business intelligence firm MicroStrategy executive chair Michael Saylor related to tax evasion. According to a Feb. 28 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, MicroStrategy said the court had not dismissed a claim against Saylor for failing “to pay personal income taxes, interest and penalties due” following an October 2022 motion from the firm. However, the court granted a motion dismissing allegations that Saylor — on his own and acting in concert with MicroStrategy — violated the …

On Episode 10 of Cointelegraph’s Hashing It Out podcast, Celo president Rene Reinsberg joins Elisha Owusu Akyaw (GhCryptoGuy) to discuss the regenerative finance (ReFi) movement, which focuses on the building blocks of decentralized finance (DeFi) and the principles of regenerative economics. Reinsberg also explains how Celo intends to stay relevant in the multichain world of layer-1 blockchains and layer-2 networks. The blockchain world is getting crowded, with multiple layer-1 blockchains launching and layer-2 networks becoming more popular. Reinsberg said the layer-1 Celo blockchain is not worried about the increase in options for users — instead, it sees it as an …

According to an official Telegram statement on March 1, Singaporean cross-chain crypto wallet developer BitKeep says it has reimbursed 50% of user assets lost during a security breach stemming from Dec. 26, 2022. On the date of the incident, an estimated $8 million was stolen by hackers after BitKeep's APK 7.2.9 (Android Package Kit) installation package was hijacked and swapped. Users who downloaded the malware subsequently saw their private keys compromised, leading to the theft of assets. As told by BitKeep, a total of 6,731 verified addresses were breached during the incident. The firm has since completed reimbursing 50% of …

In this week’s episode of Market Talks, Cointelegraph welcomes Adrian Zduńczyk, or as he is known on Twitter, CryptoBirb. He is the founder and CEO of The Birb Nest, a trading community platform. He is also a chartered market technician, chemical engineer, entrepreneur, mentor and influencer with over 655,000 followers on Twitter. We start things off with a simple question: What is Zduńczyk’s general approach or set of procedures that he goes through when he begins to connect with the markets in the mornings? How does he begin to decide if he should trade on any given day or stay …

On Mar. 1, nearly two years after Jack Dorsey's technology conglomerate Block (known as Square at the time) announced plans to build a self-custodial Bitcoin wallet, the company revealed that more work still needs to be done regarding its plans and that Block is actively seeking partners "to make this a reality." As told by Block, partnerships are required to move assets between fiat and Bitcoin financial systems and provide users with the access and information they need to buy, sell, and store bitcoin securely and easily. The company stated it is prioritizing a quality over quantity approach to select …

Bitcoin (BTC) popularised the term blockchain. Blockchains, or “decentralized and distributed digital ledgers used to record transactions across a network of computers,” have been around for over thirty years, the household name for a blockchain is Bitcoin. That’s despite the fact that the Genesis block was mined well over 14 years ago when George W. Bush was president and “I Gotta Feeling” by Black Eyed Peas topped the charts–Bitcoin is still top of the blocks. It’s to be expected, then, that most blockchain advocates would have used, understood or a the very least experimented with Bitcoin. Nope. Not so. Here’s …