Both Binance and Coinbase suffered technological issues on Wednesday — the same day Bitcoin (BTC) crossed the $20,000 price threshold for the first time. Binance related its issues to the number of people surfing the exchange. Changpeng Zhao, or CZ, Binance’s CEO, tweeted on Wednesday at 2:13 pm UTC: “#Bitcoin just popped. Experienced some scaling issues. Should be fixed for now. Underestimated demand. Adding A LOT more ‘servers’ still.” An update from CZ came about half an hour later, revealing improvements, as well as a dramatic surge in users on the platform. “Still some latency issues here and there. Working …

Turkey’s crypto and blockchain ecosystem welcomed 2020 with big ambitions and a strong track record from 2019, which was its best year ever in terms of adoption. Following the release of Statista’s “Global Consumer Survey 2019,” which lists Turkey as a global leader by a wide margin in terms of crypto use, one major crypto exchange after another announced plans to set up shop in the country. Huobi and Binance established their offices in Istanbul, Turkey’s biggest city and business center. Big players from Europe like Crypto.com and Bitpanda showed clear interest in the Turkish crypto ecosystem. The Turkish lira, …

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has started shipping its physical Binance Visa cards in the European Economic Area. According to a Dec. 14 announcement, users in the EEA region will soon receive their physical Binance Visa cards. Customers that have already ordered the card can now complete the delivery process in their card wallet. In conjunction with debuting its physical cards in the EEA region, Binance also added Ether (ETH) support to its crypto debit card, so customers can now pay with the altcoin. “Simply transfer Ethereum to your Card wallet and drag it above the other coins to …

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has announced a strategic partnership with sports and entertainment fan-token issuer Chiliz. In a Dec. 14 post, the exchange announced that, as the first milestone of this partnership, Chiliz fan-tokens for Paris Saint Germain (PSG) and Juventus (JUV) football clubs would be the latest featured on its Launchpool platform. As Cointelegraph reported, the Launchpool platform allows users to stake tokens for up to 30 days in order to farm certain reward assets, just before those assets are listed in Binance’s innovation zone. This provides an instant marketplace for farmed assets. These listings will see users able to …

Just four days after it launched its Eth2 staking service, customers of the popular U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange Kraken have deposited more than 100,000 Ether, worth north of $60 million. The milestone was surpassed on Dec. 8, with the exchange estimating that its staking service represents approximately 8% of all ETH staked for Ethereum 2.0 so far. Kraken estimates that its service will provide an APY of between 5% and 17%. Kraken’s vice president of product, Jeremy Welch, stated that the exchange has “long been a supporter of Ethereum,” noting that Kraken was one of the first exchanges to list Ether …

The gap is narrowing between crypto analytics providers CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko when it comes to the number of website visits each receives per month. According to a Dec. 1 report from news outlet The Ken, CoinGecko had 20.6 million monthly desktop and mobile visitors as of October, compared with CoinMarketCap’s 29 million. These numbers represent a 135% increase in site traffic for the Singapore-based firm since May, when CoinMarketCap drew four times as many visitors as the competitor. While both websites saw small peaks in traffic during July, CoinMarketCap has not significantly widened the gap since Binance acquired the site …

Cryptocurrencies are commonly known for being a store of value, but as the blockchain space continues to mature, utility tokens are being created that extend their benefits beyond mere financial gains. Scott Gralnick, director of global partnerships for ShapeShift — a Swiss cryptocurrency exchange — told Cointelegraph that cryptocurrency can help launch Web 3.0 as more utility tokens are designed to provide functions beyond market value: “At ShapeShift, we are looking past the idea of whether a token has value and can be traded or held. Moving forward, we hope that tokens will have functionality beyond being just a digital …

Following the announcement of a disappointing closure of a Ugandan subsidiary in October, Binance — the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange — released a blog post yesterday indicating that another initiative, Binance P2P, is making strong inroads across the world’s second-most populous continent. Titled “P2P Merchants: Facilitating Freedom of Money in Africa,” the post highlighted the peer-to-peer trading program’s growth in the region throughout the year — most notably stating that Binance P2P has processed a total of $280 million equivalent local African currencies since March, when the program introduced coverage for the Nigerian Naira (NGN). Binance also claims that the …

In a move that may signal that a mainnet launch is just around the corner, Flow — the blockchain from Cryptokitties and NBA Topshot developers Dapper Labs — has launched the Flow Port: a tool for token holders to manage, stake, and delegate their Flow cryptoassets. The announcement focused heavily on how users can stake their FLOW tokens through custody providers such as Kraken and Coinlist, as well as delegate their tokens to currently-existing node operators. Those who wish to operate their own node might face a lengthy reviewal process, however: the announcement notes that there is a long waiting …

The Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation released a web series to educate citizens about cryptocurrencies, blockchain and Bitcoin (BTC). The show premiered on Wednesday and was developed in collaboration with Binance, Hacken and Crystal Blockchain as part of the Ukrainian government’s “Diia.Digital Education” program. The show consists of eight episodes of six to 12 minutes each that explain the basic concepts of cryptocurrency and blockchain. The show is hosted by Andriy Onistrat, an entrepreneur and former banker, who interviews guests working in the blockchain industry. The first episode, available on YouTube, introduces the concept of cryptocurrencies as a permissionless, unstoppable …

With Bitcoin within $1,000 of its all-time high price of $19,891 set in December 2017, trading on major crypto exchange Binance is also hitting new heights, with more than $37 billion in volume in the last 24 hours. According to data from CoinMarketCap, the daily trading volume of Binance has now hit $37,291,444,117, up 40.5% in the last 24 hours. Last week, the analytics site reported $25 billion in trading volume for Binance. In addition, Bitcoin (BTC) futures open interest on Binance hit an all-time high of $1.17 billion, according to crypto analytics site Glassnode. #Bitcoin futures open interest on …

In a blog post of Friday, Binance re-introduced BTCB to the world — a wrapped Bitcoin asset intended to bring liquidity from the world's largest cryptocurrency, BTC, to Binance Smart Chain's DeFi (decentralized finance) ecosystem. However, hodlers may be cheering the renewed interest in BTCB for a different reason: each Bitcoin locked on BSC may contribute to a looming BTC supply crisis. First announced last year, Binance initially saw wrapped Bitcoin solely as a vehicle for traders to obtain cross-chain asset exposure without leaving BSC. Since then, however, the utility of wrapped Bitcoin has boomed due to the precocious maturation …