Global cryptocurrency exchange Binance continues restricting support for some of its trading services amid an ongoing regulatory crackdown. Binance officially announced Monday that the exchange would delist margin trading pairs for three fiat currencies: the euro, the Australian dollar and the British pound sterling. According to the announcement, Binance will suspend the mentioned fiat trading pairs on Aug. 10 and then switch to automatic settlement and cancel all related pending orders. The isolated margin trading pairs will have been entirely delisted from the exchange by Aug. 12. Binance Margin to Delist $AUD, $EUR & $GBP Pairshttps://t.co/gyBP8XzITI — Binance (@binance) July …

Bitcoin's (BTC) current price slump has failed to dampen some experts' optimism regarding the world’s biggest cryptocurrency. In a new survey by personal finance comparison platform Finder.com, half of the respondents believe Bitcoin will surpass fiat money, or central bank-issued currencies, by 2040. While the sampling is arguably narrow — Finder.com says the report is based on a panel of 42 cryptocurrency experts — it shows that Bitcoin’s price crash from April’s all-time high didn’t impact the long-term perspective of crypto professionals. The survey reveals that 50% of the respondents expect to see the moment that Bitcoin overtakes global finance, …

Bitcoin (BTC) bears should watch out for a potential blow as the number of margined short positions on the Bitfinex exchange crashes by roughly 25%. The dataset dropped to 11,066 BTC as of 12:20 GMT Saturday, compared to 14,897 BTC at the session's open. Meanwhile, the drop came as a part of a bigger downside move that started on July 15. On the day, the total number of margined short positions had reached 17,053 BTC. In simple terms, BTCUSDSHORTS represents the number of margined bearish positions on Bitfinex, measured in BTC. Traders borrow funds from Bitfinex — their broker — …

Damien Hirst, a contemporary artist known around the world, talked about similarities and differences between artwork and fiat currency as he prepared to drop 10,000 NFTs tied to his physical paintings. Speaking with Cointelegraph’s Andrew Thurman at his London studio in May, Hirst answered questions in a magic 8-ball fashion, by opening up one of the boxes containing hundreds of sheets of his The Currency artwork collection and reading a sentence off the back of the paper. Though the immediate answers were not always on topic — is Satoshi really a cliche? — the artist laughed at the absurdity continued …

Binance customers in the United Kingdom are once again left without a fiat currency withdrawal option on Binance. According to Financial News on Tuesday, the crypto exchange giant sent emails to affected customers informing them of the problem. However, the exchange reportedly has not given any details as to the reason for the latest suspension of pounds sterling withdrawal but assured customers that it was working to resolve the situation. Back in June, Binance had temporarily suspended cash payouts via Faster Payouts amid warnings from the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority about the exchange operating in the country without a license. …

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), a global financial institution owned by some of the world’s biggest central banks, is trying to dispel the theory that cryptocurrency ownership is linked to distrust in traditional finance. On Thursday, the BIS published a paper on the socioeconomic drivers of cryptocurrency investments in the United States. Employing representative data from the U.S. Survey of Consumer Payment Choice, BIS argued distrust in fiat currencies such as the U.S. dollar has nothing to do with investor motivation to hold cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), stating: “Demand for cryptocurrencies is not driven by distrust in cash or …

Digital asset exchange platform Crypto.com has opened a new U.S. dollar fiat on-ramp thanks to a new partnership with global payment provider Circle, according to a Monday announcement. The partnership between Crypto.com and Circle enables users in over 30 countries to deposit dollars from their bank account and receive USD Coin (USDC), a popular dollar-pegged stablecoin at a one-to-one ratio. Crypto.com’s trading platform has over 50 pairs with USDC, which means that user will be able to buy Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and other cryptocurrencies with their stablecoins. Dollar withdrawals will be enabled in the near future, the announcement reads. …

Bitcoin may not mean an end to traditional currency and banking, according to research director of Coin Center Peter Van Valkenburgh “I think there are folks in the Bitcoin community who probably make too many noises about how Bitcoin is going to dominate all economic systems and nobody will be using dollars anymore, and nobody will be using banks anymore, and I think that’s actually a little foolhardy,” Van Valkenburgh said in a Friday interview with the Washington Journal on C-Span. “The fact of the matter is that there’s going to be times when a Bitcoin transaction is what you …

The Bank of Indonesia is one of the latest global central banks to announce state digital currency plans amid a major spike in the country’s digital payments. Governor Perry Warjiyo said Tuesday that Indonesia’s central bank is planning to launch a digital rupiah currency as a legal payment instrument in Indonesia, Reuters reports. The official noted that the rupiah is the only legally accepted currency for payment in the country so far, and BI will be looking to regulate a digital rupiah the same way it regulates cash and card-based transactions. According to Warjiyo, BI is now studying potential benefits …

Central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, could pose a threat to financial systems if related risks are not managed, Big Three credit agency Fitch Ratings has warned. Fitch Ratings released a report on Monday entitled “Central Bank Digital Currencies: Opportunities, Risk and Disruption,” which discussed the major trade-offs between risks and benefits associated with CBDCs. Fitch Ratings stated that the key benefits of a retail CBDC lie in its potential ability to expand government-backed cashless payments in an effort to keep up with the wider digitalization of society. The biggest reasons to explore a CBDC for central banks and some …

Amid the ongoing concerns over Bitcoin’s (BTC) energy consumption, a new study states that the traditional banking system consumes much more energy than the Bitcoin network. Michael Novogratz’s cryptocurrency firm, Galaxy Digital, released a report Friday titled “On Bitcoin’s Energy Consumption: A Quantitative Approach to a Subjective Question,” providing open-source access to its methodology and calculations. Compiled by Galaxy’s mining arm, the study estimates Bitcoin’s annual electricity consumption to stand at 113.89 terawatts per hour, including energy for miner demand, miner power consumption, pool power consumption and node power consumption. This amount is at least two times lower than the …

The Bank of England's deputy governor Jon Cunliffe has argued that a sea change in the issuance and circulation of public and private monies could make general access to a digital form of central bank money crucial for ensuring financial stability in future. In a speech at the OMFIF Digital Money Institute in London, Cunliffe reflected on past, present and future trends in the widespread use of private money issued by commercial banks, noting that the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated existing trends away from public to private money for everyday payments. About 70% of respondents to a recent Bank of …