In an industry milestone, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has become the first corporation within the crypto and blockchain space to be featured on the prominent Fortune 500 list. A 68-year-old annual tradition, the Fortune 500 list is synonymous with ranking the leading corporations in the United States by total revenue, as well as other quantifiable metrics such as percentage profit margins, assets and the number of employees, among others. Retail giant Walmart captured the top spot for the tenth consecutive year with $572,754 million in revenue and a growth of 2.4%. Amazon registered second place with $469,822 and 21.7%, while Apple …

LGT Group, a top family-owned private banking and asset management group, is moving into cryptocurrency by launching Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) investments at LGT Bank in Liechtenstein. Managing over $292 billion of assets, LGT Bank has debuted digital asset custody and trading services in cooperation with Swiss cryptocurrency bank Seba, according to a joint announcement released on Wednesday. “LGT Bank has been offering direct investments in Bitcoin and Ether since May. The private bank has entered into a partnership with Seba Bank, which will act as broker and custodian to provide this service,” Seba Bank’s chief marketing officer Sandra …

Blockchain.com, a cryptocurrency exchange and financial services firm, has reportedly launched an asset-management service for its wealthy customers. According to Bloomberg, the service is known as BCAM and will serve institutions, family offices and high-net-worth individuals. BCAM was founded in collaboration with Altis Partners, a futures portfolio manager that also manages investment portfolios using blockchain technology. Blockchain.com is the underlying platform that powers BCAM. The new service, which has yet to be officially announced by either Blockchain.com or Altis Partners, is based on a strategy that tracks the price of Bitcoin versus the U.S. dollar. It's also developing a new …

American Internet media and entertainment company Buzzfeed has revealed the identities of two of the four original Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT collection founders “Gordon Goner” and “Gargamel” as being Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow in real life. Journalist Kate Notopoulos authored the Feb. 4 article, which was entitled “We Found The Real Names Of Bored Ape Yacht Club’s Pseudonymous Founders.” Notopoulos was able to uncover the pair’s identities by search the publicly available records of Yuga Labs, the company behind the collection. Yuga was incorporated in Delaware with an address associated with Greg Solano, and other records pointing …

The United Nations Children's Fund has called for incorporating child safeguards into online child protection initiatives, citing financial and exploitative threats posed by unregulated crypto markets. UNICEF’s “Prospects for children in 2022” report, which examines the impact of global trends on children, anticipates further mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies — “demonstrating both the promise of greater financial inclusion and the need for new child safeguards.” The report shows that digital currencies have gained widespread interest in 87 countries by the end of 2021, with the majority of jurisdictions experimenting on their own versions of a central bank digital currency. UNICEF expects …

The Associated Press (AP) is launching a nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace where collectors will be able to purchase tokenized photographs from the global news platform. The initial collection of NFTs will include photographs of subjects like space, climate, and war from AP photojournalists. They will be released over several weeks starting on Jan. 31 for varying prices, according to the marketplace’s website. The photographs will be minted as NFTs on the Ethereum layer-two scaling network, Polygon. The platform will support secondary transactions using debit or credit cards, and payments in Ethereum. The marketplace is being built by Xooa, a blockchain …

Monday marked the start of the TotalEnergies Africa Cup of Nations tournament — the largest men’s football championship series in Africa. At the same time, Binance announced its official partnership with the Confederation of African Football as well as its official sponsorship for the AFCON 2021 tournament, becoming the first crypto and blockchain sponsor for the event. Through this sponsorship, Binance will also be promoting CAF’s social media content which will include the Assist of the Day, Assist of the Week and Assist of the Tournament. This content will cover games from five cities in Cameroon across all six venues. …

It is no secret that nonfungible tokens (NFTs) are still a niche subject. Despite their rapid surge in popularity during 2021, there is still a significant percentage of people who do not know what an NFT is. Reflecting on the graph below, it is evident that a lot of work needs to be done for NFTs to truly hit the mainstream. However, it is clear from recent months that there is potential for this to happen, and there have been many signs of awareness and adoption which I will discuss in this article. Celebrities Celebrities have been a key proponent …

From the rise of the Metaverse to major brands announcing nonfungible token (NFT) drops, cryptocurrency mass adoption is well underway. Americans in particular have taken a growing interest in crypto, as recent findings from the Pew Research Center found that nearly a quarter of 10,371 adults in the United States were familiar with cryptocurrency, while only one-eighth (13%) were entirely unfamiliar with the concept. Additional research from online broker firm, BrokerChooser, discovered that the U.S. is the third most interested county in NFTs, falling behind Canada and Australia. Given America’s curiosity for crypto, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that …

Investors who study Bitcoin (BTC) carefully are eventually convinced to own a stake in the cryptocurrency, according to SkyBridge Capital CEO and founder Anthony Scaramucci. In a Monday interview with CNBC’s Capital Connection, Scaramucci — who also served a 10-day stint as President Donald Trump's communications director — urged investors to “do the homework on Bitcoin” and “understand what it is.” He also suggested that investors read the white paper written by anonymous Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Understanding Bitcoin inevitably leads to growing adoption as many prominent investors around the world realize the potential of the cryptocurrency, Scaramucci said: “Anybody …

This year, a great crypto cycle has played out with new all-time highs, euphoria and mainstream media paying lip service to the crypto trend du jour. However, the uncomfortable truth for us in the industry is that crypto is no more present in most people’s daily lives than it was in 2017. Four years have passed — what stalled its progress? 2017 marked my first professional foray into the blockchain space when I joined Crypto.com (then known as Monaco) as its first chief marketing officer. The company grew to become one of the largest crypto service providers and fiat-to-crypto gateways …

The old adage “The crypto market is not for the faint-hearted” was put on full display recently when the total market capitalization of the industry dipped to a relative low of $1.75 trillion on Sept. 20, only to make a strong comeback. Despite all of these fluctuations, however, demand from institutional investors remains strong, with reports suggesting that big-money players continued to recently “buy the dip,” especially on the heels of China’s most recent blanket ban that saw bears take control of the market, albeit briefly. To further elaborate on the matter, a recent CoinShares report revealed that over the …