Crypto investors are betting big on real estate this year as the cryptocurrency market continues to grow. New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG) recently conducted a survey that found that 46 million Americans own Bitcoin, equating to 22% of all adults. While optimistic, some cryptocurrency investors have expressed concerns regarding the security, custody and volatility of digital assets. For example, Nickel Digital Asset Management, a regulated European investment manager dedicated to the crypto market, surveyed institutional investors and wealth managers from the United States and Europe who collectively have $275 billion in assets under management. Findings show that 76% of …

Ethereum (ETH) is currently the leader when it comes to smart contract capabilities and the sheer number of projects operating on its network, but the push to build products on Bitcoin (BTC) is gaining traction with advocates like Square CEO Jack Dorsey spearheading the effort to bring decentralized finance (DeFi) to the Bitcoin network. One project aiming to combine the features of DeFi with the security of the Bitcoin network is Stacks (STX), a layer-one blockchain protocol designed to bring smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps) to the Bitcoin network. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that since …

IOHK, the blockchain development team behind Cardano, announced on July 15 that the project’s Alonzo test net had officially transitioned from Blue to White, bringing with it the ecosystem’s long anticipated expansion to functional smart contracts. HARD FORK SUCCESSFUL: Delighted to report around 19.44 UTC today we successfully forked the #Alonzo testnet to the new #AlonzoWhite node. The new network is happily making blocks already. 1/5 — Input Output (@InputOutputHK) July 14, 2021 While the previous testnet, known as Alonzo Blue, did offer some smart contract features, these were only available to a limited number of insiders. Yesterday’s upgrade will …

Blockchain security firm CertiK announced Wednesday that it has received $37 million in fresh financing to expand its product and security capabilities for the cryptocurrency and DeFi industries. “We’re proud to advance transparency in the space by providing the tools and resources – including our official audit reports – so the community can make sense of vital security information,” said CertiK co-founder Professor Ronghu Gu. Kai Jiang, a partner at Coatue Management, said blockchain security is becoming increasingly important amid the DeFi revolution: “Decentralized finance has grown enormously over the last 18 months, giving millions of people access to innovative …

Immunefi, a security service outfit that specialized in decentralized finance (DeFi) projects, has inked a collaboration with the Binance Smart Chain. According to a release issued on Friday, Immunefi will work in collaboration with BSC to improve the security of projects on the Binance chain. As part of the partnership, ethical hackers who take part in a campaign to discover vulnerabilities in BSC-based projects will earn rewards. As a security outfit, Immunefi has reportedly paid more than $3 million in bug bounties to ethical hackers. Major BSC protocols such as PancakeSwap, DODO, and Zapper among others are already deploying the …

Phil Hogan, who served the European commissioner for trade for less than a year, will be joining the advisory board of the Astra protocol. In a Tuesday announcement, Astra said Hogan would be coming onto its board as an executive adviser, citing his experience in the European Commission and international relations. The project said the addition of the former European Union trade commissioner would provide strategic guidance in partnerships aimed at driving growth to the decentralized finance (DeFi) industry. “Decentralised finance is becoming increasingly prominent across the world, but the lack of robust, legal protection has hindered progress within major …

More than $30 billion worth of Cardano’s ADA has been staked in anticipation of a major milestone in the network’s evolution — one that could set the stage for wider network adoption and a more considerable price appreciation for the cryptocurrency. Roughly 71.7% of ADA’s circulating supply, worth roughly $31 billion at today’s prices, have been staked across 2,665 active pools, according to data provider PoolTool. On Thursday, the price of ADA was $1.34, having gained 4%. At current values, ADA is the fifth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. Cardano remains far and away the most capitalized cryptocurrency in terms of …

Jay-Z and Jack Dorsey have hinted that their music streaming service, Tidal, could be eying integrations supporting nonfungible tokens (NFT) and smart contracts. Speaking during a conference on Monday hosted on Twitter Spaces, the duo emphasized the importance of introducing features that empower the artists using the platform, citing smart contracts, NFTs and analytics tools as examples. Despite Tidal lagging behind top music streaming services — with Tidal’s 2019 $166 million in revenue paling in comparison to the $2.8 billion and $7.44 billion generated by Apple and Spotify, respectively, during that same year — Dorsey and Jay-Z believe they can …

On June 12, Bitcoin (BTC) mining pool Slush Pool mined block 687,285 with the transaction including a Taproot upgrade activation signal. That particular block was the 1,816th to include a signal for Taproot activation by a BTC miner within the difficulty epoch that lasted from May 30 to June 13. With 2,016 blocks created every difficulty period, crossing 1,816 blocks with a Taproot activation signal satisfied the 90% signaling threshold required to lock in the upgrade. This event meant that Taproot, Bitcoin’s first protocol upgrade in over four years, was set for its activation phase to be expected in mid-November. …

Coinbase has unveiled a new tool that can automatically audit smart contracts built on Ethereum that use the Solidity programming language. Designed to be used by smart contract auditors, asset issuers and other exchanges, the firm has plans to make the tool open source later this year In a Wednesday post, Coinbase principal blockchain security engineer Peter Kacherginsky announced the firm’s new security analysis tool dubbed “Solidify,” which was created to improve on the “time-intensive and error-prone” process of manual smart contract analysis. The engineer noted that the exchange’s token listing process requires extensive security reviews and “risk mitigation recommendations” …

The central bank of France — Banque de France — is continuing its work on the development of a European central bank digital currency (CBDC). On Monday the bank officially announced the successful completion of a CBDC experiment with major Switzerland-based cryptocurrency bank SEBA. Conducted in collaboration with SEBA, Banque Internationale à Luxembourg, and Luxembourg central securities depository LuxCSD, the experiment used a CBDC to simulate the settlement and delivery of listed securities on TARGET2-Securities (T25), a European securities settlement engine. SEBA purchased securities from Banque Internationale à Luxembourg, with post-trade settlement managed by LuxCSD. Related: Digital euro offers better …

Smart contracts are an important element of the blockchain revolution, although they predate blockchain. According to most sources, it was Nick Szabo who coined the term “smart contract” in the 1990s. The mechanism of a vending machine has since been frequently given as an example of a basic smart contract based on if-then logic. The payment into a vending machine triggers an irrevocable automated action from when money is retained to when an item is supplied. The emergence of blockchain technology enabled the implementation of such if-then logic on decentralized networks to facilitate autonomous self-executing, self-performing smart contracts, also called …