Author - James Lim

KPMG says Germans ramping crypto investments as Bitcoin halving nears

A recent KPMG study shows a renewed enthusiasm among German investors for the cryptocurrency market. The latest uptick in investment comes after a challenging year for the sector and just as the market anticipates the upcoming Bitcoin halving event in mid-April 2024. The report, which surveyed approximately 2,400 private crypto investors across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, sheds light...

German federal bank to offer crypto to institutional and corporate clients

Germany’s largest federal bank is set to launch crypto custody services in collaboration with crypto exchange Bitpanda, targeting institutional and corporate clients. Germany’s biggest state-backed lender with over $350 billion in assets under management, Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW), will launch crypto custody services for its institutional and corporate clients in the second half of 2024 in a...

Aave fork on Blast mistakenly liquidated $26m

An Aave fork on Blast network liquidated user positions worth over $26 million due to an erroneous threshold change. Pac Finance, an iteration of decentralized finance (defi) lender Aave on Coinbase’s layer-2 chain Blast, attempted to adjust its loan-to-value (LTV) parameters on April 11. Instead, the Aave fork unknowingly reduced its liquidation threshold. The result was a...

US government tops global Bitcoin holdings with $15b in assets

The U.S. government is the largest Bitcoin holder among nations worldwide, with approximately $14.7 billion worth of BTC. According to Arkham data, the U.S. government currently holds 212,847 BTC in its treasury wallets, just behind MicroStrategy, which owns 214,246 BTC, which is currently valued at $14.8 billion. Apart from Bitcoin, the U.S. has collected significant quantities of other digital currencies, including Ethereum (ETH)...

Anza introduces updates to tackle congestion on Solana network

Anza has introduced updates in version 1.18.11 of its validator client to address Solana’s network congestion issues. Validator clients are crucial software tools used in proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchains such as Solana (SOL) and Ethereum (ETH), enabling validators to authenticate transactions and uphold network rules. According to a representative from Anza, an update aims to solve Solana’s congestion issues. “The...

CoinWire: Bitcoin halving interest doubled since 2020

More people worldwide are interested in the Bitcoin halving this year compared to 2020. According to the CoinWire research provided to crypto.news, the appeal of Bitcoin’s (BTC) halving has almost doubled since its previous quadrennial block reward slashing. The firm analyzed this year’s Google Trends data from across the globe and discovered that BTC halving interest scores increased from...

Ex-Amazon engineer sentenced to 3 years in prison for $12m crypto hack

A former Amazon software engineer Shakeeb Ahmed was sentenced to three years in prison for exploiting smart contracts. The breaches in 2022 resulted in the theft of over $12 million in different cryptocurrencies. The trial was the first-ever sentencing for a cyberattack on smart contracts. Ahmed admitted in December 2023 to manipulating smart contracts. By inserting fraudulent pricing data into the...

Salesforce is in advanced talks to buy Informatica, WSJ reports

(Reuters) - Salesforce is in advanced talks to acquire data-management software provider Informatica, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. The price of the deal being discussed is below Informatica's current stock price of $38.48, which is a potential complication factor, the Journal said. Salesforce and Informatica did not immediately respond...

How you address ChatPT can affect your response

“Compose a message to customer service about a lost package”, “Can you rewrite this paragraph to make it more concise?”... It’s not always easy to know how to talk to ChatGPT. However researchers at the University of Southern California have found that conversational robots like ChatGPT perform much better when addressed politely. Abel Salinas and Fred...