Cryptocurrency

India reportedly is set to propose a law that would ban cryptocurrencies and penalise both trading and mining due to a lack of regulation. The bill would also criminalise possession, issuance, and transferring crypto-assets in the country but offer a six-month period to liquidate assets.

Software developer and antivirus pioneer John McAfee is to stand trial in the U.S. on charges of cryptocurrency fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The Justice Department published the indictment on Friday, and McAfee faces years in prison and heavy fines if convicted.

The 75-year-old was arrested in Spain in October at the behest of U.S. law enforcement officials, who had already filed charges against him for tax evasion and unfairly promoting cryptocurrencies. A statement from McAfee was not initially available. According to U.S. authorities, he remains in custody in Spain.

According to research by scientists at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, Bitcoin mining consumes around 121.36 terawatt-hours (TWh) electricity per year in order to generate new Bitcoins and verify transactions on the blockchain.

This ranks Bitcoin’s electricity consumption above Argentina (121 TWh), the Netherlands (108.8 TWh) and the United Arab Emirates (113.20 TWh) - and it is gradually creeping up on Norway (122.20 TWh).

Bitcoin has surpassed the $50,000 mark for the first time on Tuesday, after Tesla, BNY Mellon and Mastercard showed support for the cryptocurrency and "the city of Miami’s recent moves to adopt bitcoin, and rumors of Uber and Apple jumping aboard."

Credit card company Mastercard has announced that it will enable transactions with cryptocurrencies in the future - pushing the bitcoin price, which has been rising for weeks, even higher.

Bitcoin rose to a new all-time high of $48,481. This means that bitcoin is taking aim at the round mark of 50,000 US dollars for the first time.

On Saturday, the price of the oldest and best-known cryptocurrency rose above the round mark of 25,000 US dollars (20,503.57 euros) for the first time. On the Bitstamp trading platform, a high of 25,022 dollars was reached. This is a record high. On other trading platforms, of which there are many, the record highs may differ, as there is no central Bitcoin trading.

Bitcoin has surpassed the $20,000 mark on Wednesday and continued to surge late into the evening, reaching $22,192 on 2 am EST. Bitcoin’s market cap has reached $384 billion.

PayPal has announced that cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin will in the future be supported by their services and will enable users to buy, hold and sell digital currencies through their platform.

PayPal President and CEO Dan Schulman has stated that "our global reach, digital payments expertise, two-sided network, and rigorous security and compliance controls provide us with the opportunity, and the responsibility, to help facilitate the understanding, redemption and interoperability of these new instruments of exchange".

Telegram Group has agreed to an $18.5 million civil settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and to return $1.2 billion to investors to resolve charges over an unregistered digital token coin offering, the SEC said in a statement on Friday.

In October 2019 the SEC filed a complaint against Telegram alleging the company had raised capital through the sale of 2.9 billion Grams, on its TON (Telegram Open Network) blockchain, to finance its business.

"I want to conclude this post by wishing luck to all those striving for decentralisation, balance and equality in the world. You are fighting the right battle. This battle may well be the most important battle of our generation. We hope that you succeed where we have failed." wrote Pavel Durov, creator of Telegram, announcing the shutdown of its TON blockchain platform.

New Zealand Police has frozen $90 million from a New Zealand based company belonging to Alexander Vinnik who had been arrested in July 2017 while on a family vacation in Greece. The Russian IT expert has an open extradition warrant from the United States and France where the authorities accuse him of money laundering, identity theft, drug trafficking and computer hacking. The authorities also accuse him that he has operated BTC-e, a cryptocurrency exchange that allegedly enabled money-laundering. The Greek legal team of Vinnik denies that he ran the exchange and says he was an employee.