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Tokenized gold is a type of stablecoin that pegs its price to gold, while the tokens on the blockchain represent ownership of physical gold managed by the issuer.

Fund managers have added about 4,000 bitcoins in recent weeks.

The brand is also partnering with Web3 community Poolsuite to release a co-branded NFT collection.

In the hour after the 45th President was arrested Tuesday afternoon, the collection saw 30 sales, a 462% increase after a long period of token-holder dormancy.

Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino, in response to the article, said the company has no exposure to Signature Bank.

Paxful, a peer-to-peer bitcoin marketplace, is shutting down its marketplace — and might not return at all.

The news “will probably come as a big shock to many,” CEO Ray Youssef wrote in a post, adding he could not share all the details.

The platform is closing down following some “key staff departures” and challenging regulatory conditions for the industry. “While we work through these issues, we have taken the most secure option and ask you to explore self-custody and trade elsewhere,” Youssef said.

Youssef also claimed during a Twitter Space event on Tuesday that a lawsuit filed by a Paxful co-founder “drove away all of the senior-level team.”

Peer-to-peer marketplaces allow users to buy and sell bitcoin directly with others, in-person or online. This is in contrast with more traditional crypto exchanges, which facilitate trading between buyers and sellers. 

Shifting conditions 

Customer funds are all accounted for, according to the post, and Youssef encouraged users to withdraw them, recommending self-custody options. Paxful is also offering “easy migration” to other options for non-U.S. users, to platforms like Noones, a new peer-to-peer platform “dedicated to the global south.”

The news comes two months after the shuttering of LocalBitcoin and narrows the options for people to trade cryptocurrency among themselves. While exchanges, including Binance, offer P2P trading, Paxful and LocalBitcoin were among the few pure-play P2P outfits.

“With the shutdown of LocalBitcoins and Paxful this year, peer-to-peer bitcoin trading is now much more difficult,” Steven Zheng, research director at The Block, said. As a result, users can no longer easily trade Bitcoin in a purely private manner. 

Paxful, founded in 2015, hit $5 billion in total volume traded on the platform in 2021, with Nigeria, China, India, Kenya and the U.S. as the top five countries by volume. It was listed as one of the most influential companies of 2022 by Time, boasting around 9 million users at the time.

Ether was removed from its marketplace in December, with CEO Youssef saying, “revenue is nice, but integrity trumps all,” at the time, in response to a tweet criticizing Ethereum’s design.

Not your keys, not your crypto

Youssef told customers to remove their bitcoin from the platform and move it into self-custody in December. He cited the collapse of FTX as his reason for urging Paxful’s 11 million customers to self-custody their cryptocurrency.

“I take great pride in protecting our community’s funds and, unlike others in our industry, I have never touched our customers’ money,” Youssef said in an email to users at the time.

“My sole responsibility is to help and serve you. That’s why today I’m messaging all of our users to move your Bitcoin to self-custody. You should not keep your savings on Paxful or any exchange and only keep what you trade here.”

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Participants of Celo’s Founders in Residence program and developers on the Layer-1 protocol will receive guidance and services.

“Every non-sleeping, non-exercising hour I’m working on this, because that’s what I think about.”

OpenSea’s Pro non-fungible token (NFT) trading platform is finally live after several months of development. Is it too little, too late?

The company that long held the title of the world’s biggest NFT marketplace will see if its new offering can help it regain its dominance — Upstart marketplace Blur recently overtook OpenSea as the leader in total volume as measured by U.S. dollars. Blur offered a tantalizing incentive program featuring low fees, airdrops and token incentives in order to woo traders; the strategy quickly ate into OpenSea’s market share. 

Still the leading marketplace by number of active traders, according to The Block research, OpenSea acquired NFT aggregator service Gem last April. Gem allows traders to buy and sell NFTs across multiple marketplaces.

OpenSea has integrated Gem into its Pro product. “Building on previous Gem designs, we’re excited to roll out a vastly improved suite of features that will allow collectors to discover the best deals and insights across 170 marketplaces and access sophisticated tools that meet their need for automation,” the company said in a statement.

The Block research analyst Brad Kay isn’t convinced OpenSea’s latest push will be enough to put a serious dent in Blur’s gains.

“The opportunity cost to switch to OpenSea is way too high,” said Kay, who added top traders, or whales, appear committed to Blur for now. “Seventy percent of the total Blur volume comes from the top 1% of users while OpenSea’s top 1% of users only account for 20% of the total volume.”

OpenSea appears it may be taking a page from Blur’s playbook by offering a batch of incentives. First, the company said it will allow holders, during a “promotional period” to list NFTs on Pro without charging any fees. Additionally, OpenSea said it plans to give early adopters of Gem an NFT reward. It also teased another potential reward for users who swap the regular trading platform for Pro.

“We’re not forgetting about community rewards,” the company said. “We’re charting a different course by featuring NFTs as rewards.”

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Texas is a major hub for bitcoin miners, many of whom have taken advantage of demand response programs, which the bill looks to curb.