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The number of bitcoin ATMS across the globe has surged amid a coronavirus-induced shift toward contactless payments.

The transparency measure is meant to provide additional certainty for decentralized finance (DeFi) traders who often rely on asset-backed stablecoins.

China Construction Bank’s (CCB’s) branch in Labuan, Malaysia, is raising up to $3 billion via blockchain bonds.

The bonds will be publicly traded on Malaysian digital asset exchange FUSANG and can be bought with bitcoin and U.S. dollars, according to a statement shared with The Block on Wednesday. Both retail and institutional investors can buy these bonds. The minimum investment limit is $100 and trading begins Friday.

The bonds will be issued by Longbond Ltd, a special-purpose vehicle set up to issue digital bonds and deposit the funds with CCB Labuan. The bank is the lead arranger and listing sponsor of the bonds, which will offer an annualized rate of Libor + 50 basis points, i.e., around 0.75% at current levels.

Residents of the U.S., China, Iran, North Korea, and some other restricted countries are not allowed to invest in the bonds.

Henry Chong, CEO of FUSANG, said, “digital securities can power financial inclusion, by combining the exciting advancements in blockchain technology with the tokenization of traditional securities.”

“We believe that this will be the start of Crypto 2.0. – the true institutionalization digital asset products,” Chong added.

© 2020 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.

The bitcoin market is likely to take a breather before continuing its rise toward $20,000 the end of the year, analysts told CoinDesk.

A blockchain-based streaming site is betting tokens can win over artists and fans.

OKEx has lost almost all the hash rate that was connected to its crypto mining pools following the exchange’s suspension of withdrawals.

Data from BTC.com shows that the computing power from miners that connected to OKEx’s bitcoin mining pool produced about 5% of the total blocks mined on the bitcoin network over the past three months. On average, they were mining about 10 blocks per day.

Since October 16 when the exchange announced the suspension of crypto withdrawals, the computing power connected to OKEx’s bitcoin mining pool has dwindled, from close to 9,000 petahashes per second (PH/s) to right now just 20 PH/s. 

Since October 17, OKEx’s bitcoin mining pool has mined only 12 blocks and the latest one was produced on November 2. 

Data from OKEx’s mobile and web apps show a similar trend for the computing power connected to its ethereum mining pool, which has decreased from over 30,000 MH/s before withdrawal suspension to now only 730 MH/s.

© 2020 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.

The integration will mean Rakuten Travel Xchange customers can opt to use ShareRing’s self-sovereign identity app to access bookings.

A payroll platform which has drawn in $44 million in venture capital funding during the pandemic has unveiled a new tool to allow remote workers to be paid in cryptocurrency.

Deel, which supports remote workforces with payroll and compliance, says the new tool will enable international workers to be paid in bitcoin, ether, or XRP — with “near-instant” withdrawals.

The San Francisco-based start-up has partnered with Coinbase to deliver the product. Employees will need a Coinbase account to use it.

Deel’s chief operating officer Dan Westgarth, who used to run digital bank Revolut’s operations in North America, told The Block the aim of the launch is to help workers avoid international transfer fees, as well as helping them to get paid faster.

“A question on a lot of people’s tongues is: will it be widely adopted? Will the companies paying these people be willing to opt into it? Well, we built it in a way that the company doesn’t choose. The remote worker chooses,” he said.

“So I can be working for a very old, boring institution, run by a load of old guys who don’t understand crypto and oppose it. They could pay me in U.S. dollars, but given I’m a Deel user and given I get paid through Deel, I could elect to have my paycheck delivered in XRP — instantly.”

Founded in 2018, Deel closed a $14 million Series A round led by Silicon Valley heavyweight Andreesen Horowitz in May 2020. Only five months later, the start-up secured $30 million in Series B funding in a round led by Spark Capital.

© 2020 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.

KuCoin, the crypto exchange that suffered from a $280 million hack in September, has recovered a majority of the affected assets, according to its co-founder.

Johnny Lyu, KuCoin’s co-founder and CEO, said in a Tweet on Wednesday that 84% of the affected assets have been recovered via “approaches like on-chain tracking, contract upgrade and judicial recovery.” 

He added that the details of the recovering process can’t be disclosed until the case is closed as per requirement from law enforcements. Lyu said KuCoin has so far resumed the services for 176 tokens on the platform and the services for all remaining assets will resume before November 22. 

A majority of KuCoin’s stolen funds in September were ERC-20 tokens (worth $147 million), Stellar tokens (worth $87 million) and bitcoin (worth $30 million).

The Block reported previously that within days after the hack, over $160 million worth of tokens had already been recovered through either protocol projects’ forking, redeploying the contracts or blocking the hacker’s address. 

Lyu’s note comes about 6 days after the KuCoin hacker’s Ethereum address initiated dozens of transactions with ERC-20 tokens to another Ethereum address that starts with 0xd32dbed, which now has a balance of $13.6 million worth of ERC-20 tokens.

Hours before Lyu’s Tweet on Wednesday, the 0xd32dbed address further sent several transactions with ERC-20 tokens to another address that starts with 0xd6216fc, which currently has a balance of over $110 million worth of ERC-20 tokens. 

© 2020 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.

Centralized exchange tokens have been skyrocketing this year, but there is one problem behind the astonishing performance: they are becoming more equity alike.