Crypto News: Tether, Ripple, and Ukraine

Tether has reduced its paper holdings by 21 percent. That accounts for $6.2 billion. Marching on, Tether has partnered with the Switzerland city of Lugano to transform it into a European Bitcoin City.

Ripple recently unsealed documents that show the company sought legal advice as early as 2012 on whether XRP would be a security. That certainly bolsters their case against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Meanwhile, a former SEC official says the SEC will lose “on the merits of the case.”

Russia has ordered troops into two Ukraine regions, declaring them independent states. President Joe Biden has issued sanctions against Russia for doing so. More importantly, crypto prices plunged immediately after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s chess move. The market lost $400 billion in less than a week then went up again upon announcement of the Biden sanctions. Bitcoin’s price is up this morning, to $38,873.67 at 9 a.m. CST.

Yesterday, Cardano rose to 2nd place in terms of transaction volume, with $17.04 billion, in a 24-hour period.

7 types of crypto tax nightmares.

70+ Web3 terms you need to know.

How community leaders and creators are using NFTs to collaborate.

Coinbase and Kraken CEOs get a reprimand from CoinGeek for talking tough on Canada’s decision to lock crypto accounts. But did Justin Trudeau end the bitcoin argument?

Avalanche surpassed Solana and TRON in total value locked in January 2022.

The IRS is keeping an eye on the NFT space to figure out how to get their share.

The Motley Fool predicts the top 3 cryptocurrencies in 2030.

Is Nvidia's Lite Hash Rate limiter history?

“Snowflakes Illuminate the Centenary Journey of Winter Games” launches on the BSV blockchain.

Cryptocurrency and the football metaverse (comic strip).

Binance founder to share crypto vision at Museum of the Future in Dubai.

How to stay ahead of harsh crypto market conditions.

Correction: On Monday I reported that hackers broke into OpenSea and stole over 250 NFTs. It wasn’t hackers. It was phishers exploiting The Wyvern Protocol.

Were Online Bulletin Boards a Type of Social Media?

A bulletin board system (BBS) was a primitive text-based forum that centered around a specific topic. The systems were popular among topic enthusiasts and allowed members to interact with each other on a two-dimensional screen in the same manner that internet forums currently do. However, unlike Usenet groups, BBSs were centralized.

Much like Facebook groups and forums have moderators, a BBS had a system operator, also called SysOp. The SysOp ran the BBS from their home or office with a computer, at least one modem, and a software package that managed the look and feel of the bulletin board and facilitated communication between users. Of course, there was also the community of members who interacted with each other on the system.

Graphics, if there were any, were primitive. Because the economics of DSL (digital subscriber line) was prohibitive before the 1990s, BBSs operated on modems. With a limited bitrate, graphics weren’t very practical. Even the GUI-based BBSs of the late 1980s and early 1990s had their graphical limitations. The benefit to these systems is that multiple users could communicate on a common bulletin board-like web interface in a way that wasn’t practical through email.

An excerpt from my forthcoming book Cryptosocial: How Cryptocurrencies Are Changing Social Media, to be published by Business Expert Press in March 2022. Want to read it? Join my launch team for more information.

Cryptocracy is a decentralized newsletter published 4 times a week. I curate the latest news and crypto analysis from some of the brightest minds in crypto, and sometimes offer a little insightful and snarky commentary. Always fresh, always interesting, and always crypto.

First published at Cryptocracy. Not to be construed as financial advice. Do your own research.

Image credit: BBC