In a recent podcast interview with The Stakeborg Talks, co-founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin spoke candidly on a wide range of issues, including his early attraction to mathematics and problem-solving, the potential of decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, his perspective on Bitcoin’s community and the nonfungible token, or NFT, space. Answering an inquiry as to his preference for career title, Buterin — a modest entrepreneur with an animated passion for his profession — referred to himself as a tech philosopher, and as such, perhaps, coined the term. Paraphrasing the infamous scholar and warrior quote from Athenian historian Thucydides, Buterin drew perspectives on the shifting dichotomy between the tech industry's dogma of continual advancement and the abstract space carved out for thought-leaders in philosophy.

U.S. fintech giant Stripe is hiring a new blockchain team to enable crypto payments for its users. The $100 billion company is returning to the crypto sector three years after it pulled back from offering Bitcoin support due its slow transaction times and rising fees. According to a job listing page on Stripe’s website, the firm is looking for four “Staff Engineers'' with experience in the crypto sector. Guillaume Poncin, the head of engineering stated on Twitter earlier today that he’s looking for engineers and designers to “build the future of Web3 payments.”

While Russia continues to enforce a ban on cryptocurrency payments as part of a law which took effect in January, the country has no plans at this time to completely prohibit trading by its citizens. According to an Oct. 12 report from local news agency Interfax, Alexey Moiseev, the deputy finance minister of the Russian Federation, said he believes Russian citizens will continue to be allowed to buy and use cryptocurrencies outside the country on foreign exchanges without the threat of legal action at home. Crypto payments in the country are currently banned, but Russians have been allowed to purchase and trade cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC). "Russian citizens can have a wallet open outside the Russian Federation, but if they operate within the Russian Federation then they will be subject to bans, I think, for the entire foreseeable future, due to our financial sovereignty," said Moiseev.

Blockchain payments firm Ripple has announced a $44-million environmental, social and governance (ESG) joint venture partnership with fintech provider Nelnet Renewable Energy to fund the adoption of environmentally conscious solar energy initiatives across the United States.  According to the announcement, the new fund is expected to offset over 1.5 million tons of carbon dioxide over 35 years, equivalent to the energy usage of 180,635 homes for one annum. In March 2021, Nelnet Inc. received a commendable E1 ESG accreditation from the S&P Global Ratings evaluation board for the former’s $9.9-million solar tax equity fund. The project entails the financial backing to build four photovoltaic solar projects in Upstate New York.

The International Monetary Fund’s Financial Stability Board said the growing adoption of cryptocurrencies could potentially increase the risks to the global economy. In its Global Financial Stability Report released on Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund, or IMF, said the adoption of crypto assets and stablecoins in emerging markets and developing economies could pose a challenge to those countries’ macroeconomic and financial stability. The group said the risks were “contained for now,” but urged regulators to monitor cryptocurrencies and keep them in check. The IMF added that as the crypto space expanded and evolved, “new sources of risk” were emerging, such as stablecoins and decentralized finance, or DeFi. Specifically, the group identified the space at risk from hacking as having a “lack of transparency around issuance and distribution” of tokens, and operational risks including outages during periods of extreme volatility. It also labeled “meme tokens” and centralization — a major exchange like Binance handling a large amount of trading volume, while Tether is responsible for the majority of the supply of stablecoins — as factors to consider.

Crypto asset investors may have a longer wait for a Bitcoin futures exchange-traded product according to Todd Rosenbluth, the senior director of ETF and mutual fund research at research firm CFRA. Speaking on CNBC’s “ETF Edge” on Oct. 12, Rosenbluth stated that while a Bitcoin futures product is likely to be the first crypto ETF to gain approval, he cautioned that the current clouded regulatory situation could cause further delays. There are more than 20 crypto asset-based exchange-traded products waiting for Securities and Exchange Commission approval, and the regulator is yet to pass any, instead kicking the can down the road on multiple occasions.

Institutional investors are continuing to pile into Bitcoin (BTC) despite prices pushing up to a five-month high. According to CoinShares’ Tuesday “Digital Asset Fund Flows Weekly” report, more than $226 million in capital flowed to institutional Bitcoin products this past week. Bitcoin products dominated inflows for the third consecutive week, posting a week-over-week increase of 227%. The heavy inflows coincided with the price of BTC gaining 12.5% for the week, with BTC sitting at around $54,000 on Friday.

Major crypto exchange Coinbase has announced that it will be opening a waitlist for a nonfungible marketplace it will launch later this year. In a Tuesday blog post, Coinbase vice president of product and ecosystem Sanchan Saxena said the nonfungible token, or NFT, marketplace would allow its users to mint, purchase, discover and showcase Ethereum-based tokens. According to Saxena, the offering will allow creators to maintain control of their artwork “through decentralized contracts and metadata transparency,” with all NFTs on-chain. The Coinbase announcement comes following crypto exchange FTX and its United States-based subsidiary introducing a marketplace wherein users are able to trade NFTs cross-chain through the Ethereum and Solana blockchains. Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, entered the NFT market in June by launching a marketplace aimed at minimizing transaction costs.

Bitcoin (BTC) wallet and exchange platform Blockchain.com has announced the introduction of margin trading services. In a blog post issued on Tuesday, Blockchain.com stated that Bitcoin margin trading had been a regular request from users since launching its exchange service in 2019. According to the announcement, the platform will launch margin trading for the Bitcoin-United States dollar (BTC/USD) pair with up to 5x leverage.

Cross-chain decentralized exchange (DEX) THORSwap appears to be on the path to recovery after the THORChain network was taken offline following major exploits just three months after entering its guarded launch. The Cosmos-powered network aims to support decentralized trades executed across different blockchain networks such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. According to a Tuesday progress report, the team behind the project’s DEX, THORSwap, has so far restored functionality for four of the five networks it supported prior to going down in July. The update states that THORSwap has resumed swap functionality across the Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and Binance Smart Chain networks, adding that the team is currently in the process of reinstating support for Ethereum.

MoonPay, a fintech startup dedicated to building crypto payments infrastructure, is reportedly expected to reach a valuation of $3.4 billion after conducting its first round of venture capital funding.  The VC funding for the crypto payments startup is being co-led by Tiger Global Management and Coatue Management and will inject funds worth $400 million into the bootstrapped company. The MoonPay platform allows the purchase and sale of cryptocurrencies and digital assets using mainstream payment methods such as debit and credit card and local bank transfers. While the funding information is not officially announced, a report from The Information suggests that “two people familiar with the matter” have confirmed the development. Once confirmed, MoonPay will represent a small demographic of crypto-related startups to reach unicorn-level valuation within three years.

Cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius Network has raised $400 million in a new equity funding round amid United States regulators increasingly cracking down on crypto lending. Announcing the news on Tuesday, Celsius noted that the latest funding was led by Canada’s second-largest pension fund, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), and WestCap, an equity firm established by former Airbnb executive Laurence Tosi. Celsius Network raises $400m. @FT "The funding round was led by WestCap... and Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ)." More:https://t.co/L5wpMxCvcR

The Binance cryptocurrency exchange has announced a $1 billion accelerator fund to expand the capabilities of the Binance Smart Chain ecosystem and advance mainstream adoption across the financial technology sector. The exchange showcased the eight-figure fund in a tiered development model across four specialist areas: Talent Development, Liquidity Incentive Program, Builder Program and Investment & Incubation Program. The announcement suggested that they will allocate $100M, $100M, $300M and $500M to each segment, respectively. The largest benefactor of the pot, the investment & incubation program, will focus on multi-chain expansion of the already burgeoning areas of the technological sphere. This includes various metaverses, gaming, virtual reality and artificial intelligence.

XDEFI Wallet, a browser-based wallet service for decentralized finance (DeFi) and nonfungible token (NFT) users, launched its public version on the Chrome Store. Similar to the widely-used browser extension wallet MetaMask, the XDEFI Wallet supports DeFi applications across multiple blockchains. According to the announcement, the browser wallet works with the Ethereum (ETH) network and other Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible chains. Supporting THORchain and Terra, XDEFI Wallet has plans to include Avalanche, Solana and Arbitrum.

According to data from eth.btc.com，ethereum network's hashrate is705,766.54 GH/s，mining difficulty is9,713.00T. ETH's price ：$ 3,649.73 Avg Gas Price：99.00Gwei Pending Txs ：132532

According to a Form 8-K filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday, Cipher Mining will purchase 28,000 to 56,000 next-generation Bitcoin mining hardware from Bitfury at a cost of $6,250 per rig. At a maximum cost of $6,250 per machine, Cipher’s Bitcoin mining hardware outlay could go between $175 million and $350 million, depending on whether the company elects to receive all 56,000 rigs as stated in the purchase agreement. The total inventory order will be delivered in seven batches on a monthly basis beginning in the summer of 2022 until December 2022.

The African arm of the company behind the Ignis, Nxt and Ardor blockchains will be launching a multi-country tour to provide blockchain education in the public and private sectors. According to information provided to Cointelegraph, Jelurida Africa said it would begin a blockchain expedition starting with Tanzania’s self-governing state of Zanzibar on Oct. 23 before continuing on to Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Tanzania. The group aims to promote blockchain education with meetups in universities, financial institutions and public offices. The team of distributed ledger technology and smart contract experts said it plans to reach out to local lawmakers and private firms as well as developers and blockchain enthusiasts in the respective countries as part of the tour. “If you look at our relationship within the country or even outside the country you realize there is a need for trust before we can easily scale before we can easily improve on our dealings with our neighbors so there is need for trust, there is need for the immutability of data,” said Jelurida Africa managing director Adedayo Adebajo in a Tuesday interview with KUTV Kenya.

Cryptocurrency platform Voyager Digital has been granted an official licensing approval from French regulatory bodies Autorité des marchés financiers and the Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de résolution to facilitate a trading platform of 60 digital assets in the French and European Union markets under the subsidiary LGO Europe SAS. Voyager, a United States-based, Canadian-listed company under ticker symbol VYGR.V, is reportedly the first organization outside of Europe to be designated a “Fit and Proper” approval status of this kind. In early August, Voyager penned an agreement with crypto payments firm Coinify at an estimated value of $85 million with the ambition of expanding its financial offering to global cross-border payments.

Financial regulators in the Baltic country of Estonia want to revoke all crypto exchange licenses in an effort to start the entire regulatory regime anew. Matis Mäeker, head of the Estonian Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), has urged the state to “turn the regulation to zero and start licensing all over again,” local state-run news agency Eesti Ekspress reported on Wednesday. Mäeker claimed that the public is unaware of the risks of the cryptocurrency industry. Formerly the head of the Anti-Money Laundering department at the Financial Supervision and Resolution Authority, the official pointed out a number of related concerns, including illegal crypto activity, such as money laundering and terrorism financing, as well as the industry’s vulnerability to hacks, stating:

Binance crypto exchange officially announced on Wednesday that the company will delist the Chinese yuan (CNY) from its peer-to-peer trading platform on Dec. 31. Alongside terminating yuan trading pairs, Binance will continue further restricting access to its platform for users from mainland China, introducing new measures for accounts found to be linked to the region. Binance will specifically limit such accounts to “withdrawal only” mode, limiting transactions to withdrawals, redeeming and closing positions. Binance emphasized that the company “withdrew from the Chinese mainland market in 2017” and has not been engaged in exchange business in the region since. The exchange said that China-based users have not been able to access Binance since the exit.