Argo Blockchain has secured another loan agreement from Galaxy Digital LP with the mining firm’s Bitcoin (BTC) as collateral. According to an announcement by the London Stock Exchange on Friday, the new Bitcoin-backed loan agreement is to the tune of 18.05 million pounds (about $25 million). As previously reported by Cointelegraph, Argo entered into a prior BTC-backed loan agreement with Galaxy Digital for $20 million back in June.

Bancoagrícola, El Salvador’s largest financial institution, is set to boost the country’s Bitcoin adoption policy following its partnership with digital payments gateway Flexa. According to an announcement by Flexa on Thursday, Bancoagrícola has inked a deal with the crypto payment network to enable Bitcoin (BTC) transfers for the bank’s customers, including retail and merchant clients. As part of the partnership, Bancoagrícola customers can make credit card payments denominated in United States dollars via Flexa or other Lightning Network-enabled wallets like Chivo and Éclair. According to the release, these payments will not attract any additional fees and will cover loans and merchant goods, among others.

Solana has been a trending topic due to the successive weeks of price increases seen by its SOL token. At the time of writing, SOL traded at around $207, which is an 11,400% surge from less than $2 back in January. At its present worth, Solana sits among the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization with about $60 billion, claiming the sixth spot from Dogecoin (DOGE), according to Cointelegraph Markets. One of the likely catalysts of this bullish momentum is funding from investors led by Andreessen Horowitz and Polychain in June. Solana secured $314 million, which will be used to further its technology in the decentralized finance (DeFi) arena. Notably, the investment took the form of SOL coin purchases rather than traditional equity shares. Another key reason for Solana’s SOL price boom is the announcement of its fourth hackathon event slated for Oct. 8. Hackathons are targeted at developers whose projects are entered into a competition for a chance to win cash prizes and seed funding opportunities. This was perceived as a positive move for Solana, as it could help achieve wider adoption of its technology.

Reports have emerged that a bug on OpenSea's marketplace has deleted user-owned NFTs worth 28.44 Ether (ETH), nearly $100,000 at the time of writing. The information was revealed online by Nick Johnson, lead developer of Ethereum Name Service, or ENS, who reportedly lost an NFT that was linked to the first ENS named rilxxlir.eth. ENS is a naming system that allows users to store text-based content as an NFT on the Ethereum blockchain. While transferring the NFT from an ENS account to a personal account, Johnson noticed that the token was sent to what appeared to be a burn account:

Blockchain gamification platform DeFi Land has secured $4.1 million in investments to launch a new decentralized finance game on Solana, further highlighting the growing ecosystem surrounding SOL.  The investment round had participation from over 40 investors, including some of the biggest names in blockchain venture capital. Animoca Brands, Alameda Research, Jump Capital, NGC Ventures, Solana Foundation and Gate.io were among the major investors involved. DeFi Land operates as an agriculture simulation game designed to gamify all aspects of decentralized finance. The goal is to create educational solutions for users looking to explore DeFi or other alternative finance solutions. The platform introduces a play-to-earn model that allows users to earn income for completing tasks or reaching milestones.

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged Rivetz over an alleged illegal securities offering that fetched around $18 million. Rivetz was founded in 2013 and the now-defunct blockchain hardware firm has been accused of generating $18 million via an unregistered securities offering between July and September of 2017 from more than 7,200 investors. The SEC’s Sept. 8 complaint names defendants Rivetz Corp., founder Steven Sprague and the firm’s subsidiary Rivetz International. The ICO revolved around the RvT token, which the SEC states was promoted and sold as an investment opportunity and used to capitalize on Rivetz’s business in building an app, ecosystem and cyber security hardware.

United States-based cryptocurrency exchange CrossTower is expanding operations to India despite the ongoing legal uncertainty over local crypto regulation. CrossTower has set up a local division in India and launched a cryptocurrency trading platform to capture the growing multi-billion-dollar market, Reuters reported Monday. CrossTower India has already onboarded 35 employees and is looking to expand its team to 100 people in the next six to nine months. With $7.6 million in daily trading at the time of writing, CrossTower expects its Indian exchange to contribute to its plans to expand further across the world. “India will play a pivotal role and we plan to use the country as a hub to expand into other geographies,” CrossTower co-founder and CEO Kapil Rathi said.

The man behind a multi-million dollar cryptocurrency scam has pleaded guilty to fraud this week according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Ohio man Michael Ackerman could face up to 20 years inside following the guilty plea for defrauding investors in a crypto scam he orchestrated in 2017. The too good to be true scheme lured hundreds of investors who deposited USD into a crypto fund called the Q3 Trading Club promising 15% monthly returns. U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Audrey Strauss, announced the guilty plea on Sept. 8 stating that Ackerman admitted to causing losses of more than $30 million from victims.

An information technology operations supervisor at the Suffolk County clerk’s office in New York, Christopher Naples allegedly harnessed his position to place crypto mining equipment in various spots at the Riverhead Center in the New York county in which he worked.  Naples allegedly set up 46 devices for crypto mining, “in locations like an unused electrical wall panel or underneath floorboards,” according to a statement posted on AP News on Wednesday. Crypto mining can be an expensive endeavor, sometimes requiring specific equipment for the task as well as hiking up electrical costs wherever the mining apparatuses are set up. Mining equipment can also give off notable amounts of heat, adding to the equation.

Two Central American countries, Honduras and Guatemala, are taking a cue from their common neighbor’s adoption of Bitcoin (BTC), but they are taking a very different road.  Instead of embracing an existing cryptocurrency as a legal tender, like what El Salvador did, the central banks of Honduras and Guatemala are currently studying central bank digital currencies (CBDC). Following the approval of the board of directors, the Central Bank of Honduras kicked off a study “to determine the feasibility of conducting a pilot test issuing its own digital money or a central bank digital currency,” according to Honduras central bank president Wilfredo Cerrato’s remarks at a forum event in Tegucigalpa.

According to the Wall Street Journal, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) could actually negatively impact interest rates by giving policymakers an additional tool.  A Sept. 8 article authored by senior columnist James Mackintosh argued that the difference between a CBDC and cash would be highlighted if interest rates fell below zero. People would be more inclined to hold on to physical cash to “earn zero” rather than lose money on a digital dollar issued by the central bank. This means the central bank will have more leverage with interest rates if it issues digital dollars that can’t be stashed under the mattress, he added.

By his own admission, Lee Cooperman still does not understand Bitcoin (BTC), despite its being up more than 300% since early December 2017. Speaking to CNBC on Thursday, the billionaire investor alluded to people his age having a hard time understanding Bitcoin, adding: Cooperman’s statements on Thursday are in keeping with previous comments about Bitcoin. Back in December 2017 when BTC was on a bullish price advance, Cooperman expressed his confusion about BTC.

El Salvador’s move to embrace Bitcoin has ruffled the feathers of bond investors, with yields spiking as investors signal uncertainty for the emerging economy. A Sept. 8 report published by Bloomberg notes the yield curve on El Salvador’s bonds has recently inverted, meaning bonds with short-term maturities are now yielding more than is due from the instruments. It stated: Ben Emons of Medley Global Advisors emphasized that El Salvador’s bonds lost significant ground “on the first day of its new Bitcoin Law,” describing the market action as “an unwelcome sign that the wide use of Bitcoin may have major implications” for the emerging country.

Virginia-based enterprise software company MicroStrategy has captured the attention of crypto and financial news outlets alike with its CEO’s atypical strategy of going all-in on Bitcoin, beginning in 2020, with some reporters quipping that the company has since morphed into something closer to a Bitcoin (BTC) investment vehicle than a software firm.  Recent filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission suggest some of the company’s top-level executives are ambivalent about pursuing this strategy long-term. The filings reveal that MicroStrategy chief financial officer Phong Le and chief technology officer Timothy Lang both unloaded stock in August of this year by exercising roughly 30% of the options they received as compensation. 

The auction of Yuga Labs’ 101 Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection has smashed through expectations with a winning bid of $24.39 million. The auction closed on Sept.10 and was hosted by the prestigious auction house Sotheby’s which had earlier estimated the collection would fetch between $12 million and $18 million. The bundle of non-fungibles consists of 101 Bored Apes and three M1 and three M2 “Mutant serum” NFTs. When a Bored Ape token is combined with an M1 or M2 serum, it enables the holder to mint a new Mutant Ape NFT that keeps the same traits of the original Bored Ape but depicts it in a mutant format.

Mastercard’s focus on crypto and digital currencies appears to have taken a greater dimension given the company’s recent move. According to a release on Thursday, the global payments giant has reached an agreement to acquire CipherTrace, a blockchain intelligence firm with crypto forensics capabilities for over 900 cryptocurrencies. As part of the acquisition, Mastercard says it plans to integrate CipherTrace’s operations into its own cyber security solutions for digital assets.

According to data from eth.btc.com，ethereum network's hashrate is653,603.18 GH/s，mining difficulty is8,779.74T. ETH's price ：$ 3,506.78 Avg Gas Price：128.00Gwei Pending Txs ：91850

Decentralized data aggregator SubQuery has concluded a $9 million funding round to build Polkadot’s first data aggregation layer, a move that could strengthen data indexing for the emerging interoperability network. The investment funds will be used to continue building SubQuery’s data indexing infrastructure for all Polkadot and Kusama applications, the company announced Wednesday. SubQuery also announced the investment would help it expand its technical abilities and support the open-sourcing of its software. This investment round was co-led by Arrington XRP Capital, Digital Currency Group and Stratos Technologies with additional participation from Hypersphere Ventures, NGC Ventures, Wintermute and Skynet Trading. Previously, SubQuery successfully raised $1.8 million in a private seed round that concluded in March of this year. Seed investors included DeFi Alliance, The LAO and P2P Capital, among others.

The decentralized finance (DeFi) market appears to no longer be the domain of retail actors alone as the institutional investment footprint in the crypto market segment continues to attain more significant levels. According to blockchain intelligence firm Chainalysis, institutional investors played a major role in De adoption in Q2 2021. In its soon-to-be-released “Global DeFi Adoption Index” report, Chainalysis stated:

Global payment network Roxe has recruited a seasoned economist from the International Monetary Fund, or IMF, to help lead its central bank digital currency project backed by Bitcoin’s (BTC) hashrate.  Andreas Jobst, whose career spans the IMF, World Bank and Bermuda Monetary Authority, has been appointed as Roxe’s chief currency economist, the company announced Wednesday. Jobst will be tasked with helping to scale Roxe’s CBDC Plus Program and payment network, which allows countries to issue new primary or secondary fiat currencies backed by the computational power of Bitcoin. Jobst’s most recent appointment at the IMF was an unspecified role in its European department, where he served for two-and-a-half years. He also served as senior economist for the same department between 2014 and 2016.