Altcoin News Daily Official TheBitTimes.com

The most embarrassing chart for the crypto industry this year is the price of real gold versus the price of its main digital rival. Since January 1, the yellow metal has rallied 23%, while bitcoin (BTC) has declined 12%. Gold’s outperformance on price isn’t only impressive on an absolute basis but also disproportionately impressive due to gold’s much larger size. Indeed, there’s at least $21 trillion worth of mined gold in the world versus just $1.6 trillion worth of mined BTC. Coded orange for BTC and yellow for gold, Protos has charted the divergence of the two assets as a visual checkpoint for BTC investors. That $21 trillion estimate is at the lower end of many other estimates that acknowledge the length of time for which humans have hidden and hoarded gold. Simon Hunt, for example, thinks that China alone might secretly own 40,000 tonnes of gold — 5X the amount held by the US — and that Russia owns over 11,000. Other researchers have an ar...

The Saudi Central Bank warned in 2019 that Bitcoin is “not recognized by legal entities” but hasn’t made many statements on crypto since. Hong Kong is expanding its financial collaboration with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, targeting agreements related to tokenization and payment s infrastructure. The Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) on July 26 held a bilateral meeting to strengthen the integration of financial services between the two countries. As part of the meeting agenda, the HKMA and the SAMA discussed initiatives such as financial infrastructure development, open market operations, market connectivity and sustainable development. The central banks also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to promote joint discussions on financial innovation. HJMA chief executive Eddie Yue (left) and SAMA governor Ayman Alsayari (right). Source: HKMA According to an official joint announcement, Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia’s authorities also took the oppor...

Fanusie doesn’t believe the Chinese-led CBDC movement on the global stage will replace the U.S. dollar, but it may cause a series of geopolitical headaches. A cryptocurrency researcher and former CIA analyst believes the United States government’s relatively slow start on Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) development may result in it losing grip on controlling the global financial system. Yaya Fanusie, the policy head at the crypto advocacy group the Crypto Council for Innovation explained in a Feb. 28 Bloomberg interview that sanctioned states are looking to transact on financial infrastructure that isn’t controlled or heavily influenced by the U.S. in order to move funds more freely cross-borders. If the U.S. continues to sit on the “sidelines” and lag behind on CBDC adoption, Fanusie believes this may spell “trouble” and cause unforeseen “geopolitical implications” over time: Fanusie explained that state-issued CBDCs could be a part of this financial infrastructure that becomes...