Here are the top cryptocoin news of the day:
Putin to challenge China in the Bitcoin race
China, the world leader in Bitcoin mining, may have some competition as the Kremlin enters the race, even creating its own its own cryptocurrency wallet. Russia has a complicated history with Bitcoin. The debate to ban the cryptocurrency has swayed back and forth for the past several years, even threatening extremely harsh prison sentences, but things have recently taken a more supportive turn.
Read more: Cryptoinsider
$47 Million in Bitcoin: Ukrainian Lawmakers Declare Financial Holdings
Three Ukrainian lawmakers have declared holding a combined $47 million in bitcoin following mandatory disclosures requiring members of parliament to reveal their finances. According to a report from RIA Novosti, the Russian state’s foreign news service, three Ukrainian lawmakers belonging to Ukraine’s ruling party have revealed they hold bitcoin worth a near $50 million combined.
Read more: Cryptocoinsnews
Morgan Stanley: Bitcoin a Poor Hedge Against Inflation
The stock market has wavered over the past week amid concerns that war will break out between the United States and North Korea. At the same time, the bitcoin price and total cryptocurrency market cap soared to record levels, leading some analysts to believe that investors are turning to cryptocurrency as an economic safe haven. Historically, gold, silver, and other precious metals have served this function, but younger investors are increasingly adopting bitcoin to hedge against economic instability and inflation. But Tom Price, an equity strategist at Morgan Stanley, says bitcoin has still not proven itself to be a viable safe haven for investor assets. As reported by The Australian, Price says that while bitcoin has advantages over gold as a medium of exchange–it is exponentially more divisible and portable, for instance–cryptocurrency is still too immature to serve as an inflation hedge. Even if bitcoin does prove successful over time, he warns that this success will inspire the development of even more competitor cryptocurrencies, preventing the bitcoin price from achieving stability.
Read more: Cointelegraph
PayPal Ex-COO: Bitcoin, Crypto Fulfilling Our Original Vision
Former PayPal COO David Sacks has said cryptocurrency is “fulfilling PayPal’s original vision” to “create ‘the new world currency.’” In an interview with CNBC, Sacks, who worked with the payment network in its early days around the year 2000, said there were strong comparisons between the current Blockchain scene and the dot-com boom of the 1990s.
Read more: Cointelegraph
After Bitcoin, Swiss Bank Becomes First To Offer Bitcoin Cash, Altcoins
Swiss financial institution Falcon Private Bank has become the country’s first financial institution to add Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and Litecoin to its offering. In a press release issued today, Zurich-based Falcon, which made headlines last month with its introduction of Bitcoin tools for clients, said the move “proves [its] agility and underlines its strategic repositioning” on the market.
Read more: Cointelegraph
Three Ukrainian Legislators Admit Large Bitcoin Holdings, Government Conflicted on Digital Currencies
Three Ukrainian lawmakers have released information on their Bitcoin holdings, which are quite substantial. The legislators, Dmitry Golubov, Alexander Urbansky, and Dmitry Belotserkovets, are all members of the group “Petro Poroshenko Block.” According to Russian news service RIA Novosti, Golubov has the largest Bitcoin holding among with 8,752 Bitcoins. At current prices, this amounts to about $36 mln. Urbansky and Belotserkovets have 2,494 and 398 Bitcoins, respectively.
Read more: Cointelegraph