El Salvador plans to build the world’s first “Bitcoin City”, funded initially by Bitcoin-backed bonds, President Nayib Bukele says, doubling down on his bet to harness the cryptocurrency to fuel investment in the Central American country. Speaking at an event closing a week-long promotion of Bitcoin in El Salvador, Bukele said the city planned in the eastern region of La Union would get geothermal power from a volcano and not levy any taxes except for value-added tax (VAT). “Invest here and make all the money you want,” Bukele, dressed all in white and wearing a baseball cap backwards, said in the beach resort of Mizata on Saturday. “This is a fully ecological city that works and is energised by a volcano.” Half of the VAT levied would be used to fund the bonds issued to build the city, and the other half would pay for services such as garbage collection, Bukele said, estimating the public infrastructure would cost about 300,000 Bitcoins ($17.7bn). El Salvador in September became the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. Although Bukele is a popular president, opinion polls show Salvadorans are sceptical about his love of Bitcoin, and its bumpy introduction has fuelled protests against the government. Likening his plan to cities founded by Alexander the Great, Bukele said Bitcoin City would be circular, with an airport, residential and commercial areas, and feature a central plaza designed to look like a Bitcoin symbol from the air. “If you want Bitcoin to […]

A rare first printing of the United States Constitution sold at Sotheby’s New York Thursday night for $43.2m – the highest price ever fetched at auction for an historical document –  to a buyer who beat out a group of cryptocurrency enthusiasts who still claimed a victory for crowdfunding. A Sotheby’s spokesperson late on Friday afternoon identified the buyer as entrepreneur Kenneth Griffin, founder and CEO of Citadel, a hedge fund based in Chicago, Illinois. Griffin says he plans to loan the Constitution to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art for public display. “The US Constitution is a sacred document that enshrines the rights of every American and all those who aspire to be,” Griffin said in a statement. “I am pleased that Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, which always offers free admission, will be the first venue to display our country’s foundational document.” The first printing of the Constitution – one of only 13 surviving copies that are privately owned – sold for more than double Sotheby’s top estimate range of $20m. The winning bid also marked a sharp appreciation from the $165,000 the document sold for back in 1988 to the late real estate developer and collector of American documents and manuscript, the late S Howard Goldman. All proceeds for the sale will go to a foundation established by Goldman’s widow Dorothy. The sale was being closely watched not only for the historical significance of the document, but for the hype surrounding a cryptocurrency […]

The Internal Revenue Service could seize cryptocurrency valued at billions of dollars that’s linked to tax fraud and other crimes in the coming year, according to a key agency official. The IRS seized $3.5 billion worth of cryptocurrencies during fiscal year 2021, a figure that accounted for 93% of all the assets seized by tax enforcement that year, according to an IRS criminal investigation annual report published Thursday. “I expect a trend of crypto seizures to continue as we move forward into fiscal year ‘22,” IRS Criminal Investigation Chief Jim Lee said on a call with reporters. “We’re seeing crypto involved in a number of our crimes as we move forward.” In the past year, the IRS’s criminal unit seized billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin and other virtual currencies, including $1 billion stolen from the Silk Road, an online Bitcoin exchange that was shut down in 2013. The unit also prosecuted a former Microsoft Corp. software developer who used cryptocurrency to hide $10 million he embezzled from the company. Congress recently granted the IRS more ability to surveil cryptocurrency transactions in the infrastructure package President Joe Biden signed into law on Monday. That law will require crypto brokers to track and report transactions to the IRS in an effort to give tax authorities more visibility into virtual currency trades. The agency could also benefit from an additional $80 billion in funding that Democrats are proposing in Biden’s Build Back Better plan, which could get a vote in the House as soon […]

Limpopo, South Africa – When Derek Lewitton bought a 3,000-hectare (7,413-acre) rhino reserve in South Africa’s Limpopo province four years ago, he promised the rangers at the sanctuary a bonus of a million South African rand ($64,600) if they could manage to go five years without a poaching incident. “We have not been successfully poached in almost four years,” he told Al Jazeera. “Other reserves that spend significantly on protection have not been poached in even longer.” With poachers kept at bay, Black Rock Rhino’s population has been able to breed and thrive, growing 20 percent a year to its current herd of 200, said Lewitton. But that victory has not come cheap. Roughly half of South Africa’s rhino population lives on private lands, where sanctuary owners face millions of dollars a year in costs to fund rangers and security infrastructure, veterinary care, and supplemental feeding in times of drought. “The families that do this vital work are running out of money,” Lewitton said. “Without legal trade in horn, such operations are in dire need of alternative ways to fund their work and keep their operations alive.” For years, poachers have brutally killed rhinos for their horns to feed an illicit market catering to Asia and other parts of the world. Rhino horn is used in traditional Chinese medicine and has also gained currency as a status symbol to flaunt wealth. Trading rhino horns internationally is banned. A Wildlife Justice Commission study published in 2019 found that one kilogramme of […]

Staples Center is getting a new name. Starting Christmas Day, it will be Crypto.com Arena. The downtown Los Angeles home of the NBA’s Lakers and Clippers, the NHL’s Kings and the WNBA’s Sparks will change its name after 22 years of operation, arena owner AEG announced on Tuesday night. A person with knowledge of the deal told The Associated Press that Crypto.com is paying $700m across 20 years to rename the building. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the parties are not publicly announcing the terms of what’s believed to be the richest naming rights deal in sports history. The 20,000-seat arena has been the Staples Center since it opened in October 1999, with the naming rights owned by the US office-supplies retail company under a 20-year agreement. The name will change when the Lakers host the Brooklyn Nets in the NBA’s annual Christmas showcase. Crypto.com is a cryptocurrency platform and exchange with headquarters in Singapore. Founded in 2016, Crypto.com has been on a spending spree across the global sports landscape during the past year. The platform has inked high-visibility sponsorship deals with Formula One, the UFC, Italy’s Serie A, Paris St-Germain and the NHL’s Montreal Canadiens — while also buying the Philadelphia 76ers’ uniform sponsorship patch. AEG, the sports and entertainment conglomerate that has majority ownership of the Kings and had a stake in the Lakers until the middle of this year, built the arena that quickly became a famous setting for major events in the second-largest […]

Cryptocurrencies fell on Tuesday, with Bitcoin briefly dipping below $60,000 and Ether touching its lowest level this month, in a broad-based retreat from recent record highs. The largest digital token whipsawed traders, dipping as much as 8.2% before cutting the decline by about half. The slide to $58,661 was the biggest intraday drop since Sept. 24. Second-ranked Ether tumbled more than 10% before also paring losses. Global crypto market cap has dropped some 10% in the past 24 hours to $2.7 trillion, according tracker CoinGecko. “After several days of gains, which saw Bitcoin hover near it’s all-time high as many other altcoins managed to reach new highs, we are seeing a significant pullback,” said Walid Koudmani, an analyst at XTB Market. “The extreme volatility that the market is prone to could lead to a potential domino effect if more negative news were to emerge and take prices to new lows.” Crypto-centric stocks also took a hit, with shares of Coinbase Global Inc., a crypto exchange, falling roughly 4% at one point. MicroStrategy Inc., Marathon Digital Holdings Inc. and Riot Blockchain Inc. all also dropped. Technical indicators had suggested the strong run of late across the notoriously volatile market was due for a pause. Some analysts also attributed the dip to new tax-reporting requirements for digital currencies that are part of the $550 billion infrastructure bill, which President Joe Biden signed into law Monday. “We’ve seen the U.S. infrastructure bill get signed, which has initiated a selloff from traders who are concerned […]