Ivan Chebeskov, director of the Department of Financial Policy at the Ministry of Finance, said that Russian companies were starting to use cryptocurrencies more often in international transactions. This is reported by Izvestia.

Chebeskov stressed that in 2023 the use of cryptocurrencies and digital assets in companies in settlements will be fully regulated and will reach a new level.

The increase in international settlements in cryptocurrency in 2022 occurred against the background of sanctions and a decrease in transactions in euros and dollars, said Vladimir Gamza, chairman of the Council of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation on industry, finance and investment policy.

Digital currency settlements with unfriendly countries have increased many times after the introduction of anti-Russian sanctions. According to Finam FG analyst Leonid Delitsyn, the volume of cryptocurrency settlements for the year can reach $5-10 billion.

Aon Refuses to Confirm or Deny its Involvement in the Billion Dollar Securities Offering

Dublin: Between June 5, 2022 and July 8, 2022 bankrupt crypto lender, Celsius Network, added a banner to its website homepage proudly touting the existence of $750 million in insurance for its assets. The insurance was supposedly obtained through GK8, a Celsius subsidiary that mainly sells crypto vault software.

Before being acquired by Celsius in 2021, GK8 partnered with insurance giant Aon PLC to provide insurance to its customers.  However, in bankruptcy filings, neither GK8 or Aon is listed as a vendor or insurer of Celsius.

A week before freezing billions of dollars in client accounts, Celsius boldly began boasting it had obtained $750 million in insurance on its assets.  Now it seems that was a fabrication to calm nervous investors and lure in new ones.

On August 19, 2002 and again August 25, 2022, Aon PLC’s compliance unit confirmed Celsius was not currently an insured.

Dear Dr Levy,

Thank you for your emails of 15 and 17 August. As you will appreciate, Aon does not normally share details about its clients and counterparties given that such information is commercially sensitive and potentially subject to confidentiality obligations.  

We can confirm, however, that Aon does not currently have any formal arrangements or agreements with Celsius Network.

While Aon’s response left much to be desired in terms of clarity and prompted follow ups which resulted in a similar  response

Dear Dr Levy,

Thank you for your further email.

We have already confirmed Aon’s position regarding Celsius Network. We are unable to provide you with any further information and have no obligation to do so.

Best regards

London based lawyer, Dr. Jonathan Levy represents clients with millions of dollars in Celsius accounts.  Levy blew the whistle on the Celsius insurance claims in June calling it a classic misdirection.  Now, Dr. Levy is calling it fraud in aid of an unregistered securities offering. According to Dr. Levy:

“The insurance does not exist. Celsius’ own term of use stated there was no insurance in the boilerplate print. Yet we have Celsius and GK8 shouting about insurance in bold print.  Now Aon the purported insurer refuses direct requests for clarification but at the same timeattempts to disassociate itself from Celsius.“

Dr. Levy points out that state regulators have already found that Celsius’ highly touted “Earn Accounts” which offered up to 18% interest have been classed as unregulated securities. A bold claim of $750 million of insurance on these assets with no further explanation deceived investors. As to Aon PLC, Dr. Levy expressed concern about the NYSE listed insurance giant’s involvement:

“A public company like Aon needs to investigate potential insurance fraud like this and report to the authorities so the public is not deceived by their marketing partner GK8.  The purported insurance, assuming it existed, did not cover investor losses, yet that was strongly implied by Celsius and GK8. Aon’s refusal to warn investors is troubling given its past history of anti-corruption lapses including paying substantial fines to US and UK regulators in 2009 and 2011.”

While many investors have accused Celsius and its CEO Alex Mashinsky of fraud, the false claim of insurance a week before accounts were frozen seems to be solid evidence of a concerted attempt to deceive investors.

exclusively for TheBitcoinNews.com by Dr. Jonathan Levy Attorney United Kingdom/Laguna Beach CA 92651

Telefónica has activated purchases with cryptocurrencies in its own marketplace after adding a payment function provided by Bit2Me. In parallel, the telecommunications giant has confirmed the purchase of a part of Bit2Me.

Telefónica has confirmed the news that pointed to an investment in the Spanish cryptocurrency company Bit2Me, the transnational telecommunications giant has invested 30 million euros, thus becoming the reference shareholder of the cryptocurrency platform.

The joint work between both companies will start today with a pilot project where Bit2Me will offer the technology for the purchase and sale of electronic devices through cryptocurrencies in Telefónica's Tu online store . BeInCrypto has been able to verify first-hand that the technology is already in operation, where it is offered not only to buy in Bitcoin and Ethereum, but in a long list of cryptocurrencies.

Source: https://thebitcoinnews.com/telefonica-allows-trading-with-cryptocurrencies-and-buys-part-of-bit2me/

Image: Copyright: https://de.123rf.com/profile_alvarog1970

After several weeks of downward movement and actually rather gloomy prospects in punkte large weather situation, the crypto market shows surprisingly positive on the service. Thus, BTC and ETH have grown by 6 percent each back over 20,000 and 1,400 euros, respectively, some other crypto assets grow even stronger in the past 24 hours such as Uniswap (+13%) or Chainlink (+10 percent). However, the recent growth is not enough to lift the market capitalization above one trillion euros.

That’s why the jump from Monday to Tuesday should be taken with a grain of salt. Bitcoin and Ethereum are currently only returning to the level they had about a month ago – and are significantly below the values they had six months ago or even at the beginning of the year. However, the recent growth is interesting because stock indices in regular markets actually took a different course at the beginning of the week. The Dow Jones, S&P500 and Nasdaq100, for example, are all slightly down, reflecting the ever-increasing fears of recession as a result of inflation and the Ukraine war. It is possible that we are currently seeing a first, tentative attempt by crypto assets to break free from the pull of the overall market.

The narrative of inflation protection

When Wall Street exchanges open Tuesday afternoon, we’ll know if crypto assets are really ripping, or if they were merely harbingers of a general, mild market rally. After all, as has been reported time and again, regular stocks and crypto assets have been leading parallel lives for quite some time – when stocks (especially tech stocks) fall, BTC and ETH fall as well, and vice versa.

Whether this lockstep will stop in the medium term remains to be seen. Currently, the copllication of crypto stocks to regular stock markets is an open wound for all those who saw Bitcoin in particular as an inflation hedge. However, BTC (and by extension the rest of the crypto market) is behaving more like a tech stock that reacts strongly to Federal Reserve announcements and interest rate hikes.

It has been keeping the crypto world on tenterhooks for quite some time now, and now it has become a reality: The “Merge” – a major update of the second largest crypto asset Ethereum, which took place today after a long wait. Since this update is a signpost not only for crypto-nerds, but for the entire blockchain industry, it is worth taking a closer look: What exactly is the merge and what happened to Ethereum? We present the analysis of 21Shares. You can find corresponding products via ETPs on all relevant cryptos on the Munich Stock Exchange Gettex page – here.

After Bitcoin, Ether (ETH) is the world’s second largest cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of around 200 billion euros and is part of the Ethereum blockchain, the technical basis for numerous applications and projects from the field of decentralized financial services (DeFi). As with Bitcoin, Proof of Work has been the driving force behind Ethereum to date – a so-called consensus process in which individuals – the miners – use their computers to solve complex tasks to verify transactions on the Blockchain and get paid in coins (units of a cryptocurrency) in return. This mechanism makes cryptocurrencies secure and creates decentralization – because transactions were thus validated not by a central authority, but the totality of many participants. But Proof of Work is at the same time enormously energy-intensive.

99.95 percent less power consumption

Proof of Stake (PoS) changes that: the consensus method is an alternative to Proof of Work and relies on so-called staking, comparable to depositing money and receiving interest in a traditional bank account. Ethereum users stake their own coins, and thus become part of the transaction validation process. By eliminating the need to solve complex computational tasks with high-powered hardware, PoS consumes far less energy – about 95.95 percent less – and also makes the underlying asset Ether, which grants investors returns in the form of a perpetual bond through staking. Ethereum is not the first blockchain project to rely on Proof of Stake – but it is arguably the largest and most significant. The change was prepared for a long time, including the creation of its own PoS Blockchain – the Beacon Chain. Now, the Ethereum Mainnet – Ethereum’s actual blockchain – and the Beacon Chain have been merged – hence the name “Merge.”

Why is the merge significant?

Not only does the Ethereum network become more efficient by switching to POS, but it also lays the groundwork for other important updates that should also make Ethereum much faster and cheaper in the long run, paving the way for a blockchain of the future. This is especially important for Ethereum, as the network serves as the technical foundation for thousands of applications in decentralized finance, from loans to currency exchange services. The upgrade of the world’s second largest cryptoasset is a landmark step towards a sustainable, fast and efficient crypto infrastructure.