Bitcoin trading above Rs 36.18 lakh

Cryptocurrencies traded in the red early on April 6. The global crypto market cap is $2.09 trillion, a 3.51 percent decrease over the last day. The total crypto market volume over the last 24 hours is $110.65 billion, which makes a 2.92 percent increase. The total volume in DeFi is currently $14.04 billion, 12.69 percent of the total crypto market 24-hour volume. The volume of all stable coins is now $92.05 billion, which is 83.19 percent of the total crypto market 24-hour volume. Bitcoin's price is currently Rs 36.18 lakh with a dominance of 41.18 percent. This is a 0.19 percent increase over the day, as per CoinMarketCap data. Except for Tether, which gained 1.27 percent, all other cryptos on our list were in the red. The biggest loser was Dogecoin (-7.68 percent), followed by Polkadot, (-5.53 percent), Cardano (-4. 67 percent), Ethereum (-3.56 percent), XRP (-1.75 percent), Bitcoin (-1.36 percent), and Binance Coin (-1.06 percent). Read full here

Rishi Sunak orders launch of UK's own NFT. What you need to know

The United Kingdom will soon introduce its own non-fungible token in effort to the lead the way in cryptocurrencies. Rishi Sunak, the UK's chancellor of the exchequer, has directed the Royal Mint to put out the NFT by the summer, his deputy John Glenn said at a conference in London. Glenn added that the UK government planned to prioritise blockchain technology and even consider borrowing money and issuing debt using it. Glenn, who is the economic secretary to the UK's treasury, said that the NFT would be emblematic of the "forward-looking approach we are determined to take". The hugely-popular NFTs are speculative purchases. Glenn said the UK will have in place multiple measures to regulate digital assets. Read details here

Elon Musk's 'single most annoying problem' on Twitter is...

Elon Musk on Tuesday took a swipe at Twitter for adding a new feature which allows users to use NFTs from their crypto wallets as their profile pictures. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO -- who recently made a public disclosure of a $3 billion stake in the micro-blogging site -- tweeted that the latest initiative was "annoying". He also criticised Twitter for failing to clean the platform of spambots which frequently post links to fraudulent crypto promotions and giveaways. Musk was responding to a tweet by Pune engineer and his "Twitter friend" Pranay Pathole. "Elon, you need to do something about these Crypto spam bots. They're getting really annoying. Improving the verification system to prove that you're an actual *real* human would help with this," he tweeted. To which, the billionaire businessman responded: "Yeah, single most annoying problem on twitter imo (in my opinion)." Take a look

Ukraine Crisis: Crypto funding a watershed moment for war-torn nation

For a country whose armed forces would be dwarfed by the Russian military, Ukraine has resorted to creative means to help mount a strong resistance against the attacks by its neighbour. Ukraine, the second-largest country in Europe after Russia, launched a crowdfunding initiative on February 26 and has raised more than $46 million in cryptocurrency donations alone, according to analytics firm Elliptic. While Bitcoin and Ethereum made up most of the donations, some have sent NFTs. Subsequently, Ukraine’s Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov announced on March 3 the country’s plan to launch an NFT collection and use the proceeds to support efforts in the war against Russia. This move effectively broadened the East European country’s crowdfunding initiative to cover most crypto assets and experts said it is a further nod to the potential of cryptocurrencies to act as a mechanism for financial transactions. Read more here

Email marketing platform Mailchimp hacked

Email marketing platform Mailchimp has confirmed that it was a victim of a hack. The infiltration was reportedly conducted using an internal tool and the company says the hackers managed to steal data from more than hundred of its clients. While the company disclosed the breach on April 4, initial reports of the hacks had sprung up over the weekend. Cryptocurrency wallet Trezor tweeted a day before the disclosure that Mailchimp had confirmed the hack and they were trying to determine how many email id's were affected. Mailchimp's Chief Information Security Officer Siobhan Smyth told The Verge that the company first found the breach on March 26, when it detected an unauthorised use of an internal tool, provided to the company's customer support and administrative teams. The company said that they immediately deactivated the accounts but the hackers were still able to access 300 Mailchimp accounts and obtained data from 102. Read full here

Valor, Brevan Howard Back Lightning Labs to ‘Bitcoinize the Dollar’

Crypto technology firm Lightning Labs said it is bringing in new financing as it creates a protocol to facilitate fiat currency transfers to Bitcoin. The protocol 'Taro', aims to enable high-volume transfers instantly for fiat currencies and other assets, Lightning Labs said in a statement. Valor Equity Partners, Brevan Howard Asset Management LLP and Vlad Tenev, CEO of Robinhood Markets Inc, are among new investors in the $70 million Series B financing round. Taro will help developers issue assets such as stablecoins on the Bitcoin blockchain and convert them to other assets through the Lightning Network. The network is a decentralised system that intends to eliminate the custodial risk associated with high-volume micropayments, its website states. The idea is to make the crypto assets more easily transferable at a low fee, globally. Read  details here