Bitcoin at Rs 15.95 lakh

Cryptocurrencies traded in the red early on July 2. The global crypto market cap is $863.55 billion, a 4.16 percent decrease over the last day. The total crypto market volume over the last 24 hours stood at $63.61 billion, which makes an 11.68 percent decrease. The total volume in DeFi is $5.63 billion, 8.86 percent of the total crypto market 24-hour volume. The volume of all stable coins is now $57.13 billion, which is 89.82 percent of the total crypto market 24-hour volume. Bitcoin's price is currently Rs 15.95 lakh, with a dominance of 42.42 percent. This was a 0.63 percent decrease over the day, according to data from CoinMarketCap. Read full here

Finance ministry clarifies on what NFTs qualify as virtual digital assets

In a notification, the Central Board of Direct Taxes said that only those NFT trades that do not include a parallel sale of an underlying physical asset will attract the tax rates specified for virtual digital assets.

NFT marketplace OpenSea hit with another data breach

OpenSea, the popular NFT marketplace, has been hit with another data breach. This time, the company says that an employee of its email vendor, Customer.io, apparently downloaded and shared email addresses linked to OpenSea accounts. The company said in a tweet, that emails provided to the marketplace by users, and people who had subscribed to its newsletters were both affected.

The company said there was a high chance of email phishing attempts, now that the addresses were leaked online and appealed to customers to maintain safe email practices and only respond to mails from their official domain (opensea.io). Take a look

Bitcoin could reach $28,000 by year-end: Deutsche Bank

Bitcoin could go as high as $28,000 by the end of the year, according to Deutsche Bank. An analysis by Deutsche Bank strategists Marion Laboure and Galina Pozdnyakova suggests that Bitcoin could rally around 30 percent from its current levels, however still over halfway from its all-time high.

“The digital currency is more like diamonds (a highly marketed asset) rather than gold, a stable safe-haven commodity,” they said. Equating BTC with the leading diamond company The De Beers Group, Laboure and Pozdnyakova said they changed the perception of consumers with rigorous advertising efforts. Read more here

Dubbed 'crypto queen', this woman is on FBI's most wanted list

A Bulgarian woman dubbed the "Crypto Queen" after she raised billions of dollars in a fraudulent virtual currency scheme was placed on the FBI's 10 most wanted list. The Federal Bureau of Investigation put up a $100,000 reward for Ruja Ignatova, who disappeared in Greece in October 2017 around the time US authorities filed a sealed indictment and warrant for her arrest. The 42-year-old, who is also a German citizen, was behind one of the most notorious scams in the frequently treacherous world of crypto currencies. Ignatova disappeared in 2017 as international investigators began to close in on her group. Read more here