Brussels is drawing up a proposal to use the EU budget to pre-finance purchases of weapons and ammunition, in what would be an unprecedented foray into the defence industry designed to speed up arms supplies to Ukraine. The European Commission is exploring how it could leverage the bloc’s budget to provide downpayments to arms manufacturers
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If you make your living telling other people what to buy online, “de-influencing” might sound like a direct threat. The trend of glossy videos advising users not to waste their money on Dyson Airwrap hair stylers, Ugg Minis, AirPods Max earphones or Olaplex shampoo has been hailed as a challenge to over-consumption and a return
The sanctioned Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin generated revenues of more than a quarter of a billion dollars from his global natural resources empire in the four years before Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, according to corporate records. A Financial Times investigation has found that years of western sanctions against the Wagner mercenary group’s founder failed
It has been a wild ride for buyers and sellers in the US housing market over the past year. The year-over-year growth rate for home prices reached 20.1% in April 2022— the highest level in more than two decades. But rates fell after that, dropping to just 8.6% by November. What does that mean? Homeowners
A small monetary bounty and an aptitude for coding were all it took to fork the Ordinals protocol to the world’s second-ever cryptocurrency network, Litecoin (LTC) earlier this week, its creator told Cointelegraph. On Feb. 18, an Australian software engineer by the name of Anthony Guerrera posted a repository to GitHub that forked the Bitcoin (BTC)
The California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) has launched a cryptocurrency scam tracker to help residents “spot and avoid crypto scams.” The regulator stated: “As reports of new crypto scams emerge, the DFPI will continually update this tracker to promptly alert and protect the public.” California Regulator’s Crypto Scam Tracker The Department of
Bitcoin fixes broken democracies and fights government corruption by limiting its power to control its people, argues Bitcoin advocate and chief strategy officer of the Human Rights Foundation, Alex Gladstein. In a Feb. 20 interview, Gladstein argued that the decentralized nature of Bitcoin (BTC) can act as a barrier against corruption and tyranny. “Where the
Shark Tank investor and venture capitalist Kevin O’Leary has urged crypto exchanges to “get on board with regulation” if they want to “stay out of the way” of Gary Gensler and the United States Securities Exchange Commission. In a Feb. 20 interview with TraderTV Live, O’Leary said that U.S. lawmakers are “fatigued” over crypto collapses
Gemini’s co-founder believes that the next crypto bull run will come from the East. “It will be a humbling reminder that crypto is a global asset class,” he said. “The West, really the U.S., always only ever had two options: embrace it or be left behind. It can’t be stopped.” Gemini Co-Founder on Next Crypto
Campaigners have called on the UK government to freeze household energy costs beyond the end of March as falling wholesale prices sharply reduce the amount of government subsidy needed to hold bills steady. The average UK household bill is set to rise to £3,000 per year between April and June under the energy price guarantee
Less than half of the financial aid pledged to Ukraine by the west has actually reached Kyiv since Russia’s invasion last year, according to analysis of international financial support. Ukraine’s finance ministry received €31bn by December 2022 of the €64bn promised by western countries after Russia launched its full-scale attack last February, research by the
Crypto hedge fund Galois Capital is shutting down after losing about half of its assets to the FTX disaster. “Given the severity of the FTX situation, we do not think it is tenable to continue operating the fund both financially and culturally,” the fund’s co-founder told investors. Crypto Hedge Fund Shuts Down Due to FTX
Andy Schectman, CEO of Miles Franklin Precious Metals Investments, explained in a recent interview that the five leading emerging economies—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, collectively known as BRICS nations—are “coalescing against the dollar.” Schectman believes that since 2022, de-dollarization “seems to be spinning much, much faster.” De-Dollarization and CBDCs: Monetary Historian Suggests a
Oxford university has continued to court the Sackler family over the past two years, bucking a trend for institutions to cut ties with the owners of the company at the heart of the deadly US opioid epidemic. Documents seen by the Financial Times — including letters, bank statements and event attendee lists from 2020 to
The public blockchain sector grew from less than a few million dollars in the last decade to a $1 trillion industry. However, one thing that the space has yet to achieve is a decentralized, secure interoperable solution. Let’s take going from Ethereum to Bitcoin, the largest blockchain network, as an example. Historically, centralized exchanges have been one
London and Brussels could announce a deal to resolve a bitter dispute over post-Brexit trade in Northern Ireland as early as this week. But with final negotiations under way, one sticking point remains: the region’s biggest pro-UK party is demanding that it should not be subject to EU laws. The Democratic Unionist Party has paralysed
Rishi Sunak on Monday urged Eurosceptic Tory MPs to back him in his bid to end the bitter dispute with Brussels over post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland, but opposition to a deal was hardening. The British prime minister still hopes to finalise an agreement this week, including providing a new role for the Northern
Junior doctors in England have voted overwhelmingly in favour of strikes, in a further escalation of the dispute between the UK government and NHS staff over pay and working conditions. The British Medical Association on Monday said that, on a turnout of 77.49 per cent, 98 per cent of members had backed plans for a
It might seem like forever ago that Bitcoin (BTC) was trading below $18,000, but in reality, it was 40 days ago. Cryptocurrency traders tend to have a short-term memory, and more importantly, they attribute less importance to negative news during bull runs. A great example of this behavior is BTC’s 15% gain since Feb. 13
The wheels of the global luxury real estate market keep turning with new sales and new listings popping up every day. Here’s a look at six global markets across the world and what’s recently listed for sale and what’s been sold for $4 million or more. FOR SALE—$4.3 Million (Captain Cook, Hawaii) The privacy, tropical
After the transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS), Ethereum’s annual issuance rate has been reduced to negative 0.057%, according to statistics 158 days after The Merge. The metrics indicate that more ethereum tokens have been removed than issued, and if the chain were still under PoW consensus, 1,823,678 ether would have been minted to