The Senate Committee on Finance backed Yellen’s nomination in a show of bipartisan support. Janet Yellen, the former Chair of the Federal Reserve, is one step closer to earning the nomination of Treasury Secretary.  The Senate Committee on Finance voted unanimously to approve Yellen’s nomination Friday morning, setting the stage for a full Senate vote. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley said he hoped the GOP’s backing would signal “bipartisan” support under the new Democratic administration. Fellow Republicans said they backed Yellen despite disagreeing on several of her policy […]

Bitcoin price has rebounded above a key trendline but resistance at higher levels may limit the recovery in altcoins. Aggressive profit-booking sent Bitcoin (BTC) spiraling below $29,000 on  Jan. 21 but was this a sign that institutional investors dumped their positions? This is one of the main questions bothering traders because large institutional inflows primarily led the run-up to $42,000. Cointelegraph contributor Marcel Pechman analyzed derivatives data from various exchanges, which showed professional traders might have purchased at lower levels. The fall seems to have particularly hurt […]

Harvard professor Kenneth Rogoff says that he doesn’t see Bitcoin succeeding, barring extenuating circumstances. Often touted as a store of value or hedge asset, Bitcoin (BTC) has gained significant mainstream adoption over the past several months. Kenneth Rogoff, a public policy and economics professor at Harvard University, doubts the asset’s success, however.  “I can see Bitcoin being used in failed states,” Rogoff said in a Bloomberg interview on Thursday, adding: “It’s conceivable, you know, it could have some use in a dystopian future, but I think the […]

Retail users may have to wait in much of the world, however. Editor’s note It may be too late for resolutions and too early for Lent, but lacking any discrete occasion I would still like to give up U.S. political news for a while, or at least for the duration of one Law Decoded.  Fortunately, in the spirit of going international and leaving the bonkers election cycle of the U.S., blockchain technology and stablecoins are playing a major role in the latest developments in cross-border payments and […]

Decentraland’s new features, increased digital land sales and a booming NFT market are the driving factors behind MANA’s 100% rally. In the past year non-fungible tokens (NFT) have been gaining ground as the digital art market exploded and developers experimented with a variety of use cases. Data from NonFungible shows that over the past 30 days there were 58,400 NFT sales and $12.7 million worth of volume. In the same time period, MANA, the token behind the blockchain-based virtual world Decentraland, totaled $636,000 in NFT trades. The […]

“What happens when the world and the U.S. dollar is in a continual state of quantitative easing?” Can BTC find a new and unexpected role for itself? Reserve currency is money held by central banks or treasuries usually for international transactions. Argentina is not going to be able to purchase a Boeing 737 MAX passenger jet, for example, with its highly inflationary peso; it will have to pay with U.S. dollars, which is why Argentina keeps dollars on hand — i.e., in “reserve.” A second basic function […]