Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell recently sold more than $1 million of municipal bonds issued by various entities across the U.S. as tough new ethics rules took effect for central bank officials in the wake of a trading scandal last year. The 22 separate transactions on June 30, with a total value ranging from about
A rise in interest rates since last year will mean heftier-than-expected charges on electricity bills for Oklahoma ratepayers in the wake of the first of four state-sanctioned utility securitizations related to 2021’s Winter Storm Uri. The $761.6 million taxable bond sale through the Oklahoma Development Finance Authority closed on Wednesday, just days after a state
Though the fortunes of state pension plans made a 180-degree turn as the stock market fell this year, only a handful appear to be at risk of insolvency over the next few decades. “Most public plans are fragile, not distressed,” said Anthony Randazzo, executive director of Equable, a bipartisan non-profit that works with public retirement
On Thursday, Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, shared his long-term vision for the namesake blockchain live at the annual Ethereum Community Conference, or EthCC, in Paris. As told by Buterin, Ethereum is currently at an inflection point, or period of rapid change, before the ecosystem’s capability will eventually settle down. Currently, the foremost priority for
All municipal bond insurers wrapped $18.306 billion in the first half of 2022, a decrease from the $20.842 billion of deals done in the first six months of 2021, according to Refinitiv data, but the overall insured market rate was 8.8%, higher than the 8.4% for the first half of 2021. The figures align with the
Everyone in the UK, it seems, is angry about their pay. Rail strikes are set to escalate over the summer. Bus drivers, refuse collectors and baggage handlers have staged walkouts across the country; more than 100,000 postal workers at the Royal Mail Group have voted to follow suit. In the public sector, unions representing teachers
Major Turkish crypto exchange BtcTurk has joined the crypto patent alliance (COPA) to team up with prominent firms in their mission to provide open access to patents and empower the adoption of crypto technologies. COPA aims to abolish patents as it’s perceived as an obstacle to innovations within the sector. The nonprofit favors a more
The Puerto Rico Oversight Board said it opposes a just-enacted law that walks back some pro-employer rules put in place five years ago and demanded the governor suspend enforcement of it, arguing it will harm economic growth and island revenues. Gov. Pedro Pierluisi rejected the board’s request to publicly announce suspension of Act 41’s enforcement,
As you might expect, this depends on how complex a smart contract is. According to Hacken, this can extend to $500,000 for larger projects where there are more lines of code — not least because of the additional engineering hours it’ll take. The company argues these costs pale into comparison with the economic damage that
“Turtle-esque” may not be a common adjective to describe a piece of property, but in the case of this coastal Hawaiian estate, it is a fitting descriptor. Named Honu Hale, or Turtle House, the oceanfront home located in the heart of Napili on the western shores of Maui shares many traits with its shelled namesake,
Britain needs new economic rules of thumb. The old norms and assumptions are not remotely adequate for a world with severe shocks to the supply of gas and other commodities, high inflation and extremely low rates of underlying productivity growth. In the past, the shortcuts most economists have used to describe a complex and dynamic
Individually identifiable digital representations of blockchain-based tangible or intangible objects called nonfungible tokens (NFTs) are not typically divided into smaller parts. Instead, structured metadata related to actual or virtual things is represented by NFTs. Often, the tokens are not connected to the objects and serve as distinct identifiers, advancing the interoperable commercialization of the physical
Thailand’s oldest bank is unable to acquire the country’s largest local cryptocurrency exchange due to stringent crypto regulations. As reported by Cointelegraph in November 2021, SCB X Group, a subsidiary of Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), was set to acquire a 51% stake in Bitkub by the second quarter of 2022 as part of a plan to
The developers of the Dogecoin (DOGE) project have released a new update for the core software, which improves security, efficiency and user interface. This latest update, Dogecoin Core 1.14.6, went live early on Thursday, and all the network participants were urged to upgrade to the latest version. The new update comprises numerous security fixes, modifications
According to Visual Capitalist, Ghana is now placed second on its list of countries with the highest default risk in 2022. Only four countries, namely, Ukraine 10,856 basis points (bps), Argentina (4,470), El Salvador (3,376), and Ethiopia (3,035) have a credit default swap spread that is higher than Ghana’s at 2,071 bps. El Salvador Has
The Asian Development Bank has cut its growth forecast for China due to concerns over the country’s zero-Covid approach and strict lockdowns, which put even more pressure on the real estate sector. Gross domestic product growth for the world’s second largest economy is expected to be at 4% in 2022, down from an earlier estimate
Cybersecurity specialists have welcomed a new trial by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to automatically take down scam websites. The trial saw dozens of scam sites, including crypto scams, knocked offline after more than 300 were reported. The ACCC reported that Australians had lost $113 million in cryptocurrency scams last year. The new trial
Criminals that used cryptocurrency as part of committing a crime are more likely to receive a tougher sentence in Australian courts, a new study has found. The study, titled “Crime and Cryptocurrency in Australian Courts,” published on Monday in the Monash University Law Review, found that the use of cryptocurrency in criminal activity was seen
German investment platform Trade Republic and digital asset exchange Crypto.com have registered as crypto service providers in Italy. Since February, the financial authorities in Rome maintain a registry for all cryptocurrency platforms permanently operating in the country. More Companies Register as Providers of Crypto Services in Italy Germany-based investment platform Trade Republic and Singapore-headquartered digital
The African continent may not be the biggest crypto/blockchain market yet but the growing adoption of the technology illustrates that this will likely be a key market in the future. For instance, instead of being seen or used as a tool for speculative trading, crypto is proving to be a more convenient and cheaper way