Cryptocurrency mining company Argo Blockchain announced Tuesday that it has reached an important milestone in its climate strategy, sending a strong signal that environmental sustainability remains one of its primary focuses.  The company claimed that its crypto operations have become “climate positive” for Scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas emissions. According to Carbon Trust, a global advocacy group for environmental sustainability, Scope 1 emissions are direct emissions from a company’s owned or controlled sources; Scope 2 covers indirect emissions through the purchase of electricity; and Scope 3 includes all other indirect forms of emission that occur in a company’s value chain. Argo intends to become carbon neutral and plans to go even further “by mitigating emissions through support of projects outside of Argo,” the company said. As part of its Climate Positive Strategy, Argo became a signatory to the Crypto Climate Accord and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

After several years of nearly total media silence, the Dogecoin Foundation is coming back to support core developers and projects benefiting the meme-based cryptocurrency. In a Tuesday announcement, the Dogecoin Foundation said it would be reestablishing itself in an effort to support the Dogecoin (DOGE) community as well as promote the future of the blockchain. The foundation said it would be announcing new projects in the coming weeks encouraging the adoption and utility of DOGE “that increase Dogecoin uptake at a grassroots level.” “The Foundation holds the Dogecoin mark and the Dogecoin Logo and will maintain them for the community,” said the announcement. “This will mean the Foundation can continue to protect the Dogecoin Brand and allow (under a very liberal license) the ability to use it for Dogecoin-related memes, projects and fun. — We’ve got your back on this one.”

Mike Novogratz’s crypto investment firm Galaxy Digital Holdings has posted a second-quarter loss of $175.8 million. The figure provides a stark contrast to the firm’s first-quarter report that booked $860 million in comprehensive net profit earlier this year. Galaxy Digital posted its financial results as of June 30 on Monday, with the firm attributing the $175.8 million Q2 loss to asset price declines after FUD-inducing narratives fueled the crypto downturn in May.

The latest central bank digital currency (CBDC) initiative from the Bank of Ghana (BoG) has been met with skepticism as Afroblocks, an in-house independent association, speculates the lack of clarity on the central bank’s intentions.  Afroblocks (previously Blockchain Society Ghana) has warned the BoG to steer away from “old traditional siloed financial thinking” while planning and developing its digital currency. Rather, Afroblocks co-founder Omar Majdoub said that the success of a CBDC in Ghana will be in its ability to emulate modern-day cryptocurrencies — i.e., being borderless and decentralized.

Columbia Investment Management Company president and CEO Kim Lew thinks that cryptocurrencies are here to stay.  “I think it will have profound effects,” she said in a recent interview, adding, “There are many different avenues that it can go.” Lew explained that people could build many new things within the crypto ecosystem, such as stablecoins and nonfungible tokens. “I think clearly it’s going to play some role. Not clear what role it would play,” she added.

Creator of the beloved, sometimes controversial Pepe the Frog meme, Matt Furie requested that a frog-themed NFT project worth $4M be removed from OperSea fo copyright infringement. The “Sad Frogs District” is an NFT project containing 7000 programmatically generated Sad Frog NFTs from a selection of around 200 traits. The artwork depicted in the NFTs may draw some inspiration from Furie’s character Pepe. According to OpenSea’s Community-help Discord channel on Aug. 17, numerous members had asked why the verified NFT project had been delisted as they could no longer access the Sad Frog NFTs on the platform.

According to data from eth.btc.com，ethereum network's hashrate is585,024.92 GH/s，mining difficulty is7,884.29T. ETH's price ：$ 3,021.87 Avg Gas Price：21.20Gwei Pending Txs ：168439

Digital asset exchange and service provider, Crypto.com, has launched withdrawals via U.S. dollar bank transfers for institutional clients across more than 60 countries. According to an August 18 announcement, the expanded fiat functionality for institutional account holders has been enabled by its partnership with Circle. Institutional customers are now able to withdraw dollars from their Crypto.com USD Coin (USDC) wallet via bank at a 1:1 basis using a unique code provided by Circle. Bank transfers are expected to be processed within three business days. Kris Marszalek, CEO and co-founder of Crypto.com, stated:

A glossy looking documentary series centered on the history of money and cryptocurrency premiere on August 19th at 7:00 am UTC, and features interviews from a long list of top crypto figures. The 12 episode video series is somewhat confusingly called “Coins Podcast” and the first two episodes  drop on YouTube today. The show is hosted by Patrick Mclain of blockchain accelerator Mousebelt, and narrated by actor Robert Davi, who has played roles in Die Hard, James Bond: License to Kill and Predator 2. The docu-series features interviews with crypto proponents and key figures in the sector such as FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, ShapeShift CEO Erik Vorhees, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson, founder/CEO of Global Macro Investor Raoul Pal, and Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky to name a few.

De Nederlandsche Bank, the central bank of the Netherlands, issued a warning to Binance Holdings Limited and its entities offering crypto services to local residents. In a Wednesday statement, De Nederlandsche Bank said the major crypto exchange was not operating in compliance with the country’s Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorist Financing Act, alleging that Binance customers were at risk of “becoming involved in money laundering or terrorist financing.” According to the central bank, Binance is illegally offering crypto services as well as custodian wallets without the required legal registration. The Dutch central bank specified that its notice was to the crypto exchange’s parent company Binance Holdings Limited as well as entities “under which Binance provides crypto services in the Netherlands.” This would seemingly apply to the global crypto exchange as well.

United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM), the second-largest U.S.-based mortgage lender is planning to accept cryptocurrency payments this year starting with Bitcoin (BTC). UWM CEO Mat Ishbia revealed the crypto plans on Monday in a conference call regarding the firms’ Q2 results — with the firm posting a $138.7 million net profit for the quarter. "We’re excited that hopefully (this year) we can actually execute on that before anyone in the country," Ishbia said.

Zachary Kelman, general counsel of Cointelegraph, said that the political fight over the tax implications for crypto in the United States infrastructure bill is nothing new, as it’s likely about how lawmakers plan to pay for everything. In an interview with Cointelegraph's Jackson DuMont, Kelman claimed that senators pushing the crypto language in the infrastructure bill — which ultimately passed in the U.S. Senate after one senator objected to a clarifying amendment — may have been more influenced by political concerns than ones potentially affecting the crypto space. Namely, the general counsel claimed that lawmakers know that crypto firms “can't actually acquiesce” to the proposed tax reporting requirements but needed the language to essentially win over senators concerned about paying the bill. According to Kelman, Republicans and moderate Democrats may be supportive of the bill but want the language to have a provision to fund some of the roads, bridges and major infrastructure projects proposed without actually having to raise taxes.

Mikhail Fedorov, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister and the head of the country’s Ministry of Digital Transformation, has revealed a possible early use case for the nation’s planned central bank digital currency (CBDC). In a recent interview published by Ukrainian media outlet TSN, the minister revealed considerations within the ministry to test out the CBDC by using the electronic currency in staff salary payments: Fedorov made these comments while arguing the case for the initial roll-out of the e-hryvnia to focus on a small, controlled use case rather than being deployed for social payments. According to Fedorov, there is the need to test the CBDC to prevent inappropriate use, hence, his call for staff salary payments as a viable pilot scheme for the national digital currency.

In a newly published Medium piece titled "Good stablecoins, a protocol for money, and digital wallets: the formula to fix our broken payment system", Facebook’s crypto pioneer David Marcus shared his views on topics of economic inequality, regulatory challenges and Novi’s proposed stablecoin solution. Marcus has spent the last couple of years building Diem’s crypto wallet Novi — an interoperable digital wallet designed to integrate with the Diem payment system. It is meant to enable individuals and businesses worldwide to transfer money with ease, revolutionizing the age-old financial payments system once and for all. In the piece, Marcus cites the 1.7 billion individuals unbanked across the world, as well as the reported 62 million Americans not maximizing their financial potential with their current banking provider, as primary reasons to innovate this sector.

The football ecosystem has stepped up its adoption game as more clubs continue to involve crypto in mainstream operations.  Netherland-based top-tier football club PSV Eindhoven has partnered with local crypto trading platform Anycoin Direct, which will pay the club an undisclosed amount of Bitcoin (BTC) in a new sponsorship deal. According to the official statement, Anycoin Direct will remain an official partner of PSV Eindhoven for the next two seasons with the goal of growing awareness of crypto across Europe.

London-based financial services firm ETC Group will list its entire portfolio of crypto exchange-traded products (ETPs) offering exposure to Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and Litecoin (LTC) on Austria’s national stock market. In a Wednesday announcement, the ETC Group said the Wiener Börse, or Vienna Stock Exchange, would be listing three of its crypto exchange-traded products that are “100% physically backed and central counterparty cleared.” These include the firm’s carbon-neutral Bitcoin product, a Litecoin-based product and its Ether ETP. The ETC Group has already made similar listings on stock exchanges in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Zurich and Frankfurt. The ETPs are aimed at allowing investors exposure to crypto with the regulatory protections afforded to traditional stocks. Previously stating that its crypto product was like trading Bitcoin “through an ETP structure,” the firm said its offerings are not the same as an exchange-traded fund, as they’re single asset instruments.

Smart contract platform Avalanche has announced a $180 million liquidity mining incentive program, named Avalanche Rush. The program aims to encourage more applications and tokens to move to Avalanche’s decentralized finance (DeFi) platform, according to the release. It's set to follow a multi-stage deployment starting with the Aave and Curve protocols, before expanding to other assets in the coming months. For this first stage, Avalanche will allocate up to $20M AVAX tokens for Aave and $7M AVAX tokens for Curve over a 3 month period. At the same time, the Avalanche Foundation will sponsor the launch of Benqi’s DeFi protocol native to the Avalanche network with a $3M allocation starting August 19. News of the Rush program follows the re-release of the Avalanche Bridge — an upgraded version of the project’s previous cross-chain bridging tool that is allegedly five times cheaper, faster and more secure than before.

Japanese exchange Liquid has been hacked with about $80 million in digital assets moved off the platform. The exchange confirmed the security breach in a tweet that exposed the wallet addresses implicated in the breach. The following assets had been transferred to hacker's following addresses (Further investigation to come):BTC: 1Fx1bhbCwp5LU2gHxfRNiSHi1QSHwZLf7qETH/EWT: 0x5578840aae68682a9779623fa9e8714802b59946TRX: TSpcue3bDfZNTP1CutrRrDxRPeEvWhuXbpXRP: rfapBqj7rUkGju7oHTwBwhEyXgwkEM4yby

The CEO and founder of one of the world’s largest independent financial advisory organizations, the deVere Group, has stated that Ethereum’s price appreciation should continue to beat Bitcoin’s in 2021. The deVere Group chief executive Nigel Green also believes that Ethereum’s value will exceed that of Bitcoin's within a few short years. “Ethereum is outperforming Bitcoin and it can be expected to continue this trend for the rest of 2021,” he said.

MobileCoin, a crypto-focused digital payment ecosystem, announced Wednesday that it has concluded a $66 million funding round as part of a wider effort to bring more of its products and services to market.  The Series B had participation from several leading venture funds from within the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry, including Alameda Research, BlockTower Capital and Coinbase Ventures. Berggruen Holdings, General Catalyst, Vy Capital and TIME Ventures also participated. Several entrepreneurs and investors also contributed to the funding round. MobileCoin said the funding will be used to further develop its core crypto offerings, including MOBot, which is described as the “first cryptocurrency chatbot payment system.” The company also plans to expand its merchant services and introduce a new dollar-pegged stablecoin.