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WASHINGTON/NEW YORK, Jan 10 (Reuters) - The U.S. securities regulator on Wednesday approved the first U.S.-listed exchange traded funds (ETFs) to track bitcoin, its Chair Gary Gensler said, in a watershed for the world's largest cryptocurrency and the broader crypto industry. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved 11 applications, including from BlackRock (BLK.N), Ark Investments/21Shares (ABTC.S), Fidelity, Invesco (IVZ.N) and VanEck, among others, according to a notice on its website. Some products are expected to begin trading as early as Thursday, kicking off a fierce competition for market share.

The 2024 candidate, who joins other elite-educated Republicans in cosplaying as a truth-telling populist while offering no actual solutions to improve people’s material conditions, has reportedly used some of his millions of dollars to pay a Wikipedia editor to scrub his past. Mediaite reports that Ramaswamy seems to have paid Wikipedia editor “Jhofferman,” to remove information from his page that he presumably thought would damage his candidacy in the Republican primary. A few days later, he announced his 2024 bid. The editor scrubbed off information related to Ramaswamy receiving the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans in 2011,...

Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that incidence of a common stomach illness is on the rise on cruise ships. In an update posted several days ago, the federal agency is now listing 13 outbreaks of norovirus on cruise ships this year, which is the highest number of outbreaks recorded on cruises since 2012. The most recent reported norovirus outbreak was on June 20 on a Viking Cruises ship in which about 120 passengers and crew members reported being ill out of about 1,200 people who were on board. Viking Cruises recently told The...

Gold isn’t raining from the sky in California, but it might be flooding into the rivers by summer. “Nugget Nick” Prebalick expects the record snowpack in northern California to deposit even more gold in Woods Creek in Tuolumne County, where he shares a claim with his father and son near Jamestown. The family has been offering tours to those who want to experience gold mining and learn about the history of the gold rush in the state. “I’m already finding more gold,” Prebalick told The Epoch Times. “I’ve been finding gold every tour.” The Prebalicks, who own California Gold Panning,...

SELF-CHECKOUT machines have been a constant feature in supermarkets and grocery stores across the U.S. for years. The kiosks have helped make the shopping process more convenient for customers as they don't have to wait in long lines. But, self-checkout-related theft has become more prominent and there have been occasions when shoppers have been wrongly accused of stealing amid technological errors. Dod Ghassemkhani, a criminal defense attorney based in San Diego, believes that the machines will disappear in the long term. He told The U.S. Sun: “Self-checkouts will eventually go because there’s so much theft. "At some point, it’s not...

The Biden Administration is quietly trying to ban crypto. Nic Carter explains in an explosive guest post for Pirate Wires. -Solana What began as a trickle is now a flood: the US government is using the banking sector to organize a sophisticated, widespread crackdown against the crypto industry. And the administration’s efforts are no secret: they’re expressed plainly in memos, regulatory guidance, and blog posts. However, the breadth of this plan — spanning virtually every financial regulator — as well as its highly coordinated nature, has even the most steely-eyed crypto veterans nervous that crypto businesses might end up completely...

Both Moscow and Kiev appeared to have been ready for a ceasefire, Naftali Bennett says. Peace might’ve been agreed between Russia and Ukraine shortly after the start of the conflict, but Kiev’s Western backers blocked the negotiations between the two neighbors, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who mediated those contacts, has said. Bennet, who gave an almost five-hour-long video interview to Israel’s Channel 12 on Saturday, claimed that his efforts as a middleman came close to succeeding as both Moscow and Kiev appeared to be ready to make concessions and agree to a truce. Read more: Azerbaijan unveils recent...

Brazilian lawmakers have approved a complete regulatory framework for the trading and use of cryptocurrencies in the country. Voted on Tuesday evening in Brasilia, the country’s capital, the new rules recognize bitcoin as a digital representation of value that can be used as a means of payment and as an investment asset in the South American nation. The bill applies broadly to a sector which it calls “virtual assets,” and now only needs the President’s signature before it becomes law. It does not make bitcoin or any cryptocurrency a legal tender in the country. The bill tasks the executive branch...

The extreme leftist Spanish government has drawn the rage of many in the country after it announced a commemorative postage stamp marking the centenary of the Communist Party. The stamp, featuring the notorious hammer and sickle imagery, is to be launched by the state controlled Correos on November 14, with 135,000 limited edition copies with a postal value of 0.75 euros. World News Anger As Spanish Government CELEBRATES Communist Party With Commemorative Postage Stamp Spain is currently governed by a coalition of socialists and far left extremists Published 12 hours ago on 11 November, 2022 Steve Watson JAVIER SORIANO/AFP via...

UTICA, N.Y. (UPDATED) -- A man who identified himself only as "Kem" saw people tweeting about using 3D printers to make guns for the sole purpose of selling them for big bucks at gun buyback programs, like the one the New York State Attorney General's Office held at the Utica Police Department last month. He got to work on a $200 3D printer he got for Christmas. "I 3D-printed a bunch of lower receivers and frames for different kinds of firearms," said Kem. Then, he drove six hours to Utica. "And he sees the tote and says, 'how many firearms...

The financialization of healthcare started two generations ago and is now in a run-to-fail feedback loop of insolvency. Long-time readers know I have been critical of U.S. healthcare for over a decade. When I use the term sickcare this is not a reflection on the hard work of frontline caregivers--it is a reflection of the financialization incentives that have distorted the system's priorities and put it on a path to insolvency. To describe how Healthcare became Sickcare, I'm sharing the perspective of an Insider. The financialization of healthcare started two generations ago and is now in a run-to-fail feedback loop...

Outlines First Whole-of-Government Strategy to Protect Consumers, Financial Stability, National Security, and Address Climate Risks Digital assets, including cryptocurrencies, have seen explosive growth in recent years, surpassing a $3 trillion market cap last November and up from $14 billion just five years prior. Surveys suggest that around 16 percent of adult Americans – approximately 40 million people – have invested in, traded, or used cryptocurrencies. Over 100 countries are exploring or piloting Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), a digital form of a country’s sovereign currency. The rise in digital assets creates an opportunity to reinforce American leadership in the global...

*** The banking giant said Bitcoin is nearing a “hyper-adoption phase” similar to the internet in the mid-to-late 1990 *** It is not too late to invest in bitcoin, said multinational financial services giant Wells Fargo in a Monday report, drawing parallels between the adoption rates of the internet in the 1990s and that of cryptocurrencies today. Wells Fargo’s global investment strategy team explained in the report that Bitcoin’s over 200% annualized gains since its first transaction in 2010 often lead some investors to think that it may be too late to join the party. However, the big bank disagrees....

The world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, is reportedly planning to offer a bitcoin trading service to its investor clients, three people familiar with the matter told CoinDesk. BlackRock entering the Bitcoin space by offering investment products to its clients could represent a watershed moment to the digital currency given that the New York-based firm manages over $10 trillion in assets for institutional investors. One of the people reportedly said the asset manager would let its clients get access to loans by putting up cryptocurrency as collateral with “client support trading and then with their own credit facility.” BlackRock’s over 1,500...

One miner just earned over $215,000 Most ordinary people haven't been able to mine Bitcoin at a profit for years. As the difficulty of mining the cryptocurrency has increased, most rewards have gone to massive operations that rely on a bunch of incredibly powerful machines. But solo miners with relatively weak setups have found success in recent weeks using USB-based mining rigs. The most recent example comes from a solo USB miner participating in "solo.ckpool.org," which purportedly offers "no frills, no fuss 2% fee anonymous solo bitcoin mining for everyone." The miner solved a block with a rig that had...

Bitcoin is referred to as the digital gold and after the incredible performance the digital asset has put on over the last couple of years, there is no doubt that this title was rightfully given. Now, though, the asset has moved on from competing against other digital assets to competing with gold. The latter has not done too well in the last couple of years, crushing confidence in its future. This is how bitcoin has managed to float into the radar of small and large investors alike. The digital asset, returning over 200% gains per year, has proven to not...

In Low Key Move, Singapore’s Central Bank Adds 26 Tonnes To Its Gold Reserves It has just come to light that Singapore’s central bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), added 26.35 tonnes of gold to its official monetary gold reserves over a 2 month period between May and June this year, in the process boosting its strategic gold holdings by 20% to a claimed 153.76 tonnes. This addition to the monetary gold holdings of the Monetary Authority of Singapore was first pointed out by the World Gold Council’s Krishan Gopaul in a 25 November tweet, following an update to...

Mathew Crawford just did an analysis showing that the data from the UK shows that the vaccines aren't saving any lives at all. Zero. Zip. Nada. So we're killing over 150K people to save no lives. Wow. My good friend Mathew Crawford is an amazing statistician. He’s one of the smartest people I know. He just published a new analysis on his substack showing that the UK data show that the COVID vaccines aren’t saving any lives at all. It’s all statistical noise as shown in the graph below from his article. Please check it out and if you like...

The American Medical Association reported that 96% of U.S. doctors were vaccinated in June. Even with a 20-point error margin, accounting for saline/placebo shots and exemptions, a vast majority of doctors have received the shots. It’s only fair since doctors peddle the injections to their unwitting, credulous fanatics who worship the white coats. RELATED: Thomas Flanigan: Ohio doctor writes his own obituary after Moderna shots, dead 11 weeks later (May 7, 2021)Vaccines are the leading cause of coincidences. We all know that. But you can literally search keywords like “died suddenly” and “died unexpectedly” in Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc. and...

The group is using a new Wyoming law that legally recognizes them as a corporate entity to help speed along the process. Back in July, Wyoming passed a law legally recognizing Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs)—blockchain-based entities in which members vote on the group’s direction with tokens—so long as they are registered as companies in the state. Now, one DAO that has aspirations of founding a blockchain-based city says it has actually purchased land in the state. “Today, CityDAO is officially the first DAO to own land, using the new Wyoming DAO LLC law. This is just the beginning,” CityDAO tweeted,...