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The term ‘hysteria’ derives from the Greek word ‘hystera’ meaning ‘uterus,’ and is generally attributed to the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates. In the 15th century, another outbreak of mass hysteria occurred in Germany when a nun in a convent started biting the other sisters. Before long, the behavior spread throughout the convent and, as news spread further afield, so too did the phenomenon, resulting in biting outbreaks in convents across Germany, the Netherlands and Italy. After a few examples of nuns being punished, the behavior quickly subsided. In the 1844 book ‘Epidemics of the Middle Ages’...an account is given of...

n 1636, according to an 1841 account by Scottish author Charles MacKay, the entirety of Dutch society went crazy over exotic tulips. As Mackay wrote in his wildly popular, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, as prices rose, people got swept up in a speculative fever, spending a year’s salary on rare bulbs in hopes of reselling them for a profit. Mackay dubbed the phenomenon “The Tulipomania.”

A Georgia man faces up to 20 years in prison after more than $3 billion in stolen Bitcoin was found stashed in a popcorn tin at his home in what authorities call the second largest seizure of cryptocurrency. James Zhong, 32, pleaded guilty on Friday to stealing the Bitcoin a decade ago from the illegal Silk Road marketplace, which the FBI shut down in 2013. The U.S. Department of Justice announced this week that authorities raided Zhong's Gainesville home in November 2021 where they found 50,676 Bitcoin with a value of $3.36 billion at the time.

FTX is converting crypto contributions to Ukraine’s war effort into fiat for deposit at the National Bank of Ukraine. The Ukrainian government launched a new crypto donations website on Monday, streamlining its multimillion-dollar effort to turn bitcoin into bullets, bandages and other war materiel. Other estimates place the amount closer to $100 million, but totals vary with market swings and exactly which websites are included. The website deepens an unprecedented tie-up between public and private sector forces in crypto. FTX is converting donations into fiat for deposit at the National Bank of Ukraine, a press release said. It described this...

The newly elected UK prime minister wants to “fix our economy, unite our Party and deliver for our country” Sunak previously asked the Royal Mint to create NFTs to demonstrate the country’s commitment to investing in cryptocurrency technology The United Kingdom’s incoming prime minister may be a bullish indicator for the country’s crypto prowess. Former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak is set to take the seat following the resignation of Liz Truss — who was in office for just 45 days. Handpicked by fellow Conservative Party members on Monday, Sunak, the son of Indian immigrants, will be the first...

Enthusiasm for crypto from Hollywood celebrities and top athletes reached a fever pitch over the past year. On social media, during interviews and even in music videos, they portrayed virtual currency as a world with its own hip culture and philosophy — one that was more inclusive than traditional finance and that involved the chance to make loads of money. The Super Bowl was nicknamed the “Crypto Bowl” this year because so many ads — which cost as much as $7 million for 30 seconds — featured the industry, several of them starring boldface names. (snip) Matt Damon, who compared...

Some cryptocurrency haters are spiking the football now that there has been a downturn in crypto markets arguing that the dip portends of the death of crypto. This dip is a correction and something that will weed out flawed crypto models making the market stronger. The bottom line is that cryptocurrencies are here to stay. That which did not kill crypto will make it stronger. The invention of cryptocurrencies starting with Bitcoin were a groundbreaking development in means of storing and transferring value. The creation diversified the way people can transact business. The idea was to create digital currencies that...

When Britain voted for Brexit, Macron boasted that Paris would eat the City of London’s lunch. It didn’t quite work out that way, with most league tables continuing to put London as the number one or two financial centre, with not a single EU city in the top ten. Emmanuel Macron's government has now announced that it has invited Binance, a crypto exchange site, to set up a European HQ in Paris. You have to ask: has Macron leapt on a bandwagon which has already started to lose its wheels? The warning sign for cryptocurrencies is not so much that...

An allegedly North Korean Ethereum wallet tied to March’s $600 million crypto hack continued to launder its stolen ETH Friday in defiance of U.S. sanctions. The blacklisted address that U.S. authorities say is controlled by North Korea’s elite “Lazarus” hacker group sent 2,915 ETH (around $8.8 million) to the cleaners this morning New York time, a day after federal officials listed it on its sanctions database. Making a brief pit stop at a fresh, unsanctioned wallet, its crypto quickly flew through the popular coin mixer Tornado Cash, where the trail went cold. It was a continuation of what one tracing...

But as the crowd pushes inside, a wiry man with elfin features is sprinting out of the venue, past astonished selfie takers and venture capitalists. Some call out, imploring him to stay; others even chase him down the street, on foot and on scooters. Yet the man outruns them all, disappearing into the privacy of his hotel lobby, alone. Vitalik Buterin, the most influential person in crypto, didn’t come to Denver to party. He doesn’t drink or particularly enjoy crowds. Not that there isn’t plenty for the 28-year-old creator of Ethereum to celebrate. Nine years ago, Buterin dreamed up Ethereum...

A 33-year-old French cryptocurrency expert who was shot at point-blank range by a robber trying to steal his $450,000 Richard Mille watch says he believes he was targeted and followed for hours or days before being ambushed outside his Manhattan hotel. Pierrick Jamaux told DailyMail.com he is shocked by how dangerous the city has become and would never have visited had he known how much it had changed since he lived there 10 years ago. The entrepreneur, who was visiting from Hong Kong with his Australian model wife, Sarah Watts, 26, was getting out of an Uber at the Fifty...

Blockchain project Ronin said Tuesday that hackers stole cryptocurrency worth almost $615 million from its systems, in what would be one of the largest cryptocurrency heists on record. The project said that unidentified hackers on March 23 stole some 173,600 ether tokens and 25.5 million USD Coin tokens. At current exchange rates, the stolen funds are worth $615 million, but they were worth some $540 million at the time of the attack. This makes it the second-largest crypto theft on record, according to blockchain analysis firm Elliptic.

A group of blockchain enthusiasts are turning a 32-million square foot island into what they hope will soon be considered the “crypto capital of the world.” “After years of preparation, a green light from the Vanuatu Prime Minister and Minister Of Finance and all approvals in place, Satoshi Island is now ready to be developed into a real-world crypto economy and blockchain based democracy,” states a bio for the 800-acre portion of the island nation Vanuatu that has been freshly named after Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous developer of bitcoin. A website for Satoshi Island excitedly details its futuristic housing stock...

It takes only a second to crack the handful of weak keys. Are there more out there? Cryptographic keys generated with older software now owned by technology company Rambus are weak enough to be broken instantly using commodity hardware, a researcher reported on Monday. This revelation is part of an investigation that also uncovered a handful of weak keys in the wild. "The problem is that both primes are too similar," Böck said in an interview. "So the difference between the two primes is really small."

LONDON, March 17 (Reuters) - Consumers risk losing all their money invested in cryptoassets and could fall prey to scams, the European Union's securities, banking and insurance watchdogs said in a joint statement on Thursday. "Consumers face the very real possibility of losing all their invested money if they buy these assets," the three EU authorities said in a statement. It marks a racheting up of direct warnings to consumers about cryptoassets by EU authorities, spelling out that consumers have no protections or recourse to compensation under existing EU financial services law. Regulators are increasingly worried that more consumers are...

After briefly rising above $40,000 this morning following the earlier (and now forgotten) report of some soothing words from Putin over the Ukraine conflict, Bitcoin and the broader crypto sector has slumped to session lows...... following a Reuters report that crypto firms in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are being flooded with requests to "liquidate billions of dollars of virtual currency" as Russians seek a safe haven for their fortunes.According to the report - which cites company executives and financial sources - some Russians are using cryptocurrency to "invest in real estate" in the UAE, while others want to use...

Ukraine has raised more than $17 million in cryptocurrency donations since Russia began its invasion. Over $10 million were donated directly to the crypto wallets posted by the Ukrainian government about 24 hours after the government solicited donations in bitcoin, ether, and tether.

Venus Protocol, a decentralized money market, announced on Thursday evening that about $11 million had been lost due to people exploiting the historic collapse of the Luna cryptocurrency and its sister stablecoin UST. The team behind the Venus Protocol released a statement confirming suspicions that had been floating around for hours about the potential mishandling of the fiasco around Luna. “Today, we became aware of errant price behavior for LUNA on Venus Protocol. Upon investigation, it was learned that the price feed had been paused by Chainlink due to extreme market conditions,” Venus Protocol explained... Venus Protocol and several other...

President Joe Biden plans to sign an executive order on Wednesday to study the concept of a “digital dollar” currency to compete with Bitcoin. “We’re placing the highest urgency on the effort to assess the potential benefits and the risks of a digital dollar on payment systems, on financial stability, on national security, on the implications for human rights, and financial inclusion,” a senior administration official told reporters in a briefing call on Tuesday. A digital dollar would be easier for the federal government of the United States to control than cash but make it more susceptible to inflation and...

*** 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....