Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin questioned the decentralization level of those cryptocurrencies that promise a high transaction throughput and stood up for the Proof-of-Work algorithm.

Another country that faces a financial crisis due to the US sanctions issues its own national cryptocurrency. A group of Iranian banks presented a PayMon pegged to gold.

Islamic revolution in digital

Four Iranian banks (Bank Mellat, Bank Melli Iran, Bank Pasargad, and Parsian Bank) presented PayMon cryptocurrency, each coin of which is backed to gold reserves. Technical support for the project was provided by the blockchain-startup Kuknos.

The primary issue of PayMon tokens was 1 billion coins. As expected, they will be traded on the Iranian over-the-counter Fara Bourse platform.

PayMon in Persian means “covenant”.

The goal of the project is to tokenize the assets of banks and financial institutions, said Valiollah Fatemi, director of Kuknos. It is still unknown which blockchain the Iranian cryptocurrency is built on. The Iranian Central Bank also remained silent on the four banks' initiative.

Crypto rial

Against the background of tough economic sanctions imposed by the United States, the Islamic Republic decided to partially lift the ban on cryptocurrency turnover and announced plans to issue its own stablebcoin pegged to the national currency rate. A week ago, the media reported that the Central Bank of Iran was ready to partially remove the ban on cryptocurrencies, while Iranian banks made public their plans to launch their own stablebcoin.

According to Al-Jazeera, Russia was helping Iran to create digital currency, although this information was not yet confirmed. According to some sources, the Central Bank of Iran will only ban the use of "unapproved" cryptocurrencies. The list of allowed cryptocurrencies will be updated every three months. According to rumors, Iranians may be allowed to own cryptocurrencies, but not more than 10,000 euros in equivalent.

Cryptocurrency users often lose access to their funds, not because of hacker attacks, but due to their lack of technical literacy, said crypto-enthusiast Andreas Antonopoulos.

Cryptocurrency project NEM announced a seismic shift in its strategy due to financial difficulties. Over the year, the rate of the cryptocurrency collapsed 43 fold.

AMD, which produces GPU hardware, published a financial report in which it spoke about the decline in sales of video cards and almost complete absence of demand for these products from cryptocurrency miners. Earlier, AMD admitted high risks associated with cryptocurrencies.

The responsibility for the theft of cryptocurrencies worth in total up to $1 billion rests with hackers from just two groups. They are still active.

NEO, the Chinese blockchain project, presumably does not work for more than 11 hours. Probably, the network fell victim to an unintentional fork.

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Can you imagine and elephant hiding behind the bush? Something so big and obviously powerful but surprisingly unseen by people for years.

The mainnet of the blockchain platform Telegram Open Network and its Gram token will be launched in March. Telegram founder will meet with TON investors and demonstrate the platform.

New Zealand-based cryptocurrency exchange Cryptopia, hacked on 14 January, has not yet officially disclosed the damage caused by hackers. But crypto enthusiasts did preliminary calculations, tracking transactions from the exchange after the hack.

Seven US academic institutions joined forces to develop their own digital currency. Their goal is to create a competitor to bitcoin and Ethereum, which will surpass these current market leaders by transaction speed.