Author: NBTC

Blockchain Meets Mobile Money Financial services giant Visa, mobile money platform M-Pesa, and pan-African payments network Onafriq have launched a pilot program using stablecoins to settle cross-border mobile transactions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), according to industry reports. The initiative marks the latest push by major financial players to test whether blockchain-powered digital assets can make international money transfers faster and cheaper across Africa. For consumers using platforms like Safaricom’s M-Pesa, the integration of stablecoins is intended to streamline back-end operations. If successful, the pilot could lead to quicker wallet top-ups, smoother international business transactions, and lower remittance…

The adjustment landed at block height 957600. Difficulty moved from 133.87 trillion to 127.17 trillion, a decline of roughly 6.70 trillion. The change took effect at 4:09:11 p.m., based on the block timestamp. The prior epoch ran about 14 days, 18 hours, and 9 minutes, longer than Bitcoin’s 14-day target for 2,016 blocks. That pace works out to an average block time of 10 minutes, 32 seconds, about 5.1% slower than the protocol’s 10-minute target. The 5% cut brought the network back toward that target. A Year Defined by Wide Swings Eight of the 14 difficulty adjustments so far in…

This was quickly fixed and disclosed as ‘CVE-2026-34219′ with credit to the team. The broader concern, however, was separating the agents’ real bugs from the ones that were confidently masquerading as such. “The surprise was how little of the work went into finding them, and how much went into telling the real bugs from the ones that just looked real,” wrote Nikos Baxevanis, who authored the post. The difficulty started with what an agent produces. A fuzzer, the standard tool that hurls malformed data at software until something breaks, returned a crash and a record of where it happened, which…

The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control revoked General License X on July 7, cutting off the authorization that had allowed Iranian crude oil, petrochemical, and petroleum-product transactions through Aug. 21. Its replacement, General License X1, permits only wind-down transactions through 12:01 a.m. ET on July 17. Brent crude settled at $74.16 and WTI at $70.44 that day, then extended gains in post-settlement trade to about $76.03 and $72.20, putting both benchmarks over 5% above the prior session. Tanker attacks near the Strait of Hormuz drove that move, and maritime authorities raised transit risk through the strait to severe,…

$AVAX One Technology, the Nasdaq-listed digital infrastructure company that mines bitcoin and holds a strategic Avalanche treasury, said Chief Executive Jolie Kahn resigned effective July 3, with Chief Operating Officer Pete Wylie stepping in as interim CEO, according to an 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company, which trades as AVX, said the departure came “by mutual agreement” and that there was no disagreement over the company’s operations, policies or practices, per the filing. The board has retained ZRG Partners, a global executive search firm, to find a permanent successor. Separation Terms Kahn will receive a $160,000…

Berachain is preparing a hard fork that will replace its dual-token incentive model with one centered on its main $BERA token. Set for Wednesday at 4 pm UTC, the hard fork will end Bera Governance Token (BGT) emissions and shift the network’s incentive system to Wrapped $BERA (WBERA), the Berachain Foundation announced in a Tuesday X post. Following the upgrade, the network will distribute fixed amounts of WBERA instead of BGT as block rewards. The change replaces Berachain’s previous dual-token model, which split the network’s functions between the transferable $BERA token and the non-transferable governance token BGT. Berachain said annual…

A request for the UK standards watchdog to examine Nigel Farage’s reported interactions with the Bank of England has turned the UK’s digital-pound fight into an access fight: who gets to shape public payment infrastructure while donations from a major crypto-linked backer face fresh scrutiny. A July 2 Guardian report said Labour MP Phil Brickell asked the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards to investigate Farage’s reported interactions with the Bank. The request followed the Guardian’s earlier reporting that Farage told a crypto event he had challenged Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey over the central bank’s digital-pound work. No finding of…

Blockchain research firm L2BEAT published a comparative analysis of perpetual futures exchanges Hyperliquid and Lighter on July 2. In its findings, the research firm discovered that none of the platforms fully protects traders through verifiable math alone. The report matters to anyone trading leveraged crypto derivatives on venues that market themselves as decentralized alternatives to the likes of Binance or Bybit. Are perpetual DEXs delivering on all their promises? Perpetual DEXs claim to offer custody over user collateral, and execution can be verified independently, according to L2BEAT’s research. The firm evaluated Hyperliquid and Lighter across property rights, order fairness, and…

On July 9, 2026, at approximately 03:30 UTC, a solo miner using a palm-sized Bitaxe device mined block 957382 through Public Pool, claiming the full 3.1382 $BTC block reward. That includes the 3.125 $BTC subsidy plus roughly 0.0132 $BTC in transaction fees, worth roughly $200,000 at the time. The device ran at an average of 995.2 GH/s, close to its rated 1 TH/s, for about eight hours before submitting the winning share. That share carried a difficulty of 294.14 trillion, more than double the network target, which is what confirmed the block solve. Because the miner was the only worker…

Solana’s recent social media activity has captured the attention of the crypto community, sparking discussions and interest. The platform retweeted a post by @Heistedxyz regarding the launch of a heist simulator, indicating a vibrant engagement with users. This article explores the implications of Solana’s viral tweets and their impact on traders and users. What Went Down Solana’s retweet of a viral post about a new heist simulator has significantly boosted user engagement, highlighting active community participation. The tweet, which announced that registration for the game is now live, has drawn considerable attention, with 1,437 likes and 270 retweets. This level…