“Digital Currency”

NEW YORK – Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were collapsing in price Monday, after a major cryptocurrency lender effectively failed and halted all withdrawals from its platform, citing “extreme market conditions.”

It’s the latest high profile collapse of a pillar of the cryptocurrency industry. These meltdowns have erased tens of billions of dollars of investors’ assets and spurred urgent calls to regulate the freewheeling industry.

Bitcoin was trading at roughly US$23,400 Monday afternoon, down more than 16% in the past day. Ethereum, another widely-followed cryptocurrency, was down more than 20%.

Can you say Ponzi scheme?

Logan Paul had a message for his six million Twitter followers: He was “all in” on a new cryptocurrency called Dink Doink.

According to the project’s creator, Dink Doink investors would receive shares of a cartoon character, entitling them to a portion of the proceeds if the googly-eyed figure ever appeared in a TV show or movie. Last June, Mr. Paul, a 27-year-old boxer and social-media influencer, praised Dink Doink on Twitter and in a public Telegram chat, before endorsing it again on his podcast, “Impaulsive.”

But by mid-July, the price of Dink Doink had plummeted to a fraction of a cent, and Mr. Paul was facing an online backlash. In his endorsements, he had failed to mention some relevant information: He and the project’s creator were friends, and they had come up with the idea for the cryptocurrency together. He had also received a large allocation of Dink Doink coins when it launched.

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The sudden collapse of two popular digital coins in early May shocked investors and wiped $400bn (£318bn) from the value of many other cryptocurrencies, including the biggest, Bitcoin. All over the world, people who lost their life savings are now appealing for help. One desperate man was even arrested after visiting the home of the elusive businessman at the centre of the “cryptocrash”. He told BBC News his life was in tatters.

In the volatile world of cryptocurrencies, fortunes can be made and lost rapidly – but the May 2022 cryptocrash has been particularly devastating for one man in South Korea.

“I felt like I was going to die,” the cryptocurrency streamer known as Chancers says. “I lost a lot of money in a short period of time. Around $2.4m (£1.9m) of my cryptocurrency was wiped out.”

Conservative leadership contender Pierre Poilievre promised Thursday he’d spike the Bank of Canada’s proposal to offer a digital currency, saying this sort of financial instrument should be left to the private sector.

Poilievre has emerged as a fierce critic of Canada’s central bank. He’s tried to link decades-high inflation to its COVID-era policy of quantitative easing and recently slammed the institution as “financially illiterate.”

Poilievre said that a government led by him would extend the auditor general’s authority to include the Bank of Canada and push for a review of its pandemic policies.