Guests were enticed with the promise of luxury villas overlooking aquamarine seas; a world-first crypto resort where the tech elite could commune over the latest digital innovation in opulent surrounds. The promotional material from June last year pitched a sprawling, futuristic development that would hug the coastline of Timor-Leste, one of the world’s poorest countries, and donate a percentage of profits to philanthropy. But in February, when a joint investigative team visited the proposed site of the AB Digital Technology Resort – separated from Dili airport by a barbed-wire fence…
Tag: Blockchain
Could Putin be exploring cryptocurrencies to bypass western sanctions?
As many people do when discussing the complex world of cryptocurrencies, Vladimir Putin kept it simple: “Of course, we also have certain competitive advantages here, especially in the so-called mining.” After events this weekend, when Russia was hit by severe financial sanctions, the Russian president might be considering capitalising on those advantages. Putin was speaking in January, days after the country’s central bank proposed a blanket ban on cryptocurrency trading and mining. In the case of bitcoin, the cornerstone cryptocurrency, mining is the energy-intensive process by which computers verify new…