Dogecoin a meme-based cryptocurrency might not be so good for the crypto token market, according to Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse.

Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency coin that earned a lot of its support through social media, relying on memes tied to the shiba inu dog (it later spawned a spin-off cryptocurrency based around the dog, called Shiba Inu coin).

Garlinghouse, the CEO of global payment company Ripple, said the cryptocurrency market has boomed recently because of inflation, but hes not sold on every coin.

Garlinghouse said Dogecoin relies too much on hype to prove successful.

Johnny Lyu, the CEO of the worlds third-largest crypto exchange KuCoin, has made the case, though, that meme-based cryptocurrencies can be good long-term investments, as I wrote for the Deseret News.

Lyu said that meme-based cryptocurrencies are sparked by young investors, which might be a way theyll succeed in the long haul.

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Dogecoin news: Is it a good investment? Does it work long-term? - Deseret News

Ethereum (ETH-USD) is defying broad underperformance in cryptocurrencies, with its recent price gains reflecting a surge of interest in smart contract platforms that are being rapidly co-opted by the nonfungible token (NFT) boom.

Amid newfound investor interest, the digital coin's performance has even eclipsed Bitcoins (BTC-USD), which has languished for over a month after setting a new record high near $68,000.

Currently trading around $4,400, Ethereum is the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. Like Bitcoin, ETH has morphed into something of a reserve currency of its own for crypto investors. That also might mean headwinds for the asset over the longer term, not to mention an opportunity for competing blockchains.

Unlike BTC, which is most often used as speculative store of value like gold, ether's primary use is to provide fuel or gas for transactions across the Ethereum blockchain.

As the price has gone up, it's gotten very expensive to get any [transaction] space on a block on the Ethereum blockchain, Aaron Lammer, a decentralized finance (DeFi) specialist at the crypto-focused quantitative hedge fund, Radkl, told Yahoo Finance.

There's still a huge number of people waiting to be on-ramped into DeFi and NFTs, we might see the price of Ether go even higher, and really only become available to people who are using it in a large-scale institutional way, Lammer added.

As Lammer explained, one consequence of high fees is that projects and users have a financial incentive to drop Ethereum for less expensive smart contract-enabled blockchain alternatives such as Solana, Avalanche and Terra.

By no coincidence, the tokens for these competing chains behind smaller digital coins like Terra (LUNA1-USD), Avalanche (AVAX-USD) and Solana (SOL1-USD) have also performed well over the last month.

Terra token has doubled in the last week, surpassing Shiba Inu coin (SHIB-USD) as the 12th largest cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of $25 billion.

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Similar to Ripple (XRP), the token's creator, Terra Labs, is also at the center of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissions investigation working to determine whether some of the world's top cryptocurrencies are, in fact, securities. At least for the moment, ETH isn't suffering from similar regulatory uncertainty.

However, ETH's developer team has initiated a coin supply burn in its August upgrade, which will continue to exacerbate transaction costs and potentially cause its value proposition to better fit large institutions who can afford to pay the fees.

"Applications, like within DeFi, are competing for institutional capital, which is less concerned about high fees due to the more nominal sums of money they transact," explained Mason Nystrom, a research analyst with Messari.

Data tracked at watchtheburn.com, a project supported by the Ethereum Foundation, shows the rate at which burnt ETH has risen since Ethereum's upgrade. The net supply (block rewards issued - burned ETH) has dropped 80% from August through November.

The stakes of DeFi

As Lammer pointed out, another reason for Ethers rising price can be attributed to investor interest in DeFi. The emerging sector lets investors reap lending yields that are making regulators nervous, and causing Wall Street to salivate over how to tap the market.

A lot of DeFi is based on the idea of individual investors supplying capital into decentralized marketplaces, Lammer explained.

Except when you make a swap, you're actually in a pool that people have contributed money to, and therefore get rewarded in tokens. Other services are lending platforms, where you could lend your Bitcoin, or Ethereum, or all sorts of tokens in exchange for a percentage paid in APR [annual percentage rate], he added.

Such financial apps might seem harrowing to some investors, but the yields for lending assets within DeFi exchanges and protocols, range anywhere from 15% to 45% annual percentage rate (APR). For context, that's exponentially higher than what Americans can earn for holding U.S. dollars in a savings account (0.04% according to the FDIC).

In October, Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler told Yahoo Finance that DeFi is "going to end poorly" unless protections are bolstered for those who invest. The agency has already acted on the premise that lending products from centralized crypto companies also need to be registered as securities.

Meanwhile, attackers have stolen more than $700 million dollars in this year alone, with the latest exploit coming at the expense of DeFi autonomous organization (DAO), also known as BadgerDAO. The crypto hack may cost the organization $120 million, according to one of its members.

David Hollerith covers cryptocurrency for Yahoo Finance. Follow him @dshollers.

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Ethereum outshines Bitcoin in cryptocurrency horse race, price may have further to run - Yahoo Money

Facebook cryptocurrency chief David Marcus announced today that hes leaving the company. The former PayPal executive joined Facebook in 2014 to run Messenger but eventually took over plans to launch a new cryptocurrency and wallet, known at the time as Libra and Calibra, respectively.

After some pre-Meta name changes, the digital wallet launched with a small pilot in October under the name Novi but only in two countries (the US and Guatemala) and support for a single form of crypto, the Paxos stablecoin. The currency that spurred so much ire from regulators and politicians around the world, now called Diem, has yet to appear.

In posts on his Facebook page and Twitter, Marcus says, While theres still so much to do right on the heels of hitting an important milestone with Novi launching and I remain as passionate as ever about the need for change in our payments and financial systems my entrepreneurial DNA has been nudging me for too many mornings in a row to continue ignoring it. He announced that Novi VP of product Stephane Kasriel, previously an early PayPal employee and the CEO of Upwork, will take over the leadership of the team.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg commented on the Facebook post, saying, Ive learned so much working with you and Im so grateful for everything youve done for this place. We wouldnt have taken such a big swing at Diem without your leadership and Im grateful youve made Meta a place where we make those big bets. Youve built a great team, and while Ill miss working with you, Im looking forward to working with Stephane to lead the team going forward.

As recently as October, politicians were openly calling for Facebook to drop its cryptocurrency plans. At that time, Marcus said, I do want to be clear that our support for Diem hasnt changed and we intend to launch Novi with Diem once it receives regulatory approval and goes live. We care about interoperability and we want to do it right.

What his departure means for the project overall is unclear, as well as how it fits in with Zuckerbergs metaverse vision for the future. His departure also comes one day after fellow cryptocurrency proponent Jack Dorsey stepped down from his position as the CEO of Twitter. It seems unlikely that either one will be done with Web3 projects any time soon.

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The leader of Facebooks stalled cryptocurrency project is leaving the company - The Verge

Shiba Inus European avatar ESHIB witnessed a massive 25,000 percent surge in the last 24 hours. The little-known token generated in Spain describes itself as the eco version of Shiba Inu.

The token says it aims to improve peoples quality of life as well as raise awareness about climate change, according to Coinmarketcap. ESHIB further claims to reward its owners with 5 percent of each transaction this goes to donations in the event of natural disasters and educating youth to improve the environment.

Euro Shiba Inu (ESHIB) has hit a high of $0.000000000076 from $0.000000000003 on Thursday. However, the token gave up the majority of its gains on Thursday. At the time of writing this article, ESHIB is trading at $0.000000003161.

Hitesh Malviya, founder, itsblockchain.com, believes that greed, strong community engagement are some of the reasons behind this huge surge in ESHIBs price. At the end of the day ESHIB Remains a meme coin, it doesnt offer any fundamentals for long-term growth. And investors should avoid any limb term position in any meme coin, advised Malviya.

It should be noted that the Spanish meme coin gained momentum only because its original avatar SHIB gained a massive spike, after tech billionaire Elon Musk, tweeted a photograph of the SHIB coin going to the Moon on October 18.

the developers of the dog meme coin have created a blockchain ecosystem with the Shibaswap platform Shibarium, where transaction cost will be close to 0. Additionally, tech e-tailer Newegg has decided to accept the coin as a payment method soon, thus increasing investors confidence in both SHIB and ESHIB coins, asserted Nitish Sharma, Global CEO at TP Global FX.

We dont know whether the ESHIB project has any malicious intent such as the SQUID token case when millions of dollars vanished in a matter of minutes after investors piled into a new cryptocurrency inspired by Squid Game, the popular Netflix survival series, only to watch its value plunge to nearly zero in a few short hours. It was a potential rug pull case.

Currently, there are way too many crypto coins in the market with questionable use case scenarios, that are playing off the success of other viable coins. Anirudh A Damani, managing partner at Artha Venture Fund believes that this has spurted the need for strong regulations. We look forward to the government guidelines that will protect investors from any such market manipulation.

Earlier last week, a relatively unknown cryptocurrency called Omicron (OMIC), which shares its name with the new COVID-19 variant, spiked more than 900 percent in the span of 48 hours. OMIC token was selling at just over $50 on November 26, but after the news of the new COVID, variant surfaced. The token hit an all-time high of $689 on November 29 morning.

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Heres whats fuelling cryptocurrency Euro Shiba Inus 25,000 percent surge - The Indian Express

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JUNE 29: Sir Tim Berners-Lee auctioned the source code for the World Wide Web, which was given to the world for free, as an NFT at Sotheby's on June 29, 2021 in New York City. The auction raised $5.4 million which Berners-Lee said would be donated to charity.

Noam Galai | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

This Giving Tuesday, philanthropy is undergoing a tech revolution. NFTs, known for pushing the art and entertainment industries forward, are innovating in charitable giving as well, and some of the crypto community's biggest bulls and earliest backers are getting on board.

Gemini, the cryptocurrency company founded by bitcoin billionaires Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, unveiled in February a "Give Back with Crypto'' feature, giving Gemini wallet holders the opportunity to donate to over 300 nonprofits, courtesy of a three-year-old platform named The Giving Block. The Giving Block provides the technology stack to connect the crypto community with the philanthropic community, meaning that Gemini wallet holders, FTX users, and all of The Giving Block's other partners can donate any one of dozens of cryptocurrencies directly to a nonprofit of their choosing.

The Giving Block has become one of the mainstays in crypto charitable giving, partnering with dozens of platforms and exchanges and hundreds of charities. And, trendy as they are, the logistics and tax implications of crypto donations aren't all that different from stock donations.

Donating cryptocurrency isn't new; United Way was one of the first and largest nonprofits to start accepting bitcoin donations in 2014. Edwin Goutier, vice president of innovation for United Way, told CNBC that back then, "We saw a growing thriving community of individuals who were passionate as well as a growing base of wealth."

Today, Goutier sees a similar rise with NFTs.

Jack Dorsey famously sold his first tweet as an NFT and donated the proceeds to charity earlier this year, and CNBC's own 'Haines Bottom' NFT sold at auction for over $61,000 just a few months later. The Winklevii haven't slept on the NFTs for philanthropy model either. To commemorate the 13th anniversary of the bitcoin white paper, Gemini displayed over 100 phrases from the paper on a former CNN billboard in NYC's Columbus Circle. Each phrase sold as an NFT on the Gemini-owned Nifty Gateway, and all proceeds were donated.

If donating cryptocurrency is akin to donating stock, Nifty Gateway COO Patrick McLaren says donating NFTs is analogous to donating physical goods, like a traditional piece of art or a similar high-value collectible. And, McLaren says, it's in the DNA of the crypto community. "I recall when the blockchain industry was just becoming an industry, and it was all happening very, very quickly, it always struck me how much people wanted to give back."

Venture capitalist and longtime cryptocurrency optimist Bill Tai saw the charitable potential in NFTs early on. He was Zoom's first investor and an early Twitter and Tweetdeck backer, but he's also backed DapperLabs, the company behind NBA TopShot and CryptoKitties. In 2018, he commissioned what eventually became the first NFT for charity: Honu Kitty, a part cat, part turtle that yielded $25,000 for marine conservation. Now three years later, Tai has set up Metagood, an NFT marketplace that enables donations for each NFT drop.Metagood's investors include Owen Wilson; Richard Branson's children Holly and Sam Branson; Charlie Lee, inventor of Litecoin; and Woody Harrelson.

Metagood is one of many social impact NFT projects to launch this year. Binance launched the NFT for Good collection over the summer, benefiting charities for children. OpenSea has hosted charitable drops, and DoinGud, an NFT marketplace with a donation requirement for each sale, launches for the public on Tuesday.

The charitable opportunity in crypto and NFTs isn't occurring without a related opportunity for the new platforms to make money. While many in crypto emphasize community as the industry's standout feature, more use of crypto means a bigger market overall. "Any time you have a community of interest, you have the ability to create commerce, and a currency," Tai said.

The NFT donation appeal for charities, and for donors, lay less in the novelty of the blockchain and more in its long term impact. The royalties that attracted the likes of Steve Aoki, Kings of Leon, and Gary Vaynerchuk to the NFT ecosystem are also attracting nonprofits who see the NFT's secondary and tertiary markets as opportunities for donations in perpetuity.

Built on the Polygon blockchain, DoinGud allows artists to determine how much of the token's proceeds go to charity, as well as which charity the sales will benefit. The platform is, for now, allowing no less than a 5% allocation in the primary market, and the donations from the secondary market sales are determined in each NFT's individual smart contract. The default, says co-founder and curator Kyle Gordon, is a donation of 2.5% in the secondary market.

Since NFTs, like traditional art and collectible assets, accrue value over time, Goutier says the potential in this new donation model is in part why the nonprofit agreed to work with DoinGud. "We'll have the opportunity to receive a portion of secondary market sales," he said.

As the original NFT increases in value, so does the donation, and the nonprofit first chosen by the creator benefits with every transaction, forever. The benefits are monetary, certainly, but also cultural. With each transaction, the nonprofit reups its relevance. "It's a sustainable donation model," Goutier said.

For artists, NFT profits are typically blunted by notorious gas and transaction fees, and donating a cut of proceeds may not seem feasible for newer creators. To combat that, DoinGud has instead put gas and minting fees on the collectors, offering creators a chance to retain 95% of their sale's proceeds.

Like all things crypto, though, it's still early days. While United Way has accepted crypto donations for seven years, cryptocurrencies still comprise an extremely small amount of its $4.8 billion raised annually Goutier estimates less than 1%. NFTs may very well help raise that number, but nonprofits are now considering other implications of their corporate wallets. "Do we keep crypto on our balance sheet?" Goutier said.

The Giving Block has launched its own version of Giving Tuesday: NFTuesday, scheduled for December 7, in conjunction with the Sotheby's auction benefiting Sostento, a nonprofit for health-care workers. The two are touting the upcoming event as the "biggest NFT charity auction ever."

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On Giving Tuesday, cryptocurrency and NFT backers are bullish on donations - CNBC

What happened

Early Saturday morning, crypto markets plunged, with mega-cap cryptocurrencies BitcoinandEthereumlosing altitude quickly, crashing by double-digit percentages in less than an hour.

This led to a market-based sell-off, which included top web3 and DeFi cryptocurrency,Polkadot( DOT -6.99% ). As of 11pm ET, Polkadot had lost 9.8% of its value, over the past 24 hours.

Image source: Getty Images.

Polkadot's decline on Saturday generally fell in line with the broader market move. That said, Polkadot did recover approximately 17% from its lows at the time of writing, indicating strong investor support for this web3 cryptocurrency.

Polkadot got its start as a flagship project by the Web3 Foundation, with a focus on becoming a revolutionary blockchain technology aimed at interoperability, scalability, and improved security. For those banking on the future of a fully decentralized internet with the potential for a fully integrated suite of decentralized finance applications built atop this infrastructure, Polkadot remains a top cryptocurrency right now.

Despite today's impressive decline, Polkadot remains the ninth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, for a reason. Investors looking for blockchain projects with truly innovative potential to drive what could be the future of the internet have reason to like how Polkadot is positioned right now.

Accordingly, this dip could be one long-term investors may want to consider buying with Polkadot. Of course, the crypto world is one that's historically been extremely volatile. That's not likely to change any time soon. However, the risk-reward upside with Polkadot does look attractive right now.

This article represents the opinion of the writer, who may disagree with the official recommendation position of a Motley Fool premium advisory service. Were motley! Questioning an investing thesis even one of our own helps us all think critically about investing and make decisions that help us become smarter, happier, and richer.

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Polkadot Plunges 11%-Time to Buy the Dip on This Top DeFi Cryptocurrency? - Motley Fool

A Russian national flag atop the Russian Central Bank headquarters in March 2019.

Elena Nadolinski grew up in Volgograd, Russia playing on the shells of abandoned tanks and decommissioned battleships, following the collapse of the Soviet Union. When she returned there on a recent trip from her new home in Silicon Valley, she says she was struck by how Russias growing authoritarian surveillance continues to impact the very nature of innovation.

Lack of privacy, and having this expectation that I am surveilled and I need to hide what I have because I don't actually have privacy guarantees, has evolved the culture in a way that I think negatively impacts innovation and entrepreneurship in the country, says Nadolinski, speaking from her offices in San Francisco.

To help combat this chilling effect, the 29-year-old founder of anonymous cryptocurrency startup Iron Fish raised $27.6 million in a Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz to help ensure the next generations of Russians and citizens of the growing number of authoritarian states around the world can continue to have a private life, even if all the worlds transactions move to a shared, distributed ledger.

Whats at stake with her work and that of a rising tide of other privacy innovators building with blockchain goes far beyond just what happens in the once-niche world of cryptocurrencies. In fact, it could have ripple effects reaching into the very nature of money, and whether or not online payments of all sortscrypto or fiatretain any sense of offline privacy when paying for goods with cash.

The reason why I'm working on Iron Fish is because right now we're headed in a direction where payments are totally transparent, says Nadolinski. If you are a surveillance-happy state, this is the future you want. And for us, it's kind of a scary future.

With other investors in the Series A including Sequoia Capital, LinkedIn executive chairman Jeff Weiner, billionaire Mets owner, Alan Howard, and more, the firm plans to spend the capital to nearly double its team size, establish a treasury for assigning grants to companies building on the platform and paying legal fees to help assure the process is as compliant as possible.

What theyre not doing though is adding anyone to the board, something, Nadolinski says, is increasingly par-for-the-course with crypto startups relying on a governance model built into the very fabric of the code. If there's an update [network participants] like or don't like, they will either run or not run the updated software, she says. There is, as with any cryptocurrency project, governance by action.

Born to software engineer parents in Volgograd, Russia, Nadolinski remembers her grandmother pointing out the only two buildings that survived World War II in what was then called Stalingrad. After studying in Russia for first and second grade, she moved to the United States and in 2014 received a degree in computer science from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Parlaying a Microsoft internship into her first engineering job at the tech giant, she went on to work on property rental site Airbnbs autocomplete function before discovering crypto.

In 2017, the rising star was invited to a birthday party at Ethereum developer Juan Benets house in Palo Alto, California. Three years earlier, Benet founded Protocol Labs to build technology that could enable a new version of the internet without central servers, called Web 3. In contrast to where she grew up, Nadolinski was struck by the openness of the blockchain developers. Particularly, the developer of Web 3 portal, MetaMask, Dan Finlay, who without even knowing her, helped her debug a smart contract at 3 oclock in the morning. I was like, This feels like a magical open community, she says. Where there's so much potential, and there's so much to build.

A year later, she started working on the original version of Iron Fish, then a privacy preserving cryptocurrency, using the Sapling Protocol, originally developed by Zcash. With early funding from Benet, Forbes 30 Under 30 alums, Jill Carlson of Slow Ventures, Linda Xie of Scalar Capital and others, the cryptocurrency evolved to include a system whereby almost any cryptocurrency can be deposited into a smart contract that wraps it in the same anonymity as Iron Fish itself. Think of it as the secure sockets layer (SSL) of the internet, except instead of vouchsafing for the security of a website, it helps protect the privacy of nearly any cryptocurrency.

Based in San Francisco, the Delaware C Corp currently employs nine people around the world, including six developers. In April 2021, the firm published the early version of its open source code, letting anyone build on the network, which is currently validated by 1,800 node operators. Earlier this month, they opened pre-registrations for an incentivized test network that will reward the validators and other network participants with points that qualified users will eventually be able to redeem for Iron Fishs native currency, iron.

This is at least the sixth investment Andreessen Horowitz has made in crypto privacy startups over the past four years. Most recently, the firm earlier this month led a Series A in Switzerland-based Nym, which uses cryptocurrency, including bitcoin, to reward users who run nodes similar to the Tor Network. $3.1 billion dollars has been invested in privacy startups, according to data site Crunchbase, with more than three-quarters of it over the past four years.

To give an idea of the potential value being placed on privacy, research firm Fortune Business Insights predicts technology that obscures identities will grow into a $17.75 billion industry by 2028, and analysis site ResearchAndMarkets.com estimates the related VPN industry will reach $107 billion by 2027.

If technology like Iron Fishs catches on, it could potentially provide anonymity to more than just cryptocurrencies. Perhaps the largest threat to financial privacy in recent years is the nascent and largely experimental concept of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), where the traditional issuers of government-backed currencies are seeking to leverage the best that their new decentralized competitors have to offer in terms of speed and efficiency.

While everyonefrom the Bank of International Settlements to David Chaum, whose work on electronic money was cited by bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamotohas cited concerns over what this new kind of currency might mean, the second largest economy in the world, China, is slowly rolling out its own digital currency, and dozens of similar projects are in the works.

Supporters of increased transparency say such hybrid cryptocurrencies could undermine terrorist funding and money launderers, while detractors worry about some of the same chilling effects on innovation experienced by Nadolinski. Right now, she says, whether or not you're a believer, disbeliever regulator, builder, whoever, you are inadvertently helping shape that inevitable future of digital payments being cryptocurrency-based.

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Iron Fish Raises $27 Million To Build A Cryptocurrency Beyond The Reach Of Surveillance States - Forbes

Art from Coinbase's digital gift cards.

Against a backdrop of persistent economic uncertainty, rising inflation and global supply chain issues, what if you could find a holiday gift that's highly available and easy to give? And what if that gift also straddled the line between the strategic and the strange? Yes, we're talking about cryptocurrency.

Though most Americans know about cryptocurrency, only a small percentage of them actually hold crypto. If you're one of the few, here's your chance to blaze the trail for your friends and family.

Unlike in the past, it's now simple to give the gift of cryptocurrency -- even to those who don't know the difference between a hardware and software wallet or don't have an account on a cryptocurrency exchange. And you don't even have to give a whole bitcoin, which currently costs more than $50,000. You can send minute fractions of a cryptocurrency, starting at less than $1.

We'll focus here on the big, popular players that have made it simple to securely give cryptocurrency to friends and family -- even if you or the recipient have never dabbled in digital money before.

An increasing number of mainstream financial apps, including PayPal and Venmo, have already made it relatively easy to buy and send cryptocurrency -- though some charge higher fees than crypto-focused apps and exchanges. And not all of them make it easy to send cryptocurrency as a gift, especially to people who don't already have accounts.

In March, Cash App debuted a new feature that made it possible for users to send bitcoin to anyone with a phone number or email address. Today, Coinbase unveiled a similar feature, making it easy for account holders to send bitcoin, ether and several other cryptocurrencies to anyone with an email address -- regardless of whether they already have a Coinbase account.

There are other ways to give cryptocurrency as a gift without using a centralized exchange and financial app. Those will require more technical know how. And regardless of how you give the gift, it's worthwhile to provide your recipient with a disclaimer: The world of cryptocurrency can be a wild place wherescams and misinformationare common.

To send cryptocurrency as a gift, you'll need a Coinbase account. Starting today, you'll be able to access the gift feature on the company's app and website. On the menu on the left side of the screen, select "send a gift."

The new gifting feature allows you to send five different assets -- bitcoin, ether, litecoin, bitcoin cash, stellar lumen -- to anyone, including people who don't yet have a coinbase account. All you need is their email address. The email contains directions about how to set up a Coinbase account and claim the gift. The email also includes a digital card featuring "crypto-minded artwork." There are no fees beyond the cost of the cryptocurrency you are gifting. If the recipient already has an account, you can send themany of the assets Coinbase supports(there are more than 100).

Coinbase allows you to cancel the transaction at any time, until the recipient creates their account and claims the cryptocurrency. If the person doesn't create an account within 30 days, the transaction is cancelled automatically.

Cash App is a popular money transfer service owned by Block, formally known as Square. One of Cash App's features is the ability to send bitcoin to other people. This app makes it quick and easy to gift crypto.

However, your choice of cryptocurrency is limited to bitcoin. At the moment, Cash App doesn't support any other assets, which makes the platform somewhat restrictive for cryptocurrency enthusiasts. But if the recipient is new to digital currency, then bitcoin is likely the one asset they might know.

To send bitcoin to another Cash App user, you'll need the person's address on Cash App, which is called a $CashTag. Once you have the $CashTag in hand, navigate to the bitcoin tab from the home screen. Then tap the airplane button and select the amount you want to send and the person to send it to.

If the person you're sending to doesn't have a Cash App account, you can send bitcoin to them using their phone number or email address. The person who receives your gift will then be prompted to create an account and accept the bitcoin. If the recipient doesn't create an account within 14 days, the bitcoin will go back to your account.

You can send as little as $1 in bitcoin using this service. You can find the full directions on the Cash App Website.

Alternatively, or in addition, you can give someone a cryptocurrency wallet as a gift -- with or without anything in it. These are hardware wallets that plug into your computer via USB port. If you do decide to set up a hardware wallet for someone as a gift, make sure to follow the manufacturer instructions closely and keep track of the key phrases once you set the wallet up. Trezor and Ledger are two reputable manufacturers that offer models ranging from $60 to $200.

Generally, the IRS focuses its interest on gifts of $15,000 or more. So, if you're just sending $50 in bitcoin to your cousin, you shouldn't have to worry about the tax implications. The IRS has helpful pages on gift taxes and virtual currencies to help you navigate the details. And when it comes to reporting your transactions in April, taxes usually kick in only when you sell or trade.

In this year alone, theprice of a single bitcoinhas fluctuated wildly -- from a low of about $30,000 to an all-time high of more than $65,000 in November. Plenty of people have made money through cryptocurrency speculation, but it's just as easy to lose money. Though it could make a fun gift for the holidays, keep in mind that cryptocurrency assets are highly speculative, and if you buy them, a good rule of thumb is to invest no more than you're comfortable losing. It's also worth noting that cryptocurrency is a common tool inonline scamsand that cryptocurrency transactions -- once completed -- are generally final and irreversible. Once you send some crypto, it's as good asgone forever. Do your homework, be skeptical and have fun.

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Giving cryptocurrency as a gift is easier than you think - CNET