131280
🔹 Daily DeFi & Ethereum News 🔹 Join also: @Metaverse_Defi_Nfts_Trading Contact for cooperations only: @ChengTF
🇪🇺 EU Parliament passes smart contract regulation under Data Act
Smart contracts are one step closer to falling under European Union-wide regulation within a broader strategy on data markets, an issue that continues to raise concerns within the crypto industry. The European Parliament adopted legislation under the Data Act on Tuesday, with 500 votes in favor and 23 against.
The legislation, and its provisions on smart contracts, is not explicitly aimed at the crypto industry, but focuses on data from connected devices, or the Internet of Things. Yet some in the industry worry the Data Act may have far-reaching effects on crypto if the scope isn’t clearly defined, especially as smart contracts — automated executions written into software — underpin the infrastructure of DeFi. The greatest potential of the legislation, according to Pilar del Castillo Vera, a centrist-right MEP and rapporteur on the Data Act.
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
🇺🇸 US SEC Alleges BKCoin and its Co-Founder for Running a $100 Million Crypto Scam
The watchdog froze assets connected to BKCoin after filing an emergency action against it. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed an emergency action against the Miami-based financial advisor firm – BKCoin Management LLC – and its Co-Founder Kevin Kang, claiming they have defrauded investors with $100 million via a fraudulent crypto scheme.
In a recent press release, the US securities regulator asserted that BKCoin raised around $100 million from at least 55 investors between October 2018 and September 2022. The company and one of its founders – Kevin Kang – assured customers their funds will be used to trade cryptocurrencies, promising significant returns on the investment.Instead, the SEC suggested that the defendants disregarded the outlined plan using $3.6 million of the total sum to make Ponzi-like payments, Kang supposedly stole over $370,000 to pay for holidays, sporting events tickets, and even a property in New York City.
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
💰 FTX Incentivizes Staff With $4M Bonus Program Boost
FTX is seeking to introduce a $4 million bonus program to retain employees with critical skills, according to court documents filed on Tuesday. The company’s CEO, John J. Ray III, has proposed offering bonuses of up to 94% of salary to prevent employees with knowledge of programming or company accounting practices from leaving the company.
FTX argued that its remaining employees and contractors possess institutional knowledge and unique, specialized skillsets that would be difficult to replace and are critical to the company’s objectives in its ongoing bankruptcy proceedings. FTX is facing a “massive shortfall” as it attempts to return funds to creditors, and the proposed bonus program is aimed at ensuring that the company can wind up its affairs effectively. The overall package is capped at $4,027,204, and no bonuses will be paid to directors or officers of the company, founder Sam Bankman-Fried and his family, or any staff believed to be involved in wrongdoing.
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
📣 3AC Founders’ Open Exchange Completes Its $25 Million Fundraise
3AC’s founders provide more details on how their exchange for crypto bankruptcy claims will work. The highly controversial “Open Exchange” (OPNX) headed by once-failed Crypto CEOs has reached its fundraising goal of $25 million – though the founders are yet to reveal their benefactors. Meanwhile, collapsed crypto exchange CoinFLEX has revealed that its restructuring deal.
According to a Twitter thread from DefiIgnas (that was later retweeted by co-founder Zhu Su), Kyle Davies contacted the DeFi researcher late on Monday with news that the fundraiser was now complete. Leaked in January, the raise will help build an exchange for trading the bankruptcy claims of other fallen crypto exchanges and firms that let creditors out to dry during the 2022 bear market. “Users will be onboarded via a Special Purpose Vehicle, which is sometimes called a bankruptcy-remote entity,” explained Ignas. The exchange will abide by know your customer (KYC) rules, and will not be available to American citizens.
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
🏦 Kraken is on track to launch bank 'very soon' despite regulatory 'weird place'
Kraken is moving ahead with plans to launch its own bank despite a challenging regulatory environment and the recent shuttering of its on-chain staking services for U.S. clients to settle U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charges that it violated securities laws. Kraken’s banking relationships are secure, Santori added.
A new bank born from the crypto sector would come at a tumultuous time for an industry still dealing with the widespread fallout from the collapse of FTX. There have been multiple enforcement actions over the past several weeks and rising uncertainty on the regulatory front. SEC Chair Gary Gensler said last month that the Kraken settlement, which included $30 million in fines, should "put everyone on notice in this marketplace."Santori declined to discuss the SEC settlement in detail, but said that staking had been a small percentage of Kraken's revenue.
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
🏦 Huobi to Join BitTorrent Chain Ecosystem, Build Blockchain 'Super Network'
Crypto exchange Huobi will join the BitTorrent Chain (BTTC) ecosystem, the company has revealed in an announcement. Huobi’s integration with the layer 2 cross-chain solution will enable “seamless asset exchange” through connecting leading smart contract blockchains including Ethereum, Tron and BNB Chain, the exchange said in a release shared with Decrypt.
The result promises to be a “super network linking all blockchains,” that will help to promote an on-chain open financial system, according to Huobi. “The crypto exchange’s move reflects an industry focus on layer 2 developments”, said Tron founder and member of the Huobi global advisory board Justin Sun. He added that the integration of Huobi with BTTC demonstrates BTTC’s “pioneering status among its peers in the field of building a complete and pragmatic Layer 2 cross-chain network structure and platform.". Launched in December 2021, BitTorrent Chain is a layer 2 solution for Ethereum.
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
💰 Celsius creditors tout NovaWulf deal as ‘best’ option
The Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors in the Celsius bankruptcy case said a proposed sale to NovaWulf Digital Management is “the best” option, according to a new court filing. Under a proposed bankruptcy deal, smaller creditors would get 70% of their money back.
“While the committee will consider all options until a plan is confirmed and has become effective, the committee also believes that the NovaWulf Transaction is the best, actionable alternative at this time,” the filing said. Celsius drew nine takeover bids and 40 expressions of interest, court documents say. The new owners plan to inject between $45 million and $55 million into the business and add new divisions, like private wealth and trade finance. The independent examiner in the Celsius bankruptcy filed a bombshell report.
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
🟠 Binance Responds To Forbes’ False Claims For Misappropriating Users’ Money
Binance posted on its official blog a response to an article accusing Binance of embezzling nearly $1.8 billion in USDC collateral in 2022 from Forbes on Feb. 27. According to the regulator that is completely untrue. The company also asserts that there is absolutely no misappropriation of customer funds.
According to Forbes citing on-chain data, Binance embezzled $1.78 billion worth of B-Peg USDC collateral between August 17 and 24, 2022, where the asset was worth $1.78 billion. $1.1 billion was transferred with high frequency to the trading company Cumberland/DRW, and the remainder went to Amber Group, Alameda Research and Tron founder Justin Sun. Regarding the transfer to the address of Amber Group, Alameda Research and Justin Sun mentioned in the Forbes article are all spontaneous acts of these organizations users or individual users.
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
🏦 Cathie Wood's Ark Invest acquires more Coinbase shares for ETFs
Cathie Wood has resumed purchasing shares of Coinbase (COIN) for her firm's exchange-traded funds, after having also bought them earlier this week. So far this year, ARK's Innovation ETF (ARKK) has gained 21% in value, while the ARK Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF) has increased by 16%.
Ark added a total of 150,192 COIN shares to its ARK Innovation ETF and ARK Next Generation Internet on Friday, consisting of 128,396 shares and 21,796 shares, respectively, according to its latest trade filing. Shares for Coinbase closed down 3% to about $59 Friday. Based on the price at the close, Ark's most recent purchase cost just over $8.8 million. This comes after Ark bought Coinbase shares worth more than $13 million on Wednesday. Ark added 150,192 shares Coinbase shares across two funds on Friday.
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
🪙 Maker Wishes To Enable MKR Collateral To Be Used To Borrow Stablecoin DAI
The DeFi protocol is in charge of the stablecoin DAI, and the creators want to create a new usage for MKR that may be collateralized to borrow DAI. Someone pointed out that Maker has announced its desire to provide a new application for MKR in the new tokenomics area.
The “Endgame Plan” is a plan for a total revamp of Maker that was announced in mid-2022 and adopted by the MakerDAO community in October, with the most significant change being the partition of the protocol into sub-DAOs with tasks. Produce the matching token individually. Endgame was launched by the Maker team, lead by creator Rune Christensen, to identify a new path for the project after a lengthy period of confronting several issues that threatened the project’s survival and stability. DAI is both a maker and a stablecoin.
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
🪙 Cosmos Hub’s v9 Lambda Upgrade Aims To Revolutionize Inter-Chain Security
Cosmos Hub’s v9 Lambda upgrade proposal includes the Replicated Security feature, which aims to enforce inter-chain security rules for better scalability. The Governance Forum recently voted on the v9 Lambda upgrade proposal for Cosmos Hub. This upgrade is geared towards implementing the Replicated Security feature.
The Cosmos ecosystem’s scalability can be improved by utilizing Interchain Security (ICS), a collection of features. Replicated Security is one such ICS feature that enables the replication of security to consumer chains, ensuring their compliance with the regulations. Consumer chains can benefit from the security without the need to maintain their validation. The cost of censoring or controlling a consumer chain with an economic attack is equivalent to that of censoring and controlling itself. At the time of writing, 16.33 Million, which accounts for 7.8% of the voting participant.
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
💰 Helium Sets Solana Migration for March 27
Helium Network migration to Solana now has a proposed date as it is set to happen on March 27. According to the announcement from its Foundation. In a blog post detailing its plans for the migration, the foundation stated that it is currently constituting an Upgrade Readiness Working Group.
The group would consist of volunteers in the community to be responsible for monitoring the migration process. It will also choose the final date for the migration, as March 27 remains tentative. The group would consist of volunteers in the community to be responsible for monitoring the migration process. It will also choose the final date for the migration, as March 27 remains tentative. The upgrade “will encompass all wallets, Hotspots, and Helium Network state.” .
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
⏺ $FLOKI Has Increased By 520% Since The Beginning Of The Year And Is Now Listed On Kucoin
FLOKI, Shiba Inu’s and Dogecoin’s potential rival continues to rise after being listed on a major exchange. FLOKI, a meme coin project that is considered a rival to Shiba Inu and Dogecoin, announced on February 15, 2023, that this token will be listed by Kucoin with trading pairs USDT and USDC.
Elon Musk drew attention again two days ago in a Twitter post when he uploaded a photo of a dog wearing a black shirt with the words CEO and joked that his dog is a great CEO. Twitter, and “better than some,” and prices for Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, and Floki all skyrocketed. Previously, at the end of January, after passing a proposal to burn more than 100 million dollars of this tokens on a cross-chain bridge to reduce transaction fees, the price of this meme coin increased by more than 100%.
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
💸 Web3 tooling startup Nefta raises seed round at $32.5 million valuation
Nefta, a web3 infrastructure startup focused on gaming and entertainment sectors, raised $5 million in a seed funding round. Play Ventures led the round by injecting $2.5 million — the single largest investment from its Future Fund — Nefta said Wednesday.
Nefta is now valued at $32.5 million, founder and CEO Geeshan Willink told The Block. That's a 225% jump in its valuation in the last eight months. Nefta was valued at $10 million last June when it raised $1 million in pre-seed funding from Picus Capital, said Willink. That conversation went so well that we received a term sheet to follow in our seed round. Following this, we received the lead term sheet from Play Ventures," he said. Nefta then met more investors and closed the round in January.
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
📣 Former Jump Trading developers raise $19 million to build Monad blockchain
Monad Labs, a Layer 1 blockchain project co-founded by former Jump Trading developers, raised $19 million in funding led by Dragonfly Capital. Other investors included Placeholder Capital, Lemniscap and Shima Capital, as well as angel investors, including Naval Ravikant, Cobie and Hasu, according to a Tuesday announcement.
The funding is a combination of two rounds — pre-seed worth $9 million raised in May 2022 and seed worth $10 million raised in December — Monad Labs co-founder and CEO Keone Hon told The Block in an interview. The funding effort was "really smooth" despite the bear market because investors are excited about Monad's vision of building an "extremely performant" blockchain, Hon said. Hon co-founded Monad Labs last year with his former Jump Trading colleague James Hunsaker as CTO.
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
📣 Framework and Bitkraft lead $6 million seed funding into gaming studio Jungle
Bitkraft and Framework Ventures co-led a $6 million seed funding round into Jungle, a Brazil-based web3 gaming studio. Delphi Digital, Karatage, Fourth Revolution Capital, Monoceros, 32bit Ventures, Stateless Ventures, Snackclub and Norte Ventures also took part in the round, which closed at the tail end of last year.
The funding will be primarily used to build out its team, marketing, and distribution for the games it produces. Co-founded by Beraldo, Giulio Ferraro and Lucas Kertzman, Jungle differs from other web3 gaming studios in that it seeks to acquire "underutilized" intellectual property rather than developing it in-house. By leapfrogging over the often-lengthy development process, Beraldo claimed that this speeds up the release by around two to three years. Jungle says that its first game, a web3 shooter, will be released this year on mobile devices.
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
🏦 Coinbase halts conversion feature between U.S. dollars and USDC
Coinbase said Friday evening that it halted support for conversions between U.S. dollars and stablecoin USDC. "We are temporarily pausing USDC:USD conversions over the weekend while banks are closed," the firm said in a tweet. "During periods of heightened activity, conversions rely on USD transfers from the banks that clear during normal banking hours."
The firm typically offers traders a feature that allows them to seamlessly exchange USD for USDC. Coinbase plans to restart the feature on Monday. The news came moments after Circle confirmed its USDC had exposure to Silicon Valley Bank, which earlier Friday became the largest bank to fail since the 2008 financial crisis. California's financial regulator seized control of the bank Friday and put it in FDIC receivership. Silicon Valley Bank's collapse came shortly after crypto-friendly Silvergate said it was liquidating. Circle later said in a tweet that its exposure stood at $3.3 billion.
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
📣 Gemini Exchange Denies Rumors Of Losing Banking Partner, JPMorgan
According to the previous information updated in the Coindesk report that the US bank JPMorgan terminated its relationship with the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange. However, the cryptocurrency exchange soon denied the news and announced that the partnership remained intact. It is known that JPMorgan has only two customers, a cryptocurrency company, including Coinbase and Gemini.
It is known that JPMorgan has only two customers, a cryptocurrency company, including Coinbase and Gemini, supporting USD transactions for these two platforms from 2020. Coinbase representatives confirmed to CoinDesk that the relationship with JPMorgan continued as usual. The rumors arose as multiple US financial authorities simultaneously warned banks about the risks of providing services to companies exposed to the cryptocurrency sector following a rapid collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX empire. At the same time, electronic-friendly banking information Silvergate Bank had to declare shutdown.
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
🇹🇭 Thailand waives crypto tax for investment tokens: Reuters
Thailand’s cabinet has approved tax waivers for crypto companies that offer investment tokens in the country, according to a statement by Finance Minister Arkhom Termpittayapaisith on Tuesday. This tax waiver will be applicable for both primary and secondary offerings on these investment tokens.
Thailand’s new crypto tax policy also extends to investors. Those who invest in these token sales will also be exempted from paying value-added tax. This is the crypto-related value-added tax exemption. Last year, Thailand’s government waived VAT for crypto transfers until 2024. Arkhom stated that that tax waiver could see the government forgo revenue of up to 35 billion baht ($1 billion) in the next two years. This is based on an estimated 128 billion baht revenue ($3.7 billion) from investment token offerings during the period.
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
🟠 CZ Reassures Binance Still Supports Voyager Deal Amid Questionable Headlines
Binance’s CEO reassured that the company remains in support of the deal. It is related to recent developments with the SEC motion that opposes the attempt of BinanceUS to acquire Voyager Digital. BinanceUS entered into a deal with Voyager back in December 2022, but the SEC objected in February this year.
Recent reports revealed some of the arguments that the US Bankruptcy Judge overseeing the case made in relation to the lack of explanation on behalf of the SEC. CZ, the CEO of Binance, quote-tweeted CryptoPotato’s post, saying, “Maybe we should pull out?” Interestingly enough, the report itself says that a Binance spokesperson disbands the headline, saying that the company “remains committed to the Voyager transaction.” The article was also updated to include CZ’s additional comment. Nowhere has CZ mentioned anything about “US scrutiny.”
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
📣 Riot Announced Annual Revenue In 2022, Hash Rate Capacity Increases Sharply
Riot Platforms, a bitcoin mining company, released its 2022 annual revenue with hash rate capacity has tripled compared with last year. The company stated that its revenue for the fiscal year ending December 2022 was $259.2 million, compared to $213.2 million for the same period in 2021.
The mining company produced a total of 5,554 Bitcoins during the reporting period, an increase of 46% compared to 3,812 in the same period in 2021. Bitcoin mining revenue was $156.9 million, compared to $184.4 million in the same period in 2021. Net loss of $509.6 million in 2022 compared to a net loss of $15.4 million in the same period in 2021 was significantly impacted by non-cash impairment charges totaling $538.6 million, including $335.6 million related to the 2021 Whinstone and ESS Metron acquisitions Reputation impairment, $147.4 million in cryptocurrency holdings.
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
📣 Crypto wallet ZenGo is raising funds at a flat valuation of $100 million
Cryptocurrency wallet provider ZenGo is raising funds in a Series A extension round. The Israel-based startup hopes to raise $10 million via convertible notes before targeting a full Series B round later this year, according to a pitch deck obtained by The Block.
The Series A extension is pegged at the same $100 million post-money valuation as ZenGo's Series A round nearly two years ago, according to a separate pitch message seen by The Block. ZenGo bagged $20 million in Series A funding in April 2021 from investors including Insight Partners, Austin Rief Ventures and Samsung Next. It did not disclose a valuation at the time. ZenGo currently has over 800,000 registered users and targets 2 million users this year and $1 million to $2 million in annual revenue, according to the deck.
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
🪙 Solana: Cause Of Mainnet Downfall On February 25 Still Unknown
Today, Solana officially released a report on the mainnet outage on February 25. The report indicates that the outage’s root cause is still unknown, and the team is currently working on its investigative pole. Currently, the investigation is still going on actively to give the community an answer.
According to the report, at 5:46:16 UTC on February 25, 2023, performance issues of the Solana mainnet finally forced validator nodes to automatically switch to vote-only mode, a “safe mode” designed to help the network recover in the event of data unavailability. Although consensus voting transactions usually occur, the network cannot process user transactions. The initial restart attempt was aborted to allow time for more thorough data analysis and to ensure no user transactions were affected.
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
🇦🇺 Australia’s Finance Regulator Opens Targeted Review Into Binance
Australia’s financial regulator will carry out a "targeted review’ into Binance’s derivatives business in the country after the company revealed it had classed some users incorrectly. On Thursday, Binance tweeted that it had liquidated the positions of 500 of its users.
Under Australian law, a wholesale investor is someone who has more experience trading and potentially more funds to do so. If they do not meet the criteria to be a wholesale client, they are classed as retail traders, who are not allowed to trade derivatives. In response to the announcement, ASIC said it was looking into Binance’s derivatives arm, and noted that it had not been contacted by the company directly about the error. citing high rates of losses among traders.
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
🟠 Binance Australia closes derivative trading accounts of some wholesale investors
Binance closed the derivative trading accounts of some wholesale investors in Australia after an investigation found that they didn't meet the criteria for such investors. It found that these users did not actually meet the requirements of wholesale investors.
In Australia, Binance only offers crypto derivatives trading to wholesale investors. A spokesperson for Binance told The Block that the exchange giant discovered the discrepancy during a review of its onboarding process. These incorrectly labelled accounts have since had their positions closed. The owners of these accounts will also not be able to access the derivatives market on Binance anymore. Binance stated that it had informed affected customers of the restrictions on their accounts.
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
🚨 OneCoin Co-founder Ruja Ignatov Was Killed By Drug Lords In 2018
According to Bulgarian media BIRD citing local police internal investigation documents, the missing OneCoin co-founder Ruja Ignatova was shot dead on a yacht in Greece in November 2018. Ignatova’s body was allegedly dismembered and tossed into the Ionian Sea.
According to the newspaper, on March 25, 2022, in Sofia, the former head of the “Criminal Police” in the Second Police Station, Lyubomir Ivanov, was shot with three bullets. Documents were seized from the cash register at his home, which acquired the status of material evidence /VDS/ in the case of murder, which is being conducted by the Sofia City Prosecutor’s Office. Among them are several references to agency reports. it became clear from the answer of the deputy chief prosecutor of the SGP Hristo Krastev.
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
🇦🇪 Arab World Crypto Adoption: Leading Bahrainian Hotel Accepts BTC Payments
Novotel Bahrain Al Dana Resort will supposedly become the first hotel in the Kingdom to embrace digital asset payments. Novotel Bahrain Al Dana Resort reportedly became the first hotel in the country to accept cryptocurrencies as a means of payment.
According to recent coverage, Novotel Bahrain Al Dana Resort partnered with Eazy Financial Services to allow guests to settle accommodation bills in cryptocurrencies. The hotel will place specially designed terminals at its outlets to enable the offering via the Binance app. The Central Bank of Bahrain approved the move, making Novotel Bahrain Al Dana Resort the first in the nation where such a payment option is available. General Manager Amid Yazji commented.
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
📣 MultiversX Teams Up With Tencent To Bring Strong Technological Support For Web3
On Thursday, MultiversX announced a partnership with Tencent Cloud to support the growth of the latter’s Web3 products. Tencent will make use of the network to roll out a range of blockchain-based goods. Tencent has already engaged in industries like gaming and audiovisual tech.
Tencent has created this new infrastructure layer at MultiversX. The first comprehensive solution capable of managing demand on a global scale at costs and scale similar to the internet while adding special features that bring about a major change in UX. MultiversX’s announcement of three important Metaverse products—xPortal, xFabric, and xWorlds—as well as Tencent Cloud’s dedication to the Web3.0 era and the Metaverse market have strengthened the already-existing synergies between the two companies.
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
🆘 Render Network Will Regularly Unlock 12.6M RNDR In The First Half Of This Year
According to the official blog, the Render Network Foundation has announced the distribution and unlocking of the RNDR token. Of the 42 million tokens in the distribution plan, 12.6 million RNDR will be unlocked regularly in the first six months of 2023.
Render Network said that when the RNP-001 proposal was proposed last year, the balance in the treasury wallet was RNDR 257 million, of which 107 million will be allocated to partners. About 42 million are still being held for storage and subsequent distribution. This 107M “By Partners” project note is entirely separate from the proposed 107M Emissions schedule to be managed by the Foundation. There is some confusion as these balances are similar, but this is just that moment and is random. 68 million has been distributed since the Release schedule waste was published.
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum
💰 1inch Network: Introduced The Parser Incentive Program And Distributed 1.5 million INCH
According to a project data update from DEX aggregator 1inch Network, 1,507,992 INCH tokens have been granted to the parser incentive plan, which is worth more than 800,000 USD at the current pricing. 1inch Network, a DEX aggregator, provided a project data update on February 12.
To date, 1inch Network reported that 1,507,992 INCH tokens have been granted to the parser incentive plan, amounting to more than $800,000 USD at the current pricing. The resolver incentive plan token distribution was initiated by 1inch Network at the end of January, with a total of 10 million INCH. Previously, the Network unveiled Fusion, a big upgrade centered on the 1inch Swap Engine. Combination is a unique fusion of current and emerging technology designed to improve the profitability and security of swaps done over the network.
Source
/channel/DeFi_Ethereum