crypto blog
Binance obtains in-principle approval to operate in Kazakhstan
The Astana Financial Services Authority, or AFSA, an independent financial regulator in Kazakhstan, has taken a step towards licensing major cryptocurrency exchange Binance to operate in the country. In a Monday announcement, AFSA said it had granted in-principle approval toward Binance operating as a digital asset trading facility and providing custody services in the Astana International Financial Centre, a financial hub in the capital city of Nur-Sultan. In a Monday blog post, Binance said it was required to complete the application process for approval, which the crypto exchange expected to do “in due course.” According to AFSA CEO Nurkhat Kushimov, the move toward granting Binance a license to operate in Kazakhstan could lead to the development of a “vibrant ecosystem of digital asset...
Only 50 or so profiles out of 7,000 Binance employees on LinkedIn are real, says CZ
According to a Sunday Twitter post by Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, also known as CZ, only about 50 out of 7,000 users claiming to be employees of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange on Linkedin are real. The crypto executive lamented the lack of a real-ID authentication system on Linkedin, saying: “I wished LinkedIn had a feature to let the company verify people. So, many “hey, I am responsible for listing” scammers on LinkedIn. Be careful.” The LinkedIn crypto scam typically begins as an unsolicited request from an apparent crypto exchange executive to project stakeholders regarding a potential token listing. Profiles are cleverly crafted to show years of experience in the industry, along with, multiple connections, sometimes up to 500-plus, to derive ...
Price analysis 8/15: BTC, ETH, BNB, XRP, ADA, SOL, DOGE, DOT, SHIB, AVAX
Bitcoin (BTC) has been witnessing a tough battle between the bulls and the bears near the $25,000 level. A clear winner may not emerge in the short term due to a lack of a catalyst and because there is no major macroeconomic data scheduled for this week in the United States. Data points from Asia or Europe may increase volatility, but they are unlikely to start a new directional move. Anthony Scaramucci, founder and managing partner of Skybridge Capital, in an interview with CNBC, advised investors to ride out the current uncertainty in cryptocurrencies and “stay patient and stay long term.” He expects Bitcoin to reward investors immensely with a sharp uptrend over the next six years. Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360 Along with the focus on Bitcoin, investors are al...
Canadian regulatory council creates new preregistration filing for crypto platforms
The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA), the council of provincial and territorial securities regulators, announced Monday that crypto trading platforms will be expected to provide a preregistration undertaking to their principal regulators as they take steps to comply fully with securities regulation. Two platforms, Crypto.com and the Canadian platform Coinsquare Capital Markets, have already filed those undertakings. Trading platforms will be expected to agree in the undertaking to comply with terms and conditions relating to investor protection. Filing the undertaking will allow crypto trading platforms to continue operating during the review of their applications for registration with the CSA. The new undertaking is part of the “interim approach” introduced in the guida...
Ethereum ICO-era whale address transfer 145,000 ETH weeks before the Merge
An Ethereum (ETH) whale wallet that participated in the Genesis Initial Coin Offering (ICO) and obtained about 150,000 ETH in 2014 was activated again on Aug. 14 after three years of dormancy. The whale address transferred 145,000 ETH to multiple wallets as Ether price surged to a new 3-month high of over $2,000. The transfers were made in a batch of 5,000 ETH per transaction and a few transfers of over 10,000 ETH. The total value of the transferred ETH is over $280 million, and the wallet address currently has a balance of 0.107 ETH. Ethereum ICO era wallet transactions Source: Etherscan The 145,000 ETH transfer was only the second instance after the ICO when the whale wallet was activated, the first coming in July 2019 when the wallet sent out 5,000 ETH to Bitfinex3 exchange ...
Zipmex gets 3 month protection in Singapore amid halted withdrawals
Cryptocurrency exchange Zipmex has gotten a chance to sort out liquidity issues as a court in Singapore has granted the firm with more than three months of creditor protection. Singapore’s High Court has ruled to give each of the five Zipmex entities a moratorium until Dec. 2, 2022 to come up with a restructuring plan, Bloomberg reported on Monday. The action aims to protect Zipmex from potential creditor lawsuits during the moratorium period after the exchange abruptly halted crypto withdrawals on its platform in mid-July. The cryptocurrency has since resumed partial withdrawals from Zipmex’s trade wallet but is yet to resume all withdrawals. Zipmex sought creditor protection for a period of six months subsequently after halting withdrawals, filing five moratorium applications on July 27....
Tornado Cash community fund multi-signature wallet disbands amid sanctions
Following the sanctions placed by the United States on USD Coin (USDC) and Ethereum (ETH) addresses associated with the crypto mixer Tornado Cash (TORN), the signatories of the projects’ multi-signature community fund disbanded. In 2021, the Tornado Cash community created a fund to provide incentives to key contributors to the project. The fund was held in a community-managed multi-signature wallet with five peer-elected members validating transactions who were selected because of their contributions to the project. However, as interacting with Tornado Cash started to come with more risks, with penalties ranging from an up to $10 million fine to up to 30 years in prison for U.S. citizens, the community members in charge of the community fund vacated their posts to give up control of ...
Pandas, cyborgs, dogs, koalas dominate BNB Chain Red Alarm flag list
BNB Chain, a blockchain network created by crypto exchange Binance, identified over 50 on-chain projects that pose a significant risk to the users. A mix of crypto spin-offs resembling Dogecoin (DOGE) and Binance and others dedicated to pandas, cyborgs and koalas made the list as untrustworthy and high-risk projects. BNB Chain’s Red Alarm feature, which was implemented to protect investors from potential rug pulls and scams, flagged projects based on two main criteria — if the contract performs differently from what the project owners advertised or if the contract shows risks that might influence users’ funds. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Gwendolyn Regina, Investment Director at BNB Chain, said that the Red Alarm system analyzed 3,300 contracts just in July, adding that the company con...
Network and token freeze after Acala exploit raises questions
The Acala Network’s aUSD stablecoin depegged by over 99% over the weekend and forced the Acala team to pause a hacker’s wallet, raising concerns about its claim of being decentralized. On Aug. 14, a hacker took advantage of a bug on the iBTC/aUSD liquidity pool which resulted in 1.2 billion aUSD being minted without collateral. This event crashed the USD-pegged stablecoin to a cent, and in response, the Acala team froze the erroneously minted tokens by placing the network in maintenance mode. The move also halted other features such as swaps, xcm (cross-chain communications on Polkadot), and the oracle pallet price feeds until “further notice” We have identified the issue as a misconfiguration of the iBTC/aUSD liquidity pool (which went live earlier today) that resulted in error mints of a...
Scaramucci highlights key factors why crypto market will soon recover
Founder and managing partner of Skybridge Capital, Anthony Scaramucci, has an optimistic outlook for the future of crypto markets, advising investors to “see through the current environment” and “stay patient and stay long term.” In an interview with CNBC, the hedge fund manager spoke about his belief that several recent developments in the crypto space could spark “a lot more commercial activity.” In particular, he highlighted the ever-improving Lightning Network, the two-layer payment protocol layered on top of Bitcoin (BTC), BlackRock’s partnership with Coinbase, and their subsequent establishment of a BTC Private Trust Fund as positive signs for the future. Finally, CEO Larry Fink is seeing institutional demand for digital assets. Otherwis...
Celestia: Launching a blockchain to be as easy as deploying a smart contract
Developers and communities will be able to deploy their own sovereign, custom-made blockchains at the “click of a button” says Celestia co-founder Ismail Khoffi. Speaking with Cointelegraph at Korean Blockchain Week 2022 last week, Khoffi said that the project’s vision is to decouple the consensus and application execution layers to unlock new possibilities for decentralized app builders. Celesita is basically a stripped back minimalist layer one blockchain that offers users the infrastructure that makes it easy to deploy their own blockchain, or layer two rollup. in the future, we’ll all be able to have our own blockchains. and it represents one of the biggest social revolutions of our lifetimes. here’s 10 ways it could change technology, finance, work, and entire political systems ...
NFT games have edge over ‘money in, no money out’ games: Polygon’s Urvit Goel
Polygon’s VP of Global Business Development for gaming Urvit Goel believes games that integrate nonfungible tokens (NFTs) have a natural edge on traditional games that don’t allow users to sell their in-game items. Goel spoke candidly with Cointelegraph in Seoul last week about Polygon’s (MATIC) push toward helping NFT games proliferate and why game publishers in South Korea like Neowiz and Nexon are diving headfirst into the space. One of the main arguments Goel made is that the traditional business model that NFT games are competing against may be inherently weaker. In traditional gaming, users typically buy in-game items with real money, but they cannot sell those items to get back any dollar value. However, with most games in the gaming finance (GameFi) space, users can buy items as no...
