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💰 BlackRock Received $100K Seed Funding for Its Spot BTC ETF
BlackRock (BLK) received $100,000 as “seed capital” for its proposed spot bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund, the investment giant disclosed in a fresh application with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). “The seed capital investor agreed to purchase $100,000 in shares on October 27, 2023, and on October 27, 2023 took delivery of 4,000 shares at a per-share price of $25.00 (the “seed shares”),” the filing said.
Business intelligence company MicroStrategy (MSTR) was sitting on a more than $2 billion profit on its massive bitcoin (BTC) holdings on Monday following the cryptocurrency’s rally above $42,000. Led by then CEO and now Executive Chairman Michael Saylor, MicroStrategy began purchasing bitcoin in August 2020. The company's most recent purchases took place last month and as of Nov. 30, it held 174,530 bitcoin acquired for $5.28 billion, or an average price of $30,252 each. With bitcoin at $42,000, the value of MSTR's holdings rose to roughly $7.3 billion. The price at press time had pulled back to $41,700.
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💰 Terra's USTC Gains 300% as Bitcoin-Focused Comeback Plan, Binance Perpetuals Listing Fuel Speculative Frenzy
TerraClassicUSD (USTC) and its sister token Terra luna classic (LUNC) – remnants of the blown-up Terra blockchain – skyrocketed this week, fueled by a new Binance perpetuals contract listing and the emergence of a bitcoin-focused revamp and airdrop plan. LUNC is up roughly 60% this week, including a nearly 20% rise over the past 24 hours, CoinDesk data shows. USTC, meanwhile, has almost quadrupled in price.
The gains occurred as Binance, which remains the world's largest crypto exchange despite its regulatory issues, on Monday started offering perpetual contracts for USTC with up to 50x leverage. Increasing anticipation of a USTC revamp plan that would use bitcoin (BTC) as a foundation perhaps also fueled the rally. Bitcoin-focused payment project Mint Cash recently outlined a vision for a successor of Terra's failed stablecoin, this time being collateralized by BTC to mint tokens. The recent developments unleashed a speculative frenzy around the token. Trading volume with USTC has exploded in the last few days, peaking at times above $1 billion in 24-hour activity, dwarfing the less than $10 million average earlier this month, CoinGecko data shows.
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💰 World's Largest Bitcoin Futures ETF Breaks 2021 Record Highs for Assets Under Management
ProShares’ Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) – a bitcoin futures fund offered in the U.S. – hit a high of $1.47 billion in assets under management (AUM) this week, surging past a record set in December 2021. The surge indicates renewed institutional demand for bitcoin (BTC) from regulated and accredited investors, as a flurry of bitcoin spot ETF applications were filed in the U.S. BITO, listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), allows investors to gain exposure to bitcoin-linked returns via a regulated product.
“Investor demand for BITO remains strong, as shown by the ETF reaching a new high in assets under management,” Simeon Hyman, global investment strategist at ProShares, said in a statement to CoinDesk. “We believe this speaks to the demand for a familiar, accessible and regulated way to target the returns of bitcoin.” Unlike some other bitcoin futures ETFs, BITO closely tracks the asset's spot prices, which has likely added to its allure among traders. In June, investors poured in more than $65 million in a single week, making it the largest inflow in a year and breaking a previous 2023 high of just over $40 million in April. “BITO’s average daily trading volume of $160M since inception puts it in the top 5% of all U.S. ETFs,” Hyman added.
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💰 Solana MEV developer Jito launching governance token
Jito Foundation, the organization supporting a Solana based liquid staking protocol, is launching a governance token that will be used to help manage the Jito Network. Jito Labs builds infrastructure designed to mitigate negative impacts of maximum extractable value on Solana. By launching the token, Jito Foundation seeks to empower "community members to have a direct impact on the decision-making and direction of the Jito Network," the organization said in a statement.
Last month, Solana Foundation said nearly a third of stake is running through the Jito Labs client. In Monday's announcement, Jito Foundation said the Jito MEV network of validators is now being "utilized by over 40% of Solana network’s stake weight." A total of 1 billion JTO tokens have been created in an effort to organize how the network is managed, including setting fees for the JitoSOL staking pool and supervising revenue and the DAO treasury. Initially there will be 115 million JTO tokens circulating. About 34% of tokens are earmarked for community growth, with 25% for ecosystem development, 24.5% for core contributors and 16% for investors.
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💰 Raiffeisenlandesbank to launch Bitcoin trading in early 2024
The Austrian subsidiary of European lender Raiffeisen Bank is preparing to allow its clients to trade cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin in the coming months. After initially announcing its crypto plans in April 2023, Raiffeisen Bank’s Raiffeisenlandesbank Niederösterreich-Wien (RLB NÖ-Wien) is moving forward with a crypto rollout in collaboration with the Austrian crypto firm Bitpanda.
RLB NÖ-Wien expects to start rolling out crypto trading services in Vienna in the first quarter of 2024, a spokesperson for the bank told Cointelegraph. “Raiffeisenlandesbank NÖ-Wien has signed a cooperation agreement with Bitpanda. Bitpanda Deputy CEO Lukas Enzersdorfer-Konrad previously told Cointelegraph that Raiffeisen’s crypto offering would support the full range of Bitpanda’s digital asset offerings, which feature more than 2,500 cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and Ether . The exec also said Raiffeisen was willing to make the crypto trading service available to all customer segments, including retail, private banking and corporate customers.
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🇺🇸 US Seizes $9 Million in Tether Allegedly Linked to Pig Butchering Crypto Scams
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Tuesday “the seizure of nearly $9 million worth of tether, a cryptocurrency pegged to the U.S. dollar.” Acting Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division explained that these scammers target regular investors through deceptive websites. “The truth is that these international criminal actors are simply stealing cryptocurrency and leaving victims with nothing,” she said.
The acting attorney general stressed: “The department hopes this recovery of assets will bring some closure and a sense of justice to the over 70 victims affected by this series of scams.” Court documents reveal that criminals collaborate to convince victims to deposit cryptocurrency by falsely portraying the transactions as investments with reputable firms and cryptocurrency exchanges. “In reality, the purported firms and cryptocurrency exchanges were non-existent trading platforms,” the DOJ noted. This week, Tether announced that it voluntarily froze $225 million in USDT in connection with a DOJ investigation relating to pig butchering crypto schemes. Tether called it “the largest-ever freeze of USDT in history.”
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🪙 Ethereum Layer 2 Kinto migrates to the Arbitrum ecosystem
Ethereum Layer 2 Kinto has migrated to the Arbitrum ecosystem via the Arbitrum Nitro technology stack after previously launching its testnet using Optimism’s OP Stack in May. The migration follows a change in the structure of the Arbitrum Orbit ecosystem of chains that granted the Arbitrum Foundation greater autonomy in negotiating Layer 2 deployments, according to a statement. It also aims to reduce the risk of DeFi exploits, providing built-in insurance for all smart contracts.
The decision to migrate to Arbitrum was driven by a need to provide similar levels of security, reliability and regulatory compliance typical in traditional financial systems while reducing the costs and friction associated with traditional asset issuance. “Arbitrum’s ability to provide a credibly neutral, efficient and mature platform, with a strong understanding of decentralized finance, made it a perfect fit for the foundation of Kinto,” the team said. We seek to extend a bridge for TradFi into DeFi without alienating the principles and ethos of crypto and Arbitrum is the best place to do so.”.
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📣 Unstoppable Domains and ENS Clash Over Blockchain Domain Patents
ENS lead developer demanded legal backing to Unstoppable Domains’ promise to pledge their first patent to the Web3 Domain Alliance. Unstoppable Domains is currently facing criticism for allegedly appropriating the open-source advancements of the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) through the filing of a patent named “Resolving Blockchain Domain Names” in January this year. Unstoppable Domains’ ongoing pursuit of additional patents.
In an open letter, Nick Johnson, the lead developer of ENS, expressed significant concerns about Unstoppable Domains’ patent applications related to blockchain domain names while highlighting ENS’ advocacy for open source, open standards, and governance. At the center of the debate is Unstoppable Domains’s first patent, US11558344, granted in January, which, according to Johnson, is based entirely on innovations developed by ENS. The letter claims that the patent lacks original innovations and questions the irony of supporting open innovation while pursuing patents mirroring ENS’s work. including one for reserving names similar to a “Sunrise Phase,” a concept well-established in the DNS world.
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🇦🇺 Australia Updates Its Capital Gains Tax Guidance to Include Wrapped Tokens and DeFi
Australia's tax authority has clarified its view that its capital gains tax on crypto products also extends to wrapped tokens or token interaction with decentralized lending protocols, according to an updated guidance. Last year, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) warned cryptocurrency investors that capital gains and losses must be reported every time a digital asset, including non-fungible tokens (NFT), is sold. The latest update includes wrapped tokens or many “DeFi "lending” and "borrowing arrangements”.
“When you wrap or unwrap a crypto asset, you exchange one crypto asset for another and a CGT (Capital Gains Tax) event happens, the update said. “The capital proceeds for the CGT event equal the market value of the wrapped token at the time of the exchange." The move could have a chilling impact on Australians using DeFi even though it is a non-binding tax office guidance representing that tax office's interpretation of the law, meaning it is not the same as a court decision or legislation. It has also garnered criticism from the nation's crypto industry with one lawyer saying this could also apply to transferring tokens to centralized exchanges.
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🏦 Bithumb sets sights on IPO to rebalance crypto power
Bithumb gears up for a pioneering initial public offering (IPO), targeting a market shake-up against Upbit’s dominant 85% share in the virtual asset industry. In a move that aims to disrupt Upbit’s 85% stronghold on the market, Bithumb Korea is reportedly pioneering an IPO in the virtual asset exchange industry. The strategy could underscore a trust-centric approach deemed crucial for regaining Bithumb’s leading position in the Korean crypto exchange space.
The IPO will reportedly occur in the latter half of 2025, with a primary focus on a KOSDAQ listing and potential considerations for the KOSPI market under specific circumstances. Amid the intense competition in virtual asset exchanges, Bithumb’s decision to go public appears less about raising capital and more about restoring market confidence. The exchange has a history of scandals, some of which led to regulatory inspections in South Korea. In preparation for the IPO, structural changes are underway within Bithumb’s corporate echelons. Lee Jeong-hoon, the previous chairman and major stakeholder, has marked his return to active governance by rejoining Bithumb Holdings’ board.
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🆘 Justin Sun's crypto exchange Poloniex seemingly hit by hack for over $100 million
Centralized crypto exchange Poloniex appears to have suffered a security hack on one of its wallets, tagged as Poloniex 4 on Etherscan. Suspicious outflows from the apparent hot wallet indicate the incident affected a large sum of its funds, although the exchange has yet to confirm the amount. Initial analysis of the addresses receiving the outflows suggests that over $100 million in crypto assets were taken, according to analyst firms PeckShield and Arkham Intelligence.
Poloniex has operated as a centralized exchange since 2014. Tron founder Justin Sun acquired the exchange in 2019. In response to the incident, Sun stated that Poloniex is conducting an investigation and has affirmed the intention to reimburse all affected user funds. "We are currently investigating the Poloniex hack incident. Poloniex maintains a healthy financial position and will fully reimburse the affected funds," Sun said. Furthermore, Sun offered a 5% whitehat bounty to the attacker on the condition of a complete fund return, setting a seven-day deadline before initiating legal proceedings with law enforcement. “Our wallet has been disabled for maintenance. We will update this thread once the wallet has been re-enabled,” the exchange stated on its customer support X account.
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🪙 Nil Foundation introduces Ethereum ZK-Rollup with sharding support
Blockchain cryptography firm Nil Foundation is planning to introduce a ZK-Rollup, a type of Layer 2 network on Ethereum featuring sharding technology. The Layer 2 solution will function as a zkEVM — a type of ZK-Rollup that can run existing Ethereum decentralized applications. The Nil Foundation says that its objective is to provide an alternative approach to scaling by integrating multiple shards into a unified execution Layer 2. Such an approach combines modular and monolithic architectures to host data-intensive dapps.
“We’re excited to finally announce zkSharding for Ethereum availability for the wider community of developers on top of Ethereum, making it suitable for running high-load and data-intensive applications like decentralized sequencers, programmable data availability solutions, exchanges, autonomous worlds, and so on,” said Misha Komarov, CEO and co-founder of Nil Foundation. According to the Nil Foundation, the deployment of zkSharding merges various architectural principles. The architecture consists of a main shard, where zero-knowledge proofs authenticate transactions as part of the Layer 2 design, and sub-shards that serve to increase transaction capacity. In January 2023, Nil Foundation raised $22 million in a funding round led by Polychain Capital.
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📣 Institutional Traders Split Between Bitcoin, Ether: Bybit Research
During the first three quarters of 2023, institutional traders nearly doubled their holdings of bitcoin (BTC). As of Setpember, half their assets were denominated in the largest cryptocurrency, driven by positive market sentiment and anticipation of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approving a spot BTC exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the U.S. Their stance contrasts with the lower BTC holdings of retail traders, possibly due to their higher leverage levels, Bybit's research shows.
Institutional traders and whales, or large holders of bitcoin, were skeptical about altcoins, the report says, with the data showing a general decline in altcoin holdings among traders despite a brief rise in May. A notable decrease started in August, particularly among institutions, reflecting a cautious stance towards these more volatile assets. Ether (ETH) holdings have generally declined since the Ethereum blockchain's Shapella upgrade, data shows, except for a surge among institutional traders in September amid a positive crypto outlook as ETF news excited markets. The bitcoin price is up about 140% year-to-date, while ether has risen 87%.
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🔵 Fidelity Spot Ethereum ETF Now Acknowledged By The SEC
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has officially received Fidelity’s application to list a Fidelity spot Ethereum ETF, according to a recent SEC filing. Notably, BlackRock has entered the Ethereum ETF arena by registering a spot ETF for ETH in Delaware under the name “iShares Ethereum Trust.” This move signals BlackRock’s expansion beyond Bitcoin, reinforcing its commitment to explore opportunities in the Ethereum market.
Fidelity Digital Assets Services is set to act as the regulated custodian for the ETH holdings within the proposed trust. The filing emphasizes the significant size of the CME Ether futures market, asserting its suitability for surveillance-sharing to meet SEC listing standards and prevent fraud and manipulation. While the SEC has yet to approve a spot Bitcoin or Ether ETF in the US, there are reports suggesting the agency is gearing up to permit simultaneous listings of spot-based Bitcoin ETFs in January. Fidelity‘s filing seeks to strengthen the case for SEC approval of a spot Ether ETF, aligning with the evolving landscape of cryptocurrency investment opportunities.
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🇬🇧 UK to Hit Crypto Users With Penalties for Unpaid Taxes
The U.K. government on Wednesday called on crypto users to voluntarily disclose any unpaid capital gains or income taxes to avoid penalties, and published guidance on how to pay them. Users who have already made crypto tax disclosures to the U.K. Treasury have 30 days from the disclosure date to make all necessary payments. If the deadline is not met, the Treasury will take steps to recover the money, and users may face penalties, the post said.
The tax disclosures should reflect capital gains or income from exchange tokens like bitcoin (BTC), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and utility tokens. The aspiring crypto hub has been clarifying its stance on crypto tax. In 2021, the Treasury published a manual to help U.K. crypto holders pay taxes, and the country announced in March this year that people would have to declare their crypto separately in tax forms. Users who have already made crypto tax disclosures to the U.K. Treasury have 30 days from the disclosure date to make all necessary payments. The Treasury encouraged users to voluntarily disclose unpaid income or capital gains tax from crypto, NFT and utility token holdings.
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🪙 Cosmos founder to airdrop forked ATOM1 tokens to voters against reducing Hub inflation
Cosmos co-founder Jae Kwon is forking the Cosmos Hub ATOM, the central chain of the Cosmos network, after the community approved proposal 848. This proposal sets the maximum inflation of the Hub’s native token, Atom, at 10%. The fork will result in a new network, AtomOne, with the associated token, ATOM1. The launch plans include rewarding most of the genesis supply to those who opposed the proposal. Meanwhile those who voted yes to the proposal will be “slashed.”
Roughly 10% will be pre-mined for various purposes, as stated in a document by Kwon. The Interchain Foundation will not be included in the airdrop. The controversial proposal to limit Atom’s inflation rate passed narrowly yesterday with 41.1% support against 38.5% opposition, in the most popular vote in the Cosmos ecosystem’s history. Advocates argued that Atom’s inflation was higher than necessary for maintaining security and that validators could remain profitable with a 10% inflation rate. Unwilling to accept the vote’s outcome, he is now determined to split the Cosmos Hub despite many community members requesting him not to do so. The Hub serves as the central blockchain of the Cosmos ecosystem, with Atom being integral for staking, governance, and transaction fees.
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📣 KyberSwap offers 10% bounty to hacker following $47 million exploit
Decentralized exchange protocol KyberSwap offered a 10% bounty to the hacker who executed an exploit leading to the loss of $47 million. The attack, which occurred earlier this week, targeted KyberSwap’s Elastic pools, compromising funds across multiple blockchains including Arbitrum, Optimism, Ethereum, Polygon, and Base. The perpetrator had previously left a message on the blockchain suggesting an interest in negotiating with the team.
The message stated: “Dear Kyberswap Developers, Employees, DAO members, and LPs, negotiations will start in a few hours when I am fully rested. Thank you.” Today, KyberSwap proposed a deal. In an on-chain message, the team offered an implied white hat bounty reward equal to 10% of the stolen funds (roughly $4.7 million) on the basis that the hacker returns the remaining 90% to a specified address by 6 am UTC on November 25. The bounty offer is part of KyberSwap’s efforts to mitigate the consequences of the incident and make liquidity providers whole. Security firm Beosin explained that the vulnerability that resulted in the attack was due to an issue with the tick interval boundaries on Kyber's liquidity pools.
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🟠 Binance saw $1 billion in net outflows over the last 24 hours
Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, saw a significant uptick in withdrawals during news that its founder pleaded guilty to criminal charges in the U.S. Data from DefiLlama showed that Binance’s 24-hour outflows topped $1 billion as of 3:30 p.m. Hong Kong time on Wednesday. The exchange's net outflows over 7 days amounted to $703.1 million. Of the total outflows experienced by Binance, $605.9 million.
The withdrawals come after Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao pled guilty on Tuesday to violating the Bank Secrecy Act and stepped down as the company’s CEO. Binance has since appointed Richard Teng as CEO. As part of the plea deal, Zhao agreed to pay a $50 million fine. Binance will also pay a $4.3 billion fine after it pled guilty to several counts including money laundering, conspiracy to conduct an unlicensed money transmitting business, and sanctions violations. Meanwhile, OKX enjoyed net inflows of $152 million in the past 24 hours, giving it the largest daily inflow today, followed by Bybit’s $50.9 billion and Bitstamp’s $30.5 million, according to DefiLlama.
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🥇 Bitcoin Fundamentals Have Never Looked Better: Bernstein
Bitcoin (BTC) is expected to emerge as a global macropolitical asset with a more-than $3 trillion market cap, quadrupling by mid-2025, broker Bernstein said in a research report Monday. “This is an all-time high in bitcoin’s history – these churn rates are extraordinary for a financial asset, particularly one known for its exponential moves driven by a supply squeeze,” analysts led by Gautam Chhugani wrote. Another potential positive catalyst is the bitcoin halving, likely in April or May next year.
According to Bernstein, the halving is expected to reduce monthly selling pressure from miners to less than $500 million from around $1 billion at today’s prices of $37,000 per BTC. More favorable accounting treatment based on new Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) guidelines, which will allow companies to book mark-to-market gains on bitcoin inventory “will favorably impact corporate preference for holding bitcoin as a treasury asset, thus creating new demand sources from corporates,” the report said. Another tailwind is the approval of a U.S.-listed spot bitcoin exchange-traded-fund (ETF), which will make it easier for companies and retail to gain access to the cryptocurrency.
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📣 JPMorgan Says JPM Coin Could Handle $10 Billion in Daily Transactions Next Year
Global investment bank JPMorgan’s global head of financial institution payments, Umar Farooq, discussed the bank’s own digital currency, JPM coin, on Wednesday in an interview with Bloomberg on the sidelines of the Singapore Fintech Festival. Farooq expressed his optimism for JPM coin transactions to grow at least five to tenfold, emphasizing the potential for daily transactions with JPM coin to reach $10 billion within the next year or two.
JPMorgan described JPM coin as “a permissioned system that serves as a payment rail and deposit account ledger, that allows participating J.P. Morgan clients to transfer U.S. dollars held on deposit with J.P. Morgan within the system, facilitating the movement of liquidity funding and payments in right time.” Jamie Dimon, the chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, previously explained: “We use a blockchain network called Liink to enable banks to share complex information, and we also use a blockchain to move tokenized U.S. dollar deposits with JPM coin.” The JPM coin website states that the coin “facilitates real-time value movement, helping to solve common hurdles of traditional cross-border payments.”
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🇬🇧 UK's Proposed Crypto Rules Could Drive Away Foreign Firms, Lawyers Say
The U.K. government plans to apply its upcoming crypto rules to all firms, without exception, a decision lawyers say could drive international companies out of the market. Industry stakeholders have called for the government – which has said it wants to turn the U.K. into a global hub for crypto – to grant some regulatory exceptions for foreign crypto firms looking to operate in the country. In particular, they want it to expand the scope of overseas persons exclusions (OPE) to include crypto.
The OPE allows some traditional financial institutions (like multilateral trading facilities that exchange financial instruments) to operate without authorization. For example, the OPE can be used when the regulated activity is done “with or through” an authorized or exempt person. The industry requests were made during a government consultation on crypto regulation, and in its response, the government made it clear that it was not planning to extend the OPE to crypto. Choosing not to make those exceptions, however, could stifle international firms’ willingness to operate in the U.K., said Albert Weatherill, a partner at law firm Norton Rose Fulbright during an interview with CoinDesk.
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🟠 Binance fake-app scammers steal crypto funds via malicious Skype app: SlowMist
Blockchain security firm SlowMist revealed a new phishing attack involving a fake Skype app to steal crypto funds from an unsuspecting victim. The victim contacted SlowMist directly, explaining that his funds were stolen after downloading what he thought was the Skype app from the internet. The scam underscores the vulnerability users face, especially in regions like China, where direct downloads are a substitute for unavailable official app stores, SlowMist said in its report.
“Due to the inaccessibility of Google Play in China, many users often resort to searching for and downloading apps directly from the internet,” SlowMist wrote. “However, the types of fake apps available online are not limited to just wallets and exchanges. Social media applications like Telegram, WhatsApp and Skype are also heavily targeted.” SlowMist’s subsequent investigation revealed several red flags, with the app's certificate effective date hinting it was newly created in September and signature information pointing toward Chinese origin. A Baidu search found multiple sources of the fake app consistent with the one provided by the victim, SlowMist noted. The fake Skype app, camouflaged as the genuine video chat tool and injected with malicious code.
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💰 Grayscale 'Constructively Engaging' With SEC on Spot Bitcoin ETF, Says CEO
Grayscale Investments CEO Michael Sonnenshein discussed his company’s plan to convert its flagship bitcoin trust (GBTC) into a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) in an interview with Bloomberg at DC Fintech Week on Wednesday. The SEC originally rejected the crypto asset manager’s spot bitcoin ETF application. However, a court recently ordered the securities regulator to reevaluate the company’s application. “A couple months ago, a decision did come out of the D.C. Circuit that did vacate the SEC’s denial of the GBTC uplisting to a spot Bitcoin ETF on the New York Stock Exchange.
We really respected and continue to respect the court process,” the Grayscale CEO described. “There was a period of time after that during which the SEC could have challenged that decision. They in fact did not,” Sonnenshein continued. “So what you’ve seen now over the last few weeks is our team putting in the appropriate filings in front of the SEC including our S-3 filing that now really allows us to continue to have a constructive dialogue with the SEC, with all the required documents that would support us moving towards that uplisting on NYSE.” The CEO believes that Grayscale has “a really nice advantage” over other spot bitcoin ETF applicants because “Grayscale Bitcoin trust, GBTC, has already been a well known seasoned issuer for several years now.” He stressed that it gives the company “the ability to file an S-3 as compared to some of the other issuers who have had to file S-1’s.”
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🔵 Lido wstETH Is Now Launched On Base
Lido announced the launch of wstETH on the Coinbase L2 network Base, opening up new opportunities for the Base ecosystem. The addition of Lido wstETH to Base follows successful earlier introductions on Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, and Cosmos. Since its August debut, Base has solidified its position as one of the leading Ethereum Layer 2 solutions, boasting remarkable user growth, unique applications, and a thriving developer community.
With wstETH now available on Base, users can harness their staked ETH within the expanding Base DeFi ecosystem. Additionally, Base protocols can seamlessly integrate wstETH, enhancing both liquidity and usability across the platform. The wstETH Base bridge extends the advantages of Lido‘s staked ETH to Base users and protocols, further enhancing the usability of Ethereum Layer 2 solutions. Initially, Base users can access Lido wstETH through dApps like KyberSwap, Beefy, and Aerodrome, with the promise of its integration into more growing protocols on the horizon. This development signifies a significant step in advancing the utility of Ethereum Layer 2 networks, bringing staked ETH to a broader user base within the Base ecosystem.
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💰 Ripple targets unlicensed clients with new payment platform, announces Africa partnership
Crypto-payments firm Ripple announced two initiatives geared toward growing business interests in both the U.S. and Africa. With the unveiling of an updated settlements platform, dubbed Ripple Payments, the company said it aims to attract a new brand of corporate clients in the U.S. with its cross-border payments solutions. Meanwhile, the company also announced a partnership with African fintech MFS Africa, which recently changed its name to Onafriq.
Ripple’s Head of Payment Products Brendan Berry said the company's new updated platform, Ripple Payments, is centered around simplicity. "We abstract all the complexity of interacting with digital assets and any knowledge or knowhow associated with blockchain and provide customers with an elegant solution so they can immediately start sending payments," added Berry. Up until now, Ripple has primarily focused on serving licensed financial institutions which often transmit across borders instantly using Ripple’s XRP token as a bridge currency. Now, new corporate clients, after onboarding with Ripple, will be able to send payments to other users on the network.
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🇦🇪 Dubai Financial Authority Approves XRP as 'Recognized Crypto Token'
Dubai’s financial regulator, the Dubai Financial Services Authority, has approved XRP as a recognized crypto token for use within the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), a special economic zone. “Licensed virtual asset firms within the DIFC will now be able to incorporate XRP into their virtual asset services,” Ripple explained, adding that institutions located in the zone can now utilize XRP “to accelerate faster, more efficient global value exchange.”
On Thursday, the Dubai Financial Services Authority also published a “Notice of crypto token recognition,” announcing that XRP and toncoin (TON) have been added to its list of “Recognized Crypto Tokens.” The regulator clarified: “The recognition comes into effect from the date of this Notice and remains in effect until further notice.” The DFSA’s list of Recognized Crypto Tokens now consists of five cryptocurrencies: bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), litecoin (LTC), toncoin (TON), and XRP. The list specifies that TON and XRP were added on Nov. 2 while BTC, ETH, and LTC were added on Nov. 1, 2022. Another independent regulator in Dubai, the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), has also been active in the crypto space.
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🪙 Northern Data Secures $600 Million Loan From Tether Amidst AI Hardware Investment Spree
The Frankfurt-based Northern Data Group, a bitcoin (BTC) mining company expanding into specialized high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure, has secured a financing deal with Tether Group. The €575 million in funds are intended to boost Northern Data’s investment in cutting-edge hardware, which is vital for advancing the next generation of generative AI. The firm noted that the investment by Tether, the largest stablecoin issuer in the crypto space.
Northern Data believes this is a critical move as demand for computational power continues to climb. Tether’s foray into the HPC arena through this financing aligns with a broader strategy of supporting infrastructure critical to AI and blockchain technologies. Through its subsidiary, Taiga Cloud, a generative AI cloud service provider, Northern Data Group supplies energy-efficient computing power to businesses and research institutions, powered by the latest NVIDIA technology. The news comes after Tether’s significant investment of $420 million in Nvidia’s H100 GPUs, signaling a major move into the AI hardware market. Tether’s recent acquisition of a 20 percent stake in Northern Data.
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