Here's your Friday edition of Cryptonews Crunch, featuring the latest stories with an obscure Terraform Labs subsidiary appearing to exist only "on paper", Celsius holds a USD 1.2bn deficit, and Trezor's hardware wallet sales elevate following many company meltdowns & withdrawal suspensions.
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Source: CoinMarketCap.com
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- South Korean prosecutors have reportedly uncovered evidence of an obscure Terraform Labs subsidiary named FLEXE Corporation that appears to exist only “on paper.” Documents filed by the company appear to list Do Kwon, the CEO of Terraform Labs, as FLEXE’s sole executive director. The documents also appear to show that the company is still operational. An unnamed former Terra developer was quoted as stating that “the flow of money through FLEXE Corporation” had also been “an issue” during a special tax probe of Terraform conducted by the National Tax Service last year.
- According to a new document filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of New York, Celsius holds USD 4.3bn in assets against USD 5.5bn in liabilities, representing a deficit of USD 1.2bn. The majority of the firm’s liabilities were user deposits, which made up USD 4.72bn. On the assets side, the firm held USD 1.75bn in crypto assets and USD 170m in cash.
- Trezor said they have noticed higher interest in their devices following a string of crypto company meltdowns and centralized exchanges suspending withdrawals. According to a company spokesperson, crypto holders are “getting nervous about holding their coins with custodians and are exploring self-custody options.”
- El Salvador’s finance minister Alejandro Zelaya says he is unworried by international markets forecasters’ predictions that the country will default on USD 800 million bond payments early next year. But he added, the nation could seek other means to ensure that it did not default. He explained: “I can go to the regional debt market or I can issue a three-year local bond in Central America. The truth is, USD 800 million in a [national] budget of USD 7,000 million is a marginal amount. It is small.”
- Crypto mixers – services that exist to increase the anonymity of crypto users – are more popular than ever, while illicit addresses account for 23% of funds sent to mixers so far this year, a new report from Chainalysis has found. The 23% number for these seven months of 2022 marks a rise from 12% in 2021, claims the firm. That said, according to the report, "mixers are receiving more cryptocurrency than ever in 2022." The use of crypto mixers has increased significantly this year, with the 30-day moving average of total value received by mixers reaching an all-time high of USD 51.8m on April 19.
- Crypto-based play-to-earn games and game-related NFTs comprise the least affected sector in all of crypto during the current bear market, with venture capital investments continuing to flow into the sector, a new report from DappRadar has found.
- Risks are inherent to all financial sectors, and decentralized finance DeFi is no exception. The most common forms of financial risk in traditional finance include credit risk, liquidity risk, asset-backed risk, foreign investment risk, equity risk, and currency risk. While some of these risks may be present in DeFi, the industry largely has its own unique risks, and a recent report by digital asset investment firm CoinShares highlighted seven of them.
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- Ethereum developer Tim Beiko proposed September 19th as the tentative date for the long-expected Merge that will see the network transition from proof-of-work mining consensus to proof-of-stake. Ethereum also successfully completed its ninth shadow fork, which went live 15 hours ahead of schedule and focused on testing Ethereum’s so-called maximal extractable value boost feature.
- Liquidator Teneo has hired Singapore-based law firm WongPartnership to petition the High Court for provisional relief that would allow Teneo to administer crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital’s assets in the city-state and subpoena co-founders Su Zhu and Kyle Davies, the Straits Times reported. If successful, Teneo would be able to secure Three Arrows’ assets in Singapore for the hedge fund’s creditors.
- US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler said that the agency might consider exempting crypto companies from certain securities laws, hoping that the exemption will persuade more crypto companies to comply with regulations in general. However, he also stressed that several crypto companies were operating outside compliance standards, though he did not highlight any specific names.
- The European Central Bank (ECB) published a report that claims that the combined carbon footprint for Bitcoin and ether negates the greenhouse gas emission savings for most Eurozone countries as of May 2022. The authors deem all blockchains based on the proof-of-work consensus mechanism as non-sustainable, putting the whole green transition project at risk.
- The Blockchain and Crypto Assets Council (BACC), the advocacy body representing Indian crypto industry interests, has been dissolved by its parent organization, the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), CoinDesk reported, citing a statement. IAMAI made the decision without discussing the matter with the BACC, the outlet added.
- China has officially expanded its digital yuan pilot zone to 23 locations, according to local news outlets.
- Metaverse project Mandala announced a partnership with layer-2 solution Immutable X to build a multi-platform interoperable metaverse.
- OpenSea announced mass layoffs of up to 20% of its staff, due to “an unprecedented combination of crypto winter and broad macroeconomic instability.”
- Crypto exchange DeversiFi announced it is transforming into rhino.fi, a "gateway" DeFi, which they say offers users “access to the multi-chain world from a single app.” The project is expanding to include other sovereign chains, including BNB, Avalanche, and Arbitrum, as well as Ethereum Layer 2 Optimism, and it will be connected with the Cosmos and Polkadot ecosystems.
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