Here's your Thursday edition of Cryptonews Crunch, featuring the latest stories with an important update on yesterday's Solana hack affecting over 8,000 wallets, Portuguese banks begin to close accounts belonging to crypto exchanges, and episode 149 of the Cryptonews Podcast.
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Source: CoinMarketCap.com
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- The team behind the Solana blockchain has tied the widespread hack that affected over 8,000 wallets and resulted in the loss of over USD 8m worth of funds to the closed-source Slope wallet. "After an investigation by developers, ecosystem teams, and security auditors, it appears affected addresses were at one point created, imported, or used in Slope mobile wallet applications," the official Solana Status Twitter account said. In an official statement, Slope neither confirmed nor rejected the claim, but said that "nothing is yet firm" and that they currently have "some hypotheses as to the nature of the breach."
- In what is described as the first insider trading case related to crypto in the US, a former product manager at major exchange Coinbase and his brother have pleaded not guilty to wire fraud charges. The defense is based on the assumption that cryptoassets are not securities or commodities, and for this reason, the case could exert an impact on American jurisprudence related to crypto’s legal status.
- Multiple Portuguese banks have begun closing accounts belonging to crypto exchanges due to “risk management”-related reasons – and the country’s central bank appears to have given the financial institutions its blessing. Two bills proposing the imminent imposition of crypto-related tax were dismissed in parliament in May, but both originated from minor opposition parties. The ruling party is likely to formulate its own bill, which some have suggested will soon make its way to the Assembly of the Republic.
- Indicating that some major financial players have not been scared away from cryptoassets by the ongoing market downturn, the Fairfax County Retirement Systems, a US pension fund with assets totaling USD 6.8bn, has unveiled it is looking to invest in crypto lending markets to ramp up its returns.
- After a nearly two-month-long drop streak, Bitcoin mining just got a bit more difficult. Bitcoin mining difficulty, or the measure of how hard it is to compete for mining rewards, went up 1.74% today, going from 27.69 T to 28.17 T. Meanwhile, hashrate, or the computational power of the network, has seen an increase in the past two weeks. Since the previous adjustment, the 7-day moving average hashrate went up by 2.75%, per BitInfoCharts.com data.
- As reported, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is reportedly set to move ahead with an investigation into Coinbase over the listing of cryptoassets that it claims classify as unregistered securities. In an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, J.W. Verret, an Associate Professor of Law specializing in securities and finance, who recently served on an advisory committee for the SEC, wrote that the commission would be essentially shooting itself in the foot if it went ahead with what it reportedly wants to do.
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Ledger Enterprise is a global technology provider empowering organizations to participate in the digital asset ecosystem securely and at scale.
Alex Zinderbecame the
Head of Ledger Enterprisein March 2021 after almost two decades in capital markets technology. He brings more than 15 years of experience in driving the adoption of emerging technologies in major financial services organizations. Alex previously worked at Nasdaq as director of global software development and associate VP of enterprise architecture roles.
Joel Edgertonis the
Head of Americas for Ledger Enterprisewhere he is responsible for overseeing clients' strategic growth in the United States, Canada, and Latin America. He joined Ledger Enterprise in September 2021 and previously served as COO and Board of Directors of bitFlyer. He has over 17 years of experience in traditional finance and insurance through State Steet, Citigroup, and BNP Paribas.
In this conversation, we discuss:
- Moving from banks to Web3
- NFTs - the creation of value
- Security at scale
- Security at the edges
- Not your keys, not your coins
- Ledger NFT marketplace
- Growth of crypto hardware
- Teddy bear market, not a bear market
Tune In!
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- Major asset manager BlackRock has partnered with crypto exchange Coinbase to enable the former's institutional clients who also own digital assets on Coinbase to use Aladdin, the asset manager’s suite of software tools, to manage their portfolios and conduct risk analysis on investment decisions, the exchange said. For now, the partnership applies only to Bitcoin. "Our institutional clients are increasingly interested in gaining exposure to digital asset markets and are focused on how to efficiently manage the operational lifecycle of these assets,” Joseph Chalom, Global Head of Strategic Ecosystem Partnerships at BlackRock, was quoted as saying in the announcement.
- Revolut said it launched a new crypto service in Singapore, enabling customers to trade more than 80 tokens. The firm also plans to provide educational features in the coming months to help customers "better understand the trends and risks associated with cryptocurrency."
- Meta said that it's rolling out digital collectibles on Instagram to 100 more countries in Africa, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and the Americas. Additionally, they now support wallet connections with the Coinbase Wallet and Dapper Wallet (coming soon), as well as the ability to post digital collectibles minted on the Flow blockchain.
- Chainalysis claims that USD 2bn worth of crypto has been stolen from cross-chain bridges just this year across 13 separate hacks, which includes this week's USD 190m Nomad bridge exploit. In their report, Chainalysis estimated that this type of hack accounts for 69% of all stolen crypto funds this year.
- Legislation introduced Wednesday by a mix of US Republicans and Democrats, including Senators Pat Toomey, Cynthia Lummis, Rob Portman, Kyrsten Sinema, and Mark Warner, would exempt crypto miners and software developers from being considered crypto “brokers”, according to Bloomberg. The US Treasury Department has said that it supports not classifying miners, developers, and other “ancillary parties” as brokers, thus sparing them from the effort aimed at boosting tax compliance.
- Coinbase Global asked the US Supreme Court to halt two lawsuits by its users, both of which seek class-action status, while the company presses appeals that seek to send the cases to arbitration, Bloomberg reported. Federal trial judges in both cases rejected Coinbase’s bid to send the cases to arbitration, which the company says is required under its user agreements.
- Victorian Police in Australia will be granted new powers to seize crypto and digital assets from criminals and to compel platforms to hand over information about suspects, per a statement released by Victorian premier Daniel Andrews.
- Crypto gaming guild Yield Guild Games said that, by the end of Q2 2022, there were 21,739 active YGG Guild Badge (a non-transferable NFT that gives you access to the YGG website and its features) holders. Also, last quarter, YGG signed 5 new game partnerships. In total, YGG said it has 72 partnerships spanning across games, guilds, and play-to-earn infrastructure valued at USD 39.4m.
- In an attempt to fight inflation in the UK, the Bank of England increased its rate by 0.5 percentage points, to 1.75%. Inflation is expected to rise more than forecast in the May Report, from 9.4% in June to just over 13% in 2022 Q4, and to remain at very elevated levels throughout much of 2023, before falling to the 2% target two years ahead, the bank said.
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