Regulators Clamp Down On Crypto And More

The crypto news landscape this week was dominated by the many regulatory actions enforced by the SEC and others. Let’s take a closer look. 

Bitcoin

Bitcoin fell from $24,300 down to $21,500 in around nine days, which equates to an 11.5% fall in value. 

Ethereum

Ethereum blocks comply with the orders issued by the United States Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) and have dropped to 47%, the lowest since October 11, 2022.

DeFi

The DeFi protocol Platypus has been the target of the latest flash loan attack, which has resulted in a loss of funds worth $8.5 million. 

The developer of Tornado Cash, Alexey Pertsev, looks set to remain in the custody of Dutch authorities until at least the next hearing of the ongoing trial, a Dutch court ruled. 

DeFi protocol dForce suffered a loss of over $3.6 million, which the hacker was able to siphon off thanks to a reentrancy attack executed on the Arbitrum and Optimism chains. 

Altcoins

Cosmos Hub underwent its Rho upgrade on Thursday, which added a global fee module to improve the security of the Cosmos Network.

Ripple Labs has pledged to donate $1 million worth of XRP for the earthquake relief efforts in Turkey and Syria. 

Technology

The Bank of Russia is set to roll out the first consumer pilot of the country’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), which will launch as early as the 1st of April, 2023. 

Ethereum Layer-2 scaling solution provider Polygon has picked the 27th of March, 2023, as the date when its zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) beta launch will go live. 

The engineering company Siemens has issued a $64 million digital bond on a public blockchain, claiming that it is much faster than the traditional channels of issuing bonds.

With the race between Ethereum Layer-2 solutions heating up, Matter Labs has announced the rebranding of its highly anticipated ZK roll-up platform, zkSync 2.0, and the opening of the mainnet for developers. 

Business

The Celsius Network committee of unsecured creditors has put forward a filing to sell the company to NovaWulf Digital Management.

A bankruptcy judge on Wednesday rejected calls for a new, independent investigation into the collapse of FTX.

The U.S. Consumer Price Index data has just been revealed and shows a slight fall, but not as far as expected. 

The expectation was for the CPI to drop even lower, leading to more crypto turbulence. 

Wirex has signed a long-term partnership with Visa, allowing it to issue crypto-enabled debit cards in the UK and a further 40 countries.

Regulation

The founder of the collapsed Terra stablecoin, Do Kwon, has been charged with securities fraud by the SEC. 

SEC’s attack on Paxos and its issuance of the BUSD stablecoin might have caused Bitcoin’s huge spike in price.

The SEC on Wednesday voted in favor of proposed amendments to federal regulations “to expand and enhance the role of qualified custodians.”

According to a new report, USDC issuer Circle sounded the alarm about Binance’s BUSD stablecoin and its reserves to the NYDFS. 

The Paxos Trust Company has responded to the Wells notice issued to it by the SEC, claiming that it is prepared to “vigorously litigate” against the regulatory body. 

Senator Elizabeth Warren has established herself as Washington’s lead lawmaker on crypto oversight and is now cultivating an anti-crypto coalition under U.S. politicians.

Coinbase executives are pushing back against the classification of staking as a security by the SEC and are ready to defend it in court. 

On Saturday, the Finance Minister of India, Nirmala Sitharaman, said that the country is discussing ways to develop a global regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies with the G20 members.

Web3

Roughly over a year after the video platform announced that it is integrating Web3 features into its products, YouTube has announced that it will be appointing a new chief.

Final Fantasy creator Square Enix has partnered up with the Polygon blockchain to launch their next Web3 project, called Symbiogenesis. 

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.