Prison Time, Scam Entity, ETF Attempts, Mini FBI and 20 Crypto Jokes

This week in crypto: Crypto.com came under scrutiny for deploying internal teams to trade tokens for profit, Do Kwon blamed a ‘Chinese-named agency’ for ‘fake Passports’ but both he and Han Chong-joon were found guilty of using fake passports in Montenegro and will serve four months in prison. Kyle Roche fell “victim to an elaborate international setup” that caused him to expose himself as corruptly beholden to Ava Labs. We saw some big ETF news. Valkyrie Funds filed with the US SEC for approval for a Bitcoin ETF, and Invesco and WisdomTree filed submissions with the SEC for their own Bitcoin ETFs joining BlackRock.

In Binance news: it was working to enable the Bitcoin Lightning Network, issued a cease and desist notice against Binance Nigeria Limited – a “scam entity”, announced a new zero-maker fee promotion for stablecoin TUSD, and launched a regulated crypto exchange in Kazakhstan. Binance Markets Limited canceled its registration with a UK regulator, Binance.US saw a sharp decline in its share of the trading volume among exchanges that support USD-to-crypto trading, Binance Labs and CoinFund co-led a $10 million funding round for Neutron, while “Binance Ltd” and 2,400 other companies used a small Suffolk Building as a registered office address in the UK.

Then, Deutsche Bank AG sought regulatory permission to operate a custodial platform to offer crypto, and Japan’s crypto exchanges sought regulations that would allow retail investors higher leverage on margin trading. Bit2Me successfully raised €14 million in funding, Ripple received in-principle regulatory approval in Singapore to offer digital asset services, Gemini announced plans to expand into the APAC region, and Nike hinted at the possibility of an NFT collection within Fortnite.

Meanwhile, the US established a new task force, aka ‘mini-FBI’, for targeting crypto crime with five investigators from different agencies, the Canadian Securities Administrators warned users about fake regulatory claims by crypto firms, and a Russian was arrested for sending crypto to Ukraine’s armed forces. Coinbase condemned the US SEC’s ‘evasive response’ to a court mandate, JPMorgan argued that the release of the Hinman documents in the Ripple-SEC battle could benefit Ethereum, Berenberg argued the SEC was likely to extend its crackdown on DeFi and stablecoins, and a former advisor said that the SEC crypto crackdown could be stopped by legal doctrine.

As that was happening, AMF expressed its full support for globally coordinated and transparent regulation in DeFi, a government study suggested that Hong Kong should take cues from Japan and Singapore for Web3 and crypto development, Singapore’s central bank proposed a whitepaper on a protocol for digital money including CBDCs and stablecoins, BIS said that the global financial system could benefit from unified CBDCs, the Director said the IMF was working hard on a global CBDC concept, the Bank of England project found CBDCs could introduce ‘programmability’ to money, and the EU put brakes on the legislation for the digital euro, while the Chinese city of Quingdao decided to pilot a digital yuan public transport payments solution.

In mining news: Core Scientific filed its reorganization plan under Chapter 11 of the US bankruptcy law, CleanSpark acquired two Bitcoin mining sites for $9.3 million, Iris Energy announced its expansion plans to cater to the rising demand for data centers for AI, Russia’s Ministry of Energy was pushing for the legalization of industrial crypto mining, Ukrainian investigators uncovered an illegal crypto mining farm in a state-owned enterprise, and Venezuela’s ban on crypto mining severely damaged the industry that the President once supported.

Lastly, in miscellaneous news, FTX spent over $120 million on advisory fees in just three months, and a house linked to Sam Bankman-Fried may have been sold. Galaxy Digital welcomed a former Genesis exec as a global sales head, Alibaba named crypto-friendly Joseph Tsai as the new chairman, Arbol and The Institutes RiskStream Collaborative unveiled a blockchain and AI-powered parametric insurance platform, Etherscan introduced AI integration in its recently launched Code Reader beta version, and a French real estate firm signed a partnership deal with domestic crypto pay provider, while Wyre decided to shut down citing “market conditions”. Atomic Wallet hackers hid $35 million of the stolen crypto funds using THORChain, hackers released the Argentine markets regulator’s data on the dark web after the latter refused to pay a BTC ransom, and school kids were phishing millions in NFTs for Roblox skins.

Jokes time! Have a good laugh and a great weekend.

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Gooood morning, CT! What’s up? You good?

So much price action. Action everywhere.

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