Expelled Chinese Communist Party Official Shamed on TV for Supporting Crypto Mining, Nigeria Considering a Regulatory Framework for Stablecoin Implementation

Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.
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Legal news

• Xiao Yi, a former top provincial official in China’s Jiangxi province, who was fired in 2021 for abusing his power to support crypto mining, apologized for being a “sinner” and causing “grave losses” to his city, in a state television news report on Sunday, the South China Morning Post reported. “I’m a sinner to the people in Fuzhou, and I have failed them. […] Because of my distorted view of political achievements […] I acted recklessly, causing such grave losses,” he said. Xiao was the most senior Chinese official to be punished for supporting crypto mining.
• US federal prosecutors are investigating whether former FTX Director of Engineering Nishad Singh was involved in defrauding the company’s customers with trading schemes involving sister firm Alameda Research, according to Bloomberg. Additional agencies including the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) are also investigating Singh, it said, citing sources familiar with the matter.
• The SEC is investigating Avraham Eisenberg’s role in extracting $110 million from the Mango Markets protocol. “[I]  recognize the work of our colleagues at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, who are pursuing parallel actions against this same Defendant,” said Kristin Johnson, a CFTC commissioner.
• Fir Tree Partners, a shareholder of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, issued a comment regarding GBTC and Grayscale Investments’ formal answer to Fir Tree’s lawsuit filed in a US court last month seeking information from Grayscale on potential mismanagement of and conflicts of interest at GBTC. “Grayscale’s answer continues to obfuscate the facts and refuses to provide clear information to GBTC shareholders. […] In our view, the situation is actually extremely simple: Grayscale management is keeping redemptions closed in order to maximize their revenues, and they don’t care that it’s at investors’ expense,” they said.

Stablecoin news

• The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is considering the development of a regulatory framework for the potential implementation of a stablecoin, per a report titled ‘Nigeria Payments System Vision 2025’. They argued that “Stable Coin implementations are likely to be a successful payment mechanism. There is a need to develop a regulatory framework for such implementation that almost certainly will be used in Nigeria.”

Investment news

• Public technology company Ether Capital Corporation announced that it is not materially impacted by the financial troubles faced by Wyre, a US-based crypto infrastructure provider, as “Wyre is a non-core investment.” Ether Capital invested $1.5 million into Wyre in 2018, and as of September 30, 2022, the fair market value of the investment represented 2.2% of Ether Capital’s total assets, said the press release. “Ether Capital anticipates its initial investment in Wyre may result in a full write-down, but will make a final determination once more information becomes available,” it added.
• Togg, a global mobility technologies and ecosystem provider, selected METACO, a provider of digital asset custody orchestration technology to financial institutions, to underpin and secure the custody and governance of digital assets, said the press release. The Togg Blockchain Platform, built on the Avalanche C-Chain, is developing as a Mobility-as-a-Service platform (MaaS) with an aim to enable users across Turkey and Europe to benefit from a range of use cases underpinned by smart contracts.
• The Hashgraph Association, the Swiss-based non-profit association supporting the adoption of the Hedera network, announced a grant of $750,000 to Decimal Point Analytics (DPA), a major Indian research and data analytics company for the financial market. DPA will use the funds to develop an asset tokenization platform on Hedera’s distributed ledger technology (DLT) network, it said.

Payments news

• Global fintech company bitcoinblack, which created the credit card of the same name, is releasing its app for iOS and Android, said an announcement. The app will allow users to convert crypto to dollars immediately for use on their credit cards, while members will also be able to transfer unlimited funds to other members.

Web3 news

• Consola.finance, an EU-based finance and accounting SaaS platform, announced the launch of its end-to-end finance and accounting platform specifically designed for Web3 firms. “Following the successful pre-seed round in September 2022, closing $1.18 million in funding, the B2B SaaS platform offers an innovative solution for bookkeeping, accounting, and reporting for all blockchain transactional activity,” said a press release. It added that Consola.finance worked closely with organizations including Rook DAO, Decent DAO, MoonDAO, YGG SEA, Spool DAO, Solid World DAO, Bitpanda, LimeWire, Katana Inu, and others to build its platform.