Coinbase announced on Monday it would suspend trading of Binance USD (BUSD) after allegedly failing to meet listing standards.
The US crypto exchange platform’s measures will enter force on 13 March around 12:00 ET, it said.
A spokesperson tweeted at the time: “Trading will be suspended on http://Coinbase.com (Simple and Advanced Trade), Coinbase Pro, Coinbase Exchange, and Coinbase Prime. Your BUSD funds will remain accessible to you, and you will continue to have the ability to withdraw your funds at any time.”
News of the suspension dropped Binance’s native token BNB 1 percent, trading at $302.57 at the time of reporting.
The news comes after regulators from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) targeted Paxos-minted BUSD tokens earlier in February. Binance also halted US banking transfers to its service amid the ongoing row with US regulators.
A cryptocurrency wallet with massive of Shibu Inu (SHIB) holdings has moved funds to alternate exchanges. The move could signal an impending fall in prices, should the holder sell off the tokens.
The wallet, 0xd6, has reportedly transferred over 182 billion SHIB to Gemini and Crypto.com exchanges on Monday morning, Lookonchain data revealed.
The wallet later sold roughly 200 billion of the memecoins totalling $1.67 million USD after moving them to Crypto.com. This sparked a 7 percent falling in Shibu Inu’s price.
Analysts typically track the movement of large holdings of tokens to indicate price activity. Large sell-offs of a cryptocurrency could indicate a holder flooding the market with the digital assets, indicating a major price drop in the coin’s value.
This could change if tokens are moved off custodial wallets to decentralised finance (DeFi) applications.
The news comes after reports found several wallets linked to Alameda Research reactivated in mid-February. The anonymous holder later transferred $2 million USD in FTX’s native token, FTT.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the former disgraced CEO of the bankrupt firm, transferred $684,000 USD from his wallet to offshore accounts, violating his terms of bail.
Authorities have reavealed an official from a town in Massachusetts has been charged with operating an illegal crypto mining scheme in a crawl space at a local school.
The assistant facilities director, Nadeam Nahas, 39, plead not guilty on Friday at his court hearing. Authorities have charged the suspect with fraudulent electricity use and vandalisation.
The incident took place at Cohasset High School near Boston, the state’s capital city. The illegal mining operation consumed massive levels of electricity, triggering a tip-off to police in December 2021.
Police chief William Quigley told the BBC that Cohasset High School’s director of facilities found the operation in the crawl space.
He added: “Detectives interviewed the director, who said that during a routine inspection of the school he noticed electrical wires, temporary ductwork, and numerous computers that seemed out of place.”
According to ongoing investigations, authorities found computers running the mining operation. A three-month launched along with the US Coast Guard and Department of Homeland Securities led to Nahas’ arrest. Electricity costs totalled $17,500 USD, court documents seen by the Boston Globe show.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has teamed up with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the Financial Stability Board (FSB) to create a global cryptocurrency regulatory framework.
The three massive financial institutions announced on Friday they aimed to publish papers and recommendations to establish the framework for G20 nations.
Their announcement outlines a recent meeting with officials from central banks and G20 nations. In the document, the FSB plans to release recommendations in July on regulating global stablecoins as well as crypto assets, among others.
The paper read: “We look forward to the IMF-FSB Synthesis Paper which will support a coordinated and comprehensive policy approach to crypto-assets, by considering macroeconomic and regulatory perspectives, including the full range of risks posed by crypto assets.”
Additionally, the BIS will submit its findings on risks associated with digital assets and how to avoid them. Officials from G20 nations will also appoint a task force to evaluate cryptocurrencies further.
The news comes amid a wave of support for central bank digital currencies and crypto alternatives from global powers, including the United Kingdom, European Union, Japan, South Korea, Fiji, Tonga, and El Salvador, among others.
On Friday, global leaders held an event in Bengaluru, India to discuss global regulations for digital assets. United States treasury secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement to Reuters that it was “critical” to deploy strong regulatory frameworks.
Despite this, Yellen did not advocate bans on cryptocurrencies, adding: “We haven’t suggested outright banning of crypto activities, but it is critical to put in place a strong regulatory framework. We’re working with other governments.”
Mantle Core has submitted a proposal to create a $200 million fund for an early-stage Web3 small and medium enterprise (SME).
The BitDAO governance forum revealed that the new ecosystem solution hopes to improve Mantle network adoption for global crypto users and developers.
Mantle Core uses the Ethereum layer-2 network, and BitDAO will deploy the ecosystem via a new $200 million capital injection over three years’ time.
Additional contributions will come from the BitDAO treasury, totalling $100 million USD Coin (USDC) and a further $100 million from “strategic venture partners.”
Potential investors include Dragonfly Capital, Folius Ventures, Pantera, Spartan, Selini Capital, Play Ventures Future Fund, QCP Capital, Cadenza Ventures, and Lemniscap.
Mantle’s EcoFund will prioritise pre-seed, seed, and series A round fundraisers, with participants investing with a 1:1 ratio.
Global Web3 Firms Back Crypto’s Future Devs
The announcement comes just days after execution layer Cartesi unveiled a Community Grants programme to back Web3 developers and enthusiasts. The initiatives aims to expand adoption of the Cartesi ecosystem and boost decentralised finance (DeFi) solutions worldwide.
Additionally, Binance Charity launched plans to invest in tens of thousands of scholarships for Web3 students around the world. The programme will support the global Web3 ecosystem and upskill the next generation of Web3 experts capable of creating a DeFi economy.
Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX’s Founder and former chief executive, has been hit with additional criminal charges such.
United States authorities have filed further charges in addition to the eight looming ones the disgraced exec is set to face in October. Along with bank fraud, he will face charges for conspiracy to make unlawful political contributions.
According to the filing, Bankman-Fried and several other executives “falsely represented to a financial institution that the account would be used for trading and market making” to open a bank account. They would later use the account to receive and transfer customer funds for its business operations.
Bankman-Fried also opened North Dimension to defraud banks that had previously failed to authorise an account.
The filing added the charged also “agreed to and did make corporate contributions to candidates and committees in the Southern District of New York that were reported in the name of another person.”
According to the document, the former chief executive aimed to contribute roughly $1 million USD to a political action committee for the LGBTQ community but could not find a person “trusted at FTX [who was] bi/gay” at his firm.
The named executive urged Nishad Singh to donate funds and a further exec donated to causes linked to the Republican Party, the document added.
Singh contributed $1.1 million USD to the LGBTQ Victory Fund Federal Political Action Committee (PAC), records from the Federal Election Commission show.
The massive donation funded unofficial campaign contributions, namely advertising for Rep Becca Balint (D-VT).
It added: “an internal Alameda spreadsheet noted over $100 million in political contributions, even though FEC records reflect no political contributions by Alameda for the 2022 midterm elections to candidates or PACs.”
Concluding, it stated: “Bankman-Fried’s use of straw donors allowed him to evade contribution limits on individual donations to candidates to whom he had already donated.”
Disgraced cryptocurrency trading platform FTX has seen thousands of users at its Japanese sister company withdraw funds since Tuesday.
The subsidiary firm announced on Wednesday that its crypto holders and investors at Liquid Global withdrew nearly 6.6 billion Japanese Yen, or $50 million USD.
Reclaiming both fiat and crypto tokens, 7,026 accounts transferred funds from FTX Japan to Liquid Global. 1,947 users withdrew fiat currencies and 5,697 withdrew cryptocurrencies, it stated.
People withdrawing their funds from FTX Japan are required to confirm account balances to transfer their assets to Liquid accounts.
The news comes after the collapsed US crypto firm filed bankruptcy proceedings in mid-November. FTX Japan later froze millions in assets to over 9 million holders, totalling around $138 million USD after halting withdrawals, a NHK report revealed.
Japan currently plans to ease regulations on cryptocurrency tax regimes to boost the nation’s position as a global fintech hub. As people on the FTX platform pull out their funds from the bankrupt exchange, future investors may look to a more mature domestic market to invest their crypto assets.
Swedish music streaming giant Spotify is set to test a series of token-backed playlists across several critical listening markets around the world.
The three-month pilot involves Web3 gaming platform Overlord, which tweeted the partnership on Wednesday. This will allow communities to build song playlists on the Overlord platform and access them on Web3 wallets.
People with Creepz non-fungible tokens (NFTs) can access the Web3-backed playlists on Spotify’s streaming platform. The United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Germany can access the playlists.
Additional communities such as Moonbirds, the Fluf, and Kingship will also join the initiative, requiring users to own a Kingship Key Card NFT to participate.
The news comes after Spotify rolled out an NFT gallery programme for select musicians. At the time, users could preview artist NFTs and later purchase the items on OpenSea.
According to DeFi Planet, some of the best music streaming platforms are Audius, Royal, Sound, Emanate, Catalog, and Glass.xyz.
Web3 music aims to tackle the ongoing music industry crisis of low artist royalties, loss of ownership rights, and unequal distribution of revenues.
Artists fail to receive sufficient compensation due to the issues. Decentralised Web3 music platforms use the blockchain to link fans to artist NFTs and additional benefits for exclusive releases, artworks, and other incentivised programmes.
Network explorer Polygonscan reportedly stopped updating with correct values, confusing investors on the health of the Polygon blockchain.
This triggered rumours that the Polygon’s layer-2 scaling faced outages after data ceased to generate on PolygonScan for roughly 1.5 hours.
Despite the false warning, Polygon continued to create blocks, OKLINK verified on Wednesday.
Teams operating at Polygon have updated investors, stating “a few nodes” failing to synchronise caused the issue. They added the blockchain had not stopped producing blocks.
The news comes after rumours of an outage surface on Wednesday after block production allegedly ceased on Polyscan data. It showed at the time that its last block processed at roughly 20:35 UTC.
Additionally, Polygon Labs announced on Tuesday it had slashed up to 20 percent of its employees, totalling 100 workers.
The crypto firm will provide three months of severance pay to employees, it said in a blog post.
It explained: “Earlier this year, we consolidated multiple business units under Polygon Labs. As part of this process, we’re sharing the difficult news that we’ve reduced our team by 20% impacting multiple teams and about 100 positions. This was a painfully hard decision, but a necessary step in our journey.”
The New York State Attorney General has launched a further lawsuit this month as cryptocurrency exchange CoinEx has come under fire from the regulator.
NYSAG authorities have accused the exchange of operating as an unregistered securities broker as well as commodity broker-dealer.
Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement: “Our laws are designed to protect New Yorkers, and when companies ignore them, they put residents, investors, and businesses at risk. The days of crypto companies like CoinEx acting like the rules do not apply to them are over. My office will continue to protect New York investors and ensure our state’s laws are followed.”
The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) alleges it could buy and sell cryptocurrencies on CoinEx despite the company not being registered in the New York, citing an affidavit.
It adds the availability of unregistered companies violated New York’s Martin Act, allowing the NYAG to enforce actions to block the exchange from operating in New York. The filing continues that stablecoins such as LUNA, LBC, AMP, and RLY were securities and commodities.
The NYAG filing explained further,
“The Tokens each fall within the Martin Act’s definition of commodities, which includes any foreign currency and any other good, article, or material. CoinEx is engaged in the business of selling and offering to sell commodities through accounts, agreements, or contracts to accounts in New York primarily for investment purposes. The Tokens are also securities under the Martin Act because they represent investments of money in common enterprises with profits to be derived primarily from the efforts of others.”
Heavy Measures on CoinEx
It continued, stating CoinEx refused to comply after the NYAG suboenad the firm. The agency will respond by attempting to block the cryptocurrency firm from accessing local IP addresses and providing “full monetary restitution” along with paying fees.
The news comes as New York authorities aim to step up the agency’s efforts to access tools needed to monitor cryptocurrency activities across the US state.
Additional restrictions came after Paxos stablecoin rival Circle blew the whistle on the former’s cryptocurrency offering to the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) last year.
The agency claims that Binance failed to show sufficient reserves for its Binance USD (BUSD) tokens minted and issued from Paxos.