Crypto News Weekly roundup May 1

This week has seen Bitcoin hash rate touching a new all-time high of 258 EH/s amid the plummeting prices in the crypto market. We at TheCoinRise summarize this crypto market week, ranging from regulatory involvement to urging adoption.

Regulatory involvement in the crypto industry

The Central Bank of Russia (CBR) is considering allowing digital currencies to be traded on some of the country’s government-controlled stock exchanges. The Central Bank of Russia (CBR) convened a closed-door meeting with primary players in the financial assets trading ecosystem to explore the options for accepting crypto on their platforms, according to a report from Kommersant.

Temujin Labs, a blockchain, Zero-Knowledge Proofs, and DeFi technology company, has filed a lawsuit against seven former executives, accusing them of launching a competing company using stolen intellectual property. The case, filed in November 2021 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges deliberate interference with business contracts, civil conspiracy, trade secret misappropriation and misuse, trade libel, and unfair competition against eight former Temujin Labs workers.

The US Treasury Department has added three Ethereum wallet addresses to a list of sanctions reportedly linked to the hacker gang behind the loss of over $600 million in cryptocurrency from the Axie Infinity’s Ronin sidechain in the NFT game. The FBI and the CISA, or Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, have been investigating the gang for allegedly stealing more than 173,600 ETH and 25.5 million USDC from the Ronin sidechain in March of this year.

Kevin Thomas, a well-known Senator from New York, has just presented Senate Bill S8839, a bill amendment that proposes to make rug pulls and other digital asset frauds criminal offenses. Misuse of private keys and hidden interests in crypto initiatives are examples of this. The law proposes defining, punishing, and criminalizing crypto-related scams, with a specific focus on creators and companies with a history of scamming crypto investors.

One of the most progressive countries in terms of crypto legislation, Gibraltar has upgraded its DLT regulatory framework with the aim of fighting the country’s increasing market abuse. The new regulation, according to the government, is designed to establish a standard for integrity in the virtual asset industry.

Partnerships, launches, fundings, and future plans

The well-known Germany-based football media app, OneFootball has raised $300 million in a Series D funding round led by Liberty City Ventures, a New York-based venture capital firm. The goal of the company is to expand its presence in the digital realm. It intends to utilize the funds to expand Web3 as well as develop new features for its platform.

Social media giant Twitter has partnered with Stripe, a crypto-focused payment processor. The two companies would collaborate to bring bitcoin payouts to Stripe Connect. According to the announcement by the two companies, a select group of Twitter producers will soon be able to receive their revenues on the platform in the form of the USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin, with payments handled on layer-2 blockchain Polygon (MATIC) network.

Following the acceptance of 11 projects by Stacks Ventures, CityCoins will become more interesting to foreign mayors looking for digital assets to gain rewards and enhance their economies.

Crypto exchange news

Robinhood Markets Inc, a Nasdaq-listed stock and digital currency trading platform is one of the largest losers on Wall Street in the Pre-Market after the business reported dismal top and bottom-line earnings. The company reported a 43 percent drop in revenue, which was estimated at $299 million. In comparison, the first quarter of 2021 saw $522 million in revenue. Its crypto transactions data fell from $88 million in the first quarter of 2021 to $54 million in the second quarter, a 39 percent drop year-over-year.

After gaining a complete operating license from the Abu Dhabi Global Markets (ADGM) and the Financial Services Regulatory Authority, the crypto exchange giant Kraken is planning to open a regional office in Abu Dhabi (FSRA). According to a report by CNBC, Kraken will be the first trading platform to provide a Dirhams-Bitcoin trading pair (BTC).

The exchange platform Binance, which is looking for ways to expanding in the U.K., has created the Binance Refugee Crypto Card to aid Ukrainian citizens who have been disproportionately affected by the country’s ongoing conflict with Ukraine. According to the announcement, both old and new customers of Binance’s exchange are invited to apply for the card as they look for low-cost ways to buy things across the European Economic Area (EEA), where they may have been dispersed.

NFT and Metaverse

In just over a week since its release, Moonbirds’ NFT collection has surpassed expectations. Moonbird #2642, one of the most valuable in the collection, sold for 350 ETH (about $1 million) over the last weekend, up from a minting price of 2.5 ETH. “oscuranft” bought the most expensive Moonbirds NFT for roughly 100 ETH last week, and he made about 250 ETH in profit based on the price paid for the pixelated digital artwork.

Over 11,500 Ether (ETH) worth roughly $33 million was permanently locked inside a smart contract in the highly anticipated NFT project Akutars over the weekend due to both an exploit and a bug, making it inaccessible even to the development team. Interestingly, the attack was carried out by someone who wished to highlight a vulnerability in the project.

According to Bored Ape Yacht Club or BAYC creators, hackers broke into the famous NFT collection’s formal Instagram page and distributed links to a fake airdrop to the project’s followers. Ape NFTs were taken away from crypto fans who linked their MetaMask wallets to the fraudulent website. The phishing attempt seems to have been planned in advance with the BAYC collection’s one-year anniversary, boosting the phishing link’s “perceived credibility.”

Is DeFi decentralized?

Samson Mow, the founder of JAN3 and a former Chief Strategy Officer of Blockstream, has made controversial comments about DeFi or Decentralized Finance tokens. Because of their failure to establish a viable monetary network, he believes the DeFi protocols lack decentralization and hence cannot compete with Bitcoin.

DeFi projects, according to Mow, are completely controlled by groups that have absolute ownership over the protocol.

Exclusive announcements

Genius Assets: Unlike traditional financial platforms, it is an innovative ecosystem where anyone can access diverse tokenized asset classes.

TUSD-am3CRV pool: It was introduced on April 1 with the gauge feature – which only seven pools on Curve’s Polygon network have, with the aim to distribute CRV rewards. Curve’s Ethereum network also supports the TUSD-am3CRV pool.

Alchemy Pay: It has partnered with MMO Pixel to allow online players to buy in-game coins for popular games like Elden Ring, Guild Wars, and Final Fantasy using cryptocurrency. Alchemy Pay will make backend crypto to fiat conversions for MMO Pixel’s platform using its network of exchanges and remittance partners, making it easier to use Binance Pay and on-chain crypto for payment.

StandAgainstWar: Even after the aggressive actions of invasion found a way out, the war in Ukraine has continued to smolder. The concept of donation can be transformed with blockchain technology for the maximum benefit of both the donor and the receiver in such a case. Evan Luthra, a serial entrepreneur, and angel investor, has expressed interest in supporting the StandAgainstWar project with his industry knowledge.

Fuzzle: The concept of the “virtual pet” has co-evolved with the new craze of digital assets and NFT collections. Fuzzle is one of the newest and most innovative examples of a seemingly simple digital pet that lives on users’ phones and is wrapped in cutting-edge AI technology. It recently released multicolored, improbable conquerors all over the 180-degree view billboard at 7th and 48th Streets, invading Times Square.

MetaGoblin NFTs: Axies owners have already expressed their enthusiasm for MetaBlaze’s new NFT series. The collection will be available for presale in early May, and fans are already excited to get their hands on these one-of-a-kind NFTs.

VCRED: It allows liquidity providers to earn a fair return on their assets while avoiding the risk of a temporary loss. The VCRED project is not a fork; instead, it is based on an original codebase that incorporates best practices and features from across the DeFi community.

Permission.io: Recently, it announced that it is switching from its own proprietary blockchain to Polygon, the world’s most popular Ethereum scaling solution with over 100 million unique users.

APENFT: On Friday, April 15, TRON Founder H.E. Justin Sun presented the mainnet APENFT Marketplace’s debut Livestream event. TRON’s inaugural livestream in the metaverse, the Game Changer-themed event, was aired live on YouTube, DLive, and Cryptovoxels TRON HQ. 

TheCoinRise will be back with another weekly crypto roundup next Friday.

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