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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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DeFi news
- Major decentralized finance (DeFi) lending platform Aave (AAVE) has launched Aave Arc, a permissioned version of the platform. Aave Arc provides a separate deployment of the Aave V2 liquidity pool for institutions that allows “whitelisted” institutions to participate as suppliers of liquidity to earn yield, as well as borrowers of crypto assets. Institutional crypto custody firm Fireblocks is the first whitelister of Aave Arc. Customers of Fireblocks who volunteer to become “whitelisted” by undergoing a customer identification process can now access DeFi via Aave Arc with “all of the security of Fireblocks’ MPC-level controls, policies and workflows,” the announcement said.
Regulation news
- Crypto predictions service Polymarket stressed they will not be shutting down and that they have reached an agreement with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) after they had been fined for noncompliance. The three markets set to resolve after January 14, 2022 which do not comply with the Act will be prematurely wound down and participants refunded, with an official announcement to be released in the days to come, they said in an emailed comment.
- The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has extended the time period for ruling on NYDIG’s proposal for a spot bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) by 60 days in order to have “sufficient time to consider the proposed rule change and any comments received.” The SEC’s original deadline was January 15, so now it has until March 15 to make a decision.
- The UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said it had banned two adverts from Crypto.com following a complaint. The first ad, seen on September 1 last year in the Daily Mail app, featured text which stated, “Buy Bitcoin with credit card instantly,” while the second ad, seen on July 30 in the Love Balls app, promised “up to 3.5% p.a”, where the number in the text increased to “8.5%.”
- Miami Mayor Francis Suarez took over as head of the US Conference of Mayors on Monday, pledging to promote innovation and proposing that cities sign on to a “crypto compact,” per Bloomberg. He said that cities should proactively fight for a crypto regulation that “embodies success” instead of turning the burgeoning industry away, citing China as an example of the latter.
Gaming news
- Play-to-earn (P2E) gaming company Playground Labs and professional drone racing property Drone Racing League (DRL) announced a partnership to extend DRL’s high-speed drone races beyond IRL and esports and into the metaverse. The companies will develop the first P2E sports competition on Algorand (ALGO) where players will race DRL drones to earn cryptocurrency and Non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which will transcend financial value from the digital sphere to reality, they said.
- Decentralized gaming virtual world The Sandbox announced that it has added multiple Hong Kong partners from the film, music, entertainment, acting, professional services, finance, real estate, and gaming sectors to create Mega City, a new cultural hub. The Sandbox will launch a new LAND NFT sale on January 13, 2022 which should allow players to purchase choice spots near the LANDs of the partners announced today.
Taxes news
- Indian crypto exchange WazirX stated that they had no intention to evade tax and that they have been diligently paying their Goods and Services Tax (GST) every month, per The New Indian Express. Last week, the watchdog opened an investigation on the exchange for evading the GST tax.
Stablecoins news
- Stablecoin issuer Tether (USDT) froze over USD 1m worth of USDT last week, according to on-chain data. It is unclear who owns this address, which holds many other tokens in the low five-figure ranges that it hasn’t transferred out.
Exchanges news
- BitMEX said it has welcomed 50,000 new users since they announced the BMEX token on December 21. However, they declined to provide the data for signups before the announcement.
- Crypto platform Voyager Digital announced that their preliminary revenue in the second fiscal quarter of 2021, ended December 31, is anticipated to be approximately USD 165m, up from USD 3.6m for the same time last year, and with funded accounts surpassing 1m, up from just 43,000 at the beginning of the year. Preliminary total revenue for the calendar year 2021 is estimated to exceed USD 415m vs USD 6.6m for the calendar year 2020, including preliminary estimated revenue from merchant services of USD 29m.
Investments news
- Binance Labs, the venture capital and innovation incubator of Binance, announced the recent strategic investment in Coin98, a DeFi platform bridging traditional and decentralized finance. Binance Labs will provide the team with the technologies, consultation, and incubation services.
- NFT project company Metaversal has raised USD 50m Series A co-led by CoinFund and Foxhaven Asset Management. The capital should be used to fund further acquisitions for Metaversal’s growing portfolio, underwrite businesses, and support their venture studio projects.
- Cion Digital, a crypto infrastructure startup building tools for traditional financial institutions, raised USD 12m in a seed funding round. The capital will be utilized to expand their resources and accelerate the rollout of crypto financing and payment solutions tailored for financial services companies and big ticket retailers, they said.
- Investment issuer in the NFT space Pioneer Media Holdings announced that it has completed its acquisition of NGMI Labs, an onramp into decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), in a deal worth around USD 7m. The three founders of NGMI will continue in their current positions.
- Decentralized video transcoding network Livepeer (LPT) raised USD 20m in a Series B funding round. Livepeer said it plans to use the funds to accelerate its execution towards capturing the growing opportunities in livestreaming infrastructure.
Security news
- Blockchain gaming giant Illuvium has drained all the funds from a Uniswap (UNI) pool in an effort to prevent an attacker from cashing out after discovering a flaw in its staking platform. A record of transactions dating back to November shows a series of addresses with custom contracts consistently depositing a sum of ILV, Illuvium’s governance token, and then withdrawing a greater sum of staked ILV, or sILV, than the initial deposit, before rolling the proceeds to a new address.
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