Elizabeth Warren Strikes Again, Ripple Promises XRP 1B in Grants + More News

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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Regulation news

• US Senator Elizabeth Warren and a raft of Democratic co-sponsors today introduced a bill titled the Digital Asset Sanctions Compliance Enhancement Act, which “would place sweeping restrictions on persons who build, operate, and use cryptocurrency networks even if they have no knowledge or intent to help anyone evade sanctions,” according to Coin Center, a Washington-based crypto lobbying group. These lawmakers act “under the guise of bolstering sanctions against Russia for its unjustified invasion of Ukraine,” the group said, adding that this proposed legislation “may even increase the Russian government’s ability to isolate and control those within their borders who do not support the war.”
• Unidad de Información Financiera (UIF), Argentina’s money laundering regulator, is working to add service providers in the cryptoasset ecosystem to its list of entities subject to reporting and recording customer transactions, Buenos Aires Times reported. The plan is to publish the new regulation in 2022, their source said.
• US Representative Tom Emmer, chair of the Congressional Blockchain Caucus, asked the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to clarify how it gathers information from crypto-related companies. Currently, the two forms required of crypto companies ask for much of the same info, per Emmer.
• The European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) warned consumers that many cryptoassets are highly risky and speculative, and set out key steps consumers can take to ensure they make informed decisions. In their warning, the ESAs highlighted that these assets are not suited for most retail consumers as an investment or as a means of payment or exchange.

Investments news

• Blockchain company Ripple will give out XRP 1bn (USD 794m) as grants for developers to create projects based on its payments-oriented distributed ledger, The Information reported, citing the company’s representatives. The tokens will be dispersed over the next 10 to 20 years, they added.

Economics news

• The Bank of England raised interest rates to 0.75% from 0.5%, but it softened its language on the need for further increases from here. The bank sets monetary policy to meet the 2% inflation target, and in a way that should help to sustain economic growth and employment.

Mining news

• Bitcoin (BTC) mining difficulty, or the measure of how hard it is to compete for mining rewards, is expected to remain almost unchanged during an adjustment today and stay around 27.5 T. This follows a drop of 1.49% seen during the previous adjustment two weeks ago – which broke a series of increases that had lead the difficulty to a new all-time high of nearly 28 T.
• Riot Blockchain reported 2021 revenue of USD 213.2m, which is up 1,665% from 2020. It added that it considers 2022 the “year of consolidation in the bitcoin mining industry” and expects the company to potentially benefit from such a trend.
• Hut 8 Mining reported a fourth-quarter adjusted loss of CAD 0.67 (USD 0.53) per share, which they said was primarily due to noncash revaluation loss on liability warrants of CAD 114.2m (USD 90.24m). Net loss was CAD 72.7m (USD 57.44m) for the year ended December 31, 2021, compared to net income of CAD 19m (USD 15m) for the same period in 2020.

Crime news

• Shanghai police busted an unnamed online pyramid scheme that used cryptoassets worth more than CNY 100m (USD 15.7m), per the South China Morning Post. Over 60,000 users were asked to exchange their fiat currency for platform tokens to gain membership, which came with incentives, but the tokens “had no market value” and their price “was controlled by the platform.”
• Bitcoin financial services provider Unchained Capital said ActiveCampaign (AC), an outside email marketing provider used by Unchained until earlier this year, was hit with a social engineering attack last week. The attack occurred on the AC platform, meaning that only information shared with AC, like email addresses, usernames, and possibly IP addresses, may have been exported without authorization.

CBDCs news

• The Bank of Canada and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced an agreement to collaborate on a twelve-month research project on central bank digital currency (CBDC). However, no decision has been made on whether to introduce a CBDC in Canada.

Adoption news

• The European Commission (EC) launched a call for tenders to contract a consortium to facilitate and operate a pan-European regulatory sandbox for distributed ledger technologies (DLT), in particular blockchain, and provide comprehensive legal advice pertaining to the operation of the core services of the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI).
• Binance’s BNB Chain project announced a partnership with Layer 1 blockchain Aptos to unite to form an interoperable and unified cross-chain and multi-chain liquidity infrastructure, they said.

Exchanges news

• Binance announced it has been granted a Virtual Asset License from Dubai’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority, which will allow it to operate within Dubai’s “test-adapt-scale” virtual asset market model as a base for expansion into the region. Binance will be permitted to extend limited exchange products and services to pre-qualified investors and professional financial service providers.
• ByBit said that it is now a member of the decentralized data sharing alliance VerifyVASP Alliance and that it streamlines compliance with the Travel Rule requirements.

Charity news

• Savings and investment app Relai is launching an initiative to donate a proportion of its revenue from bitcoin transactions to global UNICEF projects centering around female education. Donations will come at no cost to Relai’s users, who opt into a referral code scheme, whereby the referee’s transaction fee is reduced by 0.5% and the referrer receives up to 50% revenue share from every transaction that uses their referral code.

Career news

• Rebecca Rettig, general counsel for Aave Companies, the team behind DeFi platform Aave (AAVE), has been appointed to the board of both Silvergate Bank and its publicly traded parent company, Silvergate Capital. Her role will be providing guidance while the company delves into the digital asset industry.