TronWeekly

Crypto World News

You are here: Home / All Posts

All Posts

Crypto.com Receives In-principal Approval From MAS for Its Crypto License

by

Crypto.com received approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore to function and provide its services. Three further in-principle approvals have been given by Singapore for its highly sought-after digital payment token (DPT) license, which enables businesses to provide digital assets services.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) did not identify the applicants, but the well-known cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com later revealed that it was one of the recipients in a press release. The license will allow the exchange to establish its services in Singapore.

Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat made the announcement on Wednesday (Jun 22) in a speech in which he reaffirmed Singapore’s intention to collaborate with blockchain and digital asset players.

The news comes amidst Crypto.com laying off 5% of employees

As of the end of May, MAS had received 196 applications. There are now 108 applications being reviewed; 3 have been declined, and 74 have been withdrawn. Coinhako, DBS Vickers, a trading firm, and Triple-A, a supplier of cryptocurrency payments, are among the licensees.

Heng said that by supporting the benefits of Web3 while minimizing its drawbacks, authorities and the fintech sector would work together to build the ecosystem responsibly.

“We are committed to partner innovative and responsible players to grow the Web 3.0 ecosystem and community in Singapore.”

Heng Swee Keat

Heng’s remarks follow a digital asset market collapse that has caused some firms to go into financial trouble. Policymakers throughout the world have indicated an interest in making their nations into crypto hubs as interest in Web3 technology is at an all-time high.

The role of Singapore as a global hub for Web3 has come under scrutiny in recent months as complaints about how simple it is to get a license have grown. Some people in the sector have suggested Dubai as a more cryptocurrency-friendly option because of its aspirations to become a Web3 hub.

Elon Musk’s Love For Dogecoin Finally Revealed!

by

Dogecoin advocate Elon Musk has once again proclaimed his support for the meme coin at the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha on 21 June.

In the highly televised event, Musk who appeared virtually talked about cryptocurrencies in general with Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait.

When asked about DOGE, the tech billionaire said that his preference for the asset continues to grow stronger after receiving encouragement from people of all walks of life, including his employees.

I intend to personally support Dogecoin because I just know a lot of people who are not that wealthy who have encouraged me to buy and support Dogecoin—so I’m responding to those people. Just people when I walk around the factory at SpaceX or Tesla, they’ve asked me to support Dogecoin, so I’m doing so.

The CEO of Tesla Inc. and SpaceX has often pumped Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency created as a joke in 2013, with his Twitter musings. Recently Musk noted that Tesla accepts Doge as payment for merchandise and reiterated that SpaceX will be doing the same soon.

Meanwhile, critics slammed the token comparing it to a pyramid scheme, an allegation that did not go down well with DOGE co-creator Billy Markus.

Markus posted a tweet saying “if dogecoin is a pyramid scheme, so is the entire cryptocurrency market, stock market, the housing market, commodities market, and monetary system itself. cryptocurrency itself is just a protocol and a shared database”

Some proponents felt that the recent market crash provided a perfect opportunity for naysayers to bash the coin.

Dogecoin is Pumping

Last week, a frustrated investor based in the US filed litigation against Elon Musk and his firms- Tesla, and SpaceX for $258 billion alleging the CEO of operating an ‘illegal racketeering’ network to inflate the price of the asset.

Plaintiff Keith Johnson claimed that he and others in the class-action have lost nearly $86 billion between May 2021 and June 2022 and demanded that figure in monetary damages in addition to $172 billion.

On the price front, DOGE is showing some promising upswings. In just 3 days, the 10th-ranked coin surged by over 43%. At press time, it is trading at $0.066, an 11% rise over the daily index.

ProShares Debuts First Short Bitcoin ETF [BITI]

by

ProShares is all set to unveil its first short bitcoin-linked ETF in the United States under the ticker BITI. The new fund will go live on the New York Stock Exchange NYSE.

According to the press release, BITI will provide investors a chance to profit from Bitcoin’s price dip or protect market exposure with the convenience of an ETF. Speaking of the new launch, ProShares CEO Michael L. Sapir stated,

“As recent times have shown, bitcoin can drop in value. BITI affords investors who believe that the price of bitcoin will drop an opportunity to potentially profit or hedge their cryptocurrency holdings. BITI enables investors to conveniently obtain short exposure to bitcoin through buying an ETF in a traditional brokerage account.”

Back in October 2021, ProShares created history when it successfully launched BITO, the first U.S. bitcoin-linked ETF, raking over $1 billion in assets in just two days.

The leading ETF issuer also curated the first BTC-linked mutual fund, BTCFX, in July 2021.

However, Bitcoin ETFs were being bamboozled as stocks trade sharply lower amid fears of a looming recession, with investors anticipating that the Federal Reserve may adopt a more hawkish stance by raising rates to curb surging inflation.

ProShares ETFs value dropped by 70%  

Last week, the performance of these exchange-traded funds that track Bitcoin through managed futures contracts was at their worst as these asset classes were trading all-time lows in the wake of a severe downswing in the crypto market.

As per various reports, the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF, in particular, has fallen almost 70%.

In addition to that, other top ETFs Valkyrie Bitcoin Strategy ET and VanEck Bitcoin Strategy ETF have all hit record lows in the wake of the mega BTC selloff.

Bitcoin has dropped 69% from its previous peak, falling 55% this year alone, as as result the ETFs troupe went belly up.

The report also notes that the popular Grayscale Bitcoin Trust has been trading lower this year, by 60.1%. That’s not its lowest level on record, but it is a 20-month low for the fund.

BTC Markets Becomes Australia’s First Domestic Crypto Exchange To Score AFSL License

by

Australia’s home-grown crypto exchange- BTC Markets announced that it has bagged the Australian Financial Services license [AFSL] via its sister firm, BTCM Payments.

An AFS license is mandatory to conduct a financial services business in the country. It authorizes the holder to provide service, advice, deal, or create a market for a financial product. Besides that, it also allows the provision of custodial or depository services, and so on.

Three months ago, FTX’s Australian subsidiary gained the AFS Licence by acquiring an unnamed entity that previously held the permit.

BTC Markets founded in 2013, rose to become Australia’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. It boasts of having over 325,000 local users who have traded $21 billion on its platform.

The fintech firm was instrumental in providing remitters access to Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity [ODL] payments solution. This in turn made cross-border payments completed in seconds, the first of its kind technology in the nation.

Even though licensing would not be a deal-breaker, BTC Markets says it would prepare the firm for upcoming regulations.

That said, the nation’s lack of regulatory clarity has acted as a roadblock for financial firms.

The country’s largest bank, Commonwealth Bank [CommBank] had recently planned to launch its crypto trading app. But due to regulatory hassles, it had to halt the release of the pilot program.

Although the fall of Terra’s stablecoin UST along with the recent price drop in the broader crypto market might have also acted as a catalyst.

However, Australia’s newly-elected Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reportedly tasked his cabinet to deal with three top agendas. One of them is regulating the digital assets industry.

Australia’s New PM Includes Crypto As A Top Priority

Caroline Bowler – Chief Executive Officer of BTC Markets and a member of Blockchain Australia has doubled down on the newly-elected government to continue the work of the previous one and create a regulatory bill focused on digital assets.

According to the chief exec, the authorities’ “primary concern” will be to maintain a balance between formulating suitable rules and “leaving room for innovation.”

“There is a real opportunity for the government to assist with innovation and support it, relating to the significant role that financial services play in the Australian economy, but also its position globally,” Bowler concluded.

Ethereum Testnet Beacon Chain Is Live; Ready for Merge Trial Run

by

Ethereum’s Sepolia testnet Beacon Chain has gone online, paving the way for a merging dress rehearsal that will provide Ethereum network engineers with crucial technical information.

The Sepolia testnet will commence establishing consensus utilizing proof-of-stake (PoS) instead of proof-of-work (PoW) after combining with its specialized Beacon Chain, providing evidence on what could occur when the mainnet merges.

Testnet merges are crucial for Ethereum developers

The exact date of the Sepolia merger has yet to be determined. Testnet merges are required for Ethereum developers and standalone project developers to comprehend what to anticipate when the mainnet merges.

The ETH mainnet merging will see the whole network migrate to PoS consensus, similar to the testnets, and should lower ETH’s energy usage by 99.9%.

In October of 2021, Sepolia made its debut. In April, Tim Beiko, a core Ethereum engineer, revealed that the Ropsten testnet would be decommissioned and eventually replaced with Sepolia. As a result, projects that use Ropsten have been encouraged to switch to Sepolia in order to avoid problems.

For example, Sepolia and Ropsten are public testnets that are designed to simulate the functioning characteristics of their respective mainnets without creating any disturbances to the mainnet. Ropsten, the longest-running testnet, was founded in 2016. It went through a merging trial run on June 8, which was the first of its sort for Ethereum.

Multiple times, the official mainnet merging date has been pushed back. It is now slated to be finished by August 2022, although that deadline might be pushed back significantly due to a concurrent delay in the difficulty bomb. When it’s completed, it’ll create the Consensus Layer, which was previously known as Ethereum 2.0.

The difficulty bomb is a functionality of the ETH network that disincentivizes miners who use physical devices by dramatically raising the difficulty of creating a new block.

Cloudflare Outage Brings Several Cryptocurrency Exchanges and Websites to a Halt

by

Cloudflare, a major internet infrastructure provider, recently encountered extensive issues, causing several crypto exchanges to go down.

The content delivery network (CDN) revealed in a Tuesday update that it is experiencing problems with its services and network and that a remedy is in the works. However, the company has yet to explain what went wrong, resulting in the suspension of services throughout the world.

Crypto exchanges were affected due to the Cloudflare outage

FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange, announced on Twitter that many individuals would have difficulty accessing its platform and other sites, alleging that the exchange is currently in “post-only” mode. Bitfinex and OKEx, two cryptocurrency exchanges, also tweeted about the problem, with the latter inquiring whether there would be a Web3 option in the future.

Cloudflare, which went public around three years ago, provides businesses with a web network infrastructure that allows them to publish their content online. Security services, such as distributed denial of service protection, are also provided by the infrastructure (DDOS).

Binance seems to be unaffected, and one user asked CZ, “Why are all exchanges down except yours?” For this, CZ replied:

This isn’t the only time a Cloudfare disruption has reverberated across the cryptocurrency community. A similar disruption pulled Bitfinex, Coinbase, and other big websites to a stop in August 2020.

Aside from crypto exchanges, additional sites and applications with 500 internal server errors are now unavailable, including Indian brokerages Zerodha and Upstox, as well as messaging platform Discord.

To Support War Efforts Ukraine Sells Donated CryptoPunk NFT for 90 ETH

by

The Ukrainian government stated that their Aid for Ukraine crypto fundraising effort sold a donated Cryptopunk NFT and earned over $100,000 to help the country’s anti-Russian military operations.

In March, Cryptopunk #5364 was gifted to a Ukrainian crypto fund. The company sold the NFT to an unidentified bidder for 90 ETH yesterday. NFTs are digital or physical assets that are represented by blockchain-based tokens.

In a tweet yesterday, Alex Bornyakov, Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation, the agency in charge of supervising the country’s crypto fundraising throughout the war, announced the sale.

Crypto was an aid for Ukraine in the most challenging times

In late February, just after Russian soldiers entered the country, Ukraine began receiving crypto and NFT donations. Since then, the country is said to have raised more than $135 million in cryptocurrencies through cryptocurrency donations and the selling of given NFTs.

A crypto organization collected $6.75 million for Ukraine’s military effort in early March by selling a single NFT of the Ukrainian flag. The Ukrainian rap group Kalush Orchestra, this year’s Eurovision victors, auctioned off their trophy to generate over $1 million in ETH for the foundation a few weeks ago.

The cryptocurrency fund assists Ukraine’s military in purchasing non-lethal goods such as protective vests and medical kits. The Ukrainian government does not hold or spend the cash; it just approves and monitors the initiative. The fund’s treasury is run by the Ukrainian crypto exchange Kuna, which is used to assist support volunteer purchases.

Ukraine’s use of cryptocurrency throughout the crisis has acted as a case study for the potential benefits of crypto in geopolitical situations when fiat cash (such as US dollars) is difficult to transfer fast.

Furthermore, the present crypto bear market has completely exposed crypto and NFT contributions. The price of Ethereum has dropped about 70% in the previous ten weeks, severely limiting the fundraising possibilities of NFT collections based on Ethereum, such as Cryptopunks.

The Cryptopunk that was sold yesterday raised a little over $100,000 for Ukraine’s war effort; the same value of ETH would have been worth almost $267,000 on the day the NFT was given in March.

Bybit Joins Bandwagon To Lay off Employees Amidst Harsh Market Conditions

by

Bybit, a global crypto exchange platform, has joined rivals in laying off employees to withstand the continued dip in crypto markets.

A spokesman for the exchange told The Block on Monday that affected employees will be given severance compensation and access to Bybit’s employee career support in their job move. They refused to say how many jobs would be lost or how many individuals are now employed by the exchange. According to its LinkedIn page, the exchange employs around 660 people.

Bybit is the latest cryptocurrency exchange to lay off employees. Coinbase, Gemini, BitMEX, and Crypto.com have all let off employees in recent weeks. According to The Block, at least 1,500 employees have lost their employment in the crypto field in the last two months.

Some of the other crypto firms that laid-off employees include Robinhood, Bitso, and BlockFi. The harsh market conditions have affected the lives of a lot of employees as they had to step down from their position on such short notice.

Bybit had exponential growth in 2020

According to an email from CEO Ben Zhou to colleagues reviewed by The Block, Bybit employed “a few hundred” people at the beginning of 2020 and has grown by 300 percent since then. The message’s authenticity was not confirmed by Bybit’s representative.

“Our organization size had grown exponentially but the overall business growth did not grow in the same way.” “During the latest staff review, internal efficiency is still the biggest problem that Bybit has now. This means our operational efficiency has gotten worse despite our growing size. It’s evident that we haven’t utilized our fast-growing resources properly.”

Zhou said in the email.

The exchange was formed in Singapore in 2018 and immediately rose to prominence in the derivatives market. According to The Block’s Data Dashboard, it is presently the second-largest crypto exchange in terms of futures trading.

Celsius’ Recovery Process Would Take Time- Update

by

Crypto lender Celsius Network today returned to provide an update after its week-old announcement of halting withdrawals and transfers sent shockwaves across the market. The platform released a blog asking users for more time in order to get things back on track.

“We want our community to know that our objective continues to be stabilizing our liquidity and operations. This process will take time,” the firm said in a blog post.

“As has been a priority since our company’s inception, we maintain an open dialogue with regulators and officials. We plan to continue working with regulators and officials regarding this pause and our company’s determination to find a resolution.”

The recent carnage saw the world’s dominant coin bitcoin dropping below the $20,000 mark and the crypto market cap losing over 2 trillion in value over the weekend.

On top of that Terra’s crash had further aggravated the already fragile situation spurring mega sell-offs. Despite assurances and promotional activities, Celsius failed to quell panic investors and found itself on the edge of potential liquidations.

Seeing no other viable options, the lending and borrowing platform decided to pause its operation citing “extreme market conditions.”

Celsius’ lead Investor Offers A Helping Hand

Online investment platform BnkToTheFuture co-founder Simon Dixon has proposed a recovery plan similar to the one offered to Bitfinex after its Bitcoin hack in August 2016 which he claims was resolved within nine months.

Without detailing any specifics, Dixon stated that as a Celsius shareholder and lender, and due to the “short-term systemic impact on those that own Bitcoin,” he was “keen to support Celsius with a recovery plan.” 

“It’s my position to offer solutions as we have the experience, licenses, and technology to do so,” he added.

Following the infamous breach, Bitfinex announced a recovery plan, which involved “promises to repay” in the form of BFX tokens to customers, representing the lost funds in the incident.

These tokens allowed users to trade on the open market or held later for future repayment, thus enabling customers to speculate on the firm’s recovery.

Later, BnkToTheFuture worked with Bitfinex to help users by converting the BFX tokens into equity in the company.

“If Dogecoin Is A Pyramid Scheme, So Is The Entire Monetary System”- DOGE Creator

by

Throwing his weight behind Dogecoin, its co-founder Billy Markus gave a befitting reply after critics compared the asset to a pyramid scheme.

“Cryptocurrency has an incredible amount of stupid stuff around it, but that’s all just related to how incredibly stupid people are. cryptocurrency itself is just a protocol and a shared database”, the tweet read.

One of the critics who works as an Investment Advisor chose to defend the allegation and said crypto has no intrinsic value. “It’s not a hedge against inflation [exactly the opposite given infinite duration], nor is it diversified”, he claimed.

Markus then responded by saying “Intrinsic value is arbitrary. What people choose to do with it is up to them.”

Last weekend, DOGE flared up briefly after Elon Musk reaffirmed his support for the token after a follower asked him if he would keep buying DOGE despite the market dip.

image 6
"If Dogecoin Is A Pyramid Scheme, So Is The Entire Monetary System"- DOGE Creator 2

The tweet coincided with Father’s Day and proponents soon flooded memes referring to Musk as the ‘Dogefather.’

In addition to that, the memecoin’s co-creator Markus some days back said that he wanted people to “use it for something… so it has a reason to exist,” Musk replied: “Tesla and SpaceX merch, maybe more down the road.”

A week ago, the tech billionaire and his firms- Tesla, and SpaceX were sued by a US investor for $258 billion alleging the CEO of operating an ‘illegal racketeering’ network to manipulate the price of the asset.

Dogecoin Investor Moves Court Against Elon Musk For “False Promotion”

“Defendants falsely and deceptively claim that Dogecoin is a legitimate investment when it has no value at all,” the plaintiff Keith Johnson said in the complaint.

“Since Defendant Musk and his corporations SpaceX and Tesla, Inc began purchasing, developing, promoting, supporting and operating Dogecoin in 2019, Plaintiff and the class has lost approximately $86 billion in this Crypto Pyramid Scheme,” the statement read.

Earlier this year, Musk announced that the firm’s supercharging stations will accept the cryptocurrency Dogecoin as payment.

Tesla does accept Dogecoin in its online store and there have been speculations of the automotive giant eventually including the token as a form of payment for its vehicles.