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Binance Creates History As It Secures First License In Southeast Asia

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Binance receives the green light from Thailand’s SEC to operate a crypto exchange and brokerage. This is its first license in Southeast Asia, thanks to the partnership with Gulf Energy Development, one of Thailand’s largest private power producers.

As per local sources, Binance will start operations in the fourth quarter of 2023 as a 51-49 joint venture with Gulf Innova, the fintech arm of Gulf Energy, which invested $20 million for a 0.4% stake in Binance’s U.S. operation. 

Speaking on the development, Richard Teng, regional head of Asia stated, “By harnessing Binance’s expertise together with Gulf’s established local presence and network, the exchange aims to showcase the full potential of blockchain technology to meet the needs of Thai users.”

With Binance’s entry, the local crypto market, currently dominated by Bitkub, will have a competitive platform. For the record, the CZ-led trading firm is the largest digital asset exchange in the world by trading volume.

Notably, homegrown Bitkub’s market share increased by almost 75%, when its nearest rival and no 2 Zipmex filed for bankruptcy after the Terra Luna fiasco in mid-2022.

In addition, the harsh crypto winter wiped out investors’ funds, with Thai digital asset exchanges experiencing a 79% decline in trading volume in 2017, which finally contributed to the demise of the global exchange FTX.

Further, Teng said that Thai users “can expect access to a trusted and regulated service that prioritizes user security alongside compliance with local regulations” from Binance. 

Recently, the crypto behemoth declared that it would discontinue various trading pairs, including those for well-known coins like Cardano [ADA], Ripple [XRP], and Polygon [MATIC].

Binance Removed ADA, SHIB Trading Pair

The Shiba Inu [SHIB] token has also been impacted by this change, which is scheduled to go into effect on June 1, 2023, at 6:00 a.m. UTC.

The list of affected pairs also includes the newly delisted SHIB/AUD, XRP/AUD, MATIC/AUD, and ADA/AUD. Aside from these, trading pairs for AUD/BUSD, AUD/USDT, BNB/AUD, BTC/AUD, DOGE/AUD, ETH/AUD, and GALA/AUD will also be discontinued.

Continuing its expansion, Binance embarked on the NFT lending scene by rolling out a new feature that allowed users to borrow cryptocurrencies using NFTs as collateral.

According to sources, the Binance NFT marketplace presently allows borrowing of ether [ETH] against popular or “blue-chip” NFTs including Bored Ape Yacht Club [BAYC], Mutant Ape Yacht Club [MAYC], Azuki, and Doodles.

Shiba Inu Users Scramble To Get Their Funds Off Hotbit Before Deadline

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Holders of the Shiba Inu tokens rushed to get their funds out from Hotbit after the Chinese crypto exchange urged investors to withdraw their tokens before June 21 at 04:00 UTC

Just a few days back, the trading platform with 5 million users worldwide, announced to shut down operations, an indicator of its worsening condition.

According to a blog post, the probe in August 2022, when Hotbit management teams were compelled to cease operations for several weeks, was one of the events that contributed to the decision.

Second, the shift in the crypto sector ranging from the collapse of FTX to bank crises spurred massive fund outflows from CEX which in turn had a negative impact on Hotbit’s cash flow.

The Hotbit team believes that centralized exchanges [CEX] are becoming increasingly cumbersome, with highly complex and interconnected businesses that are difficult to comply with, whether for compliance or decentralization, and are unlikely to meet long-term trends.

In addition to the above issues, the exchange suffered numerous other problems, such as repeated cyber attacks and the exploitation of project defects by malicious users, resulting in significant losses.

“Therefore, the Hotbit team believes that the operation model of supporting a diverse range of assets is unsustainable from a risk management standpoint,” according to the post.

Notably, Hotbit was among the first exchanges to list a variety of new assets, such as SHIB, KSM, GRIN, and others. It was also the first to offer staking services starting with ATOM and the first to undertake Defi mining utilizing Compound.

Shiba Inu tokens, on the other hand, have caught the attention of whales as around 40 billion SHIB tokens have been transferred between the biggest cryptocurrency trading platforms, data from Etherscan showed.

Shiba Inu Continues To Be Whales’ Favourite

In just 1 hour, a total of six significant transactions were spotted, most of which involved 6 or 6.4 billion Shiba Inus that were moved by unidentified large-scale holders.

Also recently, Lucie Sasnikova, a key member of the meme token ecosystem cautioned investors looking for a rapid pump amidst SHIB’s layer 2 impending mainnet launch.

Even once the platform is launched, Sasnikova stressed that it may take months for it to become established in the market because prices are not driven that way.

Cardano Founder Doubles Down On Decentralized Governance Via CIP-1694

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Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson shed light on Improvement Proposal CIP-1694 which he claimed will boost a new era of governance with decentralization in its decision-making.

For those new, CIP-1694 is an on-chain decentralized governance mechanism for Voltaire, touted as “a wake-up call for the entire cryptocurrency industry”, by the Cardano founder.

The CIP has several other aspects that will make Cardano’s transition into full decentralized governance smoother. These include introducing a constitutional committee and features to enable the creation of a community-controlled treasury.

Recently, IOG, EMURGO, and the Cardano Foundation announced the successful applicants for CIP-1694 workshop grants. The workshops, which will run from May through July, will examine the most recent changes to Cardano’s on-chain governance that CIP-1694 has suggested.

Hoskinson in the latest podcast emphasized the need for increasing decentralization and how it might help in setting regulatory standards in the future.

Decentralization metrics, in his opinion, could develop into a significant part of regulatory standards, acting as a yardstick for judging the legality and regulatory treatment of diverse digital assets.

The IOG head suggested that a more decentralized digital asset might be given similar status to that of the Transmission Control Protocol [TCP] for the Internet.

He also foresaw a potential regulatory gap wherein increasingly concentrated crypto assets would be subject to negative legal restrictions. In his closing remarks, the founder stressed the value of self-sovereignty in the crypto industry.

Speaking about decentralization, the Cardano networking layer might be more decentralized than previously thought.

Cardano’s Nakamoto Coefficient Is Now The Highest

The Nakamoto Coefficient, often known as the MAV [minimum attack vector], is what determines how decentralized validator nodes are in a PoS blockchain. MAV is the minimum number of independent parties that must come together to successfully attack the blockchain.

The greater the Nakamoto Coefficient, the more decentralized the network is expected to be. It represents the smallest number of entities [like miners or validators] that together control more than 50% of the power [like computing power in proof of work or proof of stake].

At present, Cardano has a MAV of 38, considered to be the highest coefficient among all blockchains.

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Cardano Founder Doubles Down On Decentralized Governance Via CIP-1694 2

In related news, Cardano’s DeFi ecosystem scored a new feat when the total value of ADA tokens staked on the network crossed 430 million, data from DeFiLlama showed.

Robinhood’s Dogecoin Reserve Drops After Withdrawal Of 5.7B DOGE

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Robinhood’s Dogecoin holdings have fallen from the steady supply of 24% to 16% after data tracking platform DogeWhaleAlert spotted massive withdrawals of DOGE.

According to the site, 5,700,000,000 DOGE tokens were shifted from Robinhood in total in a series of nine significant transfers in the past 2 days. Eight of them carried 680,000,000 DOGE each. One of those transactions moved 270,000,000 DOGE.

These tokens were moved from Robinhood to the top 20 wallets. However, it’s not clear if the receiving “top 20” wallet belongs to the exchange, the source tweet noted.

Before the mysterious transfers, Robinhood’s wallets had 33,562,118,525 DOGE worth of Doge on behalf of its clients. This was equivalent to $2,642,446,278 and accounted for 24.11% of the total Dogecoin supply then.

Robinhood now has 22,641,958,530 Dogecoins valued at $1.6 billion, making up 16.23% of the market’s available supply of DOGE.

Prior to this, the DogeWhaleAlert reported that Robinhood clients continue to hold on to their DOGE tightly and are not selling despite the recent unexpected success of a new meme coin PEPE.

The latest move has therefore raised eyebrows given that Robinhood’s DOGE stash survived the meme coin frenzy.

The trading platform recently released its Q1 revenue, showing that it generated $38 million from cryptocurrency trading, down from $54 million in the same quarter last year.

In addition, Robinhood disclosed that it holds around $11.5 billion in bitcoin assets, a 36% increase from the previous quarter and an indication of the early 2023 recovery of the cryptocurrency market.

Dogecoin’s New Milestone; Community’s Mixed Reaction

That being said, DOGE transactions reached an all-time high of almost 630k, thanks to the rise in demand for DRC20 tokens, a new wave of digital assets, which are being minted on the Dogecoin network.

The DOGE community’s response was divided, with some arguing that new tokens are merely attempts to cram them into the Dogecoin network.

Others view the surge in a positive light saying that the tokens provide a good opportunity for stress testing the network.

“Everyone should probably focus on the transactional currency use case. At least it’s a good test of the network’s ability to scale.”

Shiba Inu Grabs Whales Attention As 40B SHIB Tokens Tossed In Exchanges

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Shiba Inu’s demand rise as nearly 40 billion SHIB tokens was shuffled by whales to and from top crypto exchange platforms, data from Etherscan showed.

The last hour saw a total of six significant transactions, most of which involved 6 or 6.4 billion SHIB that were moved by unidentified large-scale holders.

From the six, the two biggest moved 9 billion meme coins, and the smallest moved 1.5 billion Shiba Inus. 13 billion SHIB were purchased and taken out of the Crypto.com exchange among these billions. On KuCoin, 1.5 billion were both purchased and withdrawn to cold wallets.

Additionally, 6.5 billion SHIB were transferred to OKX, most likely to be sold, and a total of 6.1 billion Shiba Inu tokens were transmitted to a Binance wallet. According to the current SHIB/USD exchange rate, 36.5 billion SHIB is equal to $316,090.

The highly anticipated mainnet debut of Shibarium now has an expected timeline, much to the joy of SHIB enthusiasts. Following user complaints about the lack of one, content marketing professional Lucie Sasnikova tweeted a response between Q2 and Q3 2023.

Besides that, Sasnikova revealed that the Shiba Inu team has several groups working on the launch, including one that integrates AI.

“Our estimate is for 2023, and we are not pumping anything but focusing on sustainable growth. The testing process and security audits are crucial before the launch,” she added.

In addition, Puppynet, the testnet for Shibarium, has continued to expand rapidly since its launch on March 11.

Shiba Inu’s L2 Milestone And A New Listing

Puppyscan’s most recent statistics show that there are now 15.9 million active wallet addresses on the native testnet, up from just 3 million just a few weeks after launch.

In addition, Shibarium recorded over 10 million total transactions, and at the time of publication, the average block time or time it takes to create a new block is 5 seconds.

In related news, the popular memecoin has landed in a well-known platform for trading digital assets Digitra.com, a Brazilian exchange, which recently announced its support for Shiba Inu. This update allows users of Digitra to conveniently purchase, sell, or hold SHIB tokens without any transaction fees.

Cardano’s Total Staked Value Exceed 430M ADA

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Cardano’s DeFi ecosystem achieved a new feat when the total value of ADA tokens staked on the network crossed 430 million, data from DeFiLlama showed.

With staking, holders of ADA tokens can allocate their tokens to a pool and get rewards based on their stake. Staked value is the sum of the USD worth of all participating tokens.

The more people who engaged in staking, the more secure and decentralized the network will become while generating passive revenue.

Staking has become the preferred choice over minting which has come under criticism for consuming more power and energy.

That said, the latest milestone reflects the growing confidence in Cardano’s proof-of-stake [PoS] consensus mechanism.

Due to its decentralization, Cardano is more resistant to potential assaults and reduces the likelihood of a single point of failure, which may be one of the causes of the sharp increase in staking.

Another notable mention is the successful integration of Plutus V1 into Plutus V2 deserves special recognition. Plutus V2 now incorporates all of the built-in types and features from Plutus V1, which has improved Cardano’s functionality and broadened the options for developers.

But how does this affect Cardano’s price?

As more tokens are staked, less ADA is available for trading creating a supply shortfall. The market value of ADA may be affected by this supply-demand imbalance.

Investors that chose to stake their ADA tokens profit from potential price growth in addition to contributing to the network.

In another significant development, Cardano’s trading volume over the past 24 hours surpassed $12 million, with a weekly average standing at $50 million.

On the other hand, the Cardano network recently suffered a slowdown as users faced hour-long swaps delay on its decentralized exchanges.

As per reports, the issue was not limited to a single exchange but rather to the network that supports it.

The lengthy swaps, which took 30 minutes to complete, have caused quite a commotion in the community.

The recent upgrade, Vasil hard fork promised high-speed transactions with its pipelining technique [that’s multiple avenues and sub-chains making the transactions faster].

However, the lengthy swaps serve as a cautionary reminder that improvements must be made in order to achieve the network’s target of 1 million transactions per second.

Shiba Inu L2 Mainnet Launch Time Released; AI Integration Is Also In The Cards

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Shiba Inu’s highly anticipated mainnet launch of Shibarium has now an estimated timeline. After users’ complained of not having one, Lucie Sasnikova, content marketing specialist responded by tweeting between Q2 – Q3 2023.

Yesterday,shibarium_ guessed that the launch of the mainnet would be in August, while my guess is for Q3 and ShytoshiKusama guessed July. So STOP SAYING YOU DON’T HAVE AN ESTIMATED TIME You do!!! Q2 – Q3 2023.

In addition, Sasnikova disclosed that the Shiba Inu team has several groups working on the launch, including one that integrates AI.

“Our estimate is for 2023, and we are not pumping anything but focusing on sustainable growth. The testing process and security audits are crucial before the launch,” she stressed.

Earlier, Sasnikova made public a screenshot of a message from developer Shibarium1, in which he said that because the dev team, led by Shytoshi Kusama, is speeding up work on the mainnet, it would be released sooner than the community had anticipated.

Besides, certain things are going well “in testing, etc,” according to the message.

Shibarium’s release date will depend on how well beta testing and subsequent audits go, the marketing specialist said in a May 4, 2023 comment. She also revealed Kusama had confirmed that audits would be conducted.

Sasnikova, a key member of the meme token ecosystem also emphasized the importance of prioritizing safety and the need for rigorous crash tests.

A Word Of Caution For Shiba Inu Investors

She also cautioned investors looking for a rapid boost, saying that in this situation prices are not driven that way.

Even once the platform is out, Lucie noted that it might take months for it to establish itself in the market.

Recently, another prominent Shiba Inu member known as Ragnar revealed that the team is currently working on the latest version of ShibaSwap, a decentralized exchange [DEX].

Ragnar issued the update on Telegram in response to the community’s frequent requests for information on the development of the DEX.

He claimed that before it is released, ShibaSwap 2.0 would need a fresh security audit from the top blockchain security platform CertiK and urged SHIB fans to wait for the audit which will help silence critics and doubters.

Anonymous Meme Coin Hunter Amass Over $2B In A Single Day

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An anonymous meme coin hunter spent 200 ETH worth nearly $363k to purchase 239 billion Pepe tokens and also spent 165 ETH valued at $300k to buy 3.98 billion RFD tokens. In just 2 days, he made a profit of 102 ETH [$185K] on RFD.

Onchain data platform Lookonchain which has been tracking the mysterious buyer’s movements for quite some time revealed that he earned over $2 million on $PEPE on May 22.

He also bought other 3 tokens recently, which are currently at a loss.

Lookonchain noticed that the ‘hunter’ traded RefundCoin [RFD] and Pepe Coin [PEPE] to fraudulently increase his funds by 4 and 32 times, respectively. The trader earned $345k by dealing with the first meme coin and $248k by dealing with the second.

The data tracker claimed that this person is unlike your typical market participant since he “is very good at finding potential tokens and investing heavily.”

The mysterious meme coin trader spent $81.5k and purchased 74.5 billion tokens in order to make a $345k profit on RFD.

He subsequently sold 71.3 billion tokens for $427 000, realizing a profit of around $350 000. Over the last month, Lookonchain provided details on the win rate and the number of tokens the trader chased.

The super meme coin hunter traded a total of 104 tokens in the past month, of which 66 tokens were profitable, with a winning rate of 63.5%. This guy is very good at stopping losses, at most he lost 6 $ETH [$11,306] on RIBBIT.

Along with RDF, PEPE, and WOJAK, his list of the most profitable tokens also included tokens like SHROOMS, FOXE, FOUR, and PPIZA. Conversely, the tokens where he ultimately suffered losses included CATTO, CFA, RIBBIT, SIGMA, etc.

Meme coins have attracted substantial attention in the wide and constantly changing world of cryptocurrencies, and stories like the one above only increase the excitement of early investors in their potential to provide extremely high profits.

OG Meme Coin Advocate Issues Warning For Investors

Elon Musk, the proponent of the OG meme coin DOGE, in an interview, stated that he is unable to give investment advice to individuals about how to invest in the crypto market.

Nevertheless, the tech mogul noted that DOGE is his preferred digital asset because “it has the best humor and it has dogs.”

Is Ethereum A Commodity, Security, Or both? Ex-CFTC Commissioner Responds

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It is not contradictory for Ethereum to function as both a security and a commodity, former CFTC commissioner and current SEC Counsel, Dan Berkovitz claimed.

According to Berkovitz, who participated in a podcast hosted by acclaimed journalist Laura Shin, there are specific legal provisions that allow Ethereum to fall under the purview of both the SEC and the CFTC.

The confusion arises from the fact that a commodity only relates to the physical components, like cotton, eggs, and so forth, to a layman. Berkovitz said.

However, anything that is covered by a “futures contract” as stated in the Commodity Exchange Act is likewise considered a commodity. The word “futures” being a part of the CFTC’s name makes sense in light of this.

Regarding the division of jurisdiction, the CFTC is in charge of commodities futures and swaps, and the SEC controls matters pertaining to securities.

Notes, proof of debt, and investment contracts fall under the category of security. While the aforementioned plainly falls under the authority of the SEC, they can also be the subject of a futures contract, which places them under the purview of the CFTC as well.

Furthermore, according to Berkovitz, it is feasible for an asset to be categorized as both a commodity and a security due to the overlap in the legal meanings of the two terms.

Another guest on the podcast, Collin Lloyd, a partner at the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, challenged SEC chair Gensler’s claims that everything other than Bitcoin should be given “security” status under federal securities law.

I don’t see anything in the case law that tells me that some string of digits that operates on a blockchain can natively just be a security. I think you should be asking, is this digital asset being sold as part of a securities transaction? That depends on the facts and circumstances.

The classification of Ethereum, the second-ranked crypto in the world, has caused more confusion in the US since regulators cannot agree on whether it is a security or a commodity.

Ethereum Classification Debate

At a congressional oversight session held in April, Congressman Patrick McHenry pressed the Securities and Exchange Commission chair about whether Ether is security.

Gensler avoided going into further detail when he declared that everything covered by Bitcoin is secure.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, likewise responsible for overseeing the US derivatives markets, also took steps that further demonstrated the lack of agreement in the sector of digital assets.

On 27 March, CFTC filed suit against Binance for engaging in “Willful Evasion” of laws by selling unregistered crypto derivative products.

The regulator’s definition of Ethereum as a commodity in the filing contrasted with the SEC’s classification of them as securities.

Tether’s Market Cap Surge Is Puzzling-Kaiko

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While the daily volume of Tether’s USDT fell to multi-year lows over the weekend, the market valuation of the stablecoin is currently at an all-time high of $82.9 billion.

According to crypto market research firm Kaiko, since stablecoins’ primary use is for trading, the unprecedented surge in USDT’s market cap is “questionable” given that the token’s use plummeted.

“Typically, changes in trade volume have been loosely correlated with changes in Tether’s market cap, with occasional surges during periods of notable market activity. Today, the correlation is at zero,” Kaiko noted.

Stablecoins whose value is tied to the fiat currencies like the dollar are primarily used as a somewhat secure “parking space” for crypto volatility and as a bridge to trade cryptocurrencies.

USDT, issued by Tether, and USDC managed by the Centre consortium are the two most widely used stablecoins measured by market cap and trading volume.

At present, Tether accounts for over 50% of all trades on centralized exchanges. On DEXs, USDC remains the dominant stablecoin.

Just 20% of non-stablecoin swap volume on DEXs is represented by USDT; while this is an increase from the beginning of the year, it is not necessarily sufficient to account for the more than $15 billion gain in market size during the same period.

One possible explanation behind Tether’s rise in market cap could be the impending demise of BUSD together with USDC’s March de-pegging event.

Based on a previous coverage by TronWeekly, the market value of Circle’s USDC depreciated in late March when the company disclosed that beleaguered Silicon Valley Bank [SVB] owned $3.3 billion of the reserves that were utilized to support it.

Even though investors flocked toward its rival, Kaiko pointed out that the “increase seems inordinate” particularly when compared to other stablecoins over the previous few months. This is mostly because Binance promoted TUSD as a substitute for BUSD.

Tether’s USDT Issued Mostly On TRON Network

Next, the research platform took note of how the majority of USDT tokens are issued on the TRON blockchain, especially on offshore exchanges like Binance and OKX.

Although TRON’s DeFi activity is negligible compared to Ethereum’s, it may indicate that market makers and whales favor this network due to its low transaction fees.

With USDC, the relationship between transaction volume and market cap was found to have a “clean correlation.”

“Overall, USDT’s market cap has little correlation with trade volume, which is questionable considering the primary use case for this stablecoin is trading,” Kaiko added.