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Lipika Deka

UK’s Revolut Adds DOGE, SHIB With Eyes On US Market

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DOGE, SHIB, SOL, and AVAX are among the 29 tokens added by London-based fintech startup Neobank Revolut as part of its crypto expansion plans in the highly competitive US market dominated by industry heavyweights such as Coinbase, Binance, etc.

According to the press release, the bank’s partnership with digital asset service provider Apex Crypto made it feasible for it to make the most recent step to expand its portfolio.

“Today we’ve more than quadrupled our token portfolio to give our customers access to a much more diverse crypto offering,” Mazen Eljundi, Revolut’s global business head for crypto said in a statement. Trading is commission-free up to $200,000 a month, he added. 

The New York department of financial services has not yet approved all of the tokens, the announcement also revealed.

On its platform, Revolut enables users to purchase and trade cryptocurrencies. Customers could previously only keep cryptocurrency within the app; however, they can now withdraw Bitcoin to an external wallet.

Revolut is also referred to as a “challenger bank,” a term for new digital banks with the mission to challenge the major banks.

However, the firm reportedly came under the scanner of UK financial regulators who have noted some discrepancies in the auditing report.

According to a Financial Reporting Council report from July, the audit of an unnamed “financial services provider” by accountancy firm BDO was found to be insufficient and to have a risk of an undetected material misstatement.

The report came after co-founder and CEO Nikolay Storonsky ‘complained’ in a recent interview about how long regulators are taking to review its application for a banking license.

That said, the popular meme coin Dogecoin has now emerged as the second biggest PoW coin.

DOGE 2nd Largest PoW Token After The ETH Merge

Dogecoin is now the second-largest proof-of-work cryptocurrency in terms of market value following the transition of the Ethereum network to the proof-of-stake protocol on September 15, TronWeekly reported.

The widely used meme coin is way ahead of the third-ranked PoW cryptocurrency Ethereum Classic [ETC] with a market cap of $4.69 billion, as well as Litecoin [LTC], having a market cap of $4 billion.

In addition to that, the asset made a comeback to the top 10 after surpassing Polkadot [DOT], according to CoinMarketCap data. The token is currently valued at $7.9 billion.

Cardano’s New Vasil “Capabilities” Will Become Available On Sept 27

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Cardano’s long-awaited Vasil Update is now only a few hours away which promises to enhance smart contract capabilities, increase the chain’s throughput and reduce costs. In its most recent tweet, the blockchain R&D company IOHK described what to anticipate after the hard fork.

Vasil is a component of the third development cycle for Cardano. The fork is named after notable Cardano community member and Bulgarian mathematician Vasil Dabov.

Interestingly the update arrives in the month of ADA’s fifth anniversary which it claims would significantly improve the PoS network’s capabilities.

First, the blog talks about the native smart contract language called Plutus. As the core component of Cardano, Plutus is tasked to segregate the on-chain transaction validation from the off-chain code that powers smart contracts. This off-chain code runs on a user’s computer.

The new Plutus v2 features will be accessible one epoch following the hard fork on Thursday, which is anticipated to take place on September 27, the thread read.

Other enhancements post-Vasil will include “diffusion pipelining,” a technique that scales up block propagation times leading to higher throughput. The goal of this upgrade is to ensure that blocks can be shared [propagated] in the network within five seconds after their creation.

According to the blog post, this scaling enhancement will speed up the process of communicating information about newly formed blocks among network participants. It also provides more space for block size and together with Plutus script improvements, creates a more scalable setting overall.

Cardano’s DeFi TVL Grew By A Whopping 565,000%

Data from DeFi data tracker DefiLlama suggested that Aada Finance, a noncustodial lending protocol on the Cardano mainnet, recently tapped a staggering growth in Total Value Locked [TVL]. As per reports, Aada Finance recorded a growth of 565,873% over the past week.

After months of open testnet use, Aada Finance, a groundbreaking platform that enables lending and borrowing of native Cardano assets, went live on the mainnet exactly a week ago, on September 13.

The lending platform asserts that the pre-Vasil hard fork sentiment exactly matches the debut of the V1 protocol, which is why it decided to do so before the much-awaited upgrade.

XRP-Based ODL Expands Its Use Case In Philippines’ Largest Fintech

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Ripple’s ODL Solution which leverages XRP for cross-border treasury flows, would be now utilized for scaling up the internal treasury management in Philippines’ largest non-bank remittance firm, I-Remit.

This isn’t the first time for the domestic fintech as it has been an early adopter of ODL and was using the blockchain-enabled enterprise solution to clear cross-border payments in real-time and cost-effectively into the Philippines.

In order to provide rapid and inexpensive settlement without the need to hold pre-funded money in a destination market, On-Demand Liquidity, or ODL, leverages XRP, the digital currency created for payments as a bridge between two fiat currencies, as stated in the press release.

But in this case, it would be used to accelerate I-Remit’s internal payout capabilities, instead of relying on outdated infrastructure.

By leveraging ODL for treasury payments, I-Remit is now able to get 24/7, all-year-round access to liquidity for their funding requirements, thereby enabling same-day settlement globally. Having eliminated the need to pre-fund destination accounts over several days, I-Remit can now channel these funds to scale the business operations of its overseas subsidiaries and support its partners.

The latest expansion has put I-Remit in the league of companies such as FOMO Pay, Novatti, FlashFX, Tranglo, SBI Remit, Pyypl.

First High-profile Game On XRP Ledger Announced

Just yesterday, one of XRP ledger’s top projects, the onXRP modular ecosystem, inked a deal with Ripple, Armiin van Buuren’s music label, Armada, and Styngr simultaneously with the launch of its highly anticipated free-to-play battle royale game Maladroids.

The in-game radio will be combined with a playlist prepared by top electronic dance music artists including Tom Staar and Kryder, both of whom are on the Armada label, thanks to the collaboration of onXRP’s new partners.

According to Styngr, who revealed the partnership’s specifics, the musicians would create two new songs each month just for Maladroids. Additionally, as part of the collaboration, NFT audio will be made available.

It is the first play-to-win multiplayer game project built on the XRP blockchain.

Meanwhile, the token’s price rallied by over 13% in just a few hours, making it the biggest gainer among the top 10 crypto assets in the backdrop of Ripple‘s legal win prospects.


Binance Granted MVP Licence To Boost Its Presence In Dubai

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Binance, the world’s leading crypto exchange, has been issued the Minimal Viable Product [MVP] license from Dubai’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority [VARA], per local reports. Bahamas-based FTX subsidiary FTZ was the first recipient of the MVP VASP license back in July 2022.

The MVP license allows Binance to operate inside Dubai’s legal framework for virtual asset service providers [VASPs], providing a range of virtual asset-related services to appropriately qualified institutional and retail investors.

The permit would also facilitate the blockchain services provider to open a client money account with a domestic bank and provide the following services.

Customers can now take advantage of the local banking channels made available by this first-of-its-kind regulatory licensing as Binance will serve a clientele certified by VARA. Trading on a regulated platform under the direction of VARA in Dubai will also provide users with higher levels of consumer protection.

The license is a big achievement that comes after several registrations for Binance’s local branches across Europe in Italy, France, and Spain as well as in the MENA area.

Welcoming the move, Changpeng Zhao a.k.a CZ, founder, and CEO of Binance, stated that this registration is an acknowledgment of its compliance and safety processes in the new regulatory framework and would work closely with industry peers to develop consistent implementation standards.

Recently the top exchange teamed up with a UAE-based company formation and business support services provider Virtuzone, encouraging new entrepreneurs to set up businesses in the nation using cryptocurrencies.

Binance Adds Another UAE Entity Into Its Payment Getaway

After incorporating Binance Pay into its payment gateway, Virtuzone joined the list of well-known entities like JA Resorts & Hotels and Majid Al Futtaim to accept cryptocurrency, in the west Asian nation.

Binance‘s ties to the Gulf nation have become stronger lately as the UAE attempts to position itself as the world’s newest center for digital assets and creates rules.

Last December, the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume, announced that it was considering Dubai for its potential headquarters and hired over 100 positions in the United Arab Emirates, its regional head then said.

Dubai, one of the seven emirates in the UAE, established the Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority in March and published the first law governing digital assets [VARA].

Besides Binance, it issued licenses to fellow global powerhouse FTX Europe, and businesses like crypto.com are opening offices there.

SHIB, XRP, ADA See A Spike In Social Media Discussions

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Top 10 altcoins such as ETH, SHIB, ADA, XRP, etc are the most talked about tokens, on-chain data analytics platform Santiment revealed. On the other hand, Bitcoin and Ethereum have fallen by 16% and 25% over the last week.

Crypto markets have obviously taken a big hit over the past week, but it’s interesting to see where social interests have shifted. ETH, XRP, ADA, MATIC, and SHIB have increased in discussions, while most other assets are being discussed far less.

Interestingly, each cryptocurrency that made it to the list has at least one active or completed development. The presence of Ethereum, Shiba Inu, Ripple, and Cardano on the roster is therefore not surprising.

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SHIB, XRP, ADA See A Spike In Social Media Discussions 2

Here’s What Is Driving SHIB, XRP, ADA, and ETH’s Social Interest

Memecoin SHIB achieved a three-month record for social media mentions in the latter part of August. Shiba Inu recently launched its Play-to-Earn [P2E] game, Shiba Eternity, for beta testing in Australia.

The project’s leading pseudonymous developer, Shytoshi Kusama, announced the other day that the game would soon go global.

Drawing similar traction is XRP due to the Ripple and SEC’s lawsuit that intensified after both the parties filed their applications seeking summary judgment. Many believed that the outcome would provide much-needed clarity on the token’s classification as a commodity or a security.

With regards to ADA, Vasil’s hard fork is hogging the limelight for the PoS ecosystem that has reached the end of the update as Cardano founder famously tweeted, “The Rocket is in the air.”

On the other hand, the second-largest altcoin, Ethereum, has undergone a smooth transition, which changed the Proof-of-Work protocol to Proof-of-Stake. But its prices continued to register a steep decline, reaching low as $1294 from $1772 this past week.

That said, the crypto market is likely to remain volatile in the near term as investors remain cautious in anticipation of the upcoming Federal Reserve rate hike on Sept. 20 and 21.

Many experts predicted that Bitcoin [BTC] will fall below its June low and continue to decline and the crypto market, in general, will be under pressure.

But if the FED does not shock the markets, anxious traders would take the opportunity to dive straight in, leading to a temporary relief recovery.


Ripple Labs & CFTC’s Surprise Meet Sends XRP Community Into A Frenzy

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A meeting between Ripple and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] was held in the former’s office as per a tweet shared by CFTC commissioner Caroline D. Pham.

Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse also took to Twitter welcoming the top exec calling it “an absolute pleasure” and that the meeting was a typical “public-private engagement”.

Pham, an American lawyer who took over her new role in April 2022, described the visit to the blockchain firm as a “learning tour”.

Shortly after being sworn in as the CFTC commissioner, the top exec criticized SEC’s move for bringing insider trading charges against a former Coinbase product manager and two other individuals, calling it “a stunning example of regulation by enforcement”.

“Major questions are best addressed through a transparent process that engages the public to develop appropriate policy with expert input,” she wrote in a statement. “Regulatory clarity comes from being out in the open, not in the dark.”

While many in the crypto community hailed Pham’s bold stance, it exposed a growing feud between the SEC and the CFTC, two organizations that are supposed to work closely for regulating digital assets.

In fact, it has taken the shape of a political conflict between the top U.S. financial regulatory agencies after Chairman of the CFTC, Rostin Behnam testified at a recent Congressional hearing that it was the “right regulator” to oversee digital assets trading.

In a number of cases, the CFTC head has suggested an approach that is friendlier to the developing asset class than the SEC’s enforcement strategy.

Ripple Lawsuit’s Result Will Decide XRP’s Classification And CFTC’s Role

Following the latest announcement, the XRP community appeared ecstatic. Some took aim at the Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC], asking the regulator to take a leaf out of its counterparts. Many in the community felt that the timing was not just a mere coincidence.

In a lawsuit alleging that the company’s XRP sales broke securities regulations, the SEC and Ripple both filed petitions for summary judgment on 17th Sept. The investigation into the case began in December 2020.

Crypto proponents believe that the outcome of the lawsuit may determine which federal regulator would handle the XRP token more like a commodity or securities.

A Lesser Known Ethereum Fork PoW Chain Is Making Its Presence; Here’s How

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Ethereum’s Merge created two forked proof-of-work chains, one which is popularly led by Chandler Guo to create ETHPoW and ETHW and the other relatively obscure called EthereumFair, [ETF].

Looks like the lesser-known sister project has finally woken up from its deep slumber as its team announced creating Telegram groups for several languages.

EthereumFair even claimed on Twitter that it was the first PoW currency to break away from the mainnet. This account, which was created in January 2020, has about 14,000 followers.

Despite having a two-year foothold, it is fewer than the just over 15,000 Twitter followers EthPoW has gained since its establishment in July.

EthereumFair is managed by a group of Chinese miners, and its major documentation is available in Chinese. But given that it started creating social media groups in several languages and announced rewards and support, things might change from now onwards.

Its block explorer revealed that ETF has 6.7 million total transactions and 1.8 million wallet addresses.

According to Coingecko.com, the price range for ETF has been between $1.48 and $3.50 per unit, with a $3.43 million global trade volume. The price of ETF reached an all-time high two days ago at $20 per unit and then fell to its lowest level that day at $0.99 per coin.

The coin is currently exchanging hands at $6.43, down 30% over the past 24 hours.

Ethereum Forked Projects Gained Major Adoption

Poloniex, a leading exchange that accepted EthereumFair, announced its initial endorsement “based on the market condition, users’ consensus, and the community.” Later, Poloniex changed the name of ETHF to ETF and added support for ETHW.

Additionally, the coin is now traded on the cryptocurrency exchanges Huobi and BitCoke. ETHW, on other hand is also traded on OKX, XT.COM, Deepcoin, Bybit, and CoinW.

Just recently, the hash rate of the well-known forked coin reached an all-time high of 80.56 terahashes per second [TH/s], before plummeting later and ubsequently losing 53.35% of its hashpower.

That said, a little portion of the hashrate left over from the Merge has been collected by the other forked project EthereumFair. At press time, there are seven nodes specifically dedicated to the network, and its hashrate stood at 7.9 TH/s.

Cardano’s Charles Hoskinson: “Rocket Is In The Air”

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The Cardano network has reached the end of the Vasil update, according to founder Charles Hoskinson in his latest tweet.

Hoskinson revealed that a proposal was recently created and acknowledged for the hard fork commentator, which was then successfully authorized in a video that was released to Twitter. He stated that this marks the onset of the “Vasil era” for the Cardano network.

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Cardano's Charles Hoskinson: "Rocket Is In The Air" 4

Hoskinson claimed that the automated procedure to distribute the Vasil upgrade has begun and will take around 5 days to complete. Given that the procedure was started on September 17, the Vasil improvements will take effect on September 22.

The Cardano co-founder compared the procedure to launch a rocket ship and said the team would have to wait to see whether it was successful or not. He continued, “There is no turning back.”

After the switch to the new state is complete, some of the new features that will be added to the PoS network will go live right away, while others will take about 5 days to take effect. No issues are anticipated, according to the Cardano team.

Cardano’s Token Biggest Price Dip In A Single Day

Recently the IOG founder called Ethereum resembling the Hotel California of the cryptocurrency world, for catering to the wealthy and those who can afford to buy expensive specialized hardware, TronWeekly reported.

According to Hoskinson, Ethereum’s implementation of the Proof-of-Stake consensus protocol was flawed as it restricted investors to access their staked ETH.

On the other hand, Cardano’s PoS does not require having users’ ADA locked. As a result, in this case, the “needs of users” are given precedence above stakeholder needs, he claimed.

The founder further said that everyone can stake its PoS protocol; one does not need to be affluent to do so. He underlined that this is a key area where Ethereum and Cardano differ.

In terms of price, Cardano’s ADA was down 10.02% on the day at $0.43 on 19 Sept. Since Friday, August 19, 2022, it was the biggest percentage point drop in a single day.

ADA’s market cap decreased due to the negative movement to $15 billion, or 1.65% of the overall market cap of cryptocurrencies. The market cap of the token peaked at $94.8 billion.

Terra’s Do Kwon: Crypto Community “Has No Business” Knowing His Location

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Terra’s founder Do Kwon took to Twitter to address some of the issues after reports began to circulate that he was on the run evading arrest from authorities. He then criticized the cryptocurrency industry, claiming that they have “no business” knowing where he is.

I am not “on the run” or anything similar – for any government agency that has shown interest to communicate, we are in full cooperation and we don’t have anything to hide.

Reuters recently reported that the beleaguered founder of the Terra blockchain was no longer in Singapore.

Denying that he fled, the co-founder stated that his team is in the process of defending itself in multiple jurisdictions. “We have held ourselves to an extremely high bar of integrity, and look forward to clarifying the truth over the next few months.”

A South Korean court issued an arrest order for Kwon and a few other people earlier this week.

It is worth noting that South Korea doesn’t hold an extradition treaty with Singapore and, according to Bloomberg, Singapore police are willing to assist their South Korean counterparts.

The speculative rally for Terra tokens was temporarily halted by the news. According to allegations, the co-founder of the Terra project, which collapsed back in May, broke capital market regulations.

Do Kwon, the co-founder, and CEO of Terraform Labs is accused by South Korean prosecutors of defrauding investors by issuing LUNA and USTC without warning them of the risk that the price of both could fall at the same time.

Terra Troubled Founder May Lose His Passport

A few days ago, local media claimed that Kwon’s passport cancellation process had been initiated by South Korean officials. The founder of Terra would thereafter be considered an “illegal alien.”

Kwon maintains his defiance despite rising legal issues.

The founder also faced a sea of wrath over Terra‘s blowout with some asking for his immediate arrest after the fiasco. Even international hacker group Anonymous vowed to “make sure” Do Kwon is “brought to justice as soon as feasible,” back in June.

The self-proclaimed hacktivist released a video that showed a list of Kwon’s alleged wrongdoings. These include his purported $80 million monthly withdrawals from UST and LUNA before the crash and his role in the demise of the stablecoin Basis Cash, which the terra founder is alleged to have created in late 2020 under the alias “Rick Sanchez.”

Cardano’s PoS Do Not Lock Users Fund Unlike Ethereum: Charles Hoskinson

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Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson is back in the limelight with his recent Twitter musings. Hoskinson emphasized that Ethereum’s implementation of the Proof-of-Stake consensus protocol was flawed as it restricted investors to access their staked ETH.

A shared discord message from an Ethereum developer revealed that there is still some uncertainty regarding the timing of withdrawals even after the Shanghai upgrade.

This was corroborated by a Twitter user @StakeWithPride who shared screenshots from Discord, saying that there is no ETA [estimated time of arrival] for ETH withdrawals.

Many however expected that holders would be able to access their staked Ethereum immediately after the Shanghai upgrade, slated to be six months to a year from now.

In the subsequent screenshots, the head of Serv.eth Support, Micah Zoltu, claimed that the information about withdrawals resuming only after the Shanghai upgrade comes from exchanges. But he admits that it is crucial at this point to allow investors “to exit in 2023, rather than in 2024.”

Hoskinson- Here’s What Makes Cardano Unique From Ethereum

In a previous post, the same Twitter user claimed to have revealed another screenshot from a conversation with Zoltu, who said that Ethereum stakes do not need to withdraw their ETH right immediately and may wait until later because they are wealthy and can afford to buy expensive specialized hardware.

Charles Hoskinson intervened at this very time, criticizing Ethereum for resembling the Hotel California of the cryptocurrency world, a famous song by the American rock band Eagles.

The song was widely believed as an allegory of self-destruction, and greed in the music industry of the late 1970s.

Hoskinson continued by asserting that because ADA is staked without ever leaving a user’s wallet and can be withdrawn at any time, Cardano’s PoS does not necessitate having users’ ADA locked. As a result, in this case, the “needs of users” are given precedence above stakeholder needs.

The IOG founder further said that everyone can stake Cardano‘s PoS protocol; one does not need to be affluent to do so. He underlined that this is a key area where Ethereum and Cardano differ.