Blockchain Africa
Ethereum

A US government-sanctioned Sinaloa cartel’s Ethereum wallet

An Ethereum wallet connected to Jimenez Castro, a Mexican man with connections to the Sinaloa cartel, has been sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Treasury.According to a list posted on OFAC’s website, Castro is one of 10 people named on its sanctions list as part of a counter-narcotics campaign. According to data from Arkham, the wallet in issue received almost $740,000 in deposits to Binance over a two-month period after becoming active for the first time in January of this year. A U.S. Treasury press release states that Jimenez Castro “operates money laundering organization that uses virtual currency and wire transfers, among

Read More
Nft's

2,000 Walmart Stores Will Carry the New NFT Brand Pudgy Penguins Toy Collection.

There is a chance that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) will survive.Some popular collections are just moving outside of digital markets in search of a new audience, despite the fact that some of them have rock-bottom prices.According to an email from a spokesman, Pudgy Penguins, one of the most well-known and valuable NFT collections, will launch its Pudgy Toys line today in 2,000 Walmart locations across the United States.Since May, you can purchase these toys online. Each toy would include a special birth certificate that, when scanned with a QR code in Pudgy environment, an online virtual environment built on the zkSync Era blockchain, would enable users to claim special abilities for their digital “Forever Pudgy” characters. “Pudgy Penguins is bridging the gap between our physical and digital worlds of play for kids in a really engaging way,”

Read More
Crypto

Crypto Exchange HTX Lost $8M of Ether as a result of a hack, according to Justin Sun

According to HTX adviser and Tron creator Justin Sun, HTX, formerly Huobi, was hacked with a total loss of 500 ether (ETH) valued

Read More
Crypto

Mudrex, an Indian cryptocurrency investment platform, expands to Italy

According to co-founder and CEO Edul Patel, the Indian cryptocurrency investment platform Mudrex has been approved to operate in Italy. For Indian businesses,

Read More
Crypto

Since August, MicroStrategy has bought 5,445 bitcoin for $150 million.

According to a regulatory filing made on Monday, software company MicroStrategy (MSTR) spent close to $150 million buying bitcoin (BTC) between August 1

Read More
Crypto

The previous external legal counsel for FTX contests accusations of involvement in fraud.

A class-action complaint alleging that a law company helped the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX commit fraud has been rejected by the firm, which

Read More
Crypto

Coinbase obtains Bank of Spain AML registration.

As part of its continued expansion across Europe, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has obtained an Anti-Money Laundering (AML) compliance registration from Spain’s central bank.

Read More
Blockchain

Miss Universe disputes any connection to the just-announced coin concept.

The Philippine Blockchain Week (PBW) event earlier this month featured the Miss Universe Coin initiative, which the Miss Universe Organisation has categorically denied

Read More
Technology

Google Cloud Adds 11 Networks, Including Polygon, as It Digs Deeper Into Blockchain Data

With the addition of 11 new networks to its ‘BigQuery’ programme for public datasets, including Polygon, Optimism, and Polkadot, Google’s cloud computing division

Read More
Crypto

Recently, Coinbase has discussed purchasing FTX Europe, according to Fortune

According to Fortune, the American cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Inc. (COIN), which is looking to grow internationally in the face of regulatory pressure at home, has recently thought about purchasing FTX Europe.According to the article, this is a part of Coinbase’s ambition to grow its derivatives business. It also stated that takeover conversations were never in a “late stage.” Due to its “highly profitable” derivatives business and expanding customer base, the company took into consideration FTX Europe, which was put up for sale after its parent company filed for bankruptcy last October. Financial contracts known as derivatives, which draw their value from an underlying asset like bitcoin (BTC), can be profitable for both traders and the exchanges that support them.In addition to providing a variety of derivatives products, FTX Europe, like other European exchanges, was the only company authorized to provide perpetual futures, a very well-liked derivative.According to Fortune, it is those licenses that have drawn interest from a number of prospective owners.The magazine noted that Trek Labs and the cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com had also showed interest in FTX Europe.

Read More
Ethereum

Network revenue drops to a 9-month low, causing ether to become inflationary.

In the midst of declining Ethereum activity, Ether (ETH) has turned inflationary, analysts claim, which could have an impact on the token’s price.According to statistics from blockchain analytics company IntoTheBlock, network fees, a proxy for usage, fell more than 9% this week to $22.1 million, the lowest level in nine months. Data from Ultrasound.money indicates that as a result, the supply of ETH, Ethereum’s native token, has been growing since fewer tokens were burned to confirm transactions than were created. According to Lucas Outumuro, research head at IntoTheBlock, the adoption of layer 2 networks is one of the factors contributing to the drop in network fees, which is expected to continue in the near future. “[This trend] may be putting some pressure on the second largest crypto-asset, as its supply has been growing over the

Read More
Tech

Big Time, a Web3 Adventure Game, is Prepared to Launch Its “Player-Owned Economy”

Adventure role-playing game on the Web 3Big Time is coming out of a year-long testing phase and plans to launch in early October.Big Time intends to offer its big community a free-to-play experience without the sort of poorly matched pay-to-win incentives that have afflicted other crypto-centric games. Big Time’s creators, which include the former CEO of Ethereum-based virtual world Decentraland and several former AAA game developers, refer to its “player-owned economy,” in which players can craft, trade, or loot digital wearables and collectibles in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), powered by a native Big Time cryptocurrency, as they explore historic civilizations and dystopian futures. Axie Infinity, a competitive digital pet player, and other once-heralded cryptocurrency-based games like Decentraland have experienced issues over time. Decentraland’s metaverse world has received criticism for having few players, and Axie is vulnerable to the sneaky effects of its play-to-earn model.Ari Meilich, the creator of Big Time and former CEO of Decentraland, credited his new game’s success to both a committed player base and the Big Time Studios creative team, which has worked on games that have amassed hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and tens of millions of users. “The Big Time community has already grown to over 350,000 people on Discord and over a quarter million on X

Read More
Crypto

Insolvent Bitcoin miner Core Scientific will spend $77 million on 27K Bitmain servers

According to a press statement, insolvent miner Core Scientific (CORZQ) will buy 27,000 bitcoin (BTC) mining servers from Bitmain for $23.1 million in cash and $53.9 million in common stock.Last month, the acquisition was first promoted as a component of Core Scientific’s bankruptcy strategy.Anchorage Digital, a cryptocurrency corporation, was also touted as a potential investor in the business. The devices, which might raise Core Scientific’s hash rate by 4.1 exahashes, are anticipated to arrive in the fourth quarter of this year.The mining company declared bankruptcy in December of last year as a result of declining income and increased energy costs.A federal judge supervising the case said in May that the company hoped to come out of bankruptcy as soon as this month. “Core Scientific is an important contributor to the strength and stability of the Bitcoin Network, and we look forward to working

Read More
Crypto

Former Hong Kong Affiliate Employees Are Being Sued by FTX, Seeking $157 Million

In order to recoup roughly $157.3 million, the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX has filed a lawsuit against former Salameda workers. Salameda is a Hong Kong-incorporated company connected to FTX that the company claims was run by Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of the company.The complaint claims that Michael Burgess, Matthew Burgess, their mother Lesley Burgess, Kevin Nguyen, Darren Wong, and two corporations owned or controlled numerous firms that had accounts registered at FTX.com and FTX US, and that they fraudulently withdrew money in the days preceding FTX’s bankruptcy. The defendants benefited from withdrawals that constitute preferential transfers and “are avoidable under the Bankruptcy Code,” according to the petition, during the Preference Period, which is the 90 days prior to the bankruptcy filing on November 11, 2022.According to the petition, the defendants rushed to remove funds and took use of their relationships with FTX employees to guarantee they would be given preference over other clients. The FTX bankruptcy estate has attempted to recoup payments from linked parties previously.Bankman-Fried and his executives, his parents, FTX’s charity and life science divisions, as well as Bankman-Fried himself, have already been targeted.In addition, it is attempting to recover payments made to the similarly bankrupt Genesis Global Capital, which is controlled by CoinDesk’s parent company, Digital Currency Group.A bankruptcy lawyer claimed in January that FTX had recovered more than $5 billion in various assets.The bankruptcy team estimated that the corporation owes its clients $8.7 billion in June. Additionally, the petition claims that Matthew Burgess used other FTX workers to “push out” some pending withdrawal requests from one of Michael Burgess’ FTX US exchange accounts while falsely claiming ownership of the account, according to messages on the messaging service Slack.Just a few hours before FTX stopped accepting withdrawals on November 8, 2022, the transactions were finished.On or after November 7, more than $123 million of the total $157.3 million (based on pricing as of August 31, 2023) were withdrawn.The transfers were made “with the intent to hinder, delay or defraud FTX US’s present or future creditors,” the lawsuit stated. In order to be ready for his trial, which will begin on October 3, Bankman-Fried is now being held in custody.His effort to be released from prison before the proceedings began was rejected by an appeals court on Thursday.

Read More
Article

How to recognise and defend against routing attacks on the Lightning Network

Routing assaults are one of the potential dangers, but the Lightning Network is not immune to security problems like any other network is.

Read More
Crypto

Tether, a stablecoin issuer, spends $427 million on Nvidia chips as part of its Northern Data AI initiative.

Using a company jointly owned by bitcoin (BTC) miner and data cloud provider Northern Data Group (NB2), stablecoin issuer Tether announced that it is foraying into artificial intelligence (AI).Nvidia graphic processing units (GPU) were purchased by Damoon Designated Activity, in which Frankfurt-based Northern Data acquired a controlling stake in July, for over 400 million euros ($427 million), according to a press release from the German business. The chips will be made available through Northern Data’s cloud platform, Taiga Cloud, with plans to start granting users access at the end of the fourth quarter.The recent development shows Tether, the largest stablecoin corporation with $83 billion USDT in market capitalization, branching out beyond its core market.The company has invested in Bitcoin mining facilities in South America this year, as well as a payment processor in Georgia. Tether has been criticized within the cryptocurrency community for years because to its lack of transparency on its stablecoin reserves and questionable lending and investment practices.A publicly traded data company called Northern Data has shifted beyond cryptocurrency mining to offer computing capacity for AI-related data processing.Shares increased 2.7% on Thursday. “We are excited about this investment into Northern Data Group as it represents a fresh venture into new technological frontiers,”

Read More
Crypto

Binance Issues a Delisting Notice for Multiple Stablecoins amid Lawyers Confusion Over EU’s MiCA

A Binance official said on Thursday that the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation of the European Union, which is slated to take effect in a few months, may result in the widespread delisting of stablecoins.There are still questions about how the historic law of the EU will affect decentralized and foreign issuers, and representatives of the European Banking Authority (EBA) have emphasized that there is no grace period for coins already in circulation.With the adoption of MiCA, which was concluded in June 2018, the EU will become the first significant region in the world with a full crypto regulatory framework, enabling exchanges and wallet providers to operate across the bloc with only a single license. The MiCA’s provisions on stablecoins, which are digital assets whose value is linked to other assets like fiat money or gold, will go into effect in June 2024, but the EBA and its sister organization, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), are currently consulting on the specifics. “We are heading to a delisting of all stablecoins in Europe on June 30,” given that no project has yet been

Read More
Crypto

Marieke Flament Resigns as CEO of NEAR Foundation

After two years in charge of the NEAR Foundation, which oversees the NEAR protocol, CEO Marieke Flament has resigned.According to a blog post published on Thursday, Chris Donovan, the foundation’s chief counsel, will take her place.Up to the end of the year, Flament will continue to serve as Donovan’s strategic adviser.Flament will continue to serve on the council board for the charity. “When I joined two years ago, NEAR had around 50,000 users, and now we have over 2.5 million daily active users,” Flament

Read More
Crypto

According to a report, Stanford University would return ‘Gifts’ given by FTX.

According to a Bloomberg article, Sam Bankman-Fried’s parents allegedly coordinated the “gifts” that Stanford University received from FTX, purportedly amounting to millions of dollars. Stanford University will be returning these apparently expensive “gifts,” the report states.Barbara Fried and Joseph Bankman are Stanford Law School professors.The FTX Group filed a lawsuit against Bankman and Fried on Monday for allegedly stealing millions, including $5.5 million in donations intended for Stanford University. “We have been in discussions with attorneys for the FTX debtors to recover these gifts and we will be returning the funds

Read More
Crypto

‘WAGMI’ Tokens from Avalanche Developer, a company known for minting millionaires and duds, are back

Daniele Sestagalli, the notorious inventor of Avalanche, has returned with a project whose name seems to inspire hopes among cryptocurrency traders about riches in an essentially flat market.An apparent rebranding of Sestagalli’s Popsicle Finance is the new product, which goes by the initials WAGMI, which stands for “we are gonna make it,” or another expression that indicates to prosper financially.Sestagalli’s most recent effort is focused on Popsicle’s ICE tokens.Starting on Wednesday, owners of ICE tokens can use a blockchain-based platform to exchange their tokens for WAGMI.Sestagalli stated that WAGMI currently has a $2 million market valuation while ICE tokens have increased by 70% over the last 24 hours. In July, it was revealed that WAGMI will be restarted as a platform that would operate across different blockchains and provide users with a range of decentralized financial (DeFi) tools and services.As of Wednesday, the details of the project were not disclosed in any technical documents that were open to the public. “I’m pretty confident to say that the token economics and the $WAGMI project is my best project ever,” Sestagalli said in

Read More
Defi

DeFi Protocol Balancer Reports “Attack” on Web Front End

At the moment, tweets from Balancer and a warning from the Metamask wallet indicate that the Balancer URL, or web address, has been the target of a redirect attack and users are being sent to a malicious page rather than the legitimate site.Over $200 000 in digital assets may have been stolen, according to a wallet address found by online sleuth ZachXBT.The wallet currently has little over $100,000 in assets, with stETH and DAI making up the majority, according to data from Nansen.ai. According to on-chain statistics, the user who created the wallet has been sending some of the stolen money to Ave.All of this occurred approximately a month after Balancer alerted the public to a separate vulnerability in the protocol’s pooling system and recommended users to withdraw their funds.

Read More
Crypto

Cobra Can’t Defend Against $700K Craig Wright Legal Fees as an Anonymous, UK Judge Rules Once More

On Monday, a London High Court judge upheld an earlier decision stating that Bitcoin.org website owners, including the fictitious Cobra, must reveal their identities to avoid being charged expensive legal fees by self-declared Bitcoin inventor Craig Wright.In April 2021, Wright served Cobra with legal documents pertaining to the copyright of the whitepaper for Bitcoin, the popular cryptocurrency.The owners of the website for the Bitcoin.org payment network were accused of violating the author’s rights by posting the white paper, according to the Australian computer scientist who has long claimed to be its pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto.Wright asserted that he owned the copyright to the Bitcoin manifesto in his capacity as Satoshi. A judge commanded the removal of the white paper from the internet when Cobra failed to appear in court.Then, in November, a London High Court Judge decided that Cobra had to provide their identity in order to contest Wright’s request for 568,516.42 pounds ($704,500) in legal expenses. Justice Richard Smith of the London High Court dismissed Cobra’s appeal of the November ruling on Monday, stating that while there are a number of legitimate justifications for parties seeking anonymity, such as a threat to their lives, Cobra’s justifications appeared “not only unworkable but also risked undermining the very principles of natural justice” because they sought to remain anonymous “not only against the public at large, but against the Claimant [Wright] a party.” The struggle of Cobra to maintain anonymity may be understood by the fact that significant community members, developers, or influencers sometimes go by pseudonyms in the cryptosphere.While this is going on, Wright is suing people all over the world for the Bitcoin whitepaper and even for libel for claiming to be Satoshi.Wright’s attorneys reported on Monday that they are awaiting a decision regarding the following steps, including whether Cobra is now compelled to make full payment.Cobra’s legal counsel did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Read More
Article

How blockchain technology is being used for social good, such as in humanitarian aid and philanthropy.

The use of blockchain technology has the ability to completely change how we interact with one another and our surroundings. One of the

Read More
Crypto

Hong Kong Leader: JPEX Drama Illustrates Need for Crypto Regime

According to the territory’s governor, John Lee, the freezing of cash on the Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange JPEX demonstrates the need for stringent crypto licensing regulations.Six persons, including two social media influencers, were detained by Hong Kong police after more than a thousand complaints totaling $128 million were made regarding the trade, the South China Morning Post said on Monday. “This incident highlights the importance that when investors want to invest in virtual assets, then they must invest on platforms that are

Read More
Crypto

The ‘Bitcoin Adoption Fund’ is launched by Nomura’s Laser Digital for institutional investors.

A new fund offering institutional investors exposure to bitcoin (BTC) has been launched by Laser Digital, a division of Japanese financial services major Nomura that specializes in digital assets.According to a Tuesday release by Laser Digital, the Bitcoin Adoption Fund will offer long-only exposure and will be the first of a variety of similar digital asset investment products. “Technology is a key driver of global economic growth and is transforming a large part of the economy from analogue to digital,”

Read More
Crypto

Blockchain Capital, a crypto VC firm, raises $580 million for two new funds.

A cryptocurrency-focused investment business called Blockchain Capital has withstood the market’s slump to raise $580 million for two new funds. The funding is

Read More
Crypto

Co-Founder of Tether Assesses PayPal’s Stablecoin Goals

One of Tether’s co-founders, William Quigley, claimed that while privately produced stablecoins are “beneficial to society in every respect,” the recent launch of PayPal’s PYUSD token is unlikely to result in significant innovation. “I don’t think much innovation will come from PayPal,” Quigley said in an interview. “I think PayPal will see this principally as

Read More
Crypto

Malta seeks to amend its cryptocurrency regulations in preparation for MiCA

Beginning on Monday, the Financial Services Authority of Malta (MFSA) will conduct a public consultation over adjustments to its regulations for cryptocurrency businesses.To conform to the Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation (MiCA) of the European Union, the regulator is revising the requirements for exchanges, custodians, and portfolio managers. The agency also wants to mandate that cryptocurrency providers have “an orderly wind-down plan.”Service providers will be able to conduct business throughout the bloc with a single license thanks to MiCA, which goes into force in 2024 and is the first complete crypto law in a significant jurisdiction.Malta, a member of the EU, aims to harmonize its cryptocurrency regulations with MiCA and “ensure a smooth transition for Virtual Financial Assets (‘VFA’) Service Providers” in the nation, according to the regulator. With a somewhat advanced legal system that anticipates EU standards, Malta ranks with nations like France and is home to cryptocurrency companies like Crypto.com and OKCoin.The feedback period is open until September 29.

Read More
Blockchain

Base Network surpasses 2 million transactions per day, but is still behind Polygon and BSC

Layer-2 network for Coinbase Data from blockchain explorer BaseScan shows that Base has broken its previous record for daily transactions since its introduction

Read More
Crypto

Following a cyberattack, FTX increases the security measures for its claims portal.

After being shut down owing to a cyberattack, the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX has now restarted its customer claims portal with tighter security

Read More