A securities broker license has been granted to Gibraltar-based digital asset bank Xapo, enabling it to offer customers in Europe the option of trading S&P 500 companies like Apple in addition to its cryptocurrency wealth management services.According to Xapo CEO Seamus Rocca, the company’s recently granted Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) license adds another tenet to its vision, which is much more focused on straightforward, long-term investing than the kind of speculative trading strategies that cryptocurrency is known for. “Our target customer is not your stereotypical 25-year-old Gen Z, who wants to trade crypto,” Rocca said. “It’s a slightly older demographic who bought bitcoin a few years ago to hold and to be like a pension pot, or perhaps to buy a property when the price is right. They want a diversified portfolio

The local financial authority warned on Tuesday that Binance’s U.K. partner was not permitted to approve cryptocurrency adverts, possibly undermining the exchange’s efforts to adhere to the new marketing regulations. Just before new crypto promotion regulations went into effect over the weekend, Binance announced last week that it was collaborating with Rebuildingsociety.com. The system mandates

In April 2023, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe unveiled its new scheme, which called for each digital token to be backed by a specific quantity of actual gold that was stored in the bank’s reserves. The gold-backed digital token known as Zimbabwe Gold (ZiG) began accepting payments in full on October 5. The Reserve Bank

According to a press release from the Israeli police, cryptocurrency accounts related to the Palestinian militant organisation Hamas have been frozen, local media source Calcalist said on Tuesday. Hamas’s weekend multifaceted assault on Israel has devolved into all-out war, and Israel’s defence minister has ordered a total siege of the Palestinian territory of Gaza. The

Decentralized exchange (DEX) Trader Joe is being sued by American retail company Trader Joe’s on federal trademark violation grounds. “Defendants operate a cryptocurrency platform called ‘Trader Joe’ and use the domain name traderjoexyz.com,” a court filing read. “Defendants named the platform ‘after the supermarket’ — none other than Trader Joe’s — and developed a narrative around a fictionalized ‘Trader Joe’ who sells his crops in the local marketplace, further evoking Trader Joe’s business

During the market crash on Monday, traders of cryptocurrencies lost over $100 million as a result of liquidations as the price of digital assets fell along with the Middle East conflict’s rising.According to CoinGlass data, traders who had long positions—bet that prices would rise—had lost over $105 million as of the American afternoon.This was the day with the most extended liquidations since September 11. The liquidations took place when cryptocurrency values fell as a result of the conflict between Israel and Hamas and the escalating unrest in the region, which weighed on risky assets and jarred investors.Bitcoin (BTC), the biggest digital asset, fell by more than 2% before rising back to $27,600.Ether (ETH) dropped by roughly 5% at one point, and large-cap cryptocurrencies solana (SOL), Polygon’s native token (MATIC), and Polkadot’s (DOT) saw losses of 6% to 7%. Later, they made some progress. Liquidations happen when an exchange terminates a leveraged trading position as a result of the trader losing all or part of their initial investment, or “margin,” either because they didn’t meet the margin requirements or didn’t have enough money to keep the position open.The majority of the losses were suffered by ETH derivatives traders as declining prices prompted $32.78 million of long positions to be liquidated over the course of the preceding day, according to CoinGlass. A $4.5 million ETH-BUSD long order on the cryptocurrency exchange Binance was the highest single liquidation order. BTC long bets worth about $18.25 million were liquidated, then bitcoin cash (BCH) and Bancor’s (BNT) token, each liquidated for more than $3 million.

Nearly 160,000 hacking attempts were made against Upbit, the largest exchange by trading volume in South Korea, in the first half of this year, according to parent company Dunamu’s regulatory filing, which was picked up by the local news source YNA.On the ninth, Dunamu delivered its findings to Rep. Park Seong-jung (People Power Party) of the National Assembly’s Science, Technology, Information, Broadcasting and Communications Committee. That equals around 879 on a daily basis.Although Dunamu did not provide specifics in the lawsuit, hackers may have used a variety of widely used techniques for the attacks, such as email phishing or DDoS. DDoS, or distributed denial-of-service, is a type of cybercrime where an attacker overwhelms a server with traffic to keep people from accessing linked websites and online services.According to Dunamu, there were 2.17 times as many “infringement attempts” in the first half of 2016—a period that witnessed just over 73,200 cases—as there were in the second half.In spite of being relatively unknown outside of its native market, UPbit transacts billions of dollars on trading pairs in Korean won and tokens and is renowned for inspiring ferocious rallies on listed tokens. As a U.S. court determined that the selling of XRP on exchanges did not constitute investment contracts earlier this year, the exchange processed about $2.5 billion in XRP trading volumes over a 24-hour period.The tokens were priced up to 10% more than the current international XRP marketplaces.

In a Monday legislative session, Italian central banker Piero Cipollone supported the idea of a digital euro as he sought approval to succeed Fabio Panetta as head of the European Central Bank (ECB)’s (CBDC).When Panetta leaves the central bank’s executive board in November, Cipollone, who has served as the deputy governor of the Bank of Italy since 2020, is the only contender.The comments Cipollone made on Monday suggest he won’t veer far from the current ECB digital currency policies. He assured members of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee of the European Parliament that a digital euro would “reinforce the ability to pay with public money throughout Europe with a technology and infrastructure that is based in Europe,” promising offline functionality, accessibility, and “excellent solutions” to safeguard privacy. Cipollone’s eight-year term has already been accepted by the ECB and the eurozone’s finance ministers, making his appointment to the post all but guaranteed. In a non-binding vote taken soon after the debate, lawmakers supported his candidacy 30-3.Despite strong skepticism from lawmakers over the advantages of the idea for regular consumers, Panetta has previously denounced private cryptocurrency as a greed-driven Ponzi scheme and spearheaded ECB work on a digital euro. In response to a previous written questioning from MPs, Cipollone claimed that blockchain developments carry “significant risks,” but that these risks may be mitigated by taking steps such as placing holding limitations on citizens. A group of cross-party EU legislators recently asked the ECB to hold off on making any decisions about a retail CBDC until they can come to an agreement on legislative restrictions in contentious areas like privacy. 

Crypto companies like Binance, OKX, and MoonPay have declared they have been striving to conform to the new financial promotion restrictions in the UK. Major cryptocurrency exchanges operating globally, including Binance and OKX, have declared that they are striving to comply with new financial marketing laws in the UK. To ensure fair, honest, and transparent

Deribit, the most active and actively traded crypto options exchange in the world, will soon provide options linked to the well-known alternative cryptocurrencies XRP, SOL, and MATIC. Shortly before press time, the exchange announced its expansion plans on X, noting that it is also applying for a brokerage licence in the European Union (EU). Options

The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority has accepted Komainu’s registration as a joint venture between Nomura, Ledger, and CoinShares for crypto custody. The company joined the FCA registry on Friday, shortly before the weekend-starting implementation of the regulator’s new promotion restrictions. To be able to approve their own adverts and provide consumers with the necessary risk

VAX tokens valued at almost $3 million were stolen from Stars Arena, and the hacker allegedly sent the money to the Fixed Float cryptocurrency exchange. Recently, the Avalanche-based Web3 social media application Stars Arena declared that it had raised enough money to fill the $3 million hole caused by an exploit. The team also said

After losing 5,000 ETH in late September, HTX worked quickly to recover the money from the hacker. After resolving the issue, Huobi Global’s cryptocurrency exchange HTX announced a 250 Ether bounty and confirmed the restitution of the assets that had been stolen by a hacker in late September. On September 25, 5,000 ETH from one

He advised against considering such sympathisers for interviews on prestigious television programmes like CBS’s 60 Minutes. During his continuing trials connected to the failure of their cryptocurrency enterprise, lawyer and crypto advocate Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried’s followers have come under fire from John Deaton. Deaton claimed in a post on X (previously Twitter) that those who

Blackbird Labs revealed that it has raised $24 million in a number of funding rounds for its loyalty program and app that aims to link eateries and their customers through its cryptocurrency-powered app.a financing round that was spearheaded by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), a venture capital firm.Customers tap their phone on an NFC reader to generate a non-fungible token (NFT) membership through Blackbird, which is built on Coinbase’s Layer-2 Base blockchain. NFC readers are the devices that connect smartphones to payment scanners.Users “tap in” to the eatery, at which point the NFT is created. According to a press release, Blackbird memberships grant access to awards and insider benefits like SMS concierge and off-menu items.The fact that Ben Leventhal, a co-founder of the dining network Resy, serves as the project’s CEO has contributed to its mainstream success; the New York Times carried an article about Blackbird this week without using the word “crypto” once. “Blackbird will be the first decentralized platform built especially for the hospitality industry,” the paper reads. “Unlike legacy rewards marketplaces which maroon and lock earned points, the Blackbird protocol will eventually allow users to take the points they earn anywhere they go on public blockchains.” Due to a partnership between Blackbird and Privy, customers no longer need to have a cryptocurrency wallet before signing up; instead, they simply need to sign in with their phone number, which gives them immediate access to a self-custodial wallet.In New York City, Blackbird has signed up over 80 businesses since its inception a few months ago. “Web3 enables a powerful, new way for

A well-known member of the cryptocurrency community named Crypto Eri contacted Elon Musk on X to get more information on the account suspension. Elon Musk, the executive chair and CTO of X (previously Twitter), has come under fire for the suspension of an account with an XRP connection. A well-known member of the cryptocurrency world

Newcomer avalanche Attackers took advantage of a smart contract that helps protect tokens on the social platform, Stars Arena, to drain it of nearly all locked cash earlier today. Avalanche’s AVAX tokens, which were valued almost $3 million, were depleted, leaving Stars Arena with just under $1 following the attacker. On Saturday morning in the

The THORSwap exchange announced on Friday that it would enter “maintenance” mode following a string of funds with nefarious connections passing through the platform over the previous few days.In an interview, a THORSwap developer stated that the group “stands firmly against any and all criminal actions.” “Yesterday, following a careful evaluation of the situation and consultation with advisors, legal counsel, and law enforcement, the decision was made to temporarily transition the THORSwap interface into maintenance mode,” THORSwap developers said in a tweet. “This action was taken to swiftly curtail any further potential illicit activity. THORSwap will remain in this mode

In reaction to new regulations in the U.K., cryptocurrency platform Nexo plans to phase out some of the products it provides to customers there, a company representative said in an intee on Friday.The phase-out of cashback payments for Nexo Exchange and Nexo Card transactions, as well as referral and affiliate programs, will begin on October 8. Nexo is taking these steps to be in compliance with the upcoming cryptocurrency promotions rules from the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority, which call for businesses to be registered in order to approve their own ads and make system changes, such as giving first-time buyers at least 24 hours to re-confirm whether they want to receive invitations to invest. “Nexo is committed to our U.K. community, and we regard our compliance responsibilities with the highest priority, reflecting our aim of nurturing a robust crypto ecosystem,” a company spokesperson said. “Additionally, our enhanced interface epitomizes our dedication to a consistent user experience in the evolving financial advertising context.” The FCA regulations must also go into force by October 8; however, businesses may request a three-month delay.Businesses have been preparing, and recently companies like PayPal and Bybit announced they would stop providing certain crypto services to U.K. clients in anticipation of the new regulations, while Luno has stopped some of its U.K. clients from investing in cryptocurrency.

Backed Finance, a Swiss-based tokenization company, announced in a press release on Friday that the Base blockchain of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase now supports its tokenized short-term U.S. Treasury offering.The Base network, which also houses the well-known social tokenization tool Friend.Tech, now has its first real-world asset token. BlackRock’s short-term U.S. Treasury exchange-traded fund (ETF), which provides investors with a 5.25% annual yield, is available on the blockchain as Backed’s bIB01 cryptocurrency token, which is issued in accordance with Swiss tokenized securities regulation.Qualified investors and licensed distributors who passed the company’s know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) checks may purchase the offering.The token cannot be purchased by individuals or organizations based in the United States. One of the trendiest topics in cryptocurrency this year is the tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs), a general term for tokenizing and putting on blockchains traditional financial instruments like government bonds, private equity, or credit.A research from the Boston Consulting Group predicts that by 2030, the market for tokenized assets might swell to $16 trillion.Due to their high yield and minimal risk, U.S. Treasury bonds are regarded as a gateway for tokenization initiatives by many investors in digital assets, fund managers, cryptocurrency companies, and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).According to rwa.xyz data, the market for tokenized treasuries has increased six-fold this year to $666 million, with asset management company Franklin Templeton being the dominant player. Base, according to Backed, provides a “low-cost, developer-friendly way to build on-chain,” and although its code is compatible with Ethereum, its transaction fees are “ten times cheaper.”

Following recent price increases, Bitcoin (BTC) may be at risk of a short-term reversal as the poor performance of ether (ETH) futures exchange-traded funds (ETF) put pressure on key cryptos. According to Alex Kuptsikevich, senior market analyst at FxPro, “Bitcoin continues to tend to sell on growth, failing to make a fresh attack on the

According to a Wall Street Journal investigation on Thursday, certain FTX personnel in the United States were aware of the exchange’s backdoor, which allowed Alameda Research to withdraw billions in customer assets.The workers alerted FTX’s director of engineering Nishad Singh to their discovery, but the issue was never resolved, according to the WSJ, which cited people familiar with the situation.The group was investigating whether the code for FTX’s primary exchange could be used in the United States while working for LedgerX, the crypto derivatives exchange that FTX acquired in 2021. Julie Schoening, the chief risk officer of LedgerX, brought up the issues with her employer Zach Dexter, who later spoke with Nishad Singh, one of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s closest assistants, about them.In August 2022, Schoening was let go amid claims that by calling attention to the issues, she had irked her superiors. “Following a thorough internal investigation, LedgerX has found no evidence that any of its employees were aware of any reported code enabling Alameda to take FTX customer assets, and firmly denies any contrary allegation,” Miami International Holdings, LedgerX’s new owners, said in a statement to the WSJ. The information is revealed at the beginning of Bankman-Fried’s wire fraud trial in New York.To all accusations, he has entered a not guilty plea.Singh, who entered a guilty plea, is anticipated to give a testimony against his former boss.Requests for comment were not immediately answered by FTX or LedgerX.

The rising popularity of cryptocurrencies, which international authorities partially attribute to financial crises, will require banks to declare their holdings of cryptocurrencies under new measures floated Thursday.According to the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, which establishes standards for traditional finance (TradFi) lenders, banks should release potentially prohibitive capital for their holdings of unbacked cryptocurrency like bitcoin (BTC) or ether (ETH). The industry standard-setter is now asking lenders to disclose their exposure in an effort to stop the spread of the crisis after a difficult year that witnessed the demise of digitally oriented lenders Signature and Silicon Valley Banks, as well as cryptocurrency exchange FTX. A consultation paper to be published soon will propose “a set of disclosure requirements related to banks’ crypto asset exposures,” complementing existing capital requirements for digital assets that were finalized in December, the Committee said in a statement. The Basel grouping, which consists of bank regulators from 28 countries across the world, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, has previously stated that it would examine crypto regulations and alter them as necessary, but it does not appear that it had previously raised the idea of separate disclosure rules.The Committee provided some insight into what it dubbed the “most significant system-wide banking stress” since the 2008 financial crisis, with cryptocurrency at the center of the debate, in a report released on Thursday. Along with the expansion of non-bank financial intermediation and quicker digital payment technologies that allow depositors to withdraw quickly, the sudden popularity of cryptocurrencies was also identified as one of three structural developments that were indirectly responsible for the March TradFi upheaval. Signature Bank, the New York financial institution that shuttered on March 12, “failed

According to blockchain intelligence company Messari, the third quarter’s fundraising suffered from the crypto winter and reached its lowest level in three years. According to Messari’s most recent State of Crypto Fundraising report, crypto businesses raised a total of little less than $2.1 billion across 297 deals in Q3, which is the lowest on both

Dutch cryptocurrency firms, including Bitvavo and Binance’s successor Coinmerce, have won a portion of their court battle against the $2.3 million in fines that Dutch regulators had levied. In two recent judgements, a Rotterdam court ruled that the Dutch central bank (DNB) exceeded its legal authority when it required businesses to register for anti-money laundering

In his biography of Sam Bankman-Fried titled “Going Infinite,” author Michael Lewis alleged that millions of dollars from the first tranche of cash acquired by Bankman-Fried almost went missing after trading firm Alameda Research launched in 2017. Several investors that belong to the “Effective Altruism” community, a group of people who seek out the most

According to the firm, the Monetary Authority of Singapore has granted Ripple’s Singapore branch a licence designating it as a major payments institution, allowing it to continue offering services for digital payment tokens in the quickly expanding region. This is Ripple’s second piece of positive news in the just eight hours. In a statement, Ripple

Sam Bankman-Fried’s guilt or innocence as a fraudster will be decided by a physician’s assistant, a librarian, a nurse, and nine other people.The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York’s 12-person jury that will decide the fate of the former FTX CEO was revealed by Judge Lewis Kaplan on Wednesday.On the second day of the trial, jury selection was finished early. Just under 50 people provided information to the court during voir dire, including their ages, professions, educational backgrounds, and other facts.A former prosecutor, a retired correctional officer, a flight attendant, and other Metro-North commuter rail employees were among the prospective jurors. Following the excesses that caused last year’s meltdown, some believe that Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial has indirectly evolved into a trial of the entire cryptocurrency sector. Bankman-Fried is only the most well-known and cunning in a long line of tourists that enter the market during bull runs and ruin it for everyone. To insiders, the centralized and opaque FTX exchange personified everything cryptocurrency was supposed to stand against. Opening remarks are anticipated to start shortly.

Amanda Fabiano, the head of mining at cryptocurrency financial services startup Galaxy Digital (GLXY), has quit the company to launch her own consultancy business. According to a release, Fabiano will launch a new consultancy company called Fabiano Consulting to aid bitcoin miners in expanding their operations. “I’ve discovered I really enjoy working with companies in their growth stages and love building,” she said in the statement. “I’m eager to utilize the knowledge and background I’ve gained and assist others in their growth endeavors.” As the company’s first clients, Fabiano stated she will cooperate with companies like Giga Energy and Compass Mining.By providing operational and capital markets products, she spent three years at Galaxy expanding the company’s mining division. She was once Fidelity Investments’ director of bitcoin mining. The purchase of the Helios mining facility from miner Argo Blockchain (ARBK) last year was one of the most important projects carried out under Fabiano. The agreement, which was worth around $100 million, saved the miner from going bankrupt and gave Galaxy access to a 180 megawatt-capable mining operation. The mining sector was severely impacted by the protracted crypto winter, which slashed miners’ income and resulted in high-profile bankruptcy. Miners need smart business plans now more than ever with the Bitcoin network’s hashrate close to an all-time high and the halving scheduled for next year, according to Fabiano. “As we witness a continuous rise in hash rate, it