Binance Introduces ‘Pay’, Law Firm Announces Lawsuits Against Yuga Labs (and Kevin Hart, Justin Bieber, Serena Williams…)

Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.
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Exchange news

• Binance.US introduced a new feature called Pay, which allows users to send, request, and receive crypto with friends, family, and contacts on the exchange, said the announcement. It offers instant settlement for nearly 150 supported cryptocurrencies, while all Pay transactions feature zero gas and zero transaction fees, it added.

Legal news

• Rosen Law Firm announced a class action lawsuit against Yuga Labs, its founders Wylie Aronow and Greg Solano, and a number of other entities and individuals, including Paris Hilton, Kevin Hart, Justin Bieber, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Serena Williams – on behalf of “purchasers of Yuga securities, which were sold as various non-fungible tokens” (NFTs) and ApeCoin (APE) between April 23, 2021 and December 8, 2022. According to the lawsuit, the defendants made “false and misleading statements concerning Yuga’s growth prospects, financial ownership, and financial benefits for Yuga securities investors” and used “celebrity promoters to lure in unsuspecting investors so that Yuga insiders could sell the unregistered Yuga securities,” it said.
• Law Offices of Howard G. Smith announced that a class action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of investors who purchased Singularity Future Technology Ltd. f/k/a Sino-Global Shipping America Ltd. “securities between February 12, 2021 and November 17, 2022.” It claims that the company made materially false and/or misleading statements about a variety of issues, including its crypto mining deal, among other things.
• A US federal judge ruled that the Commodities Future Trading Commission (CFTC) should serve Ooki DAO with the lawsuit against the project, several news outlets reported today. More specifically, the CFTC has been ordered to serve Tom Bean and Kyle Kistner, the founders of the decentralized trading platform bZeroX, Ooki DAO’s predecessor.

Banking news

• Jewel Bank, a bank licensed by the Bermuda Monetary Authority to issue stablecoins, announced a collaboration with the Polygon (MATIC) blockchain. Jewel Bank will issue its fully-backed Jewel USD (JUSD) stablecoin on Polygon, “offering Jewel Bank’s full suite of banking services to the Polygon ecosystem of developers and institutions,” said a press release. Jewel USD stablecoin will maintain a reserve ratio with a minimum of 1:1 with the US dollar, it added.
• The Financial Stability Board (FSB) said that it is set to hold crypto firms “to the same standards as banks […] if they provide the same service that banks provide.” A spokesperson for the global financial services regulator told the Financial Times it would lay out a new set of international rules governing cryptoassets in early 2023, to then be implemented by local governments.

DeFi news

• Decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol and creator of the DAI stablecoin, MakerDAO, announced that it approved the reactivation of the DAI Savings Rate (DSR) to provide a 1% fixed yield to holders who deposit their DAI into the DSR smart contract, said an announcement. Following the approval of an Executive Vote by Maker Governance, the interest rate increase will be deployed and enacted on-chain on December 13, it added.
• Merlin, a DeFi portfolio tracker built by VALK, a FinTech-turned-DeFi service provider, announced that it was integrated into Ledger Live. Per a press release, users of Ledger Live can now access their DeFi performance analytics on Merlin directly from their hardware wallets. Soon, Merlin will allow investors to claim liquidity provider fees and rewards directly from its interface, it added.

Payments news

• Crypto payments ecosystem CoinsPaid partnered with Mirai Flights, a UK-based company that provides private charter services in Europe and the Middle East, enabling travelers to book their flights using cryptoassets. An announcement said that “since Mirai Flights integrated the seamless crypto payment solution CryptoProcessing by CoinsPaid, the company’s revenue increased by 30%.”

Music news

• Web3 entertainment company Hume announced that it hosted a songwriting camp in partnership with the generative audio project Blocktones at Art Basel Miami Beach. The camp brought together Web3 artists Reo Cragun and metastar Angelbaby, and it was led by platinum executive producer and Hume co-founder Stolar and two-time Grammy award-winning Blocktones co-founder Gino Borri.

Mining news

• Owner and operator of bitcoin (BTC) mining facilities TeraWulf announced that it has restructured its previously announced purchase agreement with mining hardware maker Bitmain, enabling the company “to significantly expand its self-mining capacity and fully utilize 160 MW of its available mining capacity expected in Q1 2023,” said the press release. It also announced that it raised new capital, ca. $10 million, to repay the convertible promissory note with Yorkville Advisors Global in full and expects to simultaneously issue a notice to Yorkville to terminate the accompanying standby equity purchase agreement (SEPA).

Career news

• NEAR Foundation, the non-profit foundation that supports ecosystem development of the NEAR Protocol, announced several new executive appointments: Mary Beth Buchanan has been hired as a Strategic Advisor, while Sheila Warren and Jason Warner have joined as participants of the NEAR Foundation Council. Buchanan is a former US Attorney, and she also held positions in Kraken, Bitstamp, and the Board of Directors of the Cardano Foundation. Warren currently serves as the inaugural CEO of the Crypto Council for Innovation, and Warner is the former CTO of GitHub and the current Managing Director at Redpoint Ventures.