Mashinky’s Arrests, Coinbase’s Messages, Google Play’s NFTs, ETF Optimisms and 20 Crypto Jokes

15 July 2023

in Meta News

Reading Time: 8 mins read

This week in crypto: Litecoin’s strong performance before its ‘halving’ fueled optimism for a bitcoin rally, Bitcoin miners started preparing for its token rewards reduction, and Polygon proposed to revise its MATIC token to POL as a part of Polygon’s roadmap 2.0. Then, Celsius’ Alex Mashinsky was charged with fraud by the US DoJ and sued by three regulatory agencies over the company’s collapse, the judge said Ripple’s sales of XRP were not an investment contract, FTX lawyers were seeking the recovery of $323.5 million from the leadership of FTX Europe, a former FTX executive and his former congressional candidate girlfriend were under investigation for potential violations of campaign-finance law, Paradigm challenged the US SEC’s authority to regulate secondary markets for crypto, and Dubai virtual assets regulator imposed enforcement action against BitOasis.

Coinbase’s self-custody wallet will soon function as a simultaneous encrypted messaging service, and Google Play announced policy changes to allow the integration of digital assets such as NFTs into its platform. Speaking of which, Andy Murray partnered with Wimbledon and Refik Anadol to launch an NFT on Ethereum, and the Stepn creator planned to give away $431,400 in crypto in an NFT contest for a new video game. Meanwhile, Temasek dropped its plans to invest in crypto exchanges due to regulatory uncertainties, and Hive Blockchain shifted its focus to AI and rebranded as Hive Digital Technologies.

Europe’s first spot BTC ETF is set for its debut in 2023, Grayscale’s CEO Michael Sonnenshein was optimistic about the future of spot bitcoin ETFs, CF Benchmarks Sui Chung also said he was ‘very optimistic’ about the US SEC approving a spot BTC ETF, and former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton discussed the conditions for a bitcoin ETF approval. South Korea will require firms to disclose crypto holdings starting in 2024, the FCA and four other law enforcement agencies “disrupted” another 26 ATMs in the UK, and the US government moved $300 million worth of Silk Road bitcoin, while police in Brazil planned to auction off assets seized from a suspected crypto-themed financial pyramid operator.

In Russia, the parliament passed a vital ‘digital ruble” legislation, the central bank could begin ‘real-world’ tests on the digital ruble next month, and the tax body said that citizens ‘can pay’ taxes on their crypto earnings despite tokens having no legal status. The Chinese central bank unveiled an offline SIM card-based digital yuan ‘hard’ wallet solution, Blocktrade CEO Christian Niedermüller said that the EU ‘understands the benefits of having one crypto market’, Brighty CTO Nikolay Denisenko spoke of the major challenges crypto companies face when moving into neobanking, the EU financial regulators urged stablecoin issuers to adopt the MiCA guidelines, the Reserve Bank of India’s Deputy Governor warned that stablecoins pose an existential threat to policy sovereignty, and the BIS pointed to ‘inherent structural flaws’ in crypto as the reason why it will never become money but said that 15 retail CBDCs would be launched by 2030.

Even though Chainalysis found a significant decline in crypto scams in 2023, this week Coinbase users reported a series of phishing attacks that used the exchange’s domain name, DeFi platform Arcadia Finance fell victim to a $455,000 hack on the Ethereum and Optimism vaults, Arbitrum Network-based Rodeo Finance lost ETH 472 in a DeFi exploit, Gutter Cat Gang Twitter account got compromised in a phishing attack that saw NFTs worth $750,000 stolen, the DOJ charged a 25-year-old with stealing $450,000 in NFTs and crypto from OpenSea, and ZachXBT alleged YouTuber known as Blue/Jack used NFT drainer tech Monkey to steal $1.5 million. Meanwhile, rapper Seo Chul-Goo (aka Xitsuh) said he ‘lost’ up to $77,000 on bad crypto investments.

Jokes time!

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GM, CT!

Lookin’ gooood!