“reHash” — Your Weekly Summary of Everything Important in the Crypto World — issue no. 7
reHash issued for October 30th to November 5th
Another week in crypto overshadowed by the US elections. They seem to want to show the world how controversial the elections can be. What is probably unprecedented - Vitalik and CZ agree on that the cryptographic voting system would help greatly in maintaining professional and trustful elections(source). The election winner is not yet announced during writing this article. Other news (that some people will find hard to believe) include SEC allowing higher amounts of fund collected by startups without having to register and Ethereum 2.0 launch actually having a date. Not to mention that Bitcoin is swiftly approaching the all time highs. Hope you enjoy this week’s reHash!
NOTE:
reHash is not intended to be original journalism. It is intended to be brief summary of significant articles and events from the past week with links to the original sources. Sources will always be linked and credited. If you know any good newsletters or Twitter accounts which provide news we have been missing, please mention them in the comments!
ADOPTION
China’s Digital Yuan processed nearly $300 million worth of transactions; Yi Gang, governor of PBOC has confirmed that over 4 million transactions have been carried out, totalling more than 2 billion yuan, the trial has been carried out in four Chinese cities — Shenzhen, Suzhou, Xiong’an and Chengdu; reportedly Huawei Mate 40 smartphone will include a in-built wallet for the digital yuan
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5European Central Bank has released a survey regarding the digital Euro; as per Christine Lagarde tweet they are exploring and should be prepared to issue a digital euro; the project could have central bank intermediaries or it could work free of the banks — offline
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4Venezuelan plans to add Bitcoin and Litecoin pairs to its national remittances platform Patria; the pairs will be added for the state-issued petro (PTR)
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3Mongolia’s largest bank, TDB,will allegedly offer crypto-related services; incuding custody, remittance, deposits, loans and crypto-asset management
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4The buying limit on Paypal has been raised because of unusual demand; the limit was $10,000 and has been raised to $15,000; only 10% of PayPal users have access to the crypto services so far; “Digital wallets are a natural complement to all forms of digital currency,” says PayPal CEO Dan Schulman
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5Iran is the first country to use Bitcoin for international trade; crippled by sanctions imposed by the US government has turned to BTC to fund imports; only legally mined BTC will be used to fund imports according to the joint proposal by the Central Bank of Iran and the Iranian Ministry of Energy
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6The Swiss arm of Gazprombank (third largest bank in Russia) has opened crypto services to a small group of people; the services will include buying, selling, trading and custody for institutional customers
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5Verizon ‘Full Transparency’ launches blockchain verification for its news releases; since the solution is open source — other companies could use it as well; the ledger is meant to provide an authoritative record of changes to the company news releases
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
REGULATION
Xapo is shutting its services in Venezuela; they want to launch a ‘regulated digital banking platform’, it is assumed that it might be due to USA sanctions on Venezuela that they are
SOURCE: 1, 2Hong Kong lawmakers are planning to regulate all the cryptocurrency exchanges that operate within it; all platforms will need to apply for a license from Securities and Futures Commission (SFC); the previous opt-in legislation will be replaced with a new one; so far SFC has not issued a full license to any trading platform
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5SEC raised the limits on regulation crowdfunding from $1.07 million to $5 million; this should make it easier for crypto startups to raise funds; the limit means that entrepreneurs can raise much more without having to register the transaction with the SEC
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5Mark Scott, the lawyer who defended the OneCoin scammer known as the “Cryptoqueen” has been disbarred; he was convicted for money laundering and bank fraud last November; Cryptoqueen — Ruja Ignatova has disappeared in 2017 and is still at large; OneCoin has scammed more than $4 billion from the investors
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3Dutch police has seized approximately $33 million in Bitcoin from money launderers; prosecutors in Netherlands seized 2,532 bitcoins; man and his wife were sentenced to two years of prison for laundering close to $19 million during the last two years
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3Nearly $1 billion moved recently may be tied to the Silk Road darkweb market; U.S. Department of Justice is suing for the forfeiture of those 69,370 Bitcoins; Feds have likely seized the funds from an anonymous hacker
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4Centra Tech co-founder could face “substantial” prison time; Centra Tech scam that was promoted by DJ Khaled and Floyd Mayweather (both settled with SEC) has promised to deliver a crypto debit card and raised $25 million; no partnership with Visa or Mastercard was secured and the card was never released
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3Joint action of Brazilian and Amercian authorities led to seizing of $24 million in cryptocurrency; Marcos Antonio Fagundes as well as co-conspirators have received $200 million from investors by promising exaggerated returns
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4A leaked document ‘Tai Chi’ reveals Binance’s alleged scheme to evade Bitcoin regulators; CZ calls report ‘FUD’, and claims that the person who created the document was not an employee of Binance; the document itself is dated as of 2018;
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5Chinese court has confirmed nine years in prison sentence of four masterminds behind WoToken scam; the ponzi scheme stole approximately $1.1 billion from over 700,000 Chinese citizens
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4
DEVELOPMENT
- Ethereum 2.0 Phase 0 launch is planned for December 1; main requirement is 16,384 validators each staking 32 ETH at least a week before; if the number of validators is lower the launch will be postponed to a ‘7 days after required number of validators is reached; during phase 0 both Ethereum 1.0 and 2.0 will be working side by side
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
GENERAL UPDATES
Crypto startup ZenGo aims to provide customers with a non-custodial VISA crypto debit card; ZenGo has joined Visa’s Fintech Fast Track program; ZenGo currently operate a keyless multicurrency wallet that uses MPC;
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3Axion token has been exploited within 4 hours on the first day of relase; sudden minting of 79 billion AXN has crashed the token’s price by 99%; the code was audited by Hacken and Certik; as per Certik’s reply the malicious code was entered after the audit; it is likely that the expoilt was internal
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3Trading volume on decentralized exchanges down more than 26% in October; total transaction volume was $19.3 billion; accounting for the Harvest Finance hack makes the decline even higher (where some $5 billion was ‘wash traded’)— approx 45% down from September
SOURCE: 1, 2A rumor claiming that senior executive of Huobi has been arrested, Huobi is denying those allegations; ‘user assets are safe, and trading, deposits and withdrawals are operating as expected.’
SOURCE: [1](https://twitter.com/HuobiGlobal/status/1323308549573734400), 2, 3, 4Brave, a cryptocurrency browser powered by BAT has reached 20 million monthly users; it has seen a 130% increase in the last year up from 8.7 million; number of active daily users also rose from 3 million to 7 million
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3Telegram has dropped a lawsuit about Lantah LLC and forced to pay $620 thousand; lawsuit regarded the GRAM ticker for Telegram token; the project has been abandoned by Telegram in May 2020 after clash with SEC
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4Total Value Locked in DeFi sees first month to month decline in November; while it is not shocking after a rise from $1 billion in May to $12.4 billion in late October — the first signs of decline are there
SOURCE: 1, 2Harvest Finance, the victim of $34 million exploit has upped their bounty for ‘reaching out to exploitter’ to $1 million; no real plans have been announced as to the alternate ways to repay the users
SOURCE: 1, 2Number of addresses holding at least 1 BTC has reached 824,193; number of such wallets gradually rises
SOURCE: 1MicroStrategy now owns over $570 million worth of Bitcoin; company which bought 38,250 BTC for $425 million has earned over $150 million value so far in matter of weeks
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3
And that is all for this week, thank you for reading and hope you enjoyed!
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Wanchain is the infrastructure connecting the decentralized financial world. Wanchain’s live cross-blockchain solution is EVM-based, includes optional private transactions, and provides a decentralized, permissionless, and secure approach for interoperability. Wanchain has employees globally with teams in China, the USA, and other team members around the world in Asia, Africa, and Europe.
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