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Crypto Giants Are In Trouble; String of Crypto Exploits and Hacks | Cointime Weekly Jan.22 – Jan.28

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Crypto Giants Are In Trouble

Celsius May Issue Bankruptcy Token to Pay Creditors

Celsius is planning to reinvent itself as a new, publicly traded “recovery corporation” in order to exit the bankruptcy process.

WazirX Says Binance Lied About Ownership

Binance told WazirX to publish a pre-written “clarificatory statement” retracting WazirX co-founder Nischal Shetty’s previous statements that Binance owned WazirX. Schetty refused to retract his prior statements that Binance had purchased the Indian exchange.

Coinbase Slammed With $3.6M Fine in Netherlands

Coinbase broke regulatory protocols by failing to complete the required registration status before offering services in the country.

Nifty Gateway Co-Founders Stepping Down

Duncan and Griffin Cock Foster, twin brothers and co-founders of Gemini-owned NFT platform Nifty Gateway, are stepping down from their positions and leaving Gemini amid troubles at the company.

String of Crypto Exploits and Hacks

Azuki Attacker Drains Over $750K in 30 Minutes

In less than 30 minutes, over $750,000 worth of USDC, 11 NFTs, and over 3.9 ETH were stolen through malicious links feigning as a “land mint” for the popular Azuki NFT project.

Robinhood Social Media Accounts Breached

Hacker took the Twitter account behind crypto and stock trading platform Robinhood to push users to buy scam token.

Moonbirds Creator Lost $1M in a Wallet Exploit

The founder of the NFT project Moonbirds, Kevin Rose, lost at least $1 million in a wallet exploit. The Block identified the hacker's address, which appears to have taken around 40 of Rose's NFTs.

Global regulations

El Salvador’s Volcano Token To Go Live This Year

El Salvador is closer to realizing its dream of creating the Bitcoin City. Bitfinex will issue the country’s long-awaited “volcano” tokens this year in 2023.

Russia Mulls Gold-backed Stablecoin

The Russian Federation is considering the creation of a stablecoin backed by gold that can be employed for cross-border settlements, including with Iran.

EU Vote for More Restrictive Capital Requirements on Banks

According to a draft law, banks would be required to hold a “risk-weighted exposure amount” of up to 1,250% of capital based on exposure to crypto.

Indonesia Could See Crypto Classed as Securities

A new Indonesian law could end up changing the country’s unique classification of crypto assets as commodities like gold or coal.

New York Introduces Crypto Payments Bill for Fines, Taxes

A new bill would allow state agencies to accept cryptocurrency as a form of payment for fines, civil penalties, taxes, fees, and other payments charged by the state.

Crypto weekly price action

Cryptocurrency Prices Heat Map in 7 Days, Source COIN360

Research and technology

An Incomplete Guide to Stealth Addresses

Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin released a blog post to provide a high-level overview of upcoming landmark development in Ethereum (ETH) privacy, i.e., "Stealth addresses."

Understanding Token Standards

This article covers the BEP-2 vs. BEP-20 vs. ERC-20 comparison. It defines what each standard is, the top tokens in each standard, and concludes by answering the question, which one should you use?

Developer’s Guide to Secure Ethereum Smart Contracts

We'll cover smart contract security best practices, fail-safe protections, and smart contract analysis tools for hardening smart contract security.

DappRadar X BGA Games Report – 2022 Overview

Despite the significant crypto market downturn of 2022, gaming remains a driving force for the dapp industry, accounting for almost 50% of on-chain activity tracked by DappRadar.

Fundraising and investment

Bitstop Founders Acquire Genesis Coin

Genesis Coin Inc, the first and largest Bitcoin ATM software platform worldwide announced today that they have been acquired by early Bitcoin ATM pioneers Andrew Barnard and Doug Carrillo. 

Crypto Infrastructure Firm Blockstream Raises $125M

Blockstream will use the proceeds from the new capital to expand its mining facilities to meet strong demand for large-scale hosting services。

OpenWeb Acquired Jeeng for $100M

OpenWeb, the community engagement platform serving over 1,000 leading publishers, has acquired the proprietary audience management platform Jeeng.

QuickNode Raises $60M Series B Round

QuickNode announced the closing of a $60 million Series B funding round led by 10T Holdings, LLC and with participation from Tiger Global, 776, Protocol Labs, and QED, among others.

Mega Matrix Corp. Raises $10 Million

In the past 3 months, the company raised over $10 million in total to develop its new business model in digital assets staking.

Viral Quotes

“You've got people that are engaging in overt pump-and-dump scams and getting away with it because the SEC is asleep at the wheel. Some seem to get a free pass, and others seem to get their business models killed.”

—  Rep. Warren Davidson

“Still, I don’t think it is time to get too excited yet. We are only in the first month of the year and we know that corrections will come and that the biggest rallies often come in bear markets”

—  Scott Melker, suggesting crypto asset could still plunge lower

“ Digital currencies appear inevitable. We view distributed ledgers and digital currencies, such as CBDCs and stablecoins, as a natural evolution of today’s monetary and payment systems.”

—  Bank of America global research team

“The digital euro would never be programmable money. Central banks issue money, not vouchers.”

—  Fabio Panetta, executive board member of European Central Bank

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  • Ethereum Researchers Propose Reducing Final Transaction Confirmation Time from 16 Minutes to Approximately 4 Minutes

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  • Visa Negotiates Acquisition of Fireblocks Valued at Approximately $2.5 Billion

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