Kraken-SEC Deal Ends Staking And More

This week, the Kraken crypto exchange has been in the news for bending its knees and closing its staking service to comply with the SEC’s demands. Furthermore, altcoins have also performed noticeably better this week. Let’s find out more. 

Bitcoin

A nervy market awaits the next move as Bitcoin wicked down to the strong $22,300 support on Wednesday but came back up to rest at $22,600. 

A decentralized social network, Damus, is introducing a BTC earning feature for its users for posting stuff on the decentralized web.

Ethereum

Input Output Global (IOG), the entity behind the Cardano blockchain, has announced the launch of a new sidechain proof of concept compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). 

Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, has announced it is going ahead with its plan to launch its DeFi platform on Ethereum. 

DeFi

DeFi protocol dForce suffered a loss of over $3.6 million, which the hacker was able to siphon off thanks to a reentrancy attack executed on the Arbitrum and Optimism chains. 

CoW (Coincidence of Wants) Protocol, the decentralized finance platform over which CoW Swap is built, has suffered from a multisig attack on its settlement smart contract.

The VC firm Andreessen Horowitz has recently voted against the proposal to deploy the latest Uniswap iteration on the Binance Chain using the Wormhole bridge. 

Altcoins

After a couple of days of the downside, with some investors a little uneasy about whether the rally will continue, altcoins have picked up again, with the vast majority of the space in the green. 

The team behind the Lido has revealed the proposal for Lido V2, which will be the protocol’s largest upgrade to date. 

Technology

Brave Software has announced it is partnering with the Solana platform, allowing users to access top dApps on Solana directly on the browser. 

The tech giant Dell Technologies Inc. will be joining the governing council of the distributed ledger company Hedera Hashgraph LLC. 

Business

At the LEAP Conference in Riyadh, it was announced that the government of Saudi Arabia had signed an MOU with The Sandbox for their mutual benefit.

Gemini Earn users heaved a collective sigh of relief as Gemini, Genesis Global Capital (Genesis), and Digital Currency Group reached an agreement over the Earn Program. 

On 8 key data points examined by the crypto tax platform Recap, London is highlighted as the most crypto-ready city in the world.

Generally beleaguered throughout 2022, Tether has improved its financial situation drastically and topped it all with a $700 million Q4 net profit.

Cryptocurrency protection and insurance project Coincover has just announced a raise of $30 million in a round led by Foundation Capital.

Binance declares that the big auditors still have a lot to learn about the crypto industry and so a full audit probably won’t take place soon.

The digital bank Revolut has launched a crypto staking feature for its users based in the United Kingdom (UK) and the European Economic Area (EEA). 

Binance has announced a minor, temporary suspension for USD transfers on its exchange platform from February 8th.

Regulation

Commissioner Peirce published a statement on Thursday explaining her opposition to the SEC’s shutting down of Kraken’s staking program.

Crypto exchange Kraken and the SEC have reached a settlement under which Kraken will pay a $30 million fine and shutter its staking business. 

Lawmakers in the American state of Mississippi have enacted a law that legalizes cryptocurrency mining and protects the rights of cryptocurrency miners. 

The crypto company and stablecoin issuer Paxos is under investigation by a New York-based regulatory body. 

Dubai’s Virtual Assets and Regulatory Authority (VARA) has released a new set of regulations for any crypto-linked firm attempting to set up a business in its jurisdiction.

Since announcing that the UK wants to become the go-to hub for crypto worldwide, Sunak’s government has moved extremely slowly in this direction.

NFT

The file-sharing service WeTransfer has partnered with the blockchain platform Minima to launch NFTs on the network. 

Aptos Labs is expanding into the Web3 space by investing in TikTok’s competitor short video app, Chingari. 

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.