Cryptocurrency

In a July 14 blog post, Coinbase said users in California, New Jersey, South Carolina and Wisconsin would be restricted from using certain staking services until further notice. Following the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing a lawsuit against the crypto exchange in June for offering unregistered securities, regulatory bodies in 10 U.S. states started their own legal proceedings, prompting the suspension of certain services.Continue Reading on Coin Telegraph More

The SEC has begun acknowledging these spot bitcoin ETF applications. ETF Research Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence James Seyffart first noticed the move and took it to Twitter.The acknowledgment of applications included those from BlackRock (NYSE:BLK), Fidelity, WisdomTree Funds, Invesco US, and VanEck. The list is published on the Nasdaq Stock Market LLC (NASDAQ) rulemaking page.In addition, Galaxy Digital, ARK Investment, and BitWise applications have also received nods of acknowledgment from the SEC. However, this step in the application process, while integral, doesn’t necessarily predict approval or rejection.Despite the flurry of activity, the SEC has not yet given the green light to create a spot bitcoin ETF, causing concerns about the potential fate of these applications.Nevertheless, many applicants remain optimistic, bolstered by the inclusion of surveillance-sharing agreements aimed at combating market manipulation, a focal point for the SEC. These agreements, they hope, might sway the SEC towards approval, despite its previous reluctance.In this context, the recent acknowledgments by the SEC signal that the decision-making process has officially started. All eyes are on how the agency responds to these applications, especially since this could pave the way for approving the first-ever spot bitcoin ETF in the United States.Bitcoin ETFs have had a significant and intriguing journey in the United States. The concept of a bitcoin ETF first emerged in 2013 when the Winklevoss twins, founders of the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange, applied with the SEC to launch a bitcoin ETF called the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust. However, their initial proposal faced rejection in 2017 and regulatory hurdles due to concerns over market manipulation, liquidity, and custody of the underlying assets.The first significant breakthrough came in 2021 when Canada approved the launch of the Purpose Bitcoin ETF, becoming the first country to have such an asset. This move sparked renewed interest and raised expectations among investors and industry participants in the United States. It also pressured the SEC to reconsider its stance on bitcoin ETFs. Since then, several asset management firms, including VanEck, Fidelity, and Bitwise, have submitted bitcoin ETF applications to the SEC, hoping for approval.This article was originally published on Crypto.news More

The SEC’s attack on crypto has used a flexible legal definition of what constitutes a security that must register with the SEC under a legal test established by the Supreme Court in the 1946 case SEC v. Howey. Through most of its history, the SEC used this tool to go after outright frauds and scams with little economic reality behind them. You can understand why judges tended to give the SEC the benefit of the doubt and made the test increasingly flexible over a series of historical scam cases. Using this flexible test to attach legitimate crypto projects is different and, ultimately, leaves crypto projects with no way to register.Continue Reading on Coin Telegraph More

POL will serve as an instrument of coordination and growth of the Polygon 2.0 ecosystem and the main driver of the project’s vision to become the value layer of the Internet.Having recently announced the gradual rollout of its network upgrade dubbed Polygon 2.0, the Sandeep Nailwal-led Ethereum layer-2 scaling network is now set to replace its native MATIC token with POL as part of its transition process.According to a whitepaper released by the team, POL will be at the heart of Polygon 2.0, functioning as the driver of growth and coordination. The team says the creation of POL was inspired by its vision to become a “Value Layer of the Internet,” where value can be created and exchanged seamlessly across the globe the same way information is exchanged today.As the driver of coordination and growth of Polygon 2.0, POL will offer multi-fold utility, including validator staking, where members of the Polygon community will be required to stake POL to join the validator pool. Just like other proof-of-stake (PoS)-based cryptocurrencies, validator staking strengthens the security of the network and safeguards it against Sybil attacks.POL will also offer holders governance rights in the Polygon 2.0 ecosystem, enabling them to participate in the key decision-making processes of the project, amongst other benefits. Moreover, POL will come with an initial supply of 10 billion, just like MATIC.However, the team has made it clear that 2% of the entire POL supply will be set aside annually for validator rewards (1%) and community treasury (1%). MATIC holders will be able to upgrade their tokens to POL via official links to be provided by the Polygon team.This article was originally published on Crypto.news More

The unavailability of accurate valuation for Multichain assets due to the Chainlink oracles tracking real USDC, USDT, WBTC, or ETH values, has further contributed to this outcome.Geist, a lending protocol operating on the Fantom (FTM) network, had over $29 million worth of cryptocurrency assets locked in its contracts before the Multichain hack. The platform allowed users to utilize bridged tokens from Multichain, such as USD coin (USDC), tether (USDT), bitcoin (BTC), and ethereum (ETH), as collateral for borrowing and lending, with Chainlink oracles used to track their prices for valuation.However, the recent post from Geist revealed that the Chainlink oracles no longer provide reliable information. Instead of reflecting the values of the Multichain derivatives, the oracles list the prices of each coin’s non-bridged, or “real,” versions, which are over four times higher than the Multichain assets’ value.This discrepancy arises because the Chainlink oracles are unaware of the actual worth of the Multichain assets, as they are currently trading at approximately 22% of their real value.In an update on July 14, the Multichain team confirmed that the recent withdrawals, which occurred on July 7, were the result of a hack. It was revealed that all the shards of the network’s private keys had been stored in a “cloud server account” under the exclusive control of the team’s CEO, who had been arrested by Chinese authorities.Unauthorized access to this cloud server account allowed an individual to drain funds from the protocol. It is important to note that the protocol’s documents had previously stated that no single server had access to all the shards of a key.Additionally, the post stated that the fee-based attack on July 11 was a counter-exploit initiated by the CEO’s sister, acting upon the Multichain team’s instructions to recover the funds. However, the sister was also arrested, and the status of the assets she managed to retrieve remains uncertain.Arcadia Finance, a decentralized finance (defi) protocol, suffered a substantial loss of around $455,000 due to a code exploit. The breach was initially identified and disclosed by PeckShield, a blockchain security firm, which traced the incident back to a coding error related to untrusted input validation.This article was originally published on Crypto.news More

This week, Finance Redefined looks at the growing popularity of zero-knowledge proof-based scalable solutions. Zero-knowledge rollups (ZK-rollups) technology has gained a lot of traction over the past year thanks to its increased use in the Ethereum ecosystem. Continue Reading on Coin Telegraph More

There are three reasons to support Cardano’s bullish momentum, including its potential to integrate other blockchains, increased activity in decentralized applications (DApps) and the decreased regulatory risk, although the latest XRP event requires a more cautious approach.Continue Reading on Coin Telegraph More

In a July 13 letter to New York District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan, lawyers representing Bankman-Fried requested the judge allow “close friends” on a submitted list to visit him without needing to go through court-ordered security measures set out in his bail conditions.Continue Reading on Coin Telegraph More