cryptocurrencies
DeFi sparks new investments despite turbulent market: Finance Redefined
Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you significant developments over the last week. The prolonged crypto winter aided by the collapse of FTX has kept investors from backing a new protocol that merges DeFi and the foreign exchange market. A new Cosmos blockchain-based DeFi protocol has caught the eyes of investors who have put $10 million behind the project. Cardano-based leading stablecoin ecosystem Ardana abruptly stopped its development after several launch delays. However, the project remains open-source for others to add to it until they restart the development process. Aave community has now proposed a governance change after a failed $60 million short attack. The short attack was later trac...
Trouble in the Bahamas following FTX collapse: Report
Following the collapse of crypto exchange FTX, which was headquartered in the island country of Bahamas, Bahamians are reportedly still trying to find a way to make sense of everything, while remaining optimistic about the future. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, the island country — which had encouraged cryptocurrency companies to feel at home with their “copacetic regulatory touch” — has been rocked by the implosion of FTX. The Bahamas was hard hit by Hurricane Dorian in 2019 and the pandemic shortly afterward in 2020 and was already struggling to find ways to strengthen its economy, which relies heavily on tourism and offshore banking for a bulk of its gross domestic product. It appeared that the prime minister of the Bahamas, Philip Davis, and his gover...
How bad is the current state of crypto? On-chain analyst explains
Despite the market downturn and the widespread negative sentiment in the industry in the wake of the FTX collapse, on-chain data still show reasons to be bullish on Bitcoin (BTC). As pointed out by on-chain analyst Will Clemente, it’s enough to look at the positions of long-term holders, which reached an all-time high despite their profitability being at an all-time low. “Long-term holders buy heavily into the bear market. They set the floor, […] and then those long-term holders distribute their holdings to new market participants in the bull market,” he told Cointelegraph in an exclusive interview. Another positive trend worth noticing after the FTX collapse, in Clemente’s opinion, is that the average crypto user is increasingly turning away from exchanges and taking self-cust...
Uzbekistan issues first crypto licenses to two local ‘crypto stores’
As Uzbekistan prepares to adopt a new cryptocurrency framework in 2023, Uzbek regulators have started issuing regulatory approvals to local crypto service providers. The National Agency for Perspective Projects (NAPP), Uzbekistan’s major cryptocurrency market watchdog, has issued the nation’s first crypto licenses, according to an official announcement released on Nov. 17. The licenses officially authorize the offering of cryptocurrency-related services by two “cryptocurrency stores,” including Crypto Trade NET LLC and Crypto Market LLC. According to the information from the NAPP’s electronic license register, both Crypto Trade NET and Crypto Market are based in Tashkent. The data also refers to Kamolitdin Nuritdinov as Crypto Market’s single founder and shareholder. Behzod Achilov is...
Uzbekistan issues first crypto licenses to two local ‘crypto stores’
As Uzbekistan prepares to adopt a new cryptocurrency framework in 2023, Uzbek regulators have started issuing regulatory approvals to local crypto service providers. The National Agency for Perspective Projects (NAPP), Uzbekistan’s major cryptocurrency market watchdog, has issued the nation’s first crypto licenses, according to an official announcement released on Nov. 17. The licenses officially authorize the offering of cryptocurrency-related services by two “cryptocurrency stores,” including Crypto Trade NET LLC and Crypto Market LLC. According to the information from the NAPP’s electronic license register, both Crypto Trade NET and Crypto Market are based in Tashkent. The data also refers to Kamolitdin Nuritdinov as Crypto Market’s single founder and shareholder. Behzod Achilov is...
Crypto lender Matrixport seeks $100M funding despite lending crisis
Matrixport, the cryptocurrency firm founded by Bitmain co-founder Wu Jihan, is in the process of raising $100 million in funding despite the ongoing crypto market crisis. Lead investors have already committed $50 million for Matrixport’s new funding round at a $1.5 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported on Nov. 25. The deal has yet to be finalized as Matrixport is still looking for investors for the other half of the round. We’re excited and look forward to engaging with participants, on similar terms, in the other half of the #funding round. Appreciate the trust and confidence our investors continue have in Team #Matrixport.@business https://t.co/DqQhsYucUy — Matrixport (@realMatrixport) November 25, 2022 According to the company, the new round is part of Matrixport’s usual funding a...
Crypto lender Matrixport seeks $100M funding despite lending crisis
Matrixport, the cryptocurrency firm founded by Bitmain co-founder Wu Jihan, is in the process of raising $100 million in funding despite the ongoing crypto market crisis. Lead investors have already committed $50 million for Matrixport’s new funding round at a $1.5 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported on Nov. 25. The deal has yet to be finalized as Matrixport is still looking for investors for the other half of the round. We’re excited and look forward to engaging with participants, on similar terms, in the other half of the #funding round. Appreciate the trust and confidence our investors continue have in Team #Matrixport.@business https://t.co/DqQhsYucUy — Matrixport (@realMatrixport) November 25, 2022 According to the company, the new round is part of Matrixport’s usual funding a...
Leading Cardano stablecoin project shuts down after excruciating launch delays
On Nov. 24, Ardana, a leading decentralized finance (DeFi) and stablecoin ecosystem building on Cardano (ADA), abruptly halted development, citing “funding and project timeline uncertainty.” The project will remain open-source for builders while treasury balances and remaining funds will be held by Ardana Labs “until another competent dev team in the community comes forward to continue our work.” “Development on Cardano has been difficult with alot of funding going into tooling, infrastructure and security. This alongside the uncertainty around development completion has led to the best course of action being halting development of dUSD.” The move came as a shock to many due to the sudden nature of the announcement. However, it appears that issues were a...
Polkadot incentivizes its community to fight scams through an “anti-scam bounty”
Polkadot, a protocol that connects blockchains, has announced its latest initiative to help its ecosystem fight scams. According to the company, relying on security-minded individuals within its community to fight scams has proven to be an effective method of safeguarding its ecosystem. To incentivize the members of its community to continue to do the work, Polkadot consistently rewards them with bounties paid in USDC. Polkadot shared that its bounty is currently managed by the general curators, which for now, consists of three community members, and two people from the W3F Anti-Scam department. However, in the long term, Polkadot hopes that the bounty will be eventually managed exclusively by the community. As part of the community-led anti-scam initiative, community mem...
UK bank Starling bans crypto-related purchases and deposits citing high risk
Starling — a digital bank based in the United Kingdom — is the latest financial institution to ban crypto-related transfers and activities for its cardholders. Starling customers will no longer be able to purchase cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) or receive incoming transfers from crypto exchanges or merchants. The online bank announced the news in a statement to customers as well as on Twitter, citing the perceived high risks of crypto trading. Hi there We always review our position in relation to financial crime. We consider crypto activity to be high risk. We’ve taken the decision to prevent all card payments to crypto merchants and to implement further restrictions on outgoing and incoming transfers. — Starling Bank (@StarlingBank) November 22, 2022 The bank also described cryptocur...
Aave proposes governance changes after failed $60M short attack
On Nov. 23, one day after Mango Markets exploiter Avraham Eisenberg attempted to use a series of sophisticated short sales to exploit decentralized finance protocol Aave, project contributors have put forth a series of proposals to deal with the aftermath. As told by protocol engineering developer Llama and financial modeling platform Gauntlet both of whom are deployed on Aave: “Over this past week, the user 0x57e04786e231af3343562c062e0d058f25dace9e [wallet associated with Eisenberg] opened a short position on CRV [Curve] using USDC as collateral. At its peak, the user was shorting ~92M units of CRV (roughly $60M USD at today’s prices). The attempt to short CRV on Aave has been unsuccessful, and the user lost ~$10M USD from the liquidations.” Llama wrote that...
DeFi protocol raises $10M from Bitfinex, Ava Labs despite turbulent market
The ongoing crypto bear market has proven itself to be a builders market as investments continue to find projects with promise. Onomy, a Cosmos blockchain-based ecosystem, just secured millions from investors for the development of its new protocol. The project merges decentralized finance (DeFi) and the foreign exchange market to bring the latter on-chain. According to the developers, the latest funding round garnered $10 million from big industry players such as Bitfinex, Ava Labs, the Maker Foundation and CMS Holdings among others. Lalo Bazzi, co-founder of Onomy, said the underlying goal of building a decentralized autonomous organization with a public infrastructure should serve the “core tenant of crypto — self-custody — without sacrificing on the user experience.” Both DeFi and self...
