Binance’s ‘Innovation Zone,’ Iranian Power Plants Eye Bitcoin Mining + More News
Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.
Exchanges news
- Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao, announced the creation of the so-called Innovation Zone, which the post said will allow users to trade newer token offerings from their Binance account, while also “protecting less suited users from being exposed to the “risk” that comes with trading them.” Zhao added that the exchange can list a coin without being in contact with the project founders, and have done so before.
- bitFlyer Europe, a subsidiary of the Japanese crypto exchange bitFlyer, said it has struck a partnership deal that will allow Europe-based customers to make deposits via money transfer platform PayPal. According to a press release shared with Cryptonews.com, the subsidiary’s Chief Operating Officer Andy Bryant stated, “Thousands of bitFlyer users already use PayPal for fiat transactions. Now, users can purchase bitcoin (BTC) and other [cryptoassets] in the same way too.”
Mining news
- Iranian power plants started to see the crypto mining industry as an opportunity to increase their revenues, reported The Tehran Times. With the energy authorities worrying about the pressures exerted by crypto mining on the electrical grid, said the article, certain power plants suggested offering their excess electricity exclusively to the cryptocurrency miners. While the government agreed to the proposal, it also said that the power plants won’t be able to benefit from the government subsidies on their fuel supplies. In January, the Ministry of Industry, Mining and Trade reportedly issued more than 1,000 licenses for cryptocurrency mining units.
- Joint mining platform B.TOP announced its partnership with financial service platform Matrixport to accept tether (USDT) payments on its website. USDT payments from B.TOP users would be collected and custodied for B.TOP by Matrixport’s enterprise-grade ‘Cactus Custody,’ said the press release. New B.TOP users also have the option to pay in tether in addition to the previous bitcoin (BTC) payment option, providing a workaround when a payment option has higher network congestion or transaction fees, it added.
Blockchain news
- China’s Ningbo Development Zone, in Zhejiang Province, has forged a blockchain cooperation deal with Alibaba, one of the nation’s biggest e-commerce companies. Per BLNews, Alibaba’s Ant Group will co-develop a supply chain and financing service platform that will reduce the overheads incurred by contractor drivers and logistics companies. The parties stated that they would also co-build a credit management system using blockchain technology and cooperate on cloud-related matters. The state-level development zone is the center of Ningbo’s industrial sector, and is home to scores of state-owned and private firms.
- Ethereum Classic Labs (ETC Labs) has partnered with blockchain research and development firm ChainSafe and provider of Web 3.0 infrastructure OpenRelay to develop and test security responses, aiming to increase its defenses against 51% attacks. Per a post by ETC Labs and its ETC Core Dev Team, this is a part of its Network Security Plan, according to which the news partners will be collaborating to increase 51% attack resistance and to implement immediate technical responses to make the network more secure, they said.
- The Free Democratic Party (FDP), the fourth-largest political party in Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, has failed in an effort to use a blockchain network to ensure “major state projects” remain accountable to the government, the public and other stakeholders. In its original bill, the FDP stated that it wanted the government to be allowed access to audits and other information on an open blockchain network, but failed to gain support from the other Bundestag parties and was officially rejected, per a parliamentary bulletin.
CBDCs news
- Philippine central bank is looking into the feasibility of its own digital currency, while the governor Benjamin Diokno said that the technology behind digital tokens could improve delivery of financial services, reported Bloomberg. Diokno reportedly said that digital tokens “expand reach and lessen costs of financial services” and could also “help the central bank eventually reduce the use of fiat money.”
Crime news
- A former contractor at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, or CSIRO, Jonathan Khoo, who mined crypto using state-owned supercomputers, has avoided jail. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, Khoo was ordered to complete 300 hours of community service and to continue counseling. He had mined AUD 9,420 (USD 6,840) worth of cryptocurrencies and deposited these to his ethereum (ETH) and monero (XMR) wallets in 2018, while diverting the needed computing power and costing the agency AUD 76,668 (USD 55,677), the report said.
