Blockchain.com’s USD 270M Exposure to Three Arrows Capital + 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.
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Exchanges news
- Blockchain.com CEO Peter Smith said in a letter to shareholders that Three Arrows Capital (3AC), the over-leveraged hedge fund that is now subject to a liquidation, “is rapidly becoming insolvent and the default impact is approximately [USD] 270 million worth of cryptocurrency and US dollar loans from Blockchain.com,” according to Coindesk. The CEO was quoted as saying that the exchange and wallet provider “remains liquid, solvent and our customers will not be impacted.”
- Binance announced that its Spanish subsidiary Moon Tech Spain has been granted registration as a Virtual Asset Services Provider (VASP) by the Bank of Spain. This registration will allow Binance to offer crypto exchange and custody services in Spain in compliance with the requirements of its central bank, they explained.
Payments news
- Banking Circle, a European bank focused on cross-border payments, is adopting stablecoin USD Coin (USDC) on its platform as a payment acceptance, processing, and settlement method. The new payment feature is enabled as part of Banking Circle’s new service targeting banks and payment providers, allowing them to facilitate payments outside traditional bank rails.
Legal news
- A US district judge has granted a motion by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for permission to file an omnibus motion that would limit expert testimony in its case against blockchain payments system Ripple, per defense lawyer James Filan. According to a document shared by Filan, the SEC wants to limit the testimony of 10 experts retained by Ripple and its executives, while the motion will be up to 120 pages in length. Ripple has not objected to the filing — as long as they are allowed to file a response that has the same page limit.
Bitcoin news
- Pieter Wuille, a developer working on Bitcoin (BTC), is scaling back his contributions as he made the request to remove his key from the set of trusted keys through the Bitcoin GitHub. He has clarified that he will not “stop contributing to code, review, and all the projects [he’s] involved in,” but that he wanted to remove permissions as he’s “not doing much maintenance anymore.”
Mining news
- Marathon Digital sold no bitcoin during the second quarter, with holdings rising to BTC 10,055 and a fair market value standing just below USD 200m. The company mined BTC 707 during Q2, which was up 8% from Q2 one year ago, but down from BTC 1,259 mined in Q1, stating that this was caused by “operational obstacles.”
- Compass Mining has let go of 15% of its employees and has cut executive compensation to ride out the crypto downturn. Compass also said it grew too quickly and needed to readdress its strategy moving forward.
DeFi news
- Decentralized crypto mixer Tornado Cash announced a fully open-sourced user interface (UI) for Tornado Cash Classic, which means that any public contributor interested in improving the design can simply review the code and make pull requests through its GitHub code repository.
Investments news
- Machine learning-based NFT project DeepNFTValue raised USD 4m in a funding round led by Web3 venture capital firm Rockaway Blockchain Fund. The company is expanding from its flagship CryptoPunks product into other NFT collections, and a portion of the capital raised will be reserved for graphics processing unit (GPU) hardware, they added.
Career news
- Ashley Alder, CEO of Hong Kong’s financial regulator, will be the next chairman of the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the Treasury confirmed. Alder will assume the role in January 2023, succeeding Richard Lloyd, who has served as interim chair since Charles Randell left in May.
- Crypto exchange Gate.io announced the appointment of Tom Yang as Executive Vice President (EVP). Yang has previously driven global brand operation and management for many years in companies like Google and WeWork, they added.
