DEXes Outpace CEXes, Binance Buys CAKE, Losing Crypto Funds, IRA vs. Gemini + 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
- Decentralized exchanges (DEXes) have outpaced centralized exchanges (CEXes) in terms of on-chain transaction volume: there was USD 224bn sent to DEXes between April 2021 and April 2022, well above the USD 175bn sent to CEXes, according to blockchain analyst firm Chainalysis. They explain that this is driven in part by the rapid growth of DeFi, but also the fact that all DEX transactions must happen on-chain, while CEXs can handle their transactions on centralized databases and have them captured on their order books to save on transaction fees.
Investments news
- Binance Labs, the venture capital and incubation arm of major crypto exchange Binance, has made an investment of an undisclosed amount in decentralized exchange (DEX) PancakeSwap’s utility and governance token CAKE.
- The six worst-performing, non-leveraged exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the USD 6.6tn arena in 2022 are all crypto-linked equity funds, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The USD 63m Global X Blockchain ETF is the biggest loser with a year-to-date drop of 64%, it added.
- Metaverse and NFT project developer Animoca Brands reported bookings, including token sales, NFT sales including secondary sales, and other non-blockchain activities, and other income of AUD 213m (USD 148m) for the three months ended December 31, 2021, and AUD 827m (USD 573m) for the four months ended April 30, 2022. Additionally, their portfolio investments were valued at over AUD 2.2bn (USD 1.5bn) across over 340 investments, as of April 30.
Legal news
- IRA Financial Trust (IRA), a platform for self-directed retirement and pension accounts, said it has filed a lawsuit against Gemini Trust Company, a crypto exchange and custodian, “following a February 2022 theft of USD 36m of cryptoassets in Gemini’s custody belonging to customers’ retirement accounts.” Among other things, IRA alleges that Gemini did not have proper safeguards in place to protect customer crypto assets and failed to freeze accounts within a sufficient timeframe immediately following the incident.
Adoption news
- The Central African Republic announced plans to proceed with its Sango Project, which includes tokenizing access to the country’s natural resources. They state that they are “giving everyone access to the riches of our land […] through an unprecedented new administrative and economic movement.”
- Bermuda’s minister of economy and labor Jason Hayward argued that the recent crypto downturn in price will not “threaten the island’s ability to become a crypto hub,” according to the Wall Street Journal. “This industry downturn is likely to advance our goal and positively impact our long-term growth and role in this sector,” he was quoted as saying.
Blockchain news
- Blockchain project Solana (SOL)’s recent mainnet beta outage had the team disable the durable nonce transaction feature that caused it to “prevent the network from halting if the same situation were to arise again.” They added that “durable nonce transactions will not process until the mitigation has been applied, and the feature re-activated in a forthcoming release.”
Crime news
- Consumers reported losing over USD 1bn to fraud involving crypto from January 2021 through March 2022, according to a new analysis from the US Federal Trade Commission. People ages 20 to 49 were more than three times as likely as older age groups to have reported losing money to a crypto scam, it said.
Security news
- Web3 lifestyle app STEPN (STEPN) announced they have been under multiple distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. They added that “[s]ecuring the servers and recovery may take anywhere from 1 to 12 hours” but did not announce that this has been completed as of the time of writing.
Career news
- Katie Biber, previously of fintech startup Brex, joined investment firm Paradigm as Chief Legal Officer. Biber also served as the general counsel for the 2012 Mitt Romney US presidential campaign.
