Today in Crypto: Binance Denies Reports of Its Activities in China, Coinbase is Looking Into Adding Bitcoin Lightning Network, OKX Launches Account Abstraction Feature, Hyundai & Kia Partner With He

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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Exchange news

• China is Binance‘s largest market, with the exchange seeing $90 billion of business there, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing documents it reviewed. The country is a $80.6 billion futures market and a $9.4 billion spot market for the exchange, it said. Despite the ban on crypto within China, Binance teams regularly collaborate with Chinese law enforcement to detect potential criminal activity, the report claimed, adding that the exchange has 900,000 active users in-country. Binance refuted these claims, saying that “the Binance.com website is blocked in China and is not accessible to China-based users.”
• Coinbase may add Bitcoin‘s Lightning Network for payments. “We’re looking into how to best add Lightning. It’s non-trivial, but I think worth doing. I’m all for payments taking off in Bitcoin,” CEO Brian Armstrong said on Wednesday in response to a tweet by Jack Dorsey, founder of financial services company Block. “Not sure why you think we’re ignoring Bitcoin – we’ve onboarded more people to Bitcoin than probably any company in the world. Let’s build it together;” Armstrong added.  

Wallet news

• Crypto exchange OKX launched an account abstraction feature, called “Smart Account”, for its decentralized OKX Wallet, enabling users to pay for transactions on multiple blockchains using USDC or USDT, said the press release. OKX Wallet will soon launch additional account-abstraction-powered features, including social recovery functionality, it added, which will enable users to select trusted “guardians” from their social network to help them recover their Smart Account should they lose their keys.

Blockchain news

• Hyundai Motor Company and Kia Corporation introduced an AI-enabled, blockchain-based Supplier CO2 Emission Monitoring System (SCEMS) to manage the carbon emissions of business partners, utilizing the Hedera network, the HBAR Foundation announced. SCEMS is designed to compute carbon emissions at every stage of the supply chain, enabling the auto manufacturers to secure data across their supplier’s business operations, including procurement of raw materials, the manufacturing process, and product transportation, it said. 

Regulation news

• Digital asset custodian Hex Trust obtained the Digital Asset Service Provider (DASP) registration from France‘s Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) and Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolution (ACPR), the press release said. Receiving the DASP registration fully enables Hex Trust to provide the services such as digital asset custody, the purchase/sale of digital assets for legal tender, and the trading of digital assets against other digital assets. “The EU is a key market for Hex Trust, as we see strong growth potential and prepare for the European MiCA regulation, set up to regulate the digital asset industry in the region by 2024,” said Alessio Quaglini, CEO and Co-founder of Hex Trust.
• Kenya‘s Ministry of the Interior and National Administration suspended the operations of Worldcoin, the identity crypto protocol co-founded by OpenAI‘s Sam Altman. “The Government is concerned by the ongoing activities of an organization calling itself ‘WORLD COIN’ which is involved in the registration of citizens through the collection of eyeball/iris data,” said the statement signed by Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki.

DeFi news

• Decentralized finance (DeFi) exchange SushiSwap is now available to users on blockchain protocol Core DAO’s network. Per the press release, the integration introduced concentrated liquidity pools, cross-chain swaps, and a DEX aggregator. On SushiSwap, users can now trade, earn, stack yields and move assets across different blockchains, it said, adding that “the best part is that they are operating on a decentralized and community-driven platform.” For developers, the team said, this signifies an expanded landscape for building new applications and services, leveraging SushiSwap’s liquidity pools, and connecting them with other applications within the Core ecosystem.