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Showing posts from March, 2023

Gnosis launches Hashi bridge aggregator to help prevent hacks

Bridge protocols LayerZero, Celer, Wormhole, LiFi, and others have already committed to implementing the new protocol. Gnosis, the team behind Gnosis Safe multi-sig and Gnosis Chain, has launched a hash oracle aggregator for blockchain bridges, according to an announcement from the company. In a conversation with Cointelegraph, Gnosis CEO Martin Köppelmann stated that the new aggregator should make bridges more secure by requiring more than one bridge to validate a withdrawal before it can be confirmed. Multiple bridge protocols have already committed to integrating with Hashi, including Succinct Labs, DendrETH, ZK Collective, Connext, Celer, LayerZero, Axiom, Wormhole and LI.FI, according to the announcement.  Over $2 billion was stolen from bridges in 2021 and 2022, according to a report by Token Terminal. Bugs in the code have caused some bridge hacks, whereas others have been caused by the attacker taking over a multi-sig governance wallet. According to Köppelmann, Hashi can provi

Revolut not happy with how fintech deals with audit red flags: Report

Revolut reportedly issued a public statement and hired lawyers in March in order to prove “misreporting” of the audit opinion by BDO. Crypto-friendly fintech Revolut is reportedly having some issues related to its recently released annual report for the year ending December 2021. Revolut, a British-Lithuanian neobank that allows customers to buy and sell crypto, reported its first-ever full year of profit on March 1, 2023. The firm said it generated a revenue of 636 million British pounds ($769 million) in 2021, which was a significant surge from 220 million pounds ($266 million) in 2020. The financial Report was reviewed by independent audit ors from the global accounting network BDO, which confirmed that Revolut’s financial statements provided a “fair view of the state of the group’s and of the parent company’s affairs” as of Dec. 31. The audit ors stressed that the Report was correct “except for the possible effects of the matters described in the basis for the qualified opinion s

Meet commercial NFTs: The next step in Web3 evolution

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A new survival MMORPG PvP enables players to set up shop within the game and become a core part of the blockchain economy. The concept of the metaverse was conceived with the aim of providing humanity with a better life in the digital world. Today, video games are leading the way as the most active bridge for physical and digital world interactions. The same goes for blockchain-based games, as gamers who have tasted true ownership of digital assets flocked to Web3 games. Data shows that over half of active blockchain wallets were used in the GameFi space in 2022. As the blockchain gaming market gets crowded, players start to expect more from  play-to-earn (P2E) games. Users put game improvements as the top expectation for blockchain gaming in 2023. However, having a good game is not enough for gamers, either — another study showed that over 51% of users participate in GameFi to make profits. As a result, poorly designed game economies became the leading factor affecting GameFi profits

OpenLeverage Launches Permissionless Liquidity Market

Openleverage has recently unveiled its new permissionless liquidity market feature, which allows all users to deposit and borrow any crypto asset, unleashing liquidity and increasing market flexibility. Borrow with Thousands of Assets According to OpenLeverage, most lending protocols, like AAVE and Compound , have limited token support for deposits and borrowing, leaving over 99% of tokens without access to these activities. They boast of breaking this limitation by allowing any user to create a lending marketplace for any token pair. This enables users to put both tokens of the pairs as collateral and borrow against other tokens. Users can even deposit altcoins as collateral and borrow majors. Limitless Opportunities for Users OpenLeverage introduces even more opportunities for users : Unleash Your Altcoin Holdings: OpenLeverage’s over-collateralized borrowing allows users to obtain additional funds using their existing token holdings as collateral. This enables them to diversify t

Binance CEO Addresses Four Key Issues In His Response To CFTC’s “Disappointing” Complaint

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Join Our Telegram channel to stay up to date on breaking news coverage Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, is in trouble. The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) just slammed it with a “ civil enforcement action. ” This cannot be good news for the Changpeng Zhao-led company as the CFTC alleges that Binance and its Chief Executive Officer (CEO), violated federal laws. The charges were placed on three persons, Binance ( Binance Holdings Limited, Binance Holdings (IE) Limited, and Binance (Services) Holdings Limited ), Changpeng Zhao a.k.a CZ, the CEO of Binance, and Samuel Lim, the former Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) of Binance between 2019-2022.  This is not a mild charge by the CFTC as the over 1000-word civil enforcement action complaint against the exchange stated “For years Binance knew they were violating CFTC rules.” and its efforts to comply with futures and derivatives trading laws “have been a sham.” The regulator also accused Z

Price analysis 3/27: SPX, DXY, BTC, ETH, BNB, XRP, ADA, MATIC, DOGE, SOL

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The crypto market corrected on news of the CFTC suing Binance and its CEO Changpeng Zhao, but technical charts reveal a silver lining. The news and events related to the banking crisis in the United States and Europe have led to a rotation of funds into investments considered less risky. According to the Financial Times, the U.S. money market funds in March witnessed an inflow of $286 billion.  Along with money market funds, a portion of the money may also have seeped into the crypto industry. The increased demand could be one of the reasons for Bitcoin’s (BTC) strong performance in March. The big question in crypto investors’ minds is whether the recovery will continue or if it is time to book profits in Bitcoin. Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360 Bitcoin hodlers seem to be confident in the long-term story and are not getting lured into selling their holdings after the recent rally. According to Glassnode data, the percent of Bitcoin supply that has remained do

The Graph Integrates Banxa

Banxa , the leading on-and-off ramp solution for web3, has integrated with The Graph , the leading decentralized infrastructure protocol, to allow users to pay with fiat currency to access blockchain data organized by The Graph. This integration, now available directly in The Graph’s user interface, decreases barriers to decentralized protocols and provides a way to access blockchain data as easily as with methods common in traditional SaaS products. The integration also marks the first use of Banxa’s new OpenRamp product, which enables fiat payments to directly interact with smart contracts, opening up a broad array of use cases and more fluid crypto experiences. By leveraging Banxa’s new OpenRamp, The Graph offers direct access to blockchain data without the need for users to engage with centralized exchanges or platforms. Banxa’s integration fulfills all fiat transactions directly to The Graph’s billing contracts, so dapp developers and data consumers alike can start using The Graph

Ainslie Bullion Integrates Chainlink Price Feeds

‍Ainslie Bullion is pleased to announce that they have integrated Chainlink Price Feeds . By integrating the industry-leading decentralized oracle network, Ainslie Bullion now has access to high-quality, tamper-proof price feeds needed to help price precious metals, such as gold, silver and platinum, on their platform using accurate market data. This will provide their customers with stronger assurances that the price oracles that Ainslie Bullion is using are highly secure, reliable, and transparent. They chose Chainlink as their oracle solution because its infrastructure is seamless to integrate and time-tested in production. Chainlink already helps secure leading decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, maintaining robust security and high availability even amidst unexpected events and high market volatility. After reviewing various oracle solutions to help price precious metals, we integrated Chainlink Price Feeds because they provide a multitude of critical Features such as: High-

Crypto Ellis Reviews Fight Out – The Best Low Market Cap Altcoin and the Next Big P2E Gaming Altcoin

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Join Our Telegram channel to stay up to date on breaking news coverage Crypto Ellis analyzed Fight Out an innovative platform that transforms training and games into a highly rewarding experience for everyone. Fight Out incorporates a train-to-earn (T2E) mechanism to support its play-to-earn (P2E) concept in order to provide members with better rewards. Crypto Ellis – Fight Out the Fastest Growing P2E Game of 2023 Fight Out is the most remarkable play-to-earn program that provides its users with access to all of the resources necessary to improve their fitness and lead more active lifestyles. The Fight Out initiative is all about challenging ourselves to go further than we ever believed was possible and pushing the limits of what we thought was possible. It is well worth the work to achieve a state in which you are physically stronger, mentally more capable, and socially more certain. This combination creates a really rewarding experience for everyone who trains and plays ga

Banks and the Fed have a problem — What about crypto?

Join us as we discuss the problems faced by the banks and the Federal Reserve and whether they will translate into problems for the crypto market. In this week’s episode of Market Talks, Cointelegraph welcomes Dave Weisberger, CEO and co-founder of CoinRoutes. Weisberger has over 35 years of experience in market structure, quantitative finance and trading automation. He started his career at Morgan Stanley where he built its first program and electronic trading systems. Weisberger is a strong economic freedom advocate and digital asset believer. We start things off with our main topic for today: the banks and the United States Federal Reserve and the problems they are currently facing. Crypto seems to be unaffected by this at the moment, but is there a possibility that their problems could translate into problems for the crypto space? For those of you who are still a bit confused about what happened with Silvergate, Silicon Valley Bank and others, we ask Weisberger to break it all dow

Putin, Xi Vow to Use Yuan as Russia and China Move to Settlements in National Currencies

As part of the talks that Russian president Vladimir Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping are currently conducting in Russia, Russia has vowed to move to use the Chinese yuan as a settlement currency with countries in Asia, Africa, and Latam. Putin expressed that using national currencies for international trading “should be encouraged further.” Russia Expresses Support for Using Chinese Yuan in International Settlements President Vladimir Putin of Russia has made statements supporting substituting the U.S. dollar as a settlement currency for settling international payments. As part of the visit that China’s President Xi Jinping is conducting to Russia, Putin expressed his positive opinion on the use of the Chinese yuan as a form of payment in bilateral trade, especially with emerging economies. Quoted by the Tass news agency, Putin stated: We support the use of Chinese yuan in payments between Russia and countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Currently, two-thirds of the

Seized exchange Bitzlato allows users to withdraw 50% of Bitcoin

Bitzlato is yet to resolve the issue with the remaining 50% of user funds and may eventually compensate using its own funds. Russia-linked cryptocurrency exchange Bitzlato has managed to partly restore access to user funds despite being officially seized by European authorities. Bitzlato has enabled its users to withdraw up to 50% of assets that were stuck on the platform due to enforcement from the United States and Europol, the firm announced on its Telegram channel on March 20. According to the statement, Bitzlato users are now able to restore a half of their assets using the Telegram bot @bz_phoenix_bot, which allows users to move assets from the web Bitzlato account to an external wallet or an exchange . All withdrawals from Bitzlato are processed in Bitcoin (BTC) as the platform converted all altcoin holdings by users into BTC at the time the service was halted on Jan. 18. According to the firm, Bitzlato had to convert user balances into Bitcoin due to technical difficulties a

White House Says Biden Has 'Confidence' in Fed Chair Powell While Fedwatch Tool Predicts a 25bps Hike This Week

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With the Federal Open Market Committee convening on Wednesday and the recent financial troubles facing the U.S. banking system, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Joe Biden has “confidence” in Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell. Meanwhile, according to the CME Group’s Fedwatch tool, the target rate probability suggests the Fed will raise the federal funds rate by 25 basis points (bps) this week. There’s also a 26.9% chance the U.S. central bank won’t raise the rate this month. Market Laser-Focused on Upcoming Fed Meeting; Biden Administration Confident in Powell’s Leadership It has been a tumultuous week in the U.S. banking industry as three major banks collapsed, and the Federal Reserve announced that it would fully bail out two of them. Additionally, the U.S. central bank created the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP) to assist failed banks and their depositors. Moreover, the Fed loaned the banks $164.8 billion to strengthen liquidity and collaborated on M

Amazon Fires 9,000 Employees

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Following a trend in the tech industry, Amazon has fired an additional 9,000 employees today, according to Bloomberg. Moreover, the news comes after Facebook-parent company, Meta, laid off 10,000 employees in a second round of job cuts, after already firing 11,000 months prior. Amazon has joined a long list of companies in the tech sector that have executed abundant firings. From Twitter to Meta, the online leader in consumer goods sales has followed a trend likely connected to the uncertainty in the country’s economic status. JUST IN: Amazon $AMZN fires 9,000 employees. — Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) March 20, 2023 Amazon Follows Job-Cutting Trend The year has been a horrendous one for those in the finance sector. Moreover, as 2022 saw the Federal Reserve execute a year of interest rate hikes to combat inflation, and the banking sector on the edge of crisis the last few weeks, the tech industry has continued its relentless job cuts. Now, Amazon has fired 9

UBS to acquire Credit Suisse bank for $2 billion

It’s been a turbulent last few weeks for the banking industry, including Credit Suisse. Many banks solvencies are in question. The Financial Times reported that a potential buyout deal between Credit Suisse and UBS has been made. UBS has been negotiating with Credit Suisse over the weekend concerning the buyout. It seems that a deal has finally been reached. According to reports, UBS will purchase Credit Suisse for over $2 billion . JUST IN: UBS to acquire Credit Suisse $CS for over $2 billion , one of the largest banks in the world. — Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) March 19, 2023 Twitter Credit Suisse & UBS Acquisition Details Credit Suisse and UBS are two of Switzerland’s largest banks. Those familiar with the matter state that the deal could be signed as soon as Sunday evening. Furthermore, the deal could be priced around only a fraction of what Credit Suisse’s closing price was on Friday. This move is speculated to potentially negatively affect Credit Suisse’s shareholders.