There’s a lot at stake in how Kraken’s settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission plays out for the crypto industry. On Thursday afternoon, the SEC announced that crypto exchange Kraken agreed to pay a $30 million fine for not registering the offering and sale of its crypto asset staking-as-a-service program. Just a day before, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong warned…
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia-based airport ground handling services firm, Saudi Ground Services, has said it plans to implement a blockchain-based document solution that allows it “to issue over 10,000 digital documents annually including licenses.” According to the firm’s Ayman Alghamdi, using this solution allows SGS to not only easily verify documents and licenses but to improve customers’ experience as…
Bankrupt crypto broker Genesis has filed details on how it will pay back its creditors. A Friday filing shows that Digital Currency Group (DCG) plans to turn its Genesis Global Trading equity over to Genesis Global Holdco to eventually sell both companies and pay back clients. DCG is the parent company of Genesis, which is made up of two entities.…
Bitcoin (BTC) price and the wider crypto market corrected at the start of this week, giving back a small portion of the gains accrued in January, but it’s safe to say that the more experienced traders expected some sort of technical correction. What was unexpected was the SEC’s Feb. 9 enforcement against Kraken exchange and the regulator’s announcement that staking-as-service…
The Ethereum Foundation team announced another milestone on the road to the Shanghai upgrade, with the Shapella fork on the Zhejiang testnet moving into the final pre-launch sequence, according to a blog post on Feb 10. The Shapella transition includes “many features,” and “most importantly to stakers and the consensus-layer, is the enabling of withdrawals,” notes the post, adding that:…
The joint provisional liquidators of FTX Digital Markets — the firm’s subsidiary in the Bahamas — has released a report on the company’s physical assets in the island nation. According to affidavit filed by a PricewaterhouseCoopers partner with the Bahamas’ supreme court on Feb. 8, FTX’s joint provisional liquidators, or JPLs, said the company had purchased 52 properties in the…
The parts that make up the cryptocurrency ecosystem are not all equal, United States Federal Reserve Board governor Christopher Waller told a conference audience on Feb. 10. He had clear preferences among the three elements of the ecosystem that he identified. Waller was hosted by the Global Interdependence Center at its “Digital Money, Decentralized Finance, and the Puzzle of Crypto”…
The $60 billion implosion of the Terra ecosystem last May exposed cracks in the foundations of the crypto industry and kickstarted a year of cascading financial crises that have yet to relent. Now, in the ashes where Terra once stood, another controversy is bubbling—one offering potential warning signs for the broader crypto landscape. The matter concerns Terra Classic (LUNC)—the Cosmos-based…
Stablecoin issuer Tether Holdings is relying on the services of a major Wall Street firm to manage its Treasury portfolio, according to a Feb. 10 report by The Wall Street Journal. Citing sources familiar with the matter, the Journal reported that financial services company Cantor Fitzgerald is helping Tether oversee a $39 billion bond portfolio comprised of United States Treasury securities.…
On Feb. 9, 2023, the cryptocurrency community learned of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) crackdown on staking services. The SEC fined Kraken, a cryptocurrency exchange, $30 million for offering an “unregistered offering” related to its U.S. staking service. Digital currency advocates are now debating what constitutes a yield product versus a noncustodial solution that is not considered a…
