Our weekly roundup of news from East Asia curates the industry’s most important developments. On Aug. 11, a Chinese individual known only as Mr. Chen was sentenced to nine months in prison after helping his friend, Mr. Lin, purchase 94,988 Chinese yuan ($13,104) worth of Tether (USDT) and earning a commission of 147.1 Yuan ($20.24). Because Mr. Chen shared his…
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission has been granted a motion to seek assistance from South Korea to question Terraform Labs co-founder Daniel Shin — as it builds its case against the firm and co-founder Do Kwon. On Aug. 16, District Judge Jed Rakoff granted the SEC’s July 10 motion asking if it could seek to question the Terra…
Finn DeGods, the pseudonymous co-founder of DeLabs—the startup behind the valuable Ethereum NFT profile picture (PFP) collection DeGods and sister project y00ts—said on Wednesday that they would step away from the company after nearly two years. “It’s finally time for me to move on to the next chapter,” Finn said on Twitter, noting that their transition away from the company…
Bitcoin continued its crash Thursday afternoon, shedding 7% of its value in 20 minutes and briefly dipping below $26,000 in the process. And as Bitcoin went, so too did other leading cryptocurrencies, including Ethereum—with a cascade of liquidations topping $800 million to follow. The largest cryptocurrency by market cap is trading for $26,314 as of this writing, according to CoinGecko—a…
Bitcoin (BTC) dropped 8% in less than 10 minutes to temporarily fall under $26,000 after several downward days of price action. BTC was hovering around $27,600 on Aug. 17 at 9:30 pm UTC time before tumbling more than 8% to $25,320 at the time of writing, according to CoinGecko. The fall has taken Bitcoin‘s market cap below $500 billion for…
Mastercard is forming a partnership program with seven prominent blockchain and payment technology providers to “bring a greater understanding of the benefits and limitations” of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), it announced Aug. 17. Mastercard did not share specific plans for the group, but it mentioned many current buzzwords in CBDC sphere – security, privacy, interoperability and private sector, for…
A federal judge in Texas has sided with the United States Department of the Treasury by granting a motion for summary judgment in a lawsuit concerning Tornado Cash brought by six individuals backed by crypto exchange Coinbase. In an Aug. 17 filing in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Judge Robert Pitman denied a motion filed in…
The team behind the newly released Shibarium mainnet has denied reports of bridge problems and asset losses, saying screenshots floating around the crypto community are false. In a blog post on Aug. 17, Shytoshi Kusama, co-founder of the Shiba Inu ecosystem, blamed a massive influx of transactions and users activity for causing technical difficulties in Shibarium, an Ethereum layer-2 scaling…
The issuer of stablecoin Tether (USDT) will discontinue its Bitcoin (BTC) Omni Layer version, citing lack of interest from users. This Bitcoin version of Tether was one of the first stablecoins ever created. The Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Kusama (KSM) versions will also be discontinued, according to an August 17 announcement from the team. Today #Tether announces the ending of…
Launched in November 2021, non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace Orica (ORI) held itself as an “ethical platform” benefitting artists, collectors, and charities alike. At the time, the organization was involved in prominent projects such as building a school in Uganda to aiding victims of human trafficking, to helping Ukraine. But less than two years later, the project’s founders have disappeared, and…
