Today's news tips:
Hong Kong media: Hong Kong police are investigating whether JPEX is involved in criminal activities, and Zhang Zhilin once endorsed JPEX
Hong Kong Monetary Authority: Some virtual asset institutions’ use of the term “bank” is a misrepresentation
US SEC: Binance.US does not cooperate with investigation, and its use of Ceffu custody service may violate previous agreement
Wall Street Journal: Binance.US Legal Director and Chief Risk Officer Leave
Genesis no longer provides trading services through any business unit
ssv.network launches partner mainnet focused on distributed validator technology
Databricks completes $500 million Series I financing with a valuation of $43 billion, with participation from a16z and others
Celsius and Core Scientific reach $45 million tentative agreement to resolve long-standing legal dispute
Regulatory News
Hong Kong media: Hong Kong police are investigating whether JPEX is involved in criminal activities, and Zhang Zhilin once endorsed JPEX
According to Hong Kong media am730, the cryptocurrency exchange JPEX, which was previously warned by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, sold a lot of advertisements on TV, outdoor advertising spots and bus station light boxes in Hong Kong last year, and announced that Zhang Zhilin would serve as the brand ambassador. JPEX is not only promoted in Hong Kong, but also Taiwanese singer Chen Lingjiu, who previously worked with MIRROR members, is the spokesperson. It is reported that Lin Zuo, who previously switched from the insurance industry to the cryptocurrency industry, promoted "applying to become a JPEX partner" on social platforms in July, and then promoted JPEX in lectures. After the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission asked the Internet celebrities to stop promoting the platform, Lin Zuo also stated on social platforms that "none of them violated any regulatory regulations and respected the requirements of the Securities and Futures Commission." Another artist, Chong Simin, was also accused of shooting a youtube video in July to introduce JPEX, which is said to be able to get a return of up to 16%. The video has been removed from the shelves, but Chong Simin said that the video was promoted by a cryptocurrency exchanger that has a cooperative relationship with JPEX.
In addition, the Hong Kong police have confirmed to the media that they have received a notice from the SFC that the Commercial Crime Investigation Department is following up and investigating whether the case involves criminal elements. The media also stated that some users reported online that JPEX has limited the withdrawal limit to a maximum of 1,000 USDT stablecoins and the withdrawal fee has been changed to 999 USDT, which means that retail investors can only withdraw a maximum of 1 US dollar. There are KOLs on the Internet who publicly displayed photos of successful withdrawals. According to the photos, the KOL successfully withdrew 1 US dollar. However, JPEX issued an announcement to adjust the USDT withdrawal fee last night. According to the online writer "Qian Song C", at the Singapore Crypto Summit TOKEN 2049, JPEX, one of the platinum sponsors, had no staff at work today.
News came later today that JPEX addresses were severely contaminated with funds, with over 190 million risky USDT flowing into a hot wallet recharge address; Zhang Zhilin's agent said that he had notified JPEX not to use his portrait before obtaining a license and would reserve the right to pursue JPEX; JPEX's "Blockchain Building" in Taiwan was completely emptied, and the property management claimed that it moved out maliciously and wanted to claim compensation; netizens listed a number of celebrities who had cooperated with JPEX, including Hong Kong's Fat Mama, "Coin Master" Huang Zhengjie, etc.
In addition, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority also issued a statement stating that it is a misrepresentation for some virtual asset institutions to use the term "bank".
US SEC: Binance.US does not cooperate with investigation, and its use of Ceffu custody service may violate previous agreement
According to CoinDesk, court documents show that the U.S. SEC accused Binance.US of not cooperating with the investigation and questioned whether Binance.US's use of custody services provided by Ceffu violated a previous agreement aimed at preventing assets from flowing overseas.
The SEC said that during the evidence collection process, Binance.US’s holding company BAM only provided “approximately 220 documents, many of which were unintelligible screenshots and documents without dates or signatures.”
In its filing, Binance.US responded by calling the regulator’s concerns about Ceffu “much ado about nothing” and its request for more documents a “futile fishing expedition.” Binance.US said that simply creating a wallet through Ceffu does not mean the company’s international division can custody or access customer funds.
NFT
original universe
Animoca Brands Subsidiary Darewise Entertainment to Launch Bitcoin-Based Metaverse Ecosystem Token
Project News
Wall Street Journal: Binance.US Legal Director and Chief Risk Officer Leave
According to the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, Binance.US legal director Krishna Juvvadi and chief risk officer Sidney Majalya will leave. Juvvadi joined Binance.US in May last year, after serving as global operations compliance director at Uber. He also worked as a trial lawyer at the U.S. Department of Justice. Majalya began working at Binance.US in December 2021, after serving as Intel's chief compliance officer. According to previous news, Binance.US has laid off a third of its employees, and CEO Brian Shroder has left this week and will be temporarily replaced by Chief Legal Officer Norman Reed.
Genesis no longer provides trading services through any business unit
According to The Block, digital asset finance company Genesis said in an email to customers that it will stop trading digital asset derivatives through GGC International. Genesis said the move means it will no longer provide trading services through any of its business entities. The company said the decision was "made voluntarily for business reasons."
FTX asks court to reject BlockFi's bankruptcy plan
FTX filed an objection to BlockFi's bankruptcy plan on Wednesday, saying it "still has certain fundamental flaws." FTX's lawyers believe that "the plan unfairly discriminates against FTX claims in certain aspects" and asked the court to dismiss the plan. Previously, BlockFi claimed that it was a victim of the behavior of SBF, the former CEO of FTX. FTX is trying to recover repaid loans and collateral from BlockFi. The document filed on Wednesday stated that FTX debtors do not seek to hinder BlockFi debtors from returning funds to creditors, but in the absence of a consensus solution, it must ensure that any plan is fair to FTX's creditors. Both BlockFi and FTX's debtors have tried to work "constructively" to reach a proposal that "fairly and effectively resolves the complex issues between the two parties."
Ethereum's latest meeting discussed Dencun's new content, EIP-4788 updates, etc. The next meeting will determine the release date of devnet-9
Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko summarized the latest Ethereum Core Developer Executive Meeting (ACDE). The meeting introduced Devnet updates, new additions to Dencun, and a comprehensive overview of Reth. The details are as follows:
1.Devnet-8 Status Update: The network is being finalized, and many clients have begun pushing new updates to it. Meanwhile, testing of the MEV/block building process has begun with the developer tool system Kurtosis. Nethermind shared that their blob transaction pool is ready, and after a few days of testing on a single node, they have deployed it to all Dencun test nodes. Geth's blob transaction pool is also close to completion. Besu is undergoing a more extensive overhaul of its transaction pool (to limit the size of Blob + non-Blob transactions), which is expected to be released in the next version. Erigon is still developing its pool and hopes to be ready for devnet-9. Prysm also noticed some delays in receiving blob sidecars, saying that they usually appear within about 500 milliseconds after the block (processing takes about 15 milliseconds); they are investigating this issue and whether this may be caused by a race condition between blob and block imports. There was a question before the fork about whether to allow support for blob txn in the memory pool, and the team agreed not to do so.
2. The meeting continued the discussion from last week's ACDC call on whether to add a constant cap to the validator activation queue. The proposal has since been formally named EIP-7514 (Add Maximum Epoch Churn Limit). In short, in the worst case, this will slow down the growth rate of ETH equity percentage. Dankrad, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, expressed his support for the proposal on the call and said that this buys us time to make potentially more complex changes to validator rewards. All CL teams are in favor of this change, but it should be noted that this only applies to the deposit queue, not the withdrawal queue. After more discussion, we decided to set the limit to 8. So, EIP-7514 will be part of the Dencun upgrade. It is expected that the EIP and the related CL specification PR will be updated in the next few days to reflect all of this.
3. Another last-minute proposal was discussed: adding an opcode to the EVM to expose the base fee of a blob. We have a similar opcode that exposes BASEFEE from EIP-1559, which was introduced at the same time as the EIP was activated. This makes it easier for L2 to determine the correct gas price to charge users based on L1 data costs. One Optimism developer argued that this is not the only way to get the base fee of a blob from L2, as they can look at the block header (which contains the value used to calculate the base fee of the blob) and provide a merkle proof of this. Nevertheless, he also agreed that it is a good feature. Arbitrum currently does not do header parsing, and if the block header format eventually changes, relying on this will be problematic for immutable L2. One of the authors of proposal 4844 mentioned that this opcode was not included in the original specification because at the time it was hoped to develop a more general way to access block header information (rather than adding a one-time opcode). That said, doing so would be a better change than introducing this opcode, which exposes information that EL clients already need to calculate and is almost semantically identical to the BASEFEE opcode. The client team agreed that we should add this opcode, just to be consistent with BASEFEE. If we come up with a "smarter" mechanism in the future, any redundant functionality of this new opcode will also cause problems for other opcodes that use block header information.
4. The meeting discussed some updates to EIP-4788 that store the beacon root in a contract on the EL. Over the past few weeks, we have audited and fuzz tested the contract several times, which led to some minor changes described in this PR. The first is to explicitly handle 0 timestamps so that they roll back (like other invalid timestamps) instead of returning 0. The second change is the buffer size. Assuming the slot time has changed, the original contract would result in a waste of storage given how modulo arithmetic works. By using a prime number (8191), 100% of the buffer should be used regardless of the slot time. Finally, Gas optimizations were made to reduce the number of times CALLDATA needs to be loaded. The auditors will review these changes and expect to receive a final report before the next ACDE. In order to keep the fuzz testing and implementation going smoothly, the developers agreed to merge the proposed changes now.
5. The meeting discussed how the client should handle if the system contract address is part of the state but is empty at the end of execution. While this is not actually possible on the mainnet, by setting the address at genesis, this is an edge case that appeared in testing. Given the specificity of this edge case, and the lack of clear specification behavior, the developers agreed to spend more time thinking about this issue and continue the discussion on the testing call on Monday. This is the specification change.
All of the above is planned to be included in devnet-9. The customer team agreed that it should be possible to implement and test everything by next week’s ACDC. During that call, a release date for devnet-9 will be agreed upon.
Native USDC is now available on the Near mainnet
Native USDC is now live on the Near mainnet and accessible through Circle accounts and the Circle API.
The native USDC token address is: 17208628f84f5d6ad33f0da3bbbeb27ffcb398eac501a31bd6ad2011e36133a1
Crypto Advisory Firm Reverie Is Launching a $20 Million Crypto Fund
According to TechCrunch, cryptocurrency consulting firm Reverie is launching a $20 million flagship fund to invest in pre-seed and seed-stage crypto companies. The fund focuses on decentralized social media and security. The fund is led by two U.S. institutional investors, whose names have not been disclosed.
ssv.network launches partner mainnet focused on distributed validator technology
According to The Block, the decentralized Ethereum staking infrastructure ssv.network has launched a mainnet focused on distributed validator technology, which enables decentralized staking by connecting users to a network of operators who jointly manage Ethereum validator nodes. The mainnet launch has more than a dozen launch partners who integrate their staking DApps with SSV, including Stader, Ankr, Stakestar, 01node, Metapool, StakeTogether, XHash, Chainup, Coindelta and Claystack.
SSV’s mainnet deployment is taking place in multiple phases, starting with a limited launch last month. The current phase allows the public to participate in SSV through a launch partner application. In Q4, when the network begins the final phase called “permissionless launch,” users will be able to stake directly with the SSV network and become node operators.
Binance Brazil director denies involvement in two pyramid schemes worth more than $2 billion, but admits not paying taxes in the country
According to Portaldo Bitcoin, Binance Brazil director Guilherme Haddad Nazar (also the nephew of Brazilian Finance Minister Fernando Haddad) testified at a hearing in the country on Thursday (14th). He was summoned to explain Binance's alleged relationship with pyramid schemes such as GAS Consultoria & Tecnologia and Braiscompany, which are investigated by the country's regulatory agency CPI. GAS Consultoria & Tecnologia went bankrupt in February this year. The company has about 127,000 creditors and debts of more than 9 billion reais (about 1.85 billion US dollars). Braiscompany is a crypto "brokerage company" suspected of running a scam worth 1.5 billion reais (about 300 million US dollars). The regulatory issues faced by Binance in Brazil are also one of the topics discussed. The brokerage company has been subject to administrative litigation by the Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly illegally providing derivatives to Brazilians.
During the hearing, Nazar called Binance Brazil just a "victim" of a financial pyramid. "I want to reiterate that in all investigations we work closely with the authorities and share all the information requested in the letter," Nazar said. Nazar said Brascompany never had an account with Binance and had no relationship with the broker, and said it had no close relationship with GAS Consultoria & Tecnologia, a fraudulent company that used Binance's name and was defamatory of Binance. An analysis conducted by AML Reputacional found that 95% of Binance's 700 largest users in Brazil may have used the platform to launder money. Nazar denied knowledge of the study and suggested that the delegates request the document from the research firm. When asked about the number of suspicious activity reports that Binance has submitted to the Financial Activities Control Commission (COAF), Nazar said the number was about 557, but the CPI chairman expressed doubts.
In addition, Nazar admitted that Binance has not obtained any authorization in Brazil, but said that it works with regulated partners to provide customers with fiat currency access. When asked whether Binance reports investor movements to the Federal Tax Bureau in accordance with the 1888 regulations and whether Binance pays taxes in Brazil, Nazar acknowledged the problem, but said that the 1888 regulations do not currently apply to international cryptocurrency brokers. In addition, Nazar explained why he ignored the Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission (CVM)'s ban on Binance from issuing derivatives. He said that he had taken measures and warned local users. It is reported that local users can still trade crypto derivatives after Binance changes its language options.
Earlier in June, it was reported that Binance’s Brazilian director was asked to testify in parliament to assist in investigating a pyramid scheme that used its platform to transfer assets.
Bloomberg: Intel-backed blockchain company R3 laid off 20% of its staff last week
According to Bloomberg, people familiar with the matter revealed that blockchain startup R3 laid off one-fifth of its employees last week to retain cash to cope with the industry bear market. The layoffs involved various functional areas around the world, but no specific number of people was provided. It is reported that R3 has received investments from Bank of America, Intel and others.
Over $20 Million of Harmony Stolen Funds Flowed to Russian Exchanges
Chainalysis data shows that $21.9 million worth of cryptocurrency stolen from Harmony Protocol was recently transferred to a Russian exchange known for processing illegal transactions. In addition, Chainalysis evidence shows that North Korean entities have been using Russian services (including this exchange) to launder money since 2021.
Several AI painting websites based on AIGC technology in China were suddenly shut down due to suspected violations
According to 36kr, several AI painting websites based on AIGC technology in China have suddenly been taken offline. Currently, websites such as 4B3.com and liblibai.com, which are well-known to the majority of netizens, have been shut down without warning or transferred to overseas domain names and cannot be accessed normally in China. Many netizens suspect that there is a problem with compliance.
Financing News
Databricks completes $500 million Series I financing with a valuation of $43 billion, with participation from a16z and others
According to Crunchbase, AI-enhanced data analysis company Databricks announced that it has completed a $500 million Series I financing round at a valuation of $43 billion, with participation from chip manufacturing giant Nvidia, Capital One Ventures, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, Andreessen Horowitz, Baillie Gifford, ClearBridge Investments, Counterpoint Global's managed funds, Fidelity Management & Research Co., Franklin Templeton, GIC, Octahedron Capital and Tiger Global. In June this year, Databricks acquired generative AI startup MosaicML for approximately $1.3 billion (approximately RMB 9.3 billion) in an effort to compete with OpenAI.
Mining News
Bitcoin mining clean energy utilization rate has exceeded 50%, the market is waiting for Musk to fulfill Tesla's promise to resume accepting Bitcoin payments
Bloomberg crypto analyst Jamie Coutts said on the X platform that Bitcoin mining has exceeded the 50% threshold for clean energy use, and explored the changing energy narrative in the report.
Jamie Coutts further explained this with the data. After Coin Metrics made a more accurate assessment of the application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) machines used in the mining process, the Cambridge Alternative Finance Center recently revised its 2022 Bitcoin mining electricity consumption estimate from 105.3 TWh to 95.5 TWh. Further improvements by climate technology venture capitalist Daniel Batten addressed some of the shortcomings of the Cambridge model, namely that the model did not previously account for new sustainable energy sources such as off-grid electricity and flared natural gas, as well as the large-scale geographical shift to less fossil fuel-intensive power grids in the past three years. Since China issued a mining ban in mid-2021, emissions have reached 60.9 megatons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), which means that emissions have fallen by 37.5%, indicating that concerns about Bitcoin's carbon footprint are exaggerated. The clean energy usage rate of Bitcoin mining has exceeded the 50% threshold. The decline in emissions coupled with a sharp increase in computing power means that Bitcoin mining is consuming more sustainable energy. Since energy accounts for about 50% of miners' costs, the industry's shift to sustainable development may affect global energy dynamics.
It is reported that Musk said in June 2021 that Tesla will resume accepting Bitcoin payments after the utilization rate of clean energy in Bitcoin mining exceeds 50%.
Celsius and Core Scientific reach $45 million tentative agreement to resolve long-standing legal dispute
According to CoinDesk, court documents show that bankrupt crypto lender Celsius has reached a $45 million interim agreement with Bitcoin mining company Core Scientific to resolve a long-standing legal dispute. In the agreement, Celsius paid $14 million in cash and the rest was adjusted claims. The transaction must be approved by judges in Texas and New York, where Core and Celsius have filed for bankruptcy. According to the agreement, Celsius also acquired the Cedarvale mining area in Texas, covering 85 acres.
Celsius had previously claimed hundreds of millions of dollars in damages after its mining equipment was shut down due to non-payment of dues.
Important data
Report: Cryptocurrency market outflows reached $55 billion in August
According to Cointelegraph, a report released by the crypto exchange Bitfinex shows that the crypto industry has seen a $55 billion outflow in August. The analysis is based on the total realized value indicator, which measures the realized capital of Bitcoin and Ethereum, as well as the combined supply of the top five stablecoins USDT, USDC, BUSD, DAI, and TUSD. Bitfinex said that the outflow of funds has affected not only Bitcoin, but also the liquidity of Ethereum and stablecoins.
The analysis also points to the return of so-called event-based volatility, where individual events can have a greater impact on prices and overall market movements. In August, two isolated events had a significant impact on the price of Bitcoin. On August 17, a flash crash caused Bitcoin to plunge more than 11.4%. Similarly, Grayscale Investments won a partial legal battle against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on August 29, causing Bitcoin's price to jump 7.6% in two hours. "We believe that while volatility indicators continue to remain low, tight market liquidity has caused isolated events to have a greater impact on market movements," Bitfnex said.
The analysis noted that Bitcoin’s open interest outperformed the cryptocurrency market due to increased interest from institutional investors and wash trading on some exchanges. Trading volume in Ethereum futures and options has fallen sharply compared to previous years to $14.3 billion per day, down nearly 50% from the two-year average. Bitfinex wrote: “The movement in the derivatives market, especially the open interest in futures and options, has been
CyberConnect: Season 1 community rewards ended, over 130,000 addresses received nearly 2.3 million CYBER
Web3 social graph protocol CyberConnect announced on the X platform that the first season of CYBER community rewards has ended. In the past 30 days, 130,722 addresses have received a total of 2,295,288 CYBER tokens, and the remaining 97,243 CYBER tokens will be transferred to the community treasury.
MakerDAO adds another $100 million in RWA assets, bringing the total RWA assets of the protocol to $2.713 billion
According to data from makerburn.com, MakerDAO has increased its RWA assets by $100 million through BlockTower Andromeda since yesterday, mainly investing in short-term U.S. Treasury bonds with an annualized interest rate of 4.5%. In addition, the total RWA assets of the current agreement have reached $2.713 billion.
Mempool: F2Pool has returned nearly 20 BTC in overpaid fees to Paxos
Mempool stated on the X platform that F2Pool has returned the overpaid 19.82108632 BTC in fees to Paxos.
PANews APP Points Mall is officially launched
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