Today's news tips:
South Korea's Financial Services Commission plans to allow ST0 to be issued and circulated in the form of securities, as distinct from virtual assets
Visa is testing the USDC large-value payment settlement system on Ethereum
a16z votes against proposal to deploy Uniswap V3 on BNB Chain to oppose Wormhole as a cross-chain bridge
FTX asks politicians who accepted SBF political donations to return the funds by the end of the month
Data: a16z controls 41.5 million UNI through 11 addresses, accounting for more than 4% of UNI supply
Zhao Changpeng commented on "a16z's vote on Uniswap": On-chain voting may allow whales to control the blockchain
CoinShares: Digital asset investment products saw net inflows of $76 million last week
Data: BitMEX founder holds over 200,000 GMX, with total profit close to $9 million
Regulatory News
South Korea's Financial Services Commission plans to allow ST0 to be issued and circulated in the form of securities, as distinct from virtual assets
PANews reported on February 6 that the Financial Services Commission (FSC) of South Korea officially released the "Guidelines for Reform of the Security Token Issuance and Circulation Regulatory System", planning to allow ST0 to be normally issued and circulated in the form of securities within the scope of the Capital Market Law.
The guideline proposes two tasks: 1. To prevent possible illegal incidents and protect investors, provide the judgment principles and application examples of whether digital assets are securities. 2. Through three system reforms, establish the institutional foundation in advance for the normal issuance and circulation of Security Tokens and guide the policy direction. These three systems include "accepting token securities issued in the form of securities in accordance with the Electronic Securities Law", "establishing an account management agency for issuers that directly registers and manages token securities", and "establishing an over-the-counter brokerage business for investment contract securities and income securities".
According to the guideline, Security Token refers to the digitization of securities using distributed ledger technology in accordance with the Capital Markets Act. In terms of the securities system, since it is a new form of issuance of securities after physical securities and electronic securities, the name is organized as "token securities". Therefore, it is not a "security token", which is different from virtual assets. ST0 (Security Token Offering) supports the securitization of various rights that have emerged recently by allowing the issuance and distribution of token-type securities, and uses distributed ledger technology to improve the issuance and trading of existing securities, making them more efficient and convenient.
Earlier on February 1, the Financial Services Commission of South Korea ordered the country's five major crypto exchanges to remove virtual assets with securities properties. Later today, the head of the Financial Supervisory Service of South Korea said that it would unify the criteria for judging the "securities attributes" of tokens and hold a briefing this month.
UK Financial Conduct Authority: Crypto-asset firms marketing to UK consumers must prepare for financial promotions regime
The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said that all crypto-asset companies that market to UK consumers, including those based overseas, must prepare for the financial promotions regime, and violations could result in up to two years in prison. Promotions must be clear and fair, and they also need to use specific risk warnings and positive frictions (such as a 24-hour cooling-off period) in their consumer journey. Crypto-asset companies will soon need to comply with the UK's new financial promotions regime.
NFT
Illuvium to Launch Customizable NFT Collection Illuvitar in Illuvium: Beyond, Open for Minting on March 7
According to the official announcement, the RPG blockchain game Illuvium announced the launch of the Illuvium: Beyond plan. In Illuvium: Beyond, players compete to collect Illuvitar NFTs based on Illuvium's game characters. Illuvitar is a customizable NFT collection that contains Illuvials illustrations with various accessories, backgrounds, and expressions.
Illuvitar is not a standard PFP item. Unlike most avatar collections that use a base layer, Illuvitar is a configurable avatar that can be used as a profile picture in the Illuvium universe. Illuvitar is divided into a base layer and a base. The Illuvitar base layer is a hand-painted work of art designed for digital self-expression, and the Illuvitar base can be personalized with thousands of different accessory combinations, each containing different levels of rarity. From hats, to rings and bow ties, each accessory can be permanently tied to the Illuvitar or traded on the NFT market. This rarity, also known as illuviar Power, plays directly into the collection game Illuvium Album, completing collections of hundreds of unique attribute links and filling the album to earn leaderboard rankings.
Illuvitars minting is scheduled to launch on March 7, 2023. To ensure that all users have the opportunity to collect the rarest items, Illuvitars will be sold in two types of packages, Illuvitar D1SK and Mega D1SK. Illuvitar D1SK includes 1 reward level Illuvitar, 1 random Illuvitar, 3 accessories, and Mega D1SK includes 1 rare item, 1 random Illuvitar, 3 accessories. Users can mint an unlimited number of Illuvitars during the sale window. Once the sale ends, these Illuvitars will never be minted again.
Project News
Visa is testing the USDC large-value payment settlement system on Ethereum
According to Cointelegraph, Cuy Sheffield, head of the crypto department of payment company Visa, said at StarkWare Sessions 2023 that the company has been testing how to actually accept USDC settlement payments initiated by issuers on Ethereum and pay in USDC on Ethereum; so, these are large settlement payments.
Sheffield also said that using digital assets and fiat currencies for global settlement is one of the avenues Visa is investing in. He specifically pointed out: "This is one of the areas where we want to build muscle memory. Just like we can convert between dollars and euros in cross-border transactions, we should be able to convert between digital tokenized dollars and traditional dollars."
Visa has been exploring how to incorporate blockchain technology into its existing network to transfer funds faster, but currently settlements are still carried out on the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, system.
Musk: Twitter is approaching break-even, the past three months have been "extremely difficult"
Elon Musk said on Sunday that the social media company is "moving toward break-even" after he had to rescue Twitter from "bankruptcy," according to Jinshi. Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion last October, and in addition to continuing his daily work at Tesla and SpaceX, he has been running Twitter for the past three months, which has been "extremely difficult." Musk said: "I don't want anyone to suffer this pain. Twitter still faces challenges, but if we stick with it, it is now on track to break even. I am very grateful for the public's support."
Damus plans to launch a new feature in the new version that can be used to reward posts with Bitcoin
Damus, a third-party client of the Nostr protocol, said that it will launch a function for Bitcoin rewards for posts in the next version.
News came out later today that multiple fake tokens were discovered under the name “Damus,” and officials had said they would not issue any.
Zhao Changpeng commented on "a16z's vote on Uniswap": On-chain voting may allow whales to control the blockchain
In response to “a16z voted against deploying Uniswap V3 on BNB Chain”, Binance CEO Zhao Changpeng tweeted, “Is Uniswap controlled by a16z?”
In addition, Zhao Changpeng also said that people's voting is completely different from money voting. On-chain voting means that whales may control the blockchain, just like shareholders. Binance has discussed this issue at the meeting.
Yesterday, a16z voted against the proposal to deploy Uniswap V3 on BNB Chain to oppose the use of Wormhole as a cross-chain bridge. Earlier today, Compound founder Robert Leshner voted in favor of the proposal. After checking, the current support rate for the proposal is 58.45%. The opposition rate is 41.54%, and the voting will end on February 10.
BitKeep has launched a compensation claim page and sent it to affected users via in-site messages
Web3 multi-chain wallet BitKeep announced in a telegram group yesterday that BitKeep will advance the stolen funds due to the hijacking of the 729 APK installation package by hackers, and the compensation claim page has been officially launched. The announcement stated: "The hacker attack occurred on December 26, 2022, 03:00-06:15 (UTC+8). After counting the affected addresses and asset data, we decided to issue compensation funds in the form of USDT currency-BEP20." The official reminded that the compensation page will only be pushed to affected users in the form of internal messages.
On December 26 last year, it was reported that BitKeep wallet was stolen due to APK version hijacking, and the stolen funds were worth $8 million. On January 19, BitKeep said that it would launch a compensation portal in February and compensate 50% of the funds, and complete the compensation of the remaining funds by the end of March.
Stargate's proposal to re-issue STG tokens has been voted through and will be implemented on March 15
The Snapshot page shows that the cross-chain bridge Stargate's proposal to reissue STG was voted through with 90.43% support, and the contract replacement will be executed on March 15.
Earlier on February 2, Stargate proposed to reissue STG tokens on March 15 to eliminate the risk of Alamada’s tokens being illegally transferred.
Conflux CTO proposed the Conflux ecosystem token burning proposal CIP-107
Wu Ming, co-founder and CTO of Conflux, tweeted that the token burning proposal CIP-107 for destroying DAO's adjustable proportion of storage collateral during refunds has been proposed by the Conflux ecosystem and will be planned soon. In other words, when some states in the Conflux coreSpace are released in a transaction, a portion of the storage collateral will be destroyed. This proportion can be determined based on the vote of the on-chain DAO.
The proposal is to introduce some burning scenarios and mechanisms to mitigate the continuous inflation of CFX tokens. This will improve the token economics of Conflux.
FTX asks politicians who accepted SBF political donations to return the funds by the end of the month
According to CoinDesk, FTX Group said on Sunday that it was sending "confidential letters" to politicians, other political beneficiaries of SBF, his deputies, and his companies, asking them to return the political donations they received from SBF by the end of the month. In a press release, the debtors said they reserved the right to force repayment (with interest) through court proceedings. Before FTX collapsed in November last year, SBF had provided tens of millions of dollars in campaign donations to politicians. According to the debtors' estimates, FTX has donated as much as $93 million to multiple members of Washington, DC and various political factions, and one-third of the current members of the U.S. Congress have accepted funding from SBF. Even though many beneficiaries have tried to eliminate the impact of the FTX bankruptcy scandal by donating to charities, such actions "do not prevent FTX debtors from seeking compensation."
Financing News
Blockchain startup Super Block completes approximately $7.22 million in Series A funding
According to Money Today, blockchain startup Super Block announced the completion of a 9 billion won (about 7.22 million U.S. dollars) Series A financing, with participation from large Korean companies and venture capital VCs such as SK, Netmarble, DSC Investment, E & INVESTMENT, and Schmidt. The new funds will be used to recruit talents and expand the market, as well as to promote its product development.
It is reported that Superblock was founded in 2021 and is creating a new mainnet Over Network, which contains lightweight nodes that ordinary users can also run. Over Network is scheduled to be launched this year. In addition, the company will also launch wallets, scanning, bridging and other products.
Important data
Data: a16z controls 41.5 million UNI through 11 addresses, accounting for more than 4% of UNI supply
Blockchain data company Bubblemaps tweeted that a16z can control 41.5 million UNI through 11 addresses, accounting for more than 4% (4.15%) of the UNI supply, which is the amount required to pass any proposal. Nine of the wallets each have 0.25% of the supply (2.5 million UNI), which is the minimum amount required to submit a Uniswap governance proposal."
Additionally, according to crypto influencer Chris Blec, a16z is a large investor in Wormhole competitor LayerZero.
Earlier yesterday, a16z voted against the proposal to deploy Uniswap V3 on BNB Chain to oppose the use of Wormhole as a cross-chain bridge.
CoinShares: Digital asset investment products saw net inflows of $76 million last week
According to CoinShares weekly data, digital asset investment products had a net inflow of $76 million last week, the fourth consecutive week of inflows, and improved investor sentiment has brought the year-to-date inflows to $230 million. The total inflow of Bitcoin last week was $69 million, accounting for 90% of the total inflows for the week. The rest of the inflows came from shorting Bitcoin, totaling $8.2 million during the same period. Ethereum's inflows were only $700,000. From a regional perspective, inflows were mainly concentrated in the United States, Canada, and Germany, with inflows of $38 million, $25 million, and $24 million, respectively.
Additionally, total investment assets under management (AuM) have grown 39% year-to-date and currently stand at $30.3 billion, the highest level since mid-August 2022.
Data: Bitcoin Lightning Network capacity exceeds 5,300 BTC, setting a new record high
1ML data shows that the capacity of Bitcoin Lightning Network has exceeded 5,300 BTC, a record high. It is currently 5,352.67 BTC, with a 30-day increase of 3.26%. In addition, the current Lightning Network node data is 16,085 and the number of channels is 76,518.
Data: BitMEX founder holds over 200,000 GMX, with total profit close to $9 million
According to Lookonchain monitoring, BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes is currently the largest individual holder of GMX, holding a total of approximately 200,580.22 GMX (approximately US$13.4776 million). These GMX were purchased at a cost of 3,386 ETH (US$5.72 million at the time) between March 3, 2022 and September 7, 2022, with an average purchase price of US$28.5.
In addition, Arthur Hayes received rewards of 344.5 ETH (US$558,000) and 12,405 esGMX (US$818,000). Based on the recent price, Arthur Hayes' profit on GMX is close to US$9 million.
