Headlines

BOC International issues RMB 200 million in digital structured notes on Ethereum

UBS Group announced that Bank of China International (BOCI) has successfully issued RMB 200 million of fully digital structured notes for the first time, becoming the first Chinese financial institution to issue blockchain digital securities in Hong Kong. The product was initiated by UBS and sold to its clients in the Asia-Pacific region. Both parties made new attempts in terms of applicable laws and blockchain types when issuing this blockchain digital note. This issuance is the first in the Asia-Pacific region to be established under the laws of Hong Kong, China and Switzerland, the first blockchain digitization on the Ethereum public chain, and the successful introduction of regulated securities to the public chain.

It is reported that BOC International is a wholly-owned subsidiary investment bank of Bank of China.

Cryptocurrency

Tether prints 1 billion USDT on Ethereum network

Whale Alert data shows that Tether Treasury printed 1 billion USDT on the Ethereum network at 15:56:47 today. In this regard, Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino said that the Ethereum network has added 1 billion USDT inventory. This is an authorized but unissued transaction, which means that the amount will be used as inventory for the next issuance request and chain swap.

CoinShares: Digital asset investment products saw a net outflow of $88 million last week, marking the eighth consecutive week of outflows

According to the latest weekly report from CoinShares, digital asset investment products had a net outflow of $88 million last week, the eighth consecutive week of outflows, with a total outflow of $417 million. Among them, Bitcoin investment products had a net outflow of $51.6 million, and Ethereum investment products had an outflow of $35.6 million, setting the largest single-week net outflow since the merger in September last year. Litecoin, XRP, and Solana investment products all had a small inflow of funds, while Polygon had a small outflow of funds.

DWF Labs partner: Transferring some altcoins to CEX is for custody rather than selling

DWF Labs managing partner Andrei Grachev tweeted that the transfer of some altcoins to exchanges was only to transfer some of the Treasury's assets from the chain to CEX for custody, not for sale or token liquidity. "It would be stupid to sell anything at the current market level, and we are bullish on the subsequent market." As previously reported, according to Lookonchain monitoring, DWF Labs seems to be transferring some of its altcoins to multiple exchanges such as Binance, OKX, and KuCoin. DWF Labs has deposited 4.25 million CEEK, 300 million LABS, 40 million POND, 6,250 TIME, 298,000 SIMP, 1.54 million UNO, 2.5 million IXS, 438,000 DFYN, 500,000 GF, 7.26 million TOKO, 50 million APM, and 40,000 Auction. The total value of these tokens exceeds 1.55 million US dollars.

A certain whale address has unstaked 2000 trillion BABYDOGE and is gradually exchanging them for BNB

According to Spot On Chain monitoring, a whale address has unstaked 2000 trillion BABYDOGE and is gradually selling it for BNB. The address has currently exchanged 54 trillion BABYDOGE into 329 BNB (about $70,200), and still holds about 1982 trillion BABYDOGE (about $2.58 million).

Hong Kong Investment Promotion Agency Liang Hanjing: Web3 related policies have entered the legislative process, which will take about 1 year

Recently, Liang Hanjing, head of finance, finance and fintech at Invest Hong Kong, said at a closed-door meeting on Web3: "Since 2022, Hong Kong has developed three waves in the field of Web3." He pointed out that the first wave was in the fourth quarter of 2022, when local people were very excited, but people from other regions were still very skeptical; the second wave began at the beginning of this year, when Chinese people from all over the world, including mainland investors, came to Hong Kong to deal with regulators. "The most surprising thing is the third wave. Now many foreigners have also come to Hong Kong." Liang Hanjing mentioned that in the past one or two months, American practitioners or founders of institutions have communicated with regulators. In Liang Hanjing's view, Hong Kong has two advantages in developing Web3 at this stage. The first is colleges and universities. According to CoinDesk's blockchain university rankings, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University ranked first in 2022; among the top 20 in the world, 4 universities in Hong Kong were shortlisted. The other is Hong Kong's developed auction market. In 2020, Hong Kong surpassed London to become the world's second largest auction market. "Several major auction houses in Hong Kong, such as Phillips and Sotheby's, maintained positive growth when the overall market was down in 2022." Liang Hanjing mentioned that this also provides a good opportunity for investors to diversify their investments and deploy alternative assets. In addition, he also revealed that the process of launching Web3-related policies has been carried out in the Legislative Council, "It will take about a year." He has frequently communicated with regulatory authorities in major markets around the world since March, and has visited San Francisco, London, Toronto, Tokyo, New York, etc. "The conclusion is that what Hong Kong is doing now is likely to be done by other markets, and they have reached a consensus." For Hong Kong, the proposal to build a Web3 center or a virtual asset center is not essentially about the securitization of virtual product assets, but the future economic and social transformation of Hong Kong. Previously, the Hong Kong government allocated HK$62 billion to invest in tracks that contribute to Hong Kong's future economy. The four tracks that have been identified cover financial technology (including virtual assets, Web3), biotechnology, artificial intelligence big data, and high-end manufacturing.Liang Hanjing mentioned that this does not mean that there are only four tracks, and there may be more in the future: "Hong Kong is actively promoting the development of the IT economy. As the Hong Kong government said before, the most important thing is to use IT to innovate and help the development of the real economy." (Jiemian News)

Project News

Ordinals has launched "Recursive Inscriptions", which can increase the size of inscriptions beyond the 4 MB limit

Raph, the chief maintainer of the Bitcoin protocol Ordinals, recently merged the "recursive inscription"#2167update proposed by Ordinals creator Casey Rodarmor into the Ordinals code on Github. Ord.io developer Leonidas.og explained that inscriptions can now use the special "/-/content/:inscription_id" syntax to request the content of other inscriptions. This simple change unlocks many powerful use cases. For example, instead of inscribing 10,000 JPEG files for a PFP series alone (which would be very expensive), it is better to inscribe 200 features from its series, and then make 10,000 inscriptions, each of which uses a small amount of code to request features and present images programmatically. Artworks are simply stored on the chain in a more efficient way, which can save more than $1 million in transaction fees in the case of Bitcoin Apes. In addition, it is possible to completely burn many code packages on the Bitcoin chain. Because the code (in text form) is called, it is very small, which can allow the inscription size to break the 4 MB limit of the Bitcoin block size. Complex 3D video games can be completely chained to the Bitcoin network. Leonidas.og said that Bitcoin may even have an internal Internet where each file can request data from other files on Bitcoin. It is not clear how people will use it, but this is undoubtedly an important moment in Bitcoin's history. The official Ordinals browser (ordinals.com), Ord.io and other browsers will soon support recursive inscriptions.

Venus Protocol updates tweet to provide more context: BNB Chain will exclusively take over BNB Bridge attacker’s positions

Venus Protocol, a lending protocol on BNB Chain, deleted its previous tweet regarding "If BNB reaches the liquidation threshold, the BNB Chain team will take over the BNB positions on Venus" and re-issued the following statement: "In November 2022, BNB Chain submitted a governance proposal passed by the community, and the BNB Chain core team will exclusively take over the positions of the BNB Bridge attacker. The purpose is to ensure the security of these assets and prevent any further impact and sell-off liquidations. The whitelisted wallets initially had $30 million in USDT funds to ensure prevention of losses on Venus and provide additional support through this Venus governance approval mechanism." Regarding the deletion of the previous tweet and the re-posting of the new tweet, Venus explained that this was to provide users with more background information, publish links to the actual governance proposal, and explain the relevant mechanisms to increase transparency.

Gucci to take snapshot of KodaPendant NFT holders on June 21

Luxury giant Gucci announced that it will take a snapshot of KodaPendant NFT holders at 10 a.m. Eastern Time on June 21, and holders will be able to receive the physical necklace soon. In April this year, Gucci announced a partnership with Yuga Labs' metaverse game Otherside to launch a limited edition Otherside Relics by Gucci series.

OPNX announces the launch of Justice Token and releases white paper

Crypto claims and trading platform OPNX tweeted that the "Justice Token" Justice Token launched for its OX stakers of The Herd and the Milady community has been launched. According to its white paper, Justice Token (JT) is an independent ERC-20 meme token with no intrinsic value, no anchor and no return expectations. The total supply of Justice Token is 1 billion, 75% of which will be allocated to OX stakers, 20% will be used for JT-ETH liquidity miners, and 5% will be directly donated to the Milady community.

Investment and Financing

Blockchain AI computing protocol Gensyn completes $43 million Series A financing, led by a16z and participated by Protocol Labs

The blockchain-based AI computing protocol Gensyn has completed a $43 million Series A financing round, led by a16z, with participation from CoinFund, Canonical Crypto, Protocol Labs, Jsquare, Eden Block, and several angel investors in the AI ​​and crypto fields. So far, Gensyn has raised more than $50 million. The new financing will be used to accelerate the launch of the protocol and expand its staff, including adding protocol and machine learning engineers. According to reports, Gensyn enables developers to build artificial intelligence systems on smaller data centers, personal gaming computers, and other connected hardware, and pay on demand. Gensyn uses a cryptographic verification network that allows users to determine whether the machine learning work shared through the protocol has been completed correctly without an intermediary, and triggers payments through tokens, monetizing unused computing power in a verifiable way. In March 2022, Gensyn completed a $6.5 million seed round of financing, led by Eden Block, with participation from Galaxy Digital, Maven 11, CoinFund, Hypersphere, Zee Prime, Jsquare, Entrepreneur First, Counterview Capital, 7 percent Ventures, Id 4 Ventures, and angel investors from DeepMind, Livepeer, Pocket Network, Centrifuge, Cambridge University, Twitter, Google, and Parity Technologies. (CoinDesk)

Digital comic book publisher Lightning Works raises $2.5 million in funding

Digital comic book publisher LightningWorks has completed a $2.5 million seed round of financing, with its founder Geoff McCabe as the investor. Lightning Works plans to realize new comic gameplay through interactive comic book NFTs and P2E games. (Globenewswire)

Global Policy

Chan Ho-lim: The Hong Kong government actively participates in the virtual asset value chain and aims to launch a stablecoin regulatory framework by the end of next year

Chan Ho-lim, deputy secretary for financial services and the treasury of the Hong Kong government, said that the Hong Kong Monetary Authority has conducted public consultation on the launch of stablecoins, and will gradually establish a regulatory framework in the future, with the goal of launching it before the end of next year. He also said that the Hong Kong government is actively involved in the virtual asset value chain and successfully issued tokenized green bonds earlier this year. It will continue to support the development of the industry in the future and welcome the industry and talents to come to Hong Kong. Chan Ho-lim said in a speech at an event that the government is focusing on the development of Internet 3.0 and has earlier issued a policy declaration on the development of virtual assets, adopting the principle of "same business, same risks, same rules" for supervision. It is believed that the industry can develop steadily in Hong Kong while also protecting investors and ensuring that anti-money laundering and other rules meet international standards. Chan Ho-lim also mentioned that in the past five years, the number of financial technology companies in Hong Kong has increased exponentially, and now has more than 800 companies, providing diversified services, including virtual banks, virtual insurance, virtual asset trading, etc. (Zhitong Finance)

Character*Voice

Tether CTO: Regularly cooperate with third parties to balance USDT liquidity on different chains

Regarding Tether’s printing of 1 billion USDT on the Ethereum network, Tether’s chief technology officer Paolo Ardoino said that the move was to support the chain swap function. “Tether regularly works with different third parties (exchanges, hedge funds, etc.) to help them rebalance the liquidity of their USDT on different chains. For example, since exchanges support Tether USDT on multiple chains, they may end up owning most of the Tether USDT tokens on one chain (ie, Tron), but they may need to process withdrawals on another chain (ie, Ethereum). Therefore, these third parties require chain swaps. (The Block) As previously reported, Whale Alert data showed that Tether Treasury printed 1 billion USDT on the Ethereum network at 15:56:47 today. In response, Tether’s chief technology officer Paolo Ardoino said that the Ethereum network has replenished its inventory of 1 billion USDT. This is an authorized but unissued transaction, which means that the amount will be used as inventory for the next issuance request and chain swap.

Mark Cuban: Under current SEC rules, it is difficult to determine whether cryptocurrencies are securities

Mark Cuban, owner of the NBA Dallas Mavericks, cited a U.S. SEC document and commented that under its current regulatory system, it is almost impossible to know what is a security. Cuban referred to an SEC document on applying the Howey test to digital assets, and pointed out that "no element shown in this document is part of the registration process, and it is almost impossible to know what is a security and what is not a security in the crypto world, whether you have a securities lawyer on your side or not."

Adam Back: The crypto industry is "anti-fragile" and can cope with US regulatory pressure

Adam Back, CEO of crypto infrastructure company Blockstream, said that if Binance.US stops serving U.S. customers, the industry will find a way around it. The crypto system is anti-fragile. Some other company with a different strategy will gain a lot of new users. Where there is a market, there is demand. Once an exchange closes or stops serving customer service, people will turn to another exchange, and there are always alternative development options. Even if the U.S. dollar deposit service is restricted, users will start opening euro accounts to trade in another currency. Among the crypto-friendly financial institutions, he pointed out that several banks in Europe, Switzerland and Gibraltar accept USDT deposits. (Forklog)