Binance’s Judgment Day | Bankless

1️⃣ Judgment Day for Binance.

Crypto’s top exchange, and top company in general, got hit hard this week by regulators.

Judgment day came for Binance this week as the US Federal Government threw the book at the firm and its founder, CZ. Binance was forced to pay $4.3 billion in fines while founder Changpeng Zhao was pushed to step down from his role as CEO and cop to money laundering charges, for which he could serve as much as 18 months in prison.

What earned them this fate? Federal agencies seemed to gather plenty of evidence that the firm was going out of its way to support customers it knew it wasn’t supposed to.

2️⃣ KyberSwap drained for $47 million.

A shock came to the DeFi world this week when DEX protocol KyberSwap was pwned by a hacker who drained $47 million from its Elastic Pools. The hack was a reminder that even the most veteran protocols can’t afford to let their guard down.

The hacker didn’t appear too shy about his conquests, signing a transaction with the statement, “Dear Kyberswap Developers, Employees, DAO members and LPs, Negotiations will start in a few hours when I am fully rested. Thank you.”

The hacker appears to have done his homework.

3️⃣ Argentina gets a pro-BTC President.

Libertarian candidate Javier Milei is now Argentina’s President-elect after an unlikely rise to power driven by frustration over runaway peso inflation and Milei’s promise to “dollarize” the country and embrace USD as the national currency over the peso – an effort Milei already seems to be backing away from in the days after his win.

In interviews over the years, the self-described anarcho-capitalist has been a staunch supporter of Bitcoin, recently saying that the cryptocurrency represented “the return of money to its original creator, the private sector.”

4️⃣ Blast catches heat.

Paradigm’s latest bet, an L2 network “with native yield” created by the founder of Blur, caught plenty of criticism this week for its perceived ponzinomics. However, the criticism didn’t stop the network from receiving a boatload of deposited funds this week.

Curious to learn more? Well, for now, there are no docs, no testnet and no way to withdraw your funds after you deposit…

5️⃣ SEC sues Kraken.

Gary Gensler was noticeably absent from the Binance press conference, which did not include any resolution to the agency’s lawsuit against Binance – a suit that appears to be on shakier ground after losses in the XRP trial.

Rather than learn from his mistakes, the SEC doubled down on them this week, filing a lawsuit against crypto exchange Kraken, calling them out for serving as an exchange for unregistered securities.

Their mystifying logic persists as they aim to justify why assets like SOL are inherently securities.