Surging Adoptions, Unsupporting BUSDs, Winning Cases and 20 Crypto Jokes

This week in the cryptoverse, there was a lot of crypto. More specifically: major Ethereum staking providers promised not to own more than 22% of validators, Bitcoin adoption in Argentina was surging, contrasting the more measured approach seen in El Salvador, Shibarium resumed token withdrawals via the bridge, Tether established a banking relationship with Britannia Bank & Trust, Argo Blockchain reduced its total losses to $75 million from last year, and the EOS Network secured whitelist approval from Japan’s regulator allowing EOS to be traded against the yen, Friend.tech lost steam after its splashy debut.

Then, SEBA Bank obtained an approval-in-principle from the SFC in Hong Kong, Robinhood ended its crypto business relationship with Jump Trading, while the former was identified as the third-largest BTC wallet owner, Asia’s richest man Mukesh Ambani was set to invest in blockchain to drive ‘digital adoption in India’, and Prada Group embraced blockchain to combat counterfeit products. OpenZeppelin launched its last blockchain security upgrade Defender 2.0, and Galxe announced the launch of its permissionless self-sovereign identity infrastructure Galxe Protocol.

In Binance news, the exchange decided to delist eight BUSD trading pairs as part of its plan to withdraw support for the stablecoin by 2024, it introduced a new product in Latin America called “Send Cash”, it removed Banco de Venezuela as a payment option from its peer-to-peer services in the country, the head of Binance Asia-Pacific left his position, and Binance was considering a complete withdrawal from the Russian market amid growing Western sanctions. Meanwhile, OKX and Bybit also delisted sanctioned Russian banks from their peer-to-peer services, Coinbase resolved a technical glitch that showed empty balances for some wallets, and Nexo launched a “Dual Mode Crypto Card” to offer debit and credit functionalities for the EEA.

In FTX news, the US DoJ asked a court to reject Sam Bankman-Fried’s planned defense to blame a law firm for the FTX fraud, Bankman-Fried’s attorneys filed a motion seeking his “temporary release”, but the judge denied that request. FTX customers’ info was compromised during the security breach at the bankruptcy claims agent Kroll earlier this month, and phishing attacks escalated for the users following the SIM swap incident.

As this was happening, a class action lawsuit filed against Uniswap was dismissed, Grayscale won its highly anticipated case against the US SEC over the spot Bitcoin ETF application, a US Congressman called for the removal of Gary Gensler as the SEC chair following the Grayscale ruling, US Republican lawmakers accused the Fed of obstructing advancements on the stablecoin bill, and two SEC Commissioners expressed their reservations regarding the agency’s first NFT enforcement action against the media firm Impact Theory. Speaking of NFTs, Cryptoys confirmed that it collaborated with Disney to launch a new collection featuring Mickey Mouse, Minnie, and Pluto, and FirstMate raised $3.75 million for further development of a new NFT storefront builder platform,

In CBDC/mining/won/arrest/job news, Russian banks will have the opportunity to question the Central Bank on its digital ruble pilot next month, Chinese firms and commercial banks were working on new digital yuan supply chain financing solutions, and transport operators in Jamaica expressed interest in using the country’s CBDC for payments. Laos decided to cut the power supply to crypto mining firms due to production concerns, and South Korean crypto exchanges will be required to maintain a reserve fund of at least 3 billion won starting in September. Also in South Korea, prosecutors asked a court to arrest an ex-pro golfer and a top executive at Bithumb. Ben ‘BitBoy’ Crypto was fired from his own company in a ‘coup’, CoinSwitch announced job cuts in its customer support and operations teams, and Clockwork will be winding up its operations as the team steps away from “active development of the protocol”.

Immunefi said that Web3 platforms lost over $1.2 billion this year in hacks and rugs pulls, Balancer was exploited for $900,000 despite a prior vulnerability alert, Ronaldinho failed to show at a parliamentary hearing on crypto pyramids and could face jail time, and a report found that “hundreds of thousands of people” across Southeast Asia are “forced” to engage in crypto scams.

Let the laughter commence!

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GM, CT! Or is it CX, now?

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And once more for people in the back: GM, CT!!!

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Heey, well done! You’ve made profits.

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Still pretty in its own way.

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Absolute lunacy!

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Pure science.

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I think we can all agree on this one.

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Web3 business relationships.

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Gotta teach them the hard way.

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Nothing before 4…

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…but this is allowed before birth.

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So tempting. It’s just sitting there. Unhacked. 

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Mew.

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Let’s get this party started!

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Trust him, he obviously knows what he’s doing.

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No doubt.

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The man’s got the solution.

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Nah. No such thing as too much BTC talk. 

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Here’s a prediction from a world-renowned analyst on counter-SBF possibilities.

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And lastly, your weekend documentary with expert commentary.