The proposed agreement addresses the SEC's motion for a temporary restraining order but still needs judicial sign-off.

Binance, Binance.US and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) late Friday announced a deal to ensure that only Binance.US employees can access customer funds in the short term.

According to the proposed agreement, which still needs sign-off from the federal judge overseeing the case, Binance.US will take steps to make sure that no officials from Binance Holdings, the global exchange, have access to private keys for wallets or hardware wallets, or root access to Binance.US's Amazon Web Services tools. The U.S.-based crypto trading platform will share detailed information about its business expenses, including estimated costs, in the coming weeks.

The proposed deal responds to an SEC motion to freeze all of Binance.US's assets while it pursues the exchange on securities-related charges. The regulator said it was concerned that funds could be moved offshore or records destroyed if it was not granted a temporary restraining order (TRO). Binance.US's attorneys pushed back, saying that freezing all assets would amount to the "death penalty."

Judge Amy Berman Jackson, of the District Court for the District of Columbia, told the parties that it would be better for them to come to an agreement on a proposed stipulation than to have her craft a restraining order, which would come with a two-week time limit. Two weeks would give insufficient time to prepare, given the more than 4,000 pages of exhibits the parties have already filed, she said during a hearing earlier this week.

Other provisions in the proposed agreement will see Binance.US create new crypto wallets that global employees have no access to, provide additional information to the SEC, and agree to an expedited discovery schedule.

U.S.-based customers will still be allowed to withdraw funds during this time.

The proposed agreement, if accepted, will address some of the SEC's stated concerns as the broader lawsuit it filed works its way through the judicial system. The SEC sued Binance and Binance.US last week on charges of offering and trading unregistered securities, but also alleged massive commingling of funds and other poor practices. The proposed agreement does not delve into the broader suit.

Bitcoin, Ether Move Toward Oversold Territory in Post FOMC Downturn

The post-FOMC decision performance of BTC and ETH has been lackluster, contrasting to the response in traditional finance.

Both assets have breached the lower range of their Bollinger Bands, while moving into technically oversold territory

Bitcoin and ether declined into oversold territory Thursday, following hawkish comments by U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell after the central bank halted its 14-month prescription of interest rate hikes.

The degree of hawkishness is open to interpretation, but here’s what we know:

The pause in interest rate hikes and maintenance of the 5.0-5.25% target rate was widely expected, and likely already priced into the market. The following changes from the FOMC’s March projections occurred.

The increase in the projections for Core PCE inflation and the Federal Funds rate are the most alarming.

The market appeared to react that despite recent data indicating progress, inflation remains too high and problematic. Chairman Powell echoed as much in his comments on Wednesday, reiterating a commitment to future monetary tightening, even while emphasizing economic “lags” as justification for the pause.

The analogy is akin to a driver taking their foot off the accelerator slightly, as they round sharp turns, but having no intention of braking, or changing course.

Bollinger Bands breach?

Bitcoin and ether sold off sharply with both assets breaching the lower range of their Bollinger Bands. Bollinger Bands are a technical tool that tracks an asset’s 20-day moving average and plots two standard deviations above and below.

Because an asset’s price is expected to stay within two standard deviations of its average 95% of the time, a breach of the upper or lower range is viewed as a significant event.

Both assets fell near or into “oversold” territory, as ETH’s Relative Strength Index (RSI) fell to 29, while BTC’s fell to 35.

RSI ranges from 0-100, with values above 70 indicating that an asset is overbought, and values below 30 implying that the asset is oversold.

Data from 2015 to present shows that BTC’s RSI has settled between 35 and 36 on 42 occasions with an average 30-day performance of -.01%. ETH’s RSI has settled between 29 and 31 on 24 occasions since 2017, with an average 30-day performance of -15% following.

The abrupt move downward runs counter to Thursday’s price action in traditional markets, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), S&P 500, and Nasdaq Composite rose 1%, 0.92% and 0.82% respectively, compared to declines in BTC and ETH prices.

The dispersion in performance could be due partly to the additional regulatory overhang impacting crypto markets, as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), continues to eye crypto markets.

CoinDesk Indices tools highlight the decline as both the Bitcoin Trend Indicator (BTI) and Ether Trend Indicator (ETI) signal that the assets have entered a downtrend phase.

#BTC #ETH #Web3 #dyor

BlackRock's iShares Files Paperwork for Spot Bitcoin ETF

The SEC has rejected numerous attempts by other fund companies to launch a spot bitcoin ETF.

The iShares unit of fund management giant BlackRock (BLK) filed paperwork Thursday afternoon with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for the formation of a spot bitcoin (BTC) ETF.

To be named the iShares Bitcoin Trust, the fund's assets are to "consist primarily of bitcoin held by a custodian on behalf of the Trust," according to the filing. That custodian will by crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN), said the filing.

CoinDesk earlier on Thursday reported on BlackRock's intention to soon file for a bitcoin ETF.

Though approving a number of futures-based bitcoin ETFs, the SEC has notably rejected other fund management company attempts at opening a spot bitcoin ETF, including those from Grayscale, VanEck, and WisdomTree.

BlackRock, however, may not be as easy for the SEC to turn away. It's the world's largest asset manager with more than $10 trillion in assets under management (AUM) and the company and its CEO Larry Fink has political power to possibly match that of the SEC and its leader Gary Gensler.

"The proposed ETF is benchmarked against the CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate," said crypto exchange Kraken, commenting on the filing. "CF Benchmarks takes price data exclusively from cryptocurrency exchanges that adhere to the highest possible standards of market integrity and transparency. This protects investors as products benchmarked against it can then consistently and reliably track the spot price of the underlying asset."

The price of bitcoin is gaining a bit on the news, rising about 1% to just shy of $25,700.

Sotheby's Second 3AC NFT Sale Nets $10.9M, With 'The Goose' Alone Netting $6.2M

Ringers #879, a seminal NFT artwork often referred to as "The Goose," far outpaced estimates and sold for $6.2 million.

On Thursday, Sotheby's concluded another sale of non-fungible token (NFT) artwork seized from bankrupt crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC), bringing in over $10.9 million in sales.

The live auction took place in New York and included pieces from the "Grails" collection. In total, there were 37 works from generative artists like Dmitri Cherniak, Tyler Hobbs, Jeff Davis and more.

Highlights from this lot included Dmitri Cherniak's Ringers #879 (often referred to as "The Goose"), which was estimated to sell for $2-3 million. After back-and-forth bidding, it ended up selling for $6.2 million to notable NFT investor 6529. In a tweet following the sale, Sotheby's reported it was the second-highest sale of all time for a work of generative art.

#Web3 #NFTS #dyor

The largest cryptocurrency rose more than 1.3% in the hour after the announcement.

Bitcoin jumped past $25.700, a more than 1.3% gain, in the hour after the iShares unit of fund management powerhouse BlackRock (BLK) filed paperwork Thursday afternoon with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the formation of a spot bitcoin (BTC) ETF.

Bitcoin dipped below $25,000 just a day earlier for the first time in three months and spent most of Thursday prior to the BlackRock announcement hovering just over that threshold. BTC's price has sunk amid concerns about U.S. central bank hawkishness and increasing U.S. regulatory scrutiny of the crypto industry.

But the BlackRock announcement rekindled optimism about the possibility of a spot bitcoin ETF, even after the SEC has rejected multiple applications over the past 18 months.

#bitcoin #cryptocurrency #web3 #dyor

Introducing Mavprotocol $MAV on #Binance Launchpool! Farm MAV by staking and $TUSD.

Binance is excited to announce the 34th project on Binance Launchpool - Maverick Protocol (MAV), a composable DEX that enables liquidity providers to achieve high capital efficiency with their desired Liquidity Providing (LP) strategy. The webpage is estimated to be available in 4 hours, before the Launchpool starts. 

Users will be able to stake their BNB and TUSD into separate pools to farm MAV tokens over 25 days, with farming starting from 2023-06-14 00:00 (UTC).

Binance will then list MAV when its liquidity meets the requirement and open trading with MAV/BTC, MAV/USDT and MAV/TUSD trading pairs. Exact date and timing will be announced once available. 

Users will enjoy zero maker fees on the MAV/TUSD trading pair until further notice.

Maverick Launchpool Details:

Token Name: Maverick Protocol (MAV)

Total Token Supply: 2,000,000,000 MAV 

Launchpool Token Rewards: 30,000,000 (1.5% of total token supply)

Initial Circulating Supply: 250,000,000 (12.5% of the total token supply)

Smart Contract Address: Maverick Token (MAV)

Staking Terms: No upper limit. KYC required 

Supported Pools: 

Stake BNB (webpage will be available in around 4 hours): 24,000,000 MAV in rewards (80%) 

Stake TUSD (webpage will be available in around 4 hours): 6,000,000 MAV in rewards (20%)

Farming Period: 2023-06-14 00:00 (UTC) to 2023-07-08 23:59 (UTC).

SEC and Binance.US to negotiate deal avoiding total asset freeze

United States District Judge Amy Berman Jackson has ordered the two entities to work toward a compromise.

Binance.US and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission have agreed to work on an arrangement that will allow the exchange to avoid freezing all of its assets.

On June 14, Bloomberg reported that U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson referred the two organizations to a magistrate judge to work toward a compromise arrangement to protect customer funds without having to shut down the exchange.

“Shutting it down completely would create significant consequences not only for the company but for the digital asset markets in general,” Jackson said at a June 13 hearing.

Judge Jackson noted she wouldn’t come to a final decision on the SEC’s motion for a temporary restraining order until the two parties had worked through the situation with the magistrate.

An update on the negotiations made with the magistrate has been scheduled for the end of business hours on June 15.

Additionally, she noted the SEC and Binance.US seemed “not that far apart” when it came to reaching an agreement on the matter.

Before Judge Jackson reached her decision at the hearing, former SEC enforcement attorney John Read Stark informed his 20,000 Twitter followers that there is “a lot of conflict between what each party” wanted to get out of the hearing.

The federal judge ordered the Securities and Exchange Commission and Binance lawyers to keep negotiating about limits on the company, reporting back to her by Thursday.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The federal judge overseeing the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's case against Binance and Binance.US declined to order a temporary restraining order freezing the U.S. trading platform's assets.

That would allow the U.S. arm of the company to continue doing business while hashing out restrictions with the regulator.

If the two sides can agree on limits, Judge Amy Berman Jackson, of the D.C. District Court, said “there’s absolutely no need” for a restraining order. In the meantime, the judge ordered Binance.US to provide a list of its business expenses to the court, and ordered the parties to continue negotiating. A status update is due by close of business Thursday.

In a packed Washington courtroom, the judge hammered SEC attorneys about their motion to freeze all of the company's assets until it could prove that no one from Binance's global platform, including Changpeng "CZ" Zhao, had access to its private keys.

At times, the judge seemed frustrated by the responses she was hearing when asking whether any Binance.US customer funds had actually left the U.S., after multiple SEC attorneys said they were mainly concerned about the fact that Binance's global platform controlled enough private key shards to move funds.

"I want to know if it's happening or not," she said. "It's stunning that I've asked each of you this."

Sticking point

Earlier in the day, the judge hinted she may have been inclined to grant some sort of restriction on Binance's access to Binance.US assets but not a full restraining order, ordering the companies to reconcile their proposed restrictions and ordering the SEC to contrast what it wanted with what the companies proposed in lieu of the restraining order itself.

Jennifer Farer, an SEC lawyer, told the judge Tuesday, “We are open to the business continuing to operate.”

And representatives of Binance.US said they mainly wanted to be allowed normal operating expenses and that they were “not willing to accept the death penalty” represented by a total asset freeze.

Farer said Binance.US had constantly changed its story about how crypto assets and funds were held, from Binance.US telling the SEC that it had an agreement with Binance to saying the agreement was not operational to saying the non-operational agreement had been suspended.

Source via Coindesk

#dyor #Binance

Ladies and gentlemen, It is with great sadness that I address you today regarding the recent dump disaster. As you are all aware, half a billion Bitcoins have been lost forever. This is a significant loss not only for the individuals who had invested in these digital assets but also for the entire cryptocurrency industry. While the exact cause of this disaster is still unknown, it is a stark reminder of the risks associated with investing in digital currencies. As we continue to explore the potential of blockchain technology, it is imperative that we also address the challenges that come with it. As a community, we must work together to ensure that such disasters do not occur again in the future. This includes implementing stronger security measures, improving transparency, and educating investors on the risks involved. While this is undoubtedly a setback for the industry, it is also an opportunity for us to learn and grow. We must continue to innovate and explore new ways to harness the potential of blockchain technology while also mitigating the risks. In conclusion, I would like to express my deepest sympathies to those who have been affected by this disaster. We must come together as a community to learn from this experience and move forward towards a brighter future for the cryptocurrency industry. Thank you.