Headlines
SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has received multiple death threats
Bloomberg reporters recently revealed through the Freedom of Information Act that since 2022, Gary Gensler, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), has received multiple threatening emails and voice messages from the United States and internationally. These threats contain violent rhetoric, one of which claims to "shoot and chop him up", and another threatening email with the subject "Go to hell" came from Australia. However, these threats are not clearly related to Gensler's cryptocurrency regulatory policy.
SBF formally appealed and requested a new judge to re-examine the case
SBF has formally appealed its fraud conviction. In a 102-page appeal filed Friday afternoon, SBF's lawyers asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to overturn the original conviction and assign a new judge for a retrial because the judge who heard his case was unfairly biased against SBF. Last November, a New York jury convicted SBF of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy related to the collapse of his cryptocurrency trading platform in November 2022. In March of this year, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan of the Southern District of New York (SDNY) sentenced SBF to 25 years in prison for the crime, and he has currently served six months of his sentence.
Montenegro's Supreme Court expected to rule on Do Kwon this month
The Supreme Court of Montenegro is expected to rule on whether the Do Kwon extradition verdict was illegal by the end of this month, according to the acting president of the Supreme Court of Montenegro. Vesna Vučković said that the Supreme Court will decide on the "legality protection request" filed by the Supreme State Prosecutor. The prosecutor believes that the final verdict of the High Court and the Court of Appeal on the extradition of cryptocurrency founder Do Kwon contains multiple illegalities.
Industry News
Franklin Templeton: U.S. presidential election could complicate prospects for big rate cuts
"If there's still inflation in the housing sector, a 50 basis point rate cut could actually accelerate or amplify that," said Wylie Tollette, chief investment officer at Franklin Templeton Investment Solutions, who expects the Fed to cut rates by 25 basis points next week, adding that the election could also complicate the prospect of a big rate cut. Trump has previously said that a Fed rate cut would help Harris, the current vice president, "even though they know they shouldn't do that." "The path of the Fed is that they want to do what's right for the economy, and I don't think they want to be seen as favoring the incumbent candidate by cutting rates more aggressively," said Wylie Tollette.
Elon Musk's social media platform X may be exempt from EU digital markets law
Elon Musk’s social media platform X is set to escape the brunt of a signature European Union law aimed at reining in tech giants after regulators determined it does not have a big enough impact on the bloc’s markets. The European Commission is nearing the end of its investigation into the platform and is set to conclude it does not fall under the bloc’s Digital Markets Directive (DMA), according to people familiar with the matter. X will sidestep many of the DMA’s rules because its service is not yet robust enough for commercial users and does not meet certain revenue thresholds. The Commission is likely to publish its findings in October, they added. The DMA lays out a series of requirements for companies including Google Search, Apple’s Safari, Amazon and Meta. The move is aimed at preventing tech giants from breaking competition law, with fines of up to 10% of a company’s global revenue and up to 20% for repeated violations.
Goldman Sachs: Still expects the Fed to cut interest rates by 25 basis points next week
Goldman Sachs said it still expects the Fed to cut interest rates by 25 basis points next week and at each of its remaining meetings this year (November and December).
Ripple Chief Legal Officer: SEC has been self-contradictory in characterizing crypto assets
In response to Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal’s post on the X platform revealing that the SEC had previously made misleading statements about the characterization of tokens, Binance stated in footnote 6 of the revised complaint that “the SEC regrets any confusion it may have caused,” referring to the SEC’s previous mistaken statement that the tokens themselves were securities. Ripple Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty responded that the SEC’s move actually admitted two points: one is that “crypto-asset securities” is a fictitious term; the other is that to prove that crypto assets are investment contracts, the SEC needs a series of “contracts, expectations, and understandings” of evidence. At the same time, he said that the SEC has actually fallen into a dilemma of self-contradiction.
Project News
Ethereum Foundation researcher Danny Ryan announces his resignation
Danny Ryan, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, announced his resignation, ending his seven years of contribution to the Ethereum ecosystem. Ryan said on GitHub that his resignation was for personal reasons and he wanted to make room for new opportunities, and emphasized that this decision did not reflect problems in Ethereum or the crypto industry. Ryan played an important role in key upgrades of Ethereum. He served as the lead coordinator of Ethereum's The Merge upgrade and oversaw the launch of the beacon chain in 2021. Ryan also actively participated in the progress update of the Ethereum Improvement Proposal.
Solana Co-founder Questions ZKsync’s Claim That the Governance System Is Not Multi-Signature, Arguing That the latter Has Centralization Risks
Yesterday, Alex Gluchowski, CEO of ZKsync developer Matter Labs, announced the launch of the ZKsync governance system. Alex said that the governance system is not multi-signature, "All planned upgrades are initiated directly on the chain by the community of more than 370,000 ZK token holders, not by a foundation or a small group of trusted actors." Solana co-founder Toly questioned under the article that although ZKsync claims not to be a multi-signature system, it is actually still based on the honest majority assumption, which means that it is essentially similar to a multi-signature system. Toly further stated that unlike Solana, ZKsync's governance system has potential centralization risks. In Solana, even if there are enough validators to reach a consensus, a single full node of Circle (the issuer of USDC) is able to reject invalid state transitions, thereby protecting the system from malicious behavior. ZKsync's "Professional Security Committee" may face legal risks because if enough committee members are ordered by a U.S. bankruptcy judge, they may be forced to place all cross-chain assets under the control of a bankruptcy trust.
Li Lin's family office Avenir Capital established a crypto quantitative fund Avenir Crypto, with an initial fund size of US$500 million
Avenir Capital, the family office of Huobi founder Li Lin, established a crypto quantitative fund Avenir Crypto, with an initial fund size of US$500 million (including US$200 million in stablecoins, 3,000 BTC and 50,000 ETH).
Digital asset management company ParaFi Capital will tokenize $1.2 billion fund on Avalanche chain
Digital asset management company ParaFi Capital announced that it will tokenize part of its $1.2 billion portfolio on the Avalanche blockchain through the Securitize platform and trade it through the securitization platform. This is the company's first attempt at fund tokenization, providing a portion of the equity of its latest venture capital fund. It is reported that ParaFi has invested in Securitize and Avalanche. In August this year, the company completed a $120 million financing, with investors including Theta Capital Management and Accolade Partners.
HMSTR token economics: total supply 100 billion, 75% for player rewards, 3% for Binance Launchpool
Binance announces the token economics of TON ecosystem game Hamster Kombat: As of September 12, 2024, the total supply of HMSTR is 100,000,000,000, and the circulating supply at launch will be 64,375,000,000 (~64.38% of the total token supply). Among them, 60% of the total supply of tokens will be used for player rewards in the first season, 15% of the tokens will be used for player rewards in the second season, 3% of the tokens will be allocated to Binance Launchpool, 4% of the tokens will be used for liquidity, 8% of the tokens will be allocated to the team, 4% of the tokens will be used for marketing, and 6% of the tokens will be used for cooperation and funding. Yesterday, Binance Launchpool and Super Earn Coin launched the HMSTR project.
LayerZero: Users can transfer assets from Bitcoin L1 to chains such as Solana, Base and Arbitrum through the OFT standard
LayerZero announced on X that Beyond now supports connecting Bitcoin L1 to over 80 chains through LayerZero. From now on, users can transfer assets from Bitcoin L1 to chains such as Solana, Base, and Arbitrum through LayerZero's OFT standard.
Security Risks
SlowMist CISO: Anime task reward website is suspected to have SSRF vulnerability
SlowMist Chief Information Security Officer 23 pds said on the X platform that the component version of the Anime task reward website was too low and seemed to have an SSRF vulnerability, and asked the official to upgrade it.
Binance: Crypto Users Should Be Aware of “Clipper” Malware
Binance published a blog post focusing on crypto security, and pointed out that a global malware problem has been discovered, which has seriously affected cryptocurrency transactions by changing the withdrawal address during the transaction process. This malware is often called "Clipper malware" and intercepts data stored in the clipboard, mainly targeting cryptocurrency wallet addresses. The Binance security team is actively addressing this issue through a variety of measures:-Blacklisting suspicious addresses: The attacker address has been blacklisted to prevent further fraudulent transactions. This move has successfully blocked multiple withdrawal attempts by potential victims.-User notification: Affected users have been informed about the malware and are advised to check their devices for any suspicious software or plug-ins.-Incident reporting: Affected users are asked to share details about their incidents to help us identify and analyze the malware and plug-ins involved.-Continuous monitoring: The Binance team continues to monitor new threats and update security protocols accordingly.
