U.S. prosecutors charge four cryptocurrency “market makers” and their employees with market manipulation and fraud

According to CoinDesk, U.S. federal prosecutors have filed market manipulation and fraud charges against four cryptocurrency "market makers" and their employees. These companies include Gotbit, CLS Global, MyTrade, and ZM Quant. Prosecutors allege that they secretly provided wash trading services to crypto projects, exaggerating trading volumes and selling tokens at inflated prices. These actions allowed them to profit from them and benefit by persuading exchanges to lower trading fees. The list of defendants also includes several crypto asset promoters, involving tokens such as Robo Inu, VZZN, and Saitama. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are also involved in the investigation and are expected to recover $25 million in illegal gains.

Rumor: "The central bank's digital RMB platform will issue digital asset dividends" is a rumor

According to Tencent News (First Line), recently, it was reported online that some criminals used the name of the Digital Currency Research Institute of the People's Bank of China to issue a false announcement, saying that "after joint approval by the Ministry of Finance and the National Data Bureau, the digital RMB platform will issue digital asset dividends to users who have received exclusive withdrawal channels", "will start the second batch of asset registration review and green channel quota subscription", etc. It is reported that such "announcements" and "platforms" are forged, and the relevant information is not true.

Relevant people reminded that the Digital Currency Research Institute of the People's Bank of China has never released the above information, and has never organized the registration or subscription of "digital assets" or issued "digital asset dividends", etc. Relevant units, enterprises and the general public are requested to be vigilant, strengthen identification, and guard against being deceived.

Binance CEO: The project quota in Launchpool is strictly for Binance users, and Binance will not make profits from it

Richard Teng, CEO of Binance, wrote on the X platform: "I received a question about Launchpool quotas on X Spaces before. I hope this explanation will make everyone clear. The project quotas in Launchpool are strictly for Binance users. Binance will not make profits from these quotas that are supposed to be used for users, and the final allocation of project quotas is determined by the project party. We have implemented strict control measures, including setting a maximum holding limit for each Launchpool and Pre-Market user, which allows projects to reach users widely while providing protection measures. Of course, this also includes our strict token review process and a dedicated market monitoring team to monitor trading activities on Binance."

US prosecutors temporarily believe that the only person eligible for compensation in the 2016 Bitfinex hacking case is Bitfinex

According to a motion document filed by the U.S. prosecutors in the 2016 Bitfinex hacking case, prosecutor MATTHEW M. GRAVES stated that the government hopes to provide notice to the public of the crimes to which the defendant has pleaded guilty so that any individual claiming to be a potential crime victim can assert their rights under the Crime Victims Rights Act (CVRA). The government does not know of any other victims who meet the CVRA or compensation requirements under the Mandatory Victims Compensation Act (MVRA) other than Bitfinex (the victimized virtual currency exchange), but out of extreme caution, the government still seeks such relief to provide notice to members of the public, especially former account holders of VICTIM VCE, and give them the opportunity to file potential victim rights claims and/or compensation claims under the CVRA, MVRA and related regulations. The defendant's lawyer has negotiated this motion. Defendant Ilya Lichtenstein and Defendant Heather Rhiannon Morgan did not oppose the motion and maintained that if there were any potential victims under the CVRA or MVRA, only Bitfinex met that status.

Sky: Users can now get SKY token rewards

Decentralized financial lending platform Sky (formerly MakerDAO) said on the X platform that users can now get SKY token rewards. Go to the Sky Token rewards page and choose between SKY tokens and Chronicle Protocol points. After selecting the reward, users can provide their USDS to get the reward immediately. The reward accumulates every second and can be claimed at any time. At the same time, you don’t need to lose control of your assets or meet any minimum requirements. If users join Sky.money’s early bird program and choose to receive SKY, they will automatically receive 100% SKY bonus rewards from the wallet used during the event. These bonus rewards will be collected in the same wallet at a later date. In some jurisdictions (including the United States), Sky.money cannot access certain features of the Sky Protocol, such as Sky Token rewards and Sky savings rates.

VanEck Launches $30 Million VC Fund VanEck Ventures to Support Crypto and AI Industries

According to The Information, asset management company VanEck has launched VanEck Ventures, a $30 million fund focused on investing in early-stage cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence startups to expand its existing cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds and private equity funds. The fund is managed by Wyatt Lonergan and Juan Lopez, both of whom are from Circle Ventures, the venture capital arm of stablecoin issuer Circle. They will mainly invest in projects related to stablecoins.

Animoca Brands: Will acquire more PROS tokens from the open market

According to official news, Animoca Brands disclosed today that it intends to acquire more PROS tokens from the open market. PROS is Prosper’s utility token, which has been redesigned to bring institutional-grade Bitcoin mining power on-chain and seeks to provide comprehensive exposure to Bitcoin hash rate and the broader Bitcoin ecosystem.

Animoca Brands said the acquisition demonstrates the company’s support for Prosper’s new strategic direction, which will bring new utility to the PROS token and also demonstrates its commitment to the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Web3 game studio Dragonz Lab announces $9 million in funding

Decentralized AI infrastructure platform OpenGradient completes $8.5 million seed round of financing

Settlements between crypto firms and U.S. regulators total $32 billion to date

According to Coingecko statistics, the amount of settlements between crypto companies and US regulators has reached US$32 billion so far, with the largest amounts being FTX and Alameda, with settlements of US$12.7 billion, followed by Celcius ($4.7 billion), Terraform Labs ($4.5 billion), Binance ($4.3 billion), Genesis ($2 billion), Voyager ($1.65 billion), Telegram ($1.24 billion), Coinbase ($100 million), BlockFi ($100 million), and BitMEX ($100 million).

Chiliz, the CHZ project owner, has withdrawn 1.473 billion tokens from Binance since yesterday afternoon, accounting for 16% of the total number of tokens in circulation.

According to the monitoring of on-chain analyst @ai_9684xtpa, since yesterday afternoon, the CHZ project Chiliz has withdrawn a total of 1.473 billion tokens from Binance, worth $103 million, accounting for 16% of the total number of circulating tokens. The withdrawal may be related to the PEPPER airdrop, but it is not clear why it was withdrawn to the chain; CHZ is the token of the club platform Socios.com developed by Chiliz, and has risen 38% in the past month.

Solana's monthly active addresses exceed 100 million, a new high, but most addresses do not hold SOL

According to Cointelegraph, according to data from blockchain data platform Artemis Terminal, Solana's monthly active addresses have soared to more than 100 million, setting a new record high for the network. This is a big leap compared to the 509,000 monthly active addresses recorded by Artemis in early 2024.

However, supporting indicators show that most active wallets on the Solana network do not hold any SOL tokens, and skeptics attribute this explosive growth to bots artificially inflating the indicators. According to data from Solana data provider Hello Moon, over 86 million users held 0 SOL in their wallets in the past month, about 15.5 million users held less than 1 SOL, and about 1.5 million users held less than 10 SOL.

Justin d'Anethan, head of business development for Asia Pacific at market maker Keyrock, said: "Most Solana addresses have a lifetime value of less than $10, which shows that although the ecosystem is indeed very active and the token is performing very well, this is not entirely legitimate or natural." Dan Hughes, founder of decentralized financial platform Radix DLT, believes that interaction with centralized exchanges (CEX) or decentralized financial applications (DeFi) may be a possible reason for the existence of a large number of active wallets with zero balance.

Bitcoin mining difficulty increased by 4.12% to 92.05 T yesterday

CloverPool data shows that the difficulty of Bitcoin mining has been adjusted at block height 864,864 (2024-10-09 14:46:39), with the mining difficulty increased by 4.12% to 92.05 T. The current average computing power of the entire network is 596.30 EH/s.

Ethereum Foundation sold another 100 ETH for about 240,000 DAI

According to Spot On Chain, the Ethereum Foundation sold another 100 ETH last night for 242,828 DAI. This was its first ETH sale in October. In September, the Ethereum Foundation sold 1,250 ETH (about $3.06 million).