Educational technology startup TinyTap, a subsidiary of Animoca Brands, has raised $8.5m in funding for staff expansion and product development. The company offers a platform for user-generated educational content and has incorporated blockchain technology into its services, including more tokenized content via non-fungible token collections. Animoca paid $38.8m in June 2022 for an 80.45% stake in TinyTap. The funding round was backed by Sequoia China, Shima Capital, Polygon, Liberty City Ventures, Kingsway Capital, and GameFi Ventures. The startup raised its latest round as venture capital investments became harder to come by, as investors pulled back amid a higher interest rate environment and looming recession.

(By Morgan Chittum)

#BNB #bicasso #dyor #zkSnyc

According to a research report by Bernstein, MicroStrategy's decision to sell its bitcoin tokens to pay down debt is closely tied to how the cryptocurrency performs, presenting a sentiment risk in a down cycle. The company owns approximately 140,000 BTC at an average cost of $29,800, worth about $4 billion at current prices, and has $2.2 billion in debt, with repayments due in 2025 and beyond. MicroStrategy has pledged 15,000 of its bitcoins. High BTC prices mean a stronger balance sheet, higher stock prices, and easier debt repayment without selling its BTC holdings. MicroStrategy holds around 0.7% of total bitcoin in circulation, representing about 20% of daily average traded volume in spot markets.

(By Will Canny)

#zkSnyc #BTC #Binance #dyor

Crypto connectivity project Helium kicked off its migration to the Solana blockchain midday Tuesday, abandoning its own crypto infrastructure in favor of a new, more stable home.

Developers supporting the network have initiated a 24-hour process that will kick the Helium blockchain offline and recreate its key metrics on Solana. Helium’s smart contracts will be unusable during the transition, but if all goes according to plan the network will start back up again Wednesday.

The transition aims to make it faster and cheaper to operate on Helium, a project attempting to globally deploy decentralized wireless infrastructure that relies on cryptocurrency as an incentive mechanism. Until Tuesday its tokens lived for nearly four years on the Helium blockchain, a custom layer 1 that lacked the broad appeal of Solana, Ethereum and other smart contract platforms

Moving to Solana offers the project a wider audience and a more stable platform. Despite Solana’s own history of occasional outages, it is far more reliable and stable than Helium’s, according to Helium blog posts.

(by Nick Baker)

#zkSnyc #crypto2023

The U.S. House Financial Services Committee published a discussion draft Saturday of a landmark stablecoin bill ahead of a hearing on the issue.

The bill, available on the Committee's hearing page, represents the first major piece of crypto legislation to move in 2023. It creates definitions for payment stablecoin issuers, echoing a term former Senator Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) used when he introduced his own stablecoin bill in 2022. The bill also calls for a moratorium on new stablecoins that are backed by other types of tokens until a study can be conducted.

The bill also calls for federal regulators to study the potential impact of a central bank digital currency issued by the Federal Reserve.

Punchbowl News first reported on the bill's publication.

A House Financial Services subcommittee will hold a hearing on stablecoins on Wednesday, featuring Circle's Dante Disparte, the Blockchain Association's Jake Chervinsky, Columbia Professor Austin Campbell and New York Department of Financial Services Superintendent Adrienne Harris.

That hearing will come a day after the full Financial Services Committee meets to hear from Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler.

Spokespeople for Reps. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) and Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), respectively the Chair and Ranking Member on the committee, did not immediately return requests for comment.

Edited by Danny Nelson.

#zkSnyc #BNB

Economist Paul Krugman questioned why Republican Florida governor Ron DeSantis opposes a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in a recent opinion editorial.

Krugman suggested that DeSantis may be motivated by “general paranoia.” He speculated that DeSantis may be influenced by individuals who fear a digital currency could hinder “un-woke activities such as tax evasion and money laundering.”

Krugman observed that some people do not have bank accounts or trust banks, and he finds it “bizarre” that people still use so much paper cash. He speculated that the “vast hoard of Benjamins out there is held by people who want to avoid banks’ reporting requirements in order to hide activities like tax evasion, illegal purchases of drugs and weapons, extortion and so on.”

#zkSnyc

2023-04-16 06:02:28（UTC+8) , Whale Alert data shows that 2,058.00 BTC ($61.89M) were transferred from unknown to Coinbase.

#zkSnyc #crypto2023 #BNB

The blockchain and cryptocurrency space cannot consider itself mature until the day its regulators are able to read and audit code, Ava Labs CEO and founder Emin Gün Sirer told attendees of the annual Cornell Blockchain conference.

Crypto, particularly in the U.S., is in the gunsights of regulators following the collapse of FTX and other calamities that befell the space in 2022. But even the most draconian of clampdowns will not crush crypto, Gün Sirer said.

Several areas, Gün Sirer said, need to improve in order to get the next billion users into crypto, such as scalability, ease of use and adaptability. However, when asked about the feasibility of the secret sharing technology known as zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) to reach that scale, he was skeptical.

(by Nick Baker)

#zkSnyc

Tornado Cash token (TORN) is trading on a negative 13% in today’s trade session, canceling its previous day’s gains and rally, which saw the token rise close to the $12 mark. Coinmarketcap data reveals the token to be trading at $8.77 at the time of writing, a significant drop from where it was in price yesterday.

The TORN token and its decentralized mixing service platform became controversial when its developer, Alexey Pertev, was arrested mid-last year allegedly for money laundering. However, news about the possible jail release of Alexey circulated the industry yesterday, April 20, and created a rally for the TORN token.

According to a recent report, the developer of the TORN token, Alexey Pertev, is expected to be released on April 26, 2023, after spending nine months in detention without trial.

(by Mudiaga Iritare)

#zkSnyc #bicasso #airdrop #crypto2023

Following the Shapella hard fork on April 12, 2023, approximately 332,368 ether, valued at around $699 million, has been withdrawn. Despite these withdrawals, liquid staking protocols like Lido, Rocketpool, and others have experienced an increase in ether deposits over the last 30 days. Since March 14, a total of 281,498 ether worth $592 million have been added to these protocols.

#zkSnyc #Web3 #Binance

The total number of wallets on the Shibarium testnet were 3.1 million on April 13, which now stands above 5M.

Shibarium, the layer-2 solution for the Shiba Inu ecosystem, is registering an impressive surge in adoption rate, as observed in the metrics of its testnet, Puppynet. Notably, the total number of wallets on Puppynet has increased by a massive 86% in just two days, exceeding 5 million.

#bicasso #zkSnyc

SureX, the world’s first derivative trading platform that combines staking, copy trading, and social features, is ushering in a new era of public finance with its innovative approach to DeFi investing. Amid the unstable and bearish cryptocurrency market, SureX has gained momentum by providing low barriers to entry and beginner-friendly financial management services, attracting over 30,000 registered users and nearly a hundred real-money trading experts in just six months.

One of the key features of SureX is its multi-asset staking and financial management system, which allows users to stake their stablecoins and earn a 21% annualized return, providing a passive income stream. This makes it easy for users, including those with zero experience in DeFi investing, to earn through the platform without compromising their daily financial management.

SureX also offers a unique copy trading system, where the platform strictly reviews traders, and their trading history is transparent and publicly available. This allows novice users to select from a pool of high-quality strategy providers confidently and automatically copy their trades, protecting newcomers from potential losses and leveraging the expertise of experienced traders.

#airdrop #zkSnyc

A Delaware company is seeking registration with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to carry out over-the-counter (OTC) stock trading on-chain.

BlackStar Enterprise Group has been developing the platform since 2018 and spent almost two years in communication with the regulator, answering dozens of questions and comments from examiners. Recently, the company has taken the next step in providing a detailed plan to the SEC Trading and Market division about how its platforms will be operated.

BlackStar CEO Joseph Kurczodyna told Cointelegraph that he sought the SEC’s permission to build the platform’s demo in 2018. “We have proved that U.S. registered securities can be traded digitally on a blockchain, that the process is compliant with broker dealers’ back-office and SEC rules," commented the senior executive.

The platform will allow trading OTC securities within the existing regulated brokerage ecosystem from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and SEC, the company said in its filings

(by Ana Paula Pereira)

#BNB #zkSnyc #dyor #bicasso

Russian cybersecurity and anti-virus provider Kaspersky revealed that cryptocurrency phishing attacks witnessed a 40% year-on-year increase in 2022. The company detected 5,040,520 crypto phishing attacks in the year as compared to 3,596,437 in 2021.

While Kaspersky could not predict if the trend would increase in 2023, phishing attacks continue the momentum in 2023. Most recently, in March, hardware cryptocurrency wallet provider Trezor issued a warning against attempts to steal users’ crypto by tricking investors into entering their recovery phrase on a fake Trezor site.

#BNB #zkSnyc #airdrop

HyperproAI has developed a decentralized Web3 open network that combines blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) to address all crypto-related issues with AI instruments.

The team behind the project created HyerproAI because they believe that AI is the tool needed to take blockchain and cryptocurrencies to the next level. HyerproAI seeks to create a system with superior usable AI functionality allowing users to explore various professional DeFi applications. HyerproAI is a multi-feature platform that offers users unique features, including automated trading strategies, decentralization and AI marketplace/DAPP. HyerproAI is designed to offer users access to low-cost, secure and private high-performance computing power. Users can also access other services and resources, including a finite number of free API calls, reputation rankings and pricing information.

Users can set up automated trading strategies based on key order types and metrics through the platform. Notably, this information is transferred directly into the API of the broker. Users also get access to real-time analysis and insight, allowing them to create and easily manage their portfolios.

#zkSnyc #crypto2023 #antiscam

Switzerland’s Syz Group is joining with Hong Kong-based venture capital firm CMCC Global to launch a fund with at least $50 million to invest in crypto-focused hedge funds.

SyzCrest Digital will start operations on July 1, ultimately aiming to raise as much as $300 million, according to Richard Byworth, managing partner at Syz Capital, the group’s alternative investment arm. Willy Woo, who runs a quantitative research-driven fund of funds for CMCC, will join as investment committee member at the new Cayman-Islands registered firm.

#Binance #zkSnyc #crypto2023

Blockdaemon, a leading crypto infrastructure provider, is launching an all-in-one wallet service to help large-scale institutions and crypto custodians steward their assets without entrusting them to third parties.

Blockdaemon Wallet will incorporate some of the firm’s existing wallet infrastructure – along with a handful of new features – into a new platform focused on security, compliance and liquidity.

Nearly every crypto investor has at some point heard the adage, “not your keys, not your crypto” – the point being that holding assets in one’s own crypto wallet, rather than entrusting them to an intermediary, is the only true way to guarantee that those funds stay safe.

Large financial institutions, however, are forced to contend with regulations and security constraints that make consumer-focused crypto wallets (eg. browser wallets like MetaMask or hardware wallets like Ledger) inadequate. For this reason, they frequently secure their assets with third-party “custodians.”

(By Sam Kessler)

#zkSnyc #crypto2023 #BNB #bitcoin

Several crypto exchanges, including Crypto.com, Bitstamp, Kraken, and Binance, have been ordered by a Gibraltar court to cooperate with the liquidators of crypto trader Globix, who are seeking to track $43 million that went missing. The exchanges have been ordered to identify the owners of suspect wallets and Binance has been ordered to freeze transfers. Gibraltar has been seeking to become a crypto hub, housing spot trading services for the Huobi exchange and ZUBR, a subsidiary of collapsed crypto exchange FTX. The crypto trader stopped receiving investments in June amid crypto market turmoil and filed for liquidation last month.

(By Jack Schickler)

#Binance #zkSnyc

Prominent Philippines-based cryptocurrency exchange Coins.ph has continued to leverage Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) service for cross-border payments and settlements.

Since Coins.ph partnered with Ripple to use ODL for cross-border settlements, the cryptocurrency exchange has added support for top payment outlets worldwide.

Currently, Coins.ph supports more than 75 payment outlets through Ripple’s ODL solution. Some of the payment outlets Coins.ph supports through the solution include top banking giants like Citibank, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, ING Bank N.V., JPMorgan Chase Bank, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., Bank of America, etc.

(by Lele Jima)

#antiscam #bitcoin #zkSnyc #BTC

Arbitrum was forced to backtrack on a key proposal earlier this week after token holders in the Ethereum Layer 2 scaling project who control the protocol's decentralized autonomous organization staged an apparent revolt by voting to stop the planned transfer of ARB tokens worth about $1 billion meant to capitalize the Arbitrum Foundation.

While the result could be seen as a win for the promise of DAOs — truly decentralized governance that works, even when it goes against what management wants — the ordeal raised a number of thorny issues. The central question being whether or not an organization can really function from the bottom up, at least in the beginning stage and especially when huge amounts of money – and potential profit – are involved.

"A key issue DAO governance can face is the misalignment of short-term incentives with longer term goals," Charlotte Dodds, head of marketing at uncollateralized lending platform Maple Finance said in an interview.

She pointed toward her previous experience in more traditional tech companies such as TikTok and said that sometimes centralized decision-making is necessary when companies want to quickly scale.

That's exactly the argument that the Arbitrum developers initially tried to make when the plan to capitalize their Arbitrum Foundation first drew controversy, calling it a "ratification" instead of what many thought should have been a more of a consultation.

Arbitrum eggshells

"When it comes to setting up a DAO, there’s a chicken and an egg problem," the developers said in a governance forum post on Sunday, arguing that parameters involving code transfer, security council creation and the drafting of a constitution needed to be set before the DAO could take over. "There simply was no community that could have voted on these numbers, and the very act of creating the community required these parameters to be specified."

The debate followed the high-profile airdrop of Arbitrum governance tokens last month, an event that saw more than 1 billion ARB tokens allocated to nearly 300,000 wallets. It also resulted in the creation of the ArbitrumDAO.

"Slightest whiff of 'team dictates everything' won’t be met with benefit of the doubt from here," they wrote. "Build community or just don’t bother."

Nick Cannon, vice president of growth at Gauntlet Network, said that chickens and eggs might not make the cleanest analogy, but that "the evolution component is real and tough to get right."

"How can you know the mandates/stances of DAO delegates before delegation?" he said, adding that Arbitrum could have used better messaging.

"In some cases it's better to ask for forgiveness but with DAOs you always want to ask for permission first," he said. "The clarity post should have come first."

Big Tent

And while users including PaperImperium favor the big tent approach promised by many DAOs, BlockTower Capital general partner Thomas Klocanas pointed out some of the problems decentralized organizational structures face, including voter apathy and low participation.

"For the most part, it doesn't really work today, in an overwhelming majority of cases," he said.

"We have too much speculation around the space," he said. "A lot of market participants hold tokens with no long-term interest in a specific project, so they don't bother to look into governance, let alone participate."

It's a sentiment that was shared by Maple's Dodds, who pointed out that some token holders may be more interested in personal profit over the long-term sustainability and vision of the protocol. You can have decentralization on a purely technical level, she said, but it becomes harder on an ethical level.

Expectations of profit

"Some token holders have become accustomed to expecting profit from governance tokens, whereas when you're building a business, you're in it for the long haul," she said. "The incentives are not necessarily aligned in any of this," Dodds continued, noting that many DAOs were purposely structured in a decentralized way so that their tokens would not be classified as securities.

"What is the point of a DAO? There are huge advantages to being community-led, but in reality, it's complicated," she said, noting that even if voting may be decentralized, the initial allocation of tokens may result in a centralized voting process.

Klocanas said that investor activism could point to a possible solution, noting projects including Paladin and StakeDAO that are working to create "governance markets."

"Long term though, tokens can't just confer rights to governance," he said. "We need to find a way, as the crypto community and from a regulatory perspective, to have these things naturally evolve from idea, to meme / utility token, to governance token and eventually to network equity- ie something with cash flow rights but not to a company / common enterprise, but to a network / collective."

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

#antiscam #crypto2023 #zkSnyc

The Texas Senate has given unanimous backing to the Bitcoin mining bill, SB-1751, which is set to make it through the State House of Representatives before being enacted.

The bill would reduce the power allocated to cryptocurrency mining in times of high demand to ensure residential customers receive priority. Previously, Bitcoin miners have been eligible to receive credits that they can use on their power bills in exchange for cutting power usage.

Marathon Digital CEO Fred Thiel, which hosts most of its rigs in several Texas facilities, says the bill won't change his company's decision to pursue renewable power options in the state, though the company is also planning to build two $400m mining operations in the UAE with joint venture partner FS Innovation, in which Marathon has a 20% stake.

#bicasso #zkSnyc #antiscam