The Disrupt

“The two biggest creditors of Mt. Gox have elected to get their bankruptcy recovery paid out mostly in bitcoin (BTC). The payouts will come in as part of the early lump sum option offered to creditors, now expected on Sept. 30.

Their decision to pick the former option could soothe longstanding fears among bitcoin holders that a wave of simultaneous liquidations tied to Mt. Gox bankruptcy recoveries could drive down the price of bitcoin. Had these two creditors opted to take the payout in fiat, the trustee overseeing the bankruptcy estate would likely have been compelled to sell off a significant portion of Mt. Gox’s recovered bitcoin holdings to fulfill all the fiat requests.

The price of BTC jumped after CoinDesk reported this development, topping $25,000 for the first time since June.”

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“Recently, the crypto market and Wall Street’s tech-heavy Nasdaq index have grown resilient to the Federal Reserve’s angst and the resulting uptick in Treasury yields. So one chart analyst expects a continued move higher that could see bitcoin more than double in value in the coming months.

Bitcoin is breaking out from a long basing formation. There is a saying, the bigger the base, the higher into space. Bitcoin may move from consolidation to another parabolic move back to $56,000.

Another good news for crypto bulls is that Nasdaq has broken out of a bull flag, a technical pattern known to accelerate an uptrend. Bitcoin’s 90-day correlation coefficient with Nasdaq has increased to 0.75, indicating the two assets are moving in tandem.

2023 could be a surprisingly good year for both crypto and equities.”

See Also: Bitcoin Jumps Past $25K for First Time Since August

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“Matter Labs has renamed zkSync 2.0, its zero-knowledge rollup platform, to “zkSync Era” and is making its code open-source. Matter Labs’ announcement comes a day after a major competitor in the zkEVM space, the Ethereum scaling giant Polygon, locked in March 27 as its official launch date.

Starting Thursday, project builders that pre-registered for the the newly-dubbed “zkSync Era” platform will be able deploy their apps onto the network for the first time. The Era chain will be closed to general users, but app developers will be allowed to test their code in preparation for a full launch sometime in the coming months. According to Gluchowski, zkSync Era has over “200 projects lined up” to deploy on its platform.

People were expecting zkEVMs to arrive five years from now, but here we are, and it’s actually fully working. It’s the first time in history that projects can actually deploy on a ZK rollup on Ethereum.”

See Also: Web3 Firm Unstoppable Domains and Crypto Browser Opera Expand Digital Identity Offerings

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“Flashbots, a research firm formed to crack down on the unsavory practice of “maximal extractable value” or MEV on the Ethereum blockchain, proposed “MEV-Share” to distribute the gains more broadly. The new protocol would distribute MEV to Ethereum users, rather than just to validators and data-block builders.

Flasbots said that MEV-Share would be an early implementation of SUAVE, which is a blockchain that would aim to decentralize the block-building process. The new protocol would introduce an entity in the MEV supply chain called “matchmakers.”

Currently, one of the ways that validators on Ethereum earn MEV is through MEV-Boost, a software that Flashbots developed in order to democratize MEV earned by validators and solve some issues of centralization.”

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“Hong Kong’s government successfully issued its first tokenized green bond of 800 million Hong Kong dollars (US$101 million). The Hong Kong Monetary Authority had been looking into tokenized green bond issuance since at least 2021. The bond is the first green bond to be issued by a government globally. Green bonds are issued to finance eco-friendly projects, while tokenization allows the bonds to be sold digitally and with ease.

Processes of the bond lifecycle, including coupon payment, settlement of secondary trading and maturity redemption, will also be digitalized and performed on the private blockchain network.

Through a clear policy stance and road map, the Government will work towards providing a facilitating environment to promote sustainable and responsible development of the virtual assets sector. We welcome market participants to conduct tokenized issuances in Hong Kong.”

See Also: Crypto Was Singapore’s Top Area of Fintech Investment in 2022 Despite Global Slowdown: KPMG
See Also: Tencent Teams Up With MultiversX to Expand Web3 Strategy

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“The SEC alleged that Terraform and Kwon misled investors on a number of issues, including who was using TerraUSD for payments, and called both the yield-bearing Anchor Protocol and the LUNA token “crypto asset securities,” according to the complaint.

The SEC is charging Terraform and Kwon with fraud, selling unregistered securities, selling unregistered security-based swaps and other related claims. In a press release, SEC Director of Enforcement Gurbir Grewal said the project ‘was neither decentralized, nor finance. It was simply a fraud propped up by a so-called algorithmic ‘stablecoin’ – the price of which was controlled by the defendants, not any code.’

Almost immediately upon UST’s recovery in May 2021, Terraform and Kwon began to make materially misleading statements about how UST’s peg to the dollar was restored. Specifically, Terraform and Kwon emphasized the purported effectiveness of the algorithm underlying UST in maintaining UST pegged to the dollar – misleadingly omitting the true cause of UST’s re-peg: the deliberate intervention by the U.S. Trading Firm to restore the peg.”

See Also: Binance Moved Funds From US Affiliate’s Silvergate Bank Account in 2021: Reuters
See Also: Bankman-Fried Remains Out on Bond, but Judge Warns ‘Revocation’ Proceedings Possible in Future
See Also: Bankman-Fried $250M Bond Is a ‘Joke,’ Claims Securities Lawyer

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“According to a Feb. 16 tweet, e-commerce platform eBay’s nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace KnownOrigin will launch creator smart contracts for its artists. With the new contract, artists can split earnings and earn royalties as co-creators.

Users have been testing its Creator Contract beta release for the past few weeks, with 84 contracts thus far deployed and 250 editions of NFTs minted. Starting Feb. 24, all approved creators on KnownOrigin will be able to deploy and mint work on their own contract for public release.

The Ethereum-based platform seeks to empower creators and collectors by giving them the ability to showcase, sell and collect unique, authenticated digital items.”

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