Coin Bureau Insider

2022-09-01 13:15:35 COIN BUREAU NEWSFLASH! – (01/09/22)
Here are some of today’s most important headlines:

OpenSea Commits To 'Solely Supporting' NFTs On Proof-Of-Stake Ethereum Blockchain

OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace on Ethereum, has announced its plans for NFT support post the Ethereum Merge event. The announcement which was made in a series of tweets stated that it intends to exclusively support the NFTs on the proof-of-stake version of the Ethereum blockchain post-merge.

The statement read,

"While we won't speculate on potential forks — to the extent forked NFTs on ETHPoW exist — they won't be supported or reflected on OpenSea."

https://www.theblock.co/post/166940/opensea-commits-to-solely-supporting-nfts-on-proof-of-stake-ethereum-blockchain

Ticketmaster Partners with Dapper Labs' Flow Blockchain for NFT Tickets

The US ticket sales behemoth Ticketmaster has partnered with Dapper Labs' Flow blockchain to enable event organisers to issue tickets or other memorabilia as NFTs before, during and after live events.

As a result of the partnership, Ticketmaster now has a wallet and marketplace feature on its website. Ticketmaster and Dapper Labs had previously run a pilot program that saw over five million Flow NFTs being minted within a period of six months.

https://decrypt.co/108627/ticketmaster-chooses-dapper-labs-flow-blockchain-for-nft-tickets

A16z Launches New NFT Licensing Standards to Fix Legal ‘Ambiguity’

Venture Capital Firm Andreessen Horowitz has introduced new free licensing standards for NFTs that projects can adopt. The licensing standards, named “Can’t Be Evil” licenses, have been designed specifically for NFTs and are based on the existing creative commons copyright licensing standards.

According to the firm’s General Counsel Miles Jennings and Founder Chris Dixon, the licensing standards are designed to remove legal ‘ambiguity’ surrounding NFTs and IP rights. They do so by helping creators to either protect or release their intellectual property (IP), create an irrevocable baseline of IP rights for NFT holders and outline exactly what IP rights they have.

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/08/31/a16z-wants-to-standardize-nfts-by-giving-you-a-license-for-your-token/

MicroStrategy Founder Michael Saylor Sued by District of Columbia for Evading Taxes

Michael Saylor, the founder and executive chairman of MicroStrategy, is being sued by Washington D.C for allegedly evading taxes since 2005.

The suit which was filed in the D.C. Superior Court’s civil division, states that Saylor intentionally avoided paying over $25 million in income taxes by fraudulently claiming to be a resident of other jurisdictions with lower-tax regimes, including Virginia and Florida.

Saylor has responded to the allegations stating,

“I respectfully disagree with the position of the District of Columbia and look forward to a fair resolution in the courts. Although MicroStrategy is based in Virginia, Florida is where I live, vote, and have reported for jury duty, and it is at the center of my personal and family life.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-31/microstrategy-s-saylor-sued-by-dc-for-income-tax-avoidance

Helium Developers Propose Shifting Network to Solana Blockchain

A new governance proposal by the developers behind the Internet of Things (IoT) blockchain network ‘Helium’, proposes to transition the entire Helium network to the Solana blockchain. The proposal states that the transition to Solana will “improve operational efficiency and scalability” of the network, thereby bringing “significant economies of scale” to the network.

The proposal highlights the current problems, stating, Open / Comment

2022-08-31 18:17:50

Open / Comment

2022-08-31 18:17:43 Hey Guys,

The ETH Merge is less than three weeks away - and to say that the markets are excited is an understatement.

However, there are a lot of risks that come with the merge which have been raised. Moreover, there are some tail risks that may not have been fully priced in.

As promised, I have just completed my latest Ethereum update video. In it, I take a look at both the bullish and bearish case for the merge. Could there be transaction censorship? Will the devs vote for social slashing? What impact will the triple halving have and how is the price likely to react in the interim? That is all answered today.

Enjoy! Open / Comment

2022-08-31 13:54:24 OptiFi has stated that it will refund locked funds to users over the course of two weeks. It also noted that fortunately, 95% of the locked USDC belonged to a team member.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/dex-accidentally-hits-kill-switch-on-mainnet-locking-660-000-usdc-inside Open / Comment

2022-08-31 13:54:24 COIN BUREAU NEWSFLASH! – (31/08/22)
Here are some of today’s most important headlines:

Stablecoin Issuer Tether Responds to Wall Street Journal's Claim of Inadequate Reserves

Stablecoin Issuer Tether has responded to a recent WSJ report that claimed a 0.3% decline in reserve asset value could result in the ‘technical insolvency’ of the firm. Tether published a blog post that accuses the WSJ article of spreading ‘false information’. A statement from Tether read,

“The article seeks to discredit the work that Tether has put into transparent and honest communication to the public. BDO, a very reputable and independent Top 5 audit firm, is not a “Tether accounting firm,” as erroneously written by the WSJ.”

Tether also refuted the claims of it having an unsafe asset strategy by stating that U.S. Treasury bills have been the premier safe asset for decades.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/tether-responds-to-wall-street-journal-disinformation

Fugitive Founder of Turkish Crypto Exchange Thodex Arrested in Albania

According to a statement from the Turkish Interior Ministry, Faruk Fatih Özer, the founder of the Turkish crypto exchange exit scam ‘Thodex’, has been arrested in Albania. The exit scam which occurred in April last year saw over 400,000 users losing access to their deposited funds on the exchange. Özer is expected to face legal proceedings in Albania before being deported back to Turkey.

https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/08/30/founder-of-turkish-crypto-exchange-thodex-arrested-in-albania/

Protocol Upgrade Accidentally Freezes ETH on Compound For 7 Days

A bug in the code of a recent governance proposal passed by decentralised lending protocol Compound has “temporarily frozen” the protocol’s Compound Ether (cETH) market, causing cETH transactions to revert.

According to OpenZeppelin's security solutions architect Michael Lewellen, the bug in the code originated from the "getUnderlyingPrice" function, which failed to update the price of cETH tokens and would instead return empty bytes, reverting the call.

Compound founder Robert Leshner stated,

“No funds seem immediately at risk. It will likely be seven days until cETH is functioning normally. There will potentially be more governance proposals to rectify the situation.”

The 7-day timeline is the time required for the new governance proposal that will rectify the situation to take effect.

https://www.theblock.co/post/166674/protocol-upgrade-accidentally-freezes-eth-on-compound-for-7-days

Kevin Rose’s Proof Raises $50M, Plots Token and Moonbirds NFT Expansion

According to an announcement from Proof, the web3 start-up co-founded by Digg creator Kevin Rose, the firm has raised $50 million in a Series A funding round led by VC giant Andreessen Horowitz. The round also saw participation from investors such as Seven Six, True Ventures, Collab+Currency, Flamingo DAO, SV Angel and VaynerFund.

Proof CEO Kevin Rose stated,

“It’s great to have this vote of confidence from some of the most respected investors in Web3, as well as capital to keep delivering great products and services as we mature this business over the long term.”

The results of the funding round were announced in a livestream that revealed other developments for the Proof Collective projects, such as a utility token for the community and the launch of the Proof social platform.

https://decrypt.co/108607/kevin-rose-proof-raises-50m-token-moonbirds-nft-expansion

Solana DeFi Exchange OptiFi Permanently Locks Up Over 660,000 USDC in Programming Blunder

During the deployment of a program upgrade, Solana-based DeFi protocol OptiFi accidentally closed its mainnet platform in a programming blunder which has resulted in permanently locking away $661,000 in USDC on the platform.

A statement from the team read,

“We had an update to our Solana program code, so our deployer tried to upgrade the OptiFi program on Solana mainnet. However, we accidentally used the ‘Solana program close’ command, resulting in our OptiFi program on mainnet being unfortunately closed.” Open / Comment

2022-08-30 16:19:42

Open / Comment

2022-08-30 16:19:34 Hey Guys,

It's been a really tough past few days - not only in the crypto markets but also for yours truly.

As I mentioned yesterday, we couldn't get the news out to you but I promised that we would today.

And I am here to deliver!

Now, I know it's been a brutal week, but for what it's worth, the worst of the shakeout seems to be behind us. BTC and ETH are looking oversold, and Ethereum, Cardano, and other altcoins have some exciting updates scheduled for September.

It wasn't all bad either. Elon's acquisition of Twitter appears to be coming along after a whistleblower came out, and ESG is slowly starting to be banned in select US states. There also continues to be pushback against the status quo around the world.

Unfortunately this doesn't change the fact that this winter is likely to be a very cold one, and with fall around the corner, there's a lot of uncertainty in society and in the stock markets.

With some luck this uncertainty will create volatility to the upside... for once!

Enjoy!

P.S. Sorry about the suit - seems to not have made it's way to Dubai! Open / Comment

2022-08-30 11:43:21 COIN BUREAU NEWSFLASH! – (30/08/22)
Here are some of today’s most important headlines:

Argentina’s Mendoza Province Accepts Tax and Fee Payments in Crypto

Citizens of Argentina’s fifth largest territory, the Mendoza province, can now pay their taxes with crypto stablecoins, according to a recent announcement by the Mendoza Tax Administration. The move is a part of the government’s efforts to move towards “modernisation and innovation.”

Taxpayers will be able to use their Binance, Ripio, Buenbit, Bitso, Lemon, or Bybit crypto wallets to pay taxes with either USDT or DAI stablecoins, as per the official guide published by the authority.

https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/08/29/argentinas-mendoza-province-now-accepts-cryptocurrencies-for-tax-payments/

Meta Enables NFT Cross-Posting Between Facebook and Instagram

Meta’s NFT feature on Instagram is now expanding to Facebook. Users will now be able to post their Ethereum, Polygon or Flow NFTs across both the Instagram and Facebook platforms. The feature is initially being rolled out to only select US users.

To enable the NFT posting feature, users need to connect their web3 wallets only once to either the Instagram or Facebook app. After successfully connecting, the app will be able to recognise and post cross platforms as long as the feature is enable on the user’s profile. Supported wallets include, MetaMask, Rainbow, Trust Wallet, Coinbase Wallet, and Dapper.

https://decrypt.co/108489/meta-facebook-instagram-ethereum-polygon-flow-nft-crosspost

Sam Bankman-Fried Denies FTX Is Planning to Acquire Huobi

According to a recent tweet by FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman Fried, FTX has no plans to buy a stake in the crypto exchange Huobi. The announcement comes after a previous Bloomberg report stated that FTX had held preliminary talks with Huobi founder Leon Li to buy a majority stake in Huobi. Huobi’s native token HT declined by 6% after the tweet.

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/08/29/ftxs-sam-bankman-fried-denies-crypto-exchange-is-planning-to-acquire-huobi/

Derivatives Marketplace CME Launches Euro-Denominated Bitcoin, Ether Futures

Derivatives marketplace Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group has launched trading for Bitcoin and Ether futures contracts denominated in the euro. The euro denominated contracts will complement the existing dollar-denominated futures CME launched in 2021.

According to the announcement, the Bitcoin Euro and Ether Euro futures contracts will be sized at five bitcoin and 50 ether per contract. They will be cash-settled and based on the CME CF Bitcoin-Euro Reference Rate and CME CF Ether-Euro Reference Rate, which serve as once-a-day reference rates of the euro-denominated price of bitcoin and ether.

CME Group global head of equity and FX products Tim McCourt stated,

"Our new Bitcoin Euro and Ether Euro futures will provide institutional clients, both within and outside the U.S., with more precise and regulated tools to trade and hedge exposure to the two largest cryptocurrencies by market cap.”

https://www.theblock.co/post/166325/derivatives-marketplace-cme-goes-live-with-euro-denominated-bitcoin-ether-futures

Ethereum Scaling Network Arbitrum Set for Major Upgrade on Aug. 31

On Wednesday, Ethereum scaling solution Arbitrum will undergo one of its most significant updates called ‘Nitro’. The Nitro upgrade will speed up transaction processing, lower transaction costs, and make cross-chain communication between Arbitrum and Ethereum simpler.

The upgrade was confirmed by the team in a tweet. According to the tweet, two to four hours of network downtime period during the upgrade is to be expected by users. Nitro will add improved fraud proofs, along with updated sequencers, token bridges and call data compression mechanisms to Arbitrum.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/ethereum-scaling-network-arbitrum-set-for-major-upgrade-on-aug-31 Open / Comment

2022-08-29 16:23:30 Hey Guys,

Unfortunately, I can't bring you the news today. I am currently in Dubai and we have been struggling with a whole host of technical issues.

But, I promise I will get it to you tomorrow Open / Comment

2022-08-29 13:29:20 https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/08/29/singapores-central-bank-wants-to-foster-digital-assets-restrict-crypto-speculation/ Open / Comment