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2022-07-31 13:22:39 ​​Dubai permits full operation to FTX subsidiary FZE via first MVP license

According to Dubai officials, the subsidiary’s operations will serve as a regulatory trial for future commercial services using virtual assets.

On Friday, FZE, a subsidiary of crypto exchange FTX, was awarded Dubai’s first Minimal Viable Product (MVP) license, allowing full operation of the exchange in the region.

Dubai’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA) issued the operating license to FZE under the MVP program, which according to Helal Saeed Almarri, the director general of Dubai WTC Authority, is designed for secure and sustainable growth in Dubai. For now, the FTX FZE exchange’s operations are in the test phase and will be focused on providing various crypto services.

According to FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, the newly licensed exchange will operate under a model incorporating regulatory oversight and Financial Action Task Force (FATF) compliance controls catering to Tier 1 international financial markets. In addition, Almarri revealed that the exchange’s operations will be used as a regulatory trial for future commercial services using virtual assets.

“The MVP Phase, exclusive to select, responsible international players like FTX, will allow VARA to prudently structure guidelines and risk mitigation levers for secure commercial operations,” said Almarri highlighting the region’s willingness for extensive crypto adoption.

With the license, FTX FZE has been approved to deploy regulated crypto derivatives products and trading services to qualified institutional investors. In addition, the exchange can also act as a clearing house, operate a nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace, and provide custodial services across the region.

Back in March 2022, FTX was the first to receive Dubai’s virtual asset exchange (VAX) license soon after the regulators signed off the virtual assets law and established the Dubai VARA. Crypto exchange OKX also received a provisional license from Dubai’s regulatory authorities to provide additional services to local investors and financial services providers.

Dubai, and the rest of the UAE, have been taking steps towards cryptocurrency adoption at a fast pace this year. The emirates went a step further on its bet for innovation earlier this year with the launch of Dubai Metaverse Strategy.

The interest of financial authorities on cryptocurrencies and the approbation of major exchanges is setting the tone for regulators across the world. While certain countries are focused on tightening controls, the experimental approach of Dubai and the green light recently given to the European Union Markets in Crypto Assets proposal could serve as a reference for other regions. Open / Comment

2022-07-19 11:45:53 ​​Yuga Labs warns of 'persistent threat group' targeting NFT holders

The warning comes only days after hackers compromised the website of Premint NFT, making off with more than 300 NFTs and $375,000 of Ethereum.

Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) creator Yuga Labs has warned there may soon be a “coordinated attack” targeting multiple non-fungible token (NFT) communities.

The NFT company told its Twitter followers on July 19 that its security team has been tracking a “persistent threat group” targeting the NFT community through compromised social media accounts, urging followers to be on the lookout.

This isn’t the first time the company has warned its community of a possible social media-led attack by hackers. Open / Comment

2022-07-11 12:36:56 ​​Grayscale legal officer says Bitcoin ETF litigation could take two years

Grayscale argues that the differences between futures and spot Bitcoin ETFs have no correlation to approvals because prices are based on the same spot Bitcoin markets.

Asset management firms continue to fight for a spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the United States as regulators remain skeptical of the idea.

Craig Salm, chief legal officer at asset manager Grayscale, discussed the firm's lawsuit with the United States Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) regarding the conversion of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into a spot Bitcoin ETF.

Salm explained the basis for Grayscale’s argument against the SEC while answering the most-asked questions regarding the lawsuit. According to the legal officer, the SEC's denial of the spot Bitcoin ETF separates futures and spot trading for Bitcoin ETFs and draws a distinction between the two.

However, Grayscale argues that the differences have no correlation with Bitcoin ETF approvals as both futures and spot Bitcoin ETF prices are based on the same spot Bitcoin markets.

Thus, the Grayscale legal team believes that the disapproval of spot Bitcoin ETFs amid the approval of Bitcoin futures ETFs can be considered "unfair discrimination." Salm claimed that this violates several laws including the Administrative Procedure Act and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

After explaining Grayscale's arguments, Salm also answered the most common question among those following the lawsuit’s developments: When will a spot Bitcoin ETF finally be approved?

According to Salm, while there is no certainty about the exact timing — due to many factors — heestimates that it could take from one to two years.

Despite the potential length of the lawsuit, Salm said that Grayscale firmly believes in its arguments and is positive that the courts will rule in its favor.

When Grayscale launched its legal challenge to the SEC, community members rallied behind the firm. Many were disappointed with the decision to disapprove the spot Bitcoin ETF while approving an ETF that shorts Bitcoin. A Twitter user alleged that the SEC’s move aims to “suppress the price of Bitcoin.” Open / Comment

2022-06-29 15:06:02 Trader puts faith in crypto despite the failed first investment

Despite his initial losses in trading, JC Enriquez still strongly believes that crypto will bring him more profit in the years to come.

From the highs of feeling like a total genius to the lows of downward price movements, crypto investing has taken Dubai-based trader JC Enriquez on a roller coaster ride.

In an interview with Cointelegraph, Enriquez shared his crypto trading journey, starting from his first encounter with digital assets. According to the trader, it all started when a friend asked him about his plans for the future. After sharing his dreams about the future, the friend told him that if he wanted to make those plans come true, he “better study cryptocurrency, buy some and hold it.”

Hyped by the bull market in 2021, Enriquez finally decided to jump in and start trading. However, his first crypto rodeo was less than fruitful. He told Cointelegraph that he invested thousands of dollars in one project and then it went to zero in just a short period of time. He explained that:

“After a few weeks, I was surprised. Their network got grumpy and then slowly, they stopped doing developments in their project. After that, it permanently closed.” Open / Comment

2022-06-19 13:12:48 ​​Elon Musk's support for Dogecoin grows stronger following $258B lawsuit

Musk was seemingly unshaken about the allegation as he doubled down on his love for the Dogecoin ecosystem with a tweet saying, "I will keep supporting Dogecoin."

Not even a $258 billion class-action lawsuit alleging a crypto pyramid scheme could stop Elon Musk from publicly displaying his continued support for Dogecoin (DOGE).

On June 16, a New York district court received a class action complaint against the world’s richest man Elon Musk and his companies, SpaceX and Tesla, for an alleged Ponzi scheme using DOGE tokens. The lawsuit demanded $258 billion in total monetary damages from Musk while requesting the court to rule DOGE trading as gambling in the United States. Open / Comment

2022-06-13 12:04:44 ​​Ethereum difficulty bomb delayed but network adoption still growing

The difficulty bomb is designed to make mining profitability plummet in order to disincentivize miners ahead of the long-awaited Merge.

Ethereum network developers have decided to delay the difficulty bomb, a major step leading up to the highly anticipated Merge upgrade for the layer-1 blockchain.

They set the delay to two months in order to “be sure that we sanity check all the numbers before selecting an exact delay and deployment time,” according to core developer Tim Beiko in a Sunday tweet.

The difficulty bomb will be a measure to disincentivize Ether (ETH) mining operations from keeping their physical mining devices running as the network transitions from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS).

It dramatically increases the difficulty for miners to verify transactions on the network, thus reducing profitability for PoW miners. Eventually, it will become impossible for physical miners to validate a block. The difficulty bomb is a feature of the network added to the code in 2016 as plans for the Merge to become the Consensus Layer (formerly known as Eth2) were being formed.

Transitioning to PoS should reduce the Ethereum network’s energy demands by up to 99.9%, according to some estimates. Other PoS networks such as Polygon and Fantom Opera boast negligible power demands compared to other PoW networks.

Although Beiko does not mention it, delaying the difficulty bomb could lead to further delays for the Merge itself, which is expected to take place in August 2022.

The Ropsten testnet on Ethereum recently completed its own successful merge to PoS on Friday, which developers referred to as the “first dress rehearsal” for the real merge. Open / Comment

2022-06-06 13:54:26 DeFi community rallies behind PoolTogether to hit $1.4M NFT defense funding target

“Don't have a lot of words right now. Blown away by how the community has rallied around PoolTogether Inc and myself,” said PoolTogether co-founder Leighton Cusack.

No-loss lottery decentralized finance (DeFi) platform PoolTogether has reached 100% of its legal defense funding goal via the sale of NFTs.

It has taken the project just ten days to reach its funding goal of 769 Ether (ETH) or $1.4 million, signaling strong support from the DeFi community who are rallying against a lawsuit that some feel is an attack on the greater sector as a whole.

PoolTogther is currently selling three tiers of NFTs as part of a funding campaign dubbed “PoolyNFT'' to fight a class-action lawsuit that it feels has “no merit.”

The NFTs are priced at 0.1 ETH, 1 ETH and 75 ETH a pop, and vary in the number of total minted tokens, and the project will eventually roll out 'hodler utility' for the NFTs moving forward.

Cointelegraph previously reported on June 1 that PoolTogether’s fundraising project had hit around 471 ETH last week, with support coming from big figures in the crypto space such as general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, Chris Dixon, who bought a Pooly Judge tier NFT for 75 ETH, or roughly $141,000 at current prices.

At the time of writing, the figure for funding raised now stands at 788.40 ETH, or roughly $1.474 million. Notably, the campaign has another 16 days to go, and if all of its NFTs are sold it will have generated 1,076 ETH, or $2 million. Open / Comment

2022-06-03 12:31:51 ​​Vitalik shows support for Optimism’s governance structure and OP gas proposal

The Ethereum co-founder has often advocated for projects to move away from coin voting in DeFi and DeGov, as it will enable smaller holders a chance to truly participate in governance.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has shown support for Optimism’s new governance structure, noting that proposals such as using the OP token for gas fees shows “explicit representation of non-token-holder interests.”

The Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution deployed the first round of its long-awaited OP token airdrop on June 1 as part of its new governance project the “Optimism Collective.”

Optimism’s new governance structure involves two parties dubbed the “Token House” and “Citizens’ House.” The former is composed of OP governance token holders and the latter consists of “soul-bound” non-transferrable citizenship NFT owners.

While it is unclear if Buterin is fully on board with a proposal from June 2 to utilize the OP governance token for gas fees, or just happy that such a discussion was taking place, he noted on Twitter today:

The two parties mostly oversee different objectives with the Token House tasked with project incentives, protocol upgrades and treasury funds, while the Citizens’ House is focused on retroactive public goods funding.

The duo also share governance decisions on network parameters and granting new citizenships to the Citizens’ House, something which Buterin seems to appreciate in this instance.

According to Optimism, the number of citizens in the Citizens’ House will grow over time, and the “mechanism for distributing Citizenships will be determined by the Foundation with input from the Token House.”

On several occasions, Buterin has outlined his thoughts that the crypto sector needs to “move beyond coin voting” in decentralized finance (DeFi) or decentralized governance (DeGov) as it runs the risks of having whale governance token holders dominating the voting process. Buterin argues this can often lead to a short-term focus of the whales approving proposals that intend to pump the price of certain assets.

Such a method can result in small holders and platform users not having a voice in the DeGov process, or what Buterin describes as a lack of non-token-hodler interests.

As for the OP gas fee proposal, which itself was floated in the Optimism governance forum for ideas and feedback yesterday, sentiment among the community appears mixed. Open / Comment

2022-05-31 13:49:48 LUNA 2 price jumps 90% ahead of big Binance airdrop

Overall, however, the price has tanked 56% since launching on the weekend at an opening price of $18.87.

The price of Terra (LUNA) briefly spiked around 90% overnight to an intraday high of $11.33 ahead of Binance’s airdrop but has since dropped back to around $8.26 at the time of writing.

At current prices, as per CoinGecko data, the increase to $8.26 represents a 35% gain over the past 24 hours. Overall, however, the price has tanked 56% since launching on the weekend at an opening price of $18.87.

Members of the community posted screenshots of the price jumping as high as $12 on the MEXC Global exchange, with Twitter user bullbnb highlighting some surging moments as they noted that the price jumped by around $2.00 in the space of 30 minutes.

Binance is one of several exchanges aiding the relaunch of the Terra ecosystem and is set to launch a multi-year airdrop campaign to eligible users from Tuesdat at 6:00 am UTC, along with opening the token up for trading.

While the project aims to re-establish itself under Do Kwon’s revival plan, onlookers in the short term have predicted the price will tumble further once the Binance drop goes live. Open / Comment

2022-05-26 13:19:59 ‘Yikes!’ Elon Musk warns users against latest deepfake crypto scam

Deepfakes abound! Crypto scammers produce a deepfake video of Elon Musk's TED talk to prey on unwitting social media users.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk distanced himself from yet another fabricated video promoting a cryptocurrency scam.

Originally shared on Twitter, the video in question was a deepfake of Musk purportedly promoting a cryptocurrency platform boasting 30% returns on crypto deposits. Scammers made use of original footage from a TED Talk featuring Musk and curator Chris Anderson at a TED conference in Vancouver in April this year.

The tweet and video caught the attention of Musk himself, who’s been increasingly active since his move to acquire the social media platform for an estimated $44 billion. The Tesla CEO and SpaceEx founder replied to the video in his signature comical style:

Musk’s global renown as a technology pioneer has made him a choice target for scammers looking to take advantage of unwitting social media users and investors. The not-so-tech-savvy users are at risk of being duped by scams promoting unrealistic returns on investment.

Cryptocurrency scams of this nature were rife in 2020 and 2021, with the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) releasing a report that estimated that over $80 million worth of cryptocurrency was stolen from unsuspecting victims over a six month period. Open / Comment