Crypto Land

2023-08-19 17:02:29 Celsius Sends Bankruptcy Restructuring Plan To Creditors Vote After Court’s Approval

Bankrupt crypto lender Celsius is set to hold a vote on a plan to sell its asset to Fahrenheit Group following the approval by a judge as the proceeding winds down.

Celsius will send its creditors ballots to vote on the proposal between Aug 24 and Sept 22 and if approved, creditors could receive as high as $2 billion with each creditor getting returns ranging from 67% for Earn holders and 85% for those who were in the Borrow Program.

If approved, the final decision on the settlement would still be pronounced by the court in October with disbursement kicking off before the end of the year. However, customers not comfortable with the arrangement can opt-out without participating.

Judge Martin Glenn of the Southern District of New York Bankruptcy Court gave the ruling after a year-long bankruptcy case which has seen creditors mull over their assets. Open / Comment

2023-08-16 17:00:57 South Korean Police Arrest 312 in Crypto-powered Drug Trading Busts

South Korean police are stepping up their crackdown on crypto-powered drug trafficking, and have made 312 arrests in a wide-sweeping narcotics bust. The broadcaster KBS reported that the arrests were carried out by the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency’s Drug Crime Investigation.

The suspects were charged with violating the Narcotics Control Act. Police said the suspects were thought to have bought or sold drugs using dark web portals.

They are thought to have made use of “non-domestic” chat apps like Telegram, and conducted trades using cryptoassets such as Bitcoin (BTC). And police said that the group contained at least six alleged “large-scale” drug dealers.

This group included a man in his 20s who also ran an “internet shopping mall.” The suspected dealers are thought to have smuggled drugs into the country from overseas or bought from South Korean smugglers. Officers claimed the suspected dealers had been active from December 2020 to March 2023.

The “internet shopping mall” operator, police think, appears to have been a key player, and allegedly expanded his operations from selling conventional goods to trading drugs on the dark web. Open / Comment

2023-08-13 17:02:23 Venture Firm a16z Dives into ZK Technology Research with 'Jolt' and 'Lasso' Projects

Prominent VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has unveiled two open-source software projects focused on zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs.

These projects aim to accelerate the core technology behind ZK proofs, a promising type of cryptography that can help scale blockchains by increasing transaction throughput, reducing costs, and enhancing privacy, the firm said in a recent announcement.

The first project is Lasso, which introduces an innovative technique to expedite ZK systems.

The whitepaper for Lasso was co-authored by Justin Thaler, an a16z member, along with Srinath Setty—a Microsoft researcher—and Riad Wahby, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

a16z has already released the code for Lasso under an open-source license, enabling external developers to utilize it in their own projects. The other project is Jolt, which proposes a particular type of zero-knowledge virtual machine (zkVM) that incorporates Lasso's innovations. Open / Comment

2023-08-10 17:02:27 Binance Founder CZ Warns Users About the Use of AI Deepfakes in Crypto

Crypto exchange giant Binance's CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) has flagged a warning regarding AI-enabled deepfake videos that pose significant risks to cryptos. Referring to an AI-powered video post featuring Joshua Xu, CEO of HeyGen, CZ said that such videos are “pretty scary from a video verification perspective.”

“Don't send people coins even if they send you a video,” he wrote.

The Tweet by Xu included 100% AI-generated videos of his own avatar and voice clone. “We've made massive enhancements to our life-style avatar's video quality and fine-tuned our voice technology to mimic my unique accent and speech patterns perfectly,” the post added.

The HeyGen CEO noted that this feature will soon be deployed to production for everyone to try and that the AI video generator would take only “two minutes” to create a real-looking digital avatar.

According to the Binance website, users must submit video evidence to verify the identity of the customer to withdraw funds from the exchange. The know-your-customer (KYC) process mandates a video verification along with a picture of the user’s ID card or passport. Open / Comment

2023-08-07 18:31:14 Crypto Exchange Coinbase Narrows Losses Thanks to Cost Reduction Strategy

Major US-based crypto exchange Coinbase has reported a smaller loss in the second quarter this year compared to the same quarter last year, while its revenue exceeded analysts’ expectations.

Coinbase’s loss for the quarter came in at $97 million, down from $1.1 billion a year before, the firm’s financial report for the second quarter showed. The loss marked the sixth consecutive quarterly loss for the exchange, which is facing significant regulatory challenges in its home market.

Meanwhile, the report showed that revenue also declined on a year-over-year basis, coming in at $707.9 million, 12% lower than the same period last year.

Still, the revenue was markedly stronger than a consensus estimate from analysts surveyed by Bloomberg of $631.2 million, which one analyst attributed to better-than-expected interest income and staking revenue.

“Q2 was a strong quarter of execution for Coinbase and marked continued progress in our journey to build a company that is increasingly efficient and financially disciplined,” the firm wrote in a shareholder letter. Open / Comment

2023-08-04 23:01:55 Coinbase Analysts Remain Positive Ahead of Q2 Earnings Despite Regulatory Uncertainties

Crypto trading platform Coinbase is poised for better-than-expected, Q2 earnings despite ongoing legal pressure against the firm and other industry giants, analysts say.

Consensus estimates from the financial data company FactSet call for revenues to decline to $629 million, down from $773 million in the prior quarter. This is expected to come on the back of lower trading volume during that same period, projected at $114 million versus $145 million in Q1.

Furthermore, earnings per share are expected to fall by $0.75, as opposed to $0.34 in the prior quarter. However, in a Tuesday note, British Bank Barclays wrote that it expects “adjusted EBITDA” (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization) to come in “well ahead of consensus.”

Last month, the bank’s analysts downgraded Coinbase’s stock to underweight, expecting various near-term pressures to start taking their toll on the company’s earnings. At the time, analysts wrote:

“While we continue to believe Coinbase is a likely long-term winner in the broader crypto ecosystem, fundamentals remain challenged, and recent relief from price actions, increasing rates, and cost rationalization likely have little further to run.” Open / Comment

2023-08-04 20:00:03 Today everyone of us lives not only in his/her city and home country, but also in a big informational international community.
Some economic and political news from other part of the world can strongly affect your education, the health care system that you got used to, your salary and even your freedom. Are you still surprised how is it all possible? Learn about intersections of all these walks of life an the place where they meet – the shadow side of big business. Explore, how big corporations transform your life without your permitting. From the first hands. Open / Comment

2023-08-04 15:00:05 A new potential GEM on the market

Check @UBIX_Network - Worlds 1st Hybrid DAG fully built with NodeJS. It is also a powerful ecosystem, which includes 7 active projects, built to realise your ideas

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You can buy UBX on UBIX.Exchange - one of the few crypto exchanges based on a DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph) platform

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Website | Telegram Open / Comment

2023-08-01 17:01:35 Crypto Exchange Binance Secures Operating License in Dubai

On Monday, Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, secured the Operational MVP License to operate in Dubai after fulfilling the necessary pre-conditions since obtaining a preparatory license in September 2022.

Last year, Binance FZE, the Dubai-based subsidiary of Binance, achieved a significant milestone by obtaining Dubai's Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA).

This regulatory approval enables Binance FZE to open a domestic bank account to hold clients' funds locally, operate a crypto exchange, and provide payment and custody services.

However, with the recent progression to an Operational MVP License, eligible users in Dubai can now access authorized services, including safely converting virtual assets to fiat in compliance with VARA-designated standards set by the intergovernmental Financial Action Task Force.

Binance's recently obtained operating license in Dubai comes with certain limitations. The services provided are currently restricted to institutional and qualified retail investors in the region, as per Binance's announcement. Open / Comment

2023-07-31 20:00:11 Players who register at bit.ly/Stakepromo

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Send message to this link, t.me/stakead & you’ll get a free $5 gift balance to your Stake account Open / Comment