Binance has invested in GOPAX, a leading South Korean cryptocurrency exchange licensed to provide fiat-to-crypto services to customers.

https://www.binance.com/en/blog/ecosystem/binance-invests-in-south-korean-cryptocurrency-exchange-gopax-through-its-industry-recovery-initiative-2331858048818231109

European Union regulators are drafting rules for smart contract oversight and, according to the latest draft obtained by Inbar, the prospective requirement appears to be less burdensome than before.

Here’s Inbar: “The draft shows that sellers or offers of smart contracts, for example, will no longer need to perform a conformity assessment and sign a mandatory declaration that they comply with EU requirements. Expectations for smart contracts to meet so-called harmonized standards, or technical compliance specifications, were also dropped.”

The EU plans to regulate smart contacts under its broader strategy on data markets.

Any approved legislation will likely have far-reaching effects on crypto and decentralized finance. Still, the EU isn’t shying away from its ambitions to regulate smart contracts in tandem with its broader oversight powers.

The process is a significant one as governments the world over grapple with how to regulate technologies that are, at least in spirit, designed to operate without central intermediaries.

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In the past 24h, Sandbox has started to be unlocked on a large scale. A total of 170m SAND has been transferred from the multi-signature address, of which 78m ($60M) was directly transferred to the Binance deposit address.

https://etherscan.io/token/0x3845badade8e6dff049820680d1f14bd3903a5d0?a=0x2f2456953a2cbc21fde058d33fb2ad8d59e72a35

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CZ: A friend told me what media is suppose to but NOT covering.

The biggest bank runs in crypto in Dec.

$~15 billion was withdrawn from #Binance    in a few days.

$~7 billion was cashed out at Paxos (BUSD issuer).

And no issues. 🤷‍♂️

(now all came back, plus some)

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FTX sends "confidential letters" to politicians demanding they return the millions of dollars SBF donated, by the end of the month.

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Visa is testing a settlement system for large USDC payments on Ethereum.

At StarkWare Sessions 2023, Visa’s Cuy Sheffield shared the company’s vision for digital assets.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/visa-s-crypto-strategy-targets-stablecoin-settlements

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Despite losing market share, Lido remains a top 7 application by 30D revenue, taking in $3.26m over the last 30 days ($39m annualized). Lido is the only application other than GMX in the top 7 names that has printed positive revenue trends across 7d, 30d, 90d, and 180d timeframes.

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In the latest episode of as the bridge turns, a16z used its considerable UNI holdings for a big fat “No” vote against Wormhole in the full governance vote on deploying Uniswap V3 to BNB Chain.

As a reminder, Andreeseen Horowtiz’s crypto arm couldn’t vote in last week’s temperature check because they had issues accessing their 15 million tokens. Wormhole, backed by Jump Crypto, was able to secure the most votes, edging out a16z-favored LayerZero.

OxPlasma Labs put forward the latest proposal to deploy Uniswap V3 on BNB Chain, using the Wormhole bridge for the deployment. A16z threw its 15 million votes against Wormhole. Voting will conclude on Feb. 10.

While the debate about these bridges is partly about security — cross-chain bridges have been the target of numerous attacks, including last year's $325 million attack on Wormhole — the involvement of the two massive VC firms makes it all the more interesting.

Wormhole proponents were hoping to avoid this scenario, with one person close to the project telling The Block: "If a16z goes against community vote and tries to tank it, I'd be shocked. That would be truly abhorrent, and I don't think they would go that far."

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Ethereum scaling project StarkWare plans to open-source the StarkNet Prover in an effort to make the technology publicly available and increase the transparency of its code.

The prover is a crucial component of the Layer 2 scaling network for Ethereum based on the ZK-STARKs technology.
The prover is responsible for generating cryptographic proofs to compress transactions and improve the efficiency of Layer 2 scaling.

The open-sourcing of the StarkNet Prover will allow for more individuals to review the code, helping to detect bugs and increase transparency.

Eli Ben-Sasson, co-founder of StarkWare and co-inventor of ZK-STARKs, said, "This marks a significant step for scaling Ethereum and cryptography, as STARK technology becomes a publicly available resource."

Today's decision will mark the completion of open-sourcing the full StarkNet software stack once implemented in near future, the team said.

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VISA: We’ve been testing how to accept large settlement payments in USDC on Ethereum

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Binance to Suspend USD Bank Transfers Feb 8th: Spokesperson

Suspension Expected to Last 'A Couple Weeks' Until New Banking Partner Is Established.

The 7-day moving average of daily transactions on the Bitcoin network reached 312.6k on Saturday, a new high since February 2021.

A lot of hype has recently broken out over the Ordinals Bitcoin NFTs. These NFTs take advantage of upgrades made with Segwit and Taproot that make it cheaper to store data in transactions.

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A new beginning? Genesis subsidiaries and parent company Digital Currency Group have reached an initial agreement on a restructuring plan with a group of the firm’s main creditors, according to CoinDesk.

The principal agreement includes winding down the Genesis loan book and the sale of the bankrupt Genesis entities, according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke to CoinDesk.

A term sheet includes refinancing outstanding loans where Digital Currency Group borrowed $500 million in cash and about $100 million worth of bitcoin from Genesis.

The agreement will be solicited to other creditors, including customers of the Gemini Earn lending product, CoinDesk reported, citing the person familiar with the matter.

Reminder: Genesis filed for bankruptcy protection last month after taking a financial hit following the collapses of crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and exchange FTX last year.

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Trader Joe has partnered with interoperability protocol LayerZero to convert its native ERC-20 token "joe" into an omni-chain fungible token (OFT).

The integration will enable joe tokens to be easily transferred from its native chain, Avalanche, to two other blockchains where Trader Joe operates, Arbitrum and BNB Chain.

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Ark Invest investment company Katie Wood has published its long-term forecast (until 2030) on the BTC rate change:

• Bearish – provides for an increase in the price of BTC to $258,500
• Basic — increase in the value of the cryptocurrency up to $682,800
• Bullish — the asset price rises to $1.48 million.

For the calculation, analysts took into account 8 factors, for example, the amount of funds invested in cryptocurrency by institutions and the amount of transactions in digital assets.

https://ark-invest.com/big-ideas-2023/

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Hmm 🤔

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ENS DAO's proposal to "sell 10,000 ETH to cover operating expenses for the next two years" has been approved and will be implemented after the 2-day lock-up period. ENS DAO previously held 40,746 ETH and 2.46 million USDC.

Specification:
1. Transfer 935,000 USDC and 254 ETH to ens-ecosystem.pod.xyz

2. Transfer 364,000 USDC, 125 ETH, and 3,500 $ENS to ens-metagov.pod.xyz

3. Transfer 250,000 USDC and 50 ETH to ens-publicgoods.pod.xyz

https://discuss.ens.domains/t/ep-3-2-executable-q1-q2-2023-working-group-funding/16123

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All AI & Big Data Tokens pumping. Thanks to ChatGPT and Bard.

Did you buy any AI/Big data token in the last 7 days?

👍 Yes
👎 No/No, but I already own some

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⚡ Ethereum Whales Acquires 50,905,707,716,073 SHIB, Currently Valued At Over $735M.

@Crypto_News | link