2023-11-21 09:05

All trading on the platform will be disabled on Dec. 4, several months after Bittrex's U.S. arm filed for bankruptcy and stopped operations. Crypto exchange Bittrex Global is winding down operations just months after its U.S. arm was shut down, according to a Monday announcement. Trading on the platform will stop Dec. 4, and the company urged customers to complete "all necessary transactions" by then, after which only withdrawals will be available. The exchange, which is regulated in Lichtenstein and Bermuda, did not give a reason for the decision. The shutdown follows Bittrex.US' May filing for bankruptcy in Delaware after it and Bittrex Global were sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for allegedly operating a national securities exchange without the right approvals. Bittrex Global CEO Oliver Linch had told CoinDesk that it would fight the SEC charges "vigorously." Bittrex.US shuttered operations in April, and in August reached a $24 million settlement with the SEC. "It is with great regret that we announce that Bittrex Global has decided to wind down its operations. This decision was not made lightly, and we understand the inconvenience it may have on our valued customers," the company said. https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/11/21/crypto-exchange-bittrex-global-to-shut-down/

2023-11-21 08:09

Blast boasts prominent investors Paradigm and "eGirl Capital" members among others, but there’s no way to withdraw funds until February. Investors have bridged over $30 million in ether and stablecoins to Blast, the latest Ethereum layer 2 network, just hours after the project went live late on Monday. The inflow is evidence of strong demand for Layer 2 networks or protocols that operate on top of a layer 1 blockchain, such as Ethereum, to reduce bottlenecks related to speed, cost and scalability. Bridges are blockchain-based tools that allow users to transfer tokens between different networks. Also driving the charm is Blast's unique design: Depositors start earning yields on the transferred ether alongside BLAST points. “Blast natively participates in ETH staking, and the staking yield is passed back to the L2’s users and dapps,” the team said in a post Tuesday. ‘We’ve redesigned the L2 from the ground up so that if you have 1 ETH in your wallet on Blast, over time, it grows to 1.04, 1.08, 1.12 ETH automatically.” Users have to wait until the launch of the mainnet in February before they can withdraw any funds from the network or participate in on-chain activities. As such, Blast is invite-only as of Tuesday, requiring a code from invited users to gain access. Besides, the BLAST points can be redeemed starting in May. Of the total funds bridged, data shows over $19 million in ether has been staked on Lido, where it is set to earn as much as 4% annualized yield. Another $3 million is on Maker, while a smaller tranche of $150,000 in dai (DAI) stablecoins sits idle in the wallet. Users who bridge stablecoins receive Blast’s auto-rebasing stablecoin, USDB. The yield for USDB comes from MakerDAO’s on-chain T-Bill protocol. Blast raised over $20 million in a round led by Paradigm and Standard Crypto and is headed by pseudonymous figurehead @PacmanBlur, one of the co-founders of NFT marketplace Blur. @PacmanBlur said in a separate post that Blast was an extension of the Blur ecosystem, letting Blur users earn yields on idle assets while improving the technical aspects required to offer sophisticated NFT products to users. BLUR prices rose 12% in the past 24 hours following the release of Blast. https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2023/11/21/new-ethereum-layer-2-blast-attracts-30m-hours-after-bridge-goes-live/

2023-11-21 07:33

24 hours ago, prediction markets were almost certain that Altman wouldn't be back as OpenAI's CEO. Now the market's answer to that question has changed twice. Betters on decentralized prediction platform Polymarket really aren't sure if Sam Altman will be coming back as OpenAI's chief executive amidst ongoing corporate drama. On Polymarket, shares of the Yes side of the contract "Sam back as CEO of OpenAI" are currently trading at 55 cents, representing a market belief that the Yes side has a 55% chance of being correct. That's a significant upward revision from the 10% probability priced 24 hours ago. Altman, the chief executive of the artificial intelligence startup behind ChatGPT, was forced out of his role over the weekend reportedly due to lack of consistency in candidate communications with the board. Since Altman's expulsion, OpenAI has been facing a significant internal revolt, with most employees demanding the resignation of three directors, following the controversial removal of CEO Sam Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman, leading to a potential leadership change and questioning the company's future direction, the Financial Times reported. Meanwhile, Bloomberg said OpenAI is engaged in intensive negotiations to resolve internal conflicts and reunite its team following the controversial dismissal of CEO Sam Altman and the interim appointment of Emmett Shear, amidst employee threats to quit and efforts by investors and Microsoft to reinstate Altman potentially. As the Monday business day in the U.S. dragged on and backroom corporate politics continued, the Yes side went as low as 18 cents by mid-day before rising back up to 50 cents, then hovering between 48 and 53 as the afternoon wore on. Later, it flipped again in late American hours as Bloomberg published its story. So far, traders have bet $210,579 in this contract alone, with liquidity surging in the past 24 hours. At the same time, another Polymarket contract, with much less liquidity, asked betters if Emmet Shear – appointed to replace Altman – would be the CEO of OpenAI by week's end. The Yes side of that contract is currently trading for 68 cents and went as low as 32 cents during Monday's U.S. trading hours. Aside from the ongoing competition for OpenAI's top job, The Information reported that FTX-backed Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei rejected a merger offer from OpenAI's board, which included replacing Altman as CEO, amidst negotiations complicated by FTX's $500 million stake in Anthropic and legal issues surrounding the exchange's bankruptcy last November. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2023/11/21/polymarket-traders-betting-on-sam-altmans-fate-have-become-bipolar/

2023-11-20 22:41

The U.S. crypto exchange is the latest targeted by the Securities and Exchange Commission in a series of similar actions being fought in court by other companies. Kraken has joined Coinbase and Binance as targets of Securities and Exchange Commission accusations that the companies are operating without properly registering as securities businesses in the U.S. The SEC highlighted a long list of tokens it considers securities that Kraken traded, each of which has now made multiple appearances in SEC enforcement actions. Crypto exchange Kraken commingled customer and corporate funds while operating as an unregistered broker, clearing agency and dealer, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) alleged in a new lawsuit Monday. The federal regulator claimed that the San Francisco-based company violated federal securities laws in a repeat of its suits against other crypto trading platforms. Unique to Monday's lawsuit are claims that Kraken created a "significant risk" by commingling up to $33 billion in customer crypto with its own corporate assets, the regulator said, quoting Kraken's independent auditor. "Similarly, Kraken has held at times more than $5 billion worth of its customers' cash, and it also commingles some of its customers' cash with some of its own," the suit said. "In fact, Kraken has at times paid operational expenses directly from bank accounts that hold customer cash." The SEC claims that Kraken simultaneously operates an unregistered broker, clearinghouse and exchange echoes its complaints against Binance and Coinbase, two exchanges the agency sued earlier this year. Those suits are continuing. The SEC previously settled similar allegations against Bittrex's now-shuttered U.S. wing. The federal regulator, as it has with those previous suits, listed a number of tokens it deemed to be unregistered securities, including the Algorand token (ALGO), Polygon's MATIC and NEAR. According to the suit, Kraken took a direct role in promoting these tokens to the investing public. The SEC filing asks to permanently ban Kraken from operating as an unregistered exchange. The agency says it's also pursuing a fine and for Kraken to give back ill-gotten gains. "We disagree with the SEC's complaint against Kraken, stand firm in our view that we do not list securities and plan to vigorously defend our position," Kraken said in a statement. "The SEC has repeatedly challenged crypto exchanges to come in and register without a single law supporting their position and no clear path to registration. And despite opposition from lawmakers, the SEC continues to pursue legal action against these crypto exchanges. For years, we have advocated for effective U.S. market regulation that addresses the unique risks and benefits which crypto presents to all individuals. We believe Congressional action is the most appropriate path to resolving the lack of regulatory clarity in the U.S. It is disappointing to see the SEC continue down its path of regulation by enforcement, which harms American consumers, stunts innovation and damages U.S. competitiveness globally." The exchange also published a blog post outlining its position. The regulator settled charges tied to Kraken's staking services earlier this year. https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/11/20/kraken-accused-by-sec-of-operating-unregistered-platform-improperly-mixing-customer-funds/

2023-11-20 20:45

Pyth Network's speed-focused oracle service aims to challenge Chainlink as the go-to data source for blockchain finance. The buzz around this week's token airdrop from Pyth Network, a blockchain oracle firm that competes with Chainlink, has shed light on a long-simmering battle between companies to bring the nascent digital-asset industry's infrastructure up to the demands of traditional finance. JPMorgan and Visa stand out as the latest "TradFi" firms to integrate "decentralized ledger" technology and other crypto concepts into their systems. Oracle services like Chainlink (LINK) have played a key role in spearheading this merger between the old and the new, allowing blockchains to pull in information – mainly price feeds – from crypto exchanges and other real world data sources. But for the marriage of centralized and decentralized finance to prosper, crypto infrastructure needs to rise to the task – meaning traders need access to the kind of minute-to-minute market data that they've grown accustomed to in a world of transcontinental cables and high-frequency price feeds. That's where Pyth comes in. Like Chainlink, Pyth is an oracle service – a platform that feeds data to blockchains. But Pyth's market-focused "real-time data" feeds are significantly faster than Chainlink's, something that's supposed to make the service better-tuned to certain financial use cases. Originally on Solana blockchain Originally designed for the speed-centric Solana (SOL) blockchain and later built out into its own chain, Pythnet, based on Solana's technology, the project claims on its website that it refreshes its data feeds at 300-400 millisecond intervals. Chainlink's refresh rate, by contrast, can range from minutes to hours. Chainlink's comparatively slow pace comes down to how it sources data, by relying on "decentralized" consortiums of third-party data providers and a network of node operators to report out information. Chainlink's price feeds refresh at set intervals, or dynamically in response to market volatility (things might speed up soon with new latency-focused updates). Pyth, by contrast, sources data directly from first-party financial institutions – both traditional and crypto-centric – like Jane Street and Binance. While this institution-driven system carries whiffs of "centralization" – anathema to the disintermediating world of crypto – it brings drastic speed improvements, several orders of magnitude faster than competing services, supposedly in the name of serving the demands of modern finance. According to Pyth's documentation, the Pythnet network also aggregates its price measurements from multiple sources. Pyth, on its website, claims to rely on various game theory and cryptography practices to ensure its numbers are reported accurately. For example, the "bridge" service that Pyth uses to relay data to blockchains, Wormhole, automatically runs certain checks before reporting numbers to blockchains. While these validation services can help protect Pyth's numbers from tampering, the system can still risk measurement errors if multiple sources report inaccurate numbers. PYTH airdrop Pyth kicked off the highly-anticipated airdrop of its PYTH token this week. The new cryptocurrency will double as votes in the protocol's governance system, meaning the tokens can be "staked" by users who want to weigh in on how Pyth's tech evolves. The token, whose supply will be distributed, in part, to around 90,000 crypto wallets that have previously interacted with the protocol, is currently trading at $0.33, down from a height of $0.51. In addition to jump-starting the market for a new token, protocols frequently use airdrops as a tactic to gain attention and attract users. The Pyth Network currently ranks as the fourth-largest oracle project, with $1.5 billion in total value secured (TVS), according to DefiLlama. Chainlink has a TVS of $14.7 billion, followed by WINkLink with $7.74 billion and No. 3 Chronicle with $6.72 billion. But in terms of networks served, Pyth ranks second with 120, just behind Chainlink's 361. https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2023/11/20/the-pyth-airdrop-is-finally-here-but-what-is-pyth-network/

2023-11-20 18:01

Crypto exchange Binance could reportedly soon be paying $4 billion to settle multiple U.S. criminal charges, according to Bloomberg. A major overhang over the crypto market – whether the world's largest crypto exchange might soon be put out of business – might soon be going away, and bitcoin (BTC) and BNB Coin (BNB) are moving higher on the news. According to Bloomberg, Binance by month's end might be paying $4 billion to make multiple criminal charges in the U.S. go away. Importantly, however, the settlement reportedly would allow the exchange to continue operations. To this point, a spokesperson with the DOJ declined to comment to CoinDesk and Binance didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. After initial dips when the headlines hit, bitcoin and BNB have both moved to session highs, with bitcoin ahead 1% on the day and BNB up 6%. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2023/11/20/bitcoin-and-bnb-token-stage-relief-rallies-on-binance-settlement-news/