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💰 Sam Bankman-Fried’s Defunct Exchange FTX Receives Multiple Bids for Restart Bankrupt crypto exchange FTX has received multiple bids for a potential restart, investment banker Kevin Cofsky of Perella Weinberg Partners said Tuesday during a court hearing. A decision will be potentially made by mid-December, as part of plans to be submitted to the Delaware bankruptcy court for approval. Cofsky's testimony contributed to a successful bid to keep the platform's list of over 9 million customers secret, given that such information might prove valuable to a potential buyer. “We’ve narrowed the field from a large number to a smaller number in what we’re calling our second round,” Cofsky said at the court hearing, referring to the parties with whom he's discussing wind-up options. “I am optimistic that we will have either a plan for a reorganized exchange, a partnership agreement or a stalking horse for a sale, on or prior to the December 16 milestone date.” FTX collapsed last November after CoinDesk published revelations concerning the state of its balance sheet. New CEO John J. Ray III has excoriated financial controls at the company, and founder Sam Bankman-Fried is on trial for criminal charges. Ray has floated an amended proposal which could see 90% of whatever assets the estate manages to muster returned to creditors. Source https://t.me/Blockchain_Explained

🇺🇸 FinCEN Targets Crypto Mixers Over Laundering and National Security Concerns FinCEN’s goal is to mandate financial institutions to report transactions involving international CVC mixing services, which the agency identifies as an “acute money laundering and national security risk.” Notable bitcoin (BTC) and ethereum (ETH) mixing services using Coinjoin enable users to combine their transactions, thereby masking the origins and endpoints of funds. Andrea Gacki, the director of FinCEN, remarked that virtual currency mixing services empower the “ransomware ecosystem, rogue state actors. Treasury Department’s classifications of multiple cryptocurrency mixing services in the past year, such as Tornado Cash and Blender.io, the new regulations were proposed. It’s alleged that these platforms aided in laundering millions from hacks linked to countries like North Korea. However, advocates of privacy assert that clampdowns on mixers negatively affect ordinary users dependent on them. Coin Center, a nonprofit emphasizing cryptocurrency policy matters, lodged a complaint against the Treasury Department concerning the Tornado Cash prohibition in October 2022, claiming it surpasses the Treasury’s statutory authority. Coinjoin transactions conceal user identities by merging funds from varied origins. Source https://t.me/Blockchain_Explained

🏦 Coinbase-incubated Layer 2 Base open-sources code to enhance transparency Coinbase-incubated Layer 2 network Base has open-sourced its code repositories to enhance transparency and open the project to public contributions. “By sharing our work openly, we enable the community to track our progress and ensure that we're living up to our commitments,” Base said in the announcement. “This transparency also serves as a catalyst for collaboration, as it allows developers to tap into our knowledge base. The Base Layer 2 network on Ethereum is built on OP Stack in collaboration with Optimism. “Supporting open source has been one of our key tenets since we announced the testnet at the start of the year,” Base Senior Software Engineer Anika Raghuvanshi told The Block. “Our goal is to be decentralized, permissionless, and open to anyone. We joined Optimism as a Core Dev on the open source OP Stack, and open sourcing Base’s contracts and frontend is a continuation of our commitment to building a technology that is open for everyone.”. By open-sourcing its smart contract repositories (or repos), the core Base team aims to provide developers with increased transparency around its development. Source https://t.me/Blockchain_Explained

🐶 New Floki Staking Feature Will Appear Soon To Boost The Ecosystem Floki, the renowned memecoin inspired by Elon Musk’s dog and a Viking character, is set to revamp its ecosystem with a new Floki staking feature and a utility token. The primary means of earning the upcoming utility token, which remains unnamed, will be through the Floki staking feature. Notably, there will be no pre-sale or fundraising activities for these tokens. The majority of the token supply will be accessible exclusively through staking FLOKI. Users will have the opportunity to lock up their FLOKI tokens for periods ranging from 3 months to 4 years to earn the reward token, as detailed in a DAO proposal shared with CoinDesk. This strategy is expected to decrease the circulating supply of FLOKI tokens significantly, thereby adding substantial value to the FLOKI token. The Floki staking feature involves locking tokens in exchange for annualized yield rewards, a move that is likely to attract increased investor capital to the Floki ecosystem. While Floki has faced recent declines in its market value, it remains a prominent name in the meme coin space. Its strong community and strategic partnerships position it for a potential price resurgence, making it an attractive choice for crypto investors looking toward the future. Source https://t.me/Blockchain_Explained

🇺🇸 U.S. Treasury Targets Gaza Crypto Business in Sanctions to Squeeze Hamas The U.S. Department of the Treasury Wednesday sanctioned several individuals and entities it says are supporting Hamas terrorist operations, including a Gaza-based exchange. “The United States is taking swift and decisive action to target Hamas’s financiers and facilitators following its brutal and unconscionable massacre of Israeli civilians, including children,” said Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen in a statement. The Treasury Department issued a list of sanctions that included a business providing money transfers and digital assets exchange services in Gaza. Buy Cash , previously tied to wallets seized by Israel’s National Bureau for Counter Terrorist Financing in 2021, is accused of "having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, Hamas," according to the Treasury. The business included bitcoin among the assets in which it dealt. Among others, the sanctions targeted Buy Cash Money and Money Transfer Company, a company that the Treasury said had a long history of financing terrorist groups. Source https://t.me/Blockchain_Explained

📣 opBNB-based AI platform MyShell raises funds at $57 million valuation MyShell, an opBNB-based platform that offers AI tools, has raised $5.6 million in a seed funding round. The round was led by INCE Capital, with participation from Hashkey Capital, Folius Ventures, SevenX Ventures, OP Crypto and others, MyShell said Monday. This was an equity with token warrants round and brought MyShell's valuation to $57 million, co-founder Ethan Sun told The Block in an interview. MyShell also raised a small $200,000 pre-seed round earlier this year from friends and the crypto community, Sun said. Launched in May, MyShell is a web3-enabled AI platform that lets users create personalized chatbots called "Shells." The platform is for both content creators and consumers — creators can generate AI content bots, and consumers can find and use those bots. Since its launch in May, MyShell claims to have already gained over 30,000 creators and over 400,000 users. It aims to bring a creator ecosystem to blockchain. "The AI landscape today is grappling with pressing challenges, including a lack of transparency, centralization, and misaligned incentives," said Sun. "Our goal is to cultivate an ecosystem where users genuinely own their creations and receive fair compensation for their work." Source https://t.me/Blockchain_Explained

🇺🇸 SEC Won’t Appeal Loss in Grayscale Case, Boosting the Odds GBTC Can Become a Bitcoin ETF The Securities and Exchange Commission won’t appeal a court’s scathing reversal of its decision not to let Grayscale convert its bitcoin trust into a more investor-friendly exchange-traded fund, according to a person familiar with the matter, possibly clearing the way for the first bitcoin ETF in the U.S. The markets regulator had until midnight Friday to decide on challenging the court’s decision, but the SEC will let that deadline come and go without appealing, the person said. Reuters reported the news earlier. In August, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the SEC’s denial of Grayscale Investment’s application to convert the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into an ETF was invalid and must be reviewed, calling it an “arbitrary and capricious” rejection. The court said that federal agencies are required to “treat like cases alike.” “The Securities and Exchange Commission recently approved the trading of two bitcoin futures funds on national exchanges but denied approval of Grayscale’s bitcoin fund,” Circuit Judge Neomi Rao said in August. It’s unclear how the SEC will proceed in its next round with Grayscale’s application. The agency still has the authority to deny it for other reasons besides the ones courts shot down, though Grayscale could challenge those again in court. Source https://t.me/Blockchain_Explained

🔥Flare Network Will Burn 2.1B FLR to Support Ecosystem Health The developer of Flare blockchain told CoinDesk on Friday that they will burn 2.1 billion FLR tokens to support ecosystem development and overall health. The tranche of tokens that are scheduled to be burned had been allocated to Flare’s early backers. These tokens will no longer be distributed after Flare reaches an agreement with these entities on how the first Flare Improvement Proposal, FIP.01, should affect token allocations to equity shareholders. More than 2% of FLR’s total supply will be permanently removed from circulation, preventing dilution of community token holdings and increasing incentives for new users to join the network. Some 198 million FLR will be burned immediately with a further 66 million set to be burned monthly until January 2026. At the time of writing, FLR was trading at $0.0094. Based on current prices the total number of tokens burned will have a value of around $20 million. “We are very happy to have reached an agreement with our shareholders and thank them for their support,” Hugo Philion, CEO and co-founder of Flare, said in a statement. “Without this burn, the investors would be able to claim approximately 3x their original allocation through the FlareDrops, unfairly diluting community holdings.” Source https://t.me/Blockchain_Explained

🆘 Platypus Finance suffers more than $2 million exploit on Avalanche: PeckShield Platypus Finance, a DeFi protocol operating on the Avalanche network, fell victim to a security hack earlier today. An estimated loss of over $2 million was reported by security firm PeckShield. The project has responded by temporarily halting all of its liquidity pools. “Due to suspicious activities in our protocol, we have taken the proactive measure of temporarily suspending all pools. Further updates will be communicated to the community in a timely manner,” Platypus noted. The incident appears to result from a flash loan attack, explicitly targeting the AVAX-sAVAX liquidity pool — although a formal comment on the attack vector has not yet been announced. A flash loan is a feature in decentralized finance that allows users to borrow assets without collateral, provided they return the loan within the same transaction block. However, attackers have discovered methods to exploit this feature, manipulating market prices or taking advantage of vulnerabilities in DeFi protocols. By borrowing vast amounts, an attacker can create artificial market conditions, profiting from the induced discrepancies before repaying the loan, all within a single transaction block. Source https://t.me/Blockchain_Explained

📣 Caroline Ellison Testimony Is Now Important Evidence In Court According to Bloomberg, former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison made her first public appearance in court before testifying in the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the co-founder of FTX. Caroline Ellison testimony is pivotal to the prosecution’s case, as she is believed to possess insider knowledge regarding the alleged transfer of billions of dollars in FTX client funds to Alameda. Following the collapse of both FTX and Alameda a year ago, Ellison had previously pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors. Gary Wang, co-founder of FTX, was undergoing cross-examination by SBF’s legal team when Ellison arrived in court. Wang revealed that it wasn’t until June 2022 that he became confident in Alameda Research’s ability to cover its debts, and he discussed FTX’s loans to Alameda as early as 2019. Wang emphasized that the loans were considered acceptable as long as Alameda’s overall value remained positive. This trial centers on allegations that SBF orchestrated a scheme to fraudulently transfer funds to Alameda, resulting in a significant financial shortfall and the subsequent bankruptcies of both companies. Wang is a key witness for the prosecution, alongside Caroline Ellison, who is expected to testify soon, and former FTX engineering chief Nishad Singh. Source https://t.me/Blockchain_Explained

💰 Ripple CFO Kristina Campbell exits company Ripple's Chief Financial Officer Kristina Campbell has left the company after about two and a half years. Campbell's LinkedIn profile shows that she no longer works at Ripple and instead, as of this month, started working as CFO at Maven Clinic, a digital health care provider. The Harvard-educated executive previously worked several years in financial services before joining Ripple in April 2021. Ripple has been engaged in a battle with the Securities and Exchange Commission, with the regulatory agency suing the company. A trial is slated for next year. Ripple’s Chief Financial Officer of roughly two and a half years has departed the crypto company and started working in the health care industry. Campbell's LinkedIn profile shows that she no longer works at Ripple and instead, as of this month, started working as CFO at Maven Clinic, a digital health care provider. The Harvard-educated executive previously worked several years in financial services before joining Ripple in April 2021. The crypto market has been exceedingly volatile thanks in large part to a prolonged bear market, and layoffs have been common. Ripple, meanwhile, has been making inroads in markets outside the U.S., including the Asia Pacific region. Ripple did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Block. Source https://t.me/Blockchain_Explained

📣 UniSat Wallet V1.1.31 Update Tackles Taproot Signature Challenge! UniSat Wallet has unveiled a game-changing update with UniSat Wallet v1.1.31 update, packed with exciting new features and essential bug fixes that promise to enhance the user experience and bolster security. UniSat Wallet broadens its horizons by introducing support for “.x” names, in addition to the existing “.sats” and “.unisat” naming options. This expansion of naming possibilities opens up new avenues for creativity and personalization within the UniSat Wallet ecosystem. Users can now enjoy more flexibility when choosing unique names for their assets. UniSat Wallet v1.1.31 update has taken a proactive approach to enhance security by implementing a stricter name resolution process. Now, name resolution requires three commits, ensuring a higher level of trust and reliability in the system. This improvement strengthens the overall integrity of the UniSat Wallet platform and enhances the confidence of its users. UniSat Wallet has addressed and rectified two critical bugs that have been causing concerns. Firstly, the long-standing Taproot address signature issue has been successfully resolved, eliminating potential vulnerabilities and improving the security of transactions. Secondly, input validation has been reinforced to prohibit negative values, safeguarding user assets and preventing unintended errors. UniSat Wallet remains dedicated to delivering top-notch services and innovations to meet the needs of its ever-growing user base. Source https://t.me/Blockchain_Explained

🚨 Avalanche Social App Stars Arena Drained of $3M in AVAX After Hack Avalanche upstart Stars Arena was drained of nearly all locked funds earlier today as attackers exploited a smart contract that helped secure tokens on the social application. Some $3 million worth of Avalanche’s AVAX tokens were drained, leaving Stars Arena with just under $1 in funds after the attacker. X, formerly Twitter, user 0xLawliette seemed to first warn of the exploit in the early Asian hours on Saturday, but another user, 0xlilitch yesterday warned of potential security issues. Stars Arena launched just over a week ago and quickly gained a cult following among Avalanche community members, some of whom earned as much as 1,000 AVAX in trading fees from the platform. It also helped bump prices of AVAX tokens by as much as 6% at one point during the week. It was highly considered as a clone of Friend.Tech, a social app based on Ethereum grew to 100,000 users within weeks of its August release. Both apps let users purchase “keys” or “shares” of popular X users in turn for access to a closed chatroom, which may offer various privileges to those holders. The values of these shares are very volatile, leading to some users treating the price gyrations similar to tokens and making a profit. Source https://t.me/Blockchain_Explained

🏦 Tokenized U.S. Treasuries Arrive on Coinbase’s Base with Backed’s RWA Token Issuance Switzerland-based tokenization firm Backed Finance has expanded its tokenized short-term U.S. Treasury offering to crypto exchange Coinbase’s Base blockchain, the firm said Friday in a press release. Issued under the Swiss tokenized securities law, Backed’s bIB01 crypto token is a blockchain-based version of BlackRock's short-term U.S. Treasuries exchange-traded fund (ETF) that offers a 5.25% annual yield to investors. The offering is available to qualified investors and licensed distributors who passed the firm’s know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) checks. U.S. investors and entities are restricted from buying the token. Tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs) – an umbrella term for wrapping traditional financial instruments such as government bonds, private equity or credit in a token form and placing them on blockchains – has become one of the hottest trends in crypto this year. The market for tokenized assets could mushroom to $16 trillion by 2030, according to a Boston Consulting Group report. U.S. Treasuries are considered a gateway for tokenization efforts, as many digital asset investors. Source https://t.me/Blockchain_Explained

📣 Banks Would Have to Disclose Crypto Holdings Under New BIS Plan Banks will have to disclose cryptocurrency holdings under new plans floated Thursday, as international regulators partly blamed banking collapses on the sudden popularity of crypto. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, which sets norms for lenders in traditional finance (TradFi), has already said banks should issue potentially prohibitive capital for their holdings of unbacked crypto such as bitcoin (BTC) or ether (ETH). After a turbulent year that saw the collapse of crypto exchange FTX, as well as digitally focused lenders Signature and Silicon Valley Banks, the standard-setter now wants to see lenders reveal their exposure as it seeks to cut contagion. A consultation paper to be published soon will propose “a set of disclosure requirements related to banks’ crypto asset exposures,” complementing existing capital requirements for digital assets that were finalized in December, the Committee said in a statement. The Basel grouping, which includes bank supervisors from 28 global jurisdictions including the U.S., U.K. and European Union, had previously said it will monitor crypto norms and modify them if needed, but does not appear to have previously flagged the idea of separate disclosure rules. Source https://t.me/Blockchain_Explained

🇨🇳 Chinese Firms Used Crypto Payments to Run Fentanyl Network, U.S. Claims in Charges The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) targeted several Chinese businesses and their employees Tuesday in the latest round of charges tied to production and trafficking of fentanyl – a network that depended on cryptocurrency payments, according to authorities. Alongside the criminal case, the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) also sanctioned the list of Chinese nationals on Tuesday, identifying 16 associated crypto wallets in the action. “We have identified and blocked over a dozen virtual currency wallets associated with these actors,” said Treasury Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo, in a press conference. “The blocked wallets, which received millions of USD funds over hundreds of deposits, illustrate the scope and scale of the operation targeted today.” The DOJ cracked down on the Florida network of 28 businesses and individuals it said was involved in producing fentanyl and methamphetamine and the sale of precursor chemicals used to make the illegal drugs. “These companies tend to use cryptocurrency transactions to conceal their identities and the location and movement of their funds,” according to a DOJ statement. Source https://t.me/Blockchain_Explained

💰 Sam Bankman-Fried Sues His Insurer as Legal Bills Mount Crypto tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried has sued his insurance provider, CNA, for allegedly failing to pay legal costs linked to his defense against fraud allegations. Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to fraud charges levied by U.S. prosecutors in a trial that starts Tuesday. The legal complaint filed against CNA said he is also involved in a dozen civil and regulatory actions relating to his collapsed crypto exchange FTX. CNA, also known as the Continental Casualty Company, has “unjustifiably failed to make timely payment on Mr. Bankman-Fried’s claims as required by the Policy,” said the filing. His CNA policy has a limit of liability of $5 million, kicking in when an underlying $10 million policy is exhausted, the document said. The filing makes clear the mounting financial cost of litigation for Bankman-Fried since FTX declared bankruptcy in November 2022. After being arrested in December, he was originally released on bail on a $250 million bond, that was eventually revealed to have been co-signed by his parents and two family friends linked to Stanford University. In a January Substack post, Bankman-Fried suggested he would be willing to surrender some $500 million worth of Robinhood shares in return for access to FTX’s directors and officers (D&O) insurance policy for executives, though those assets have now been confiscated by the Department of Justice. Source https://t.me/Blockchain_Explained

🆘 FTX exploiter moved over $17M in ETH in the last 24 hours According to recent information from Spot On Chain, an address linked to the FTX exploit identified as 0x3e9, has conducted transfers exceeding 10,000 Ether , worth roughly $17 million, across five different addresses since Sept. 30. The addresses had remained inactive for several months before the recent activity. A significant portion of the 7,749 ETH, worth roughly $13 million, was directed toward the THORChain router and Railgun contract. Furthermore, the exploiter engaged in a swap involving 2,500 ETH, worth around $4.19 million, converting it into 153.4 tBTC at an average price of $27,281 per token. At the time of the initial hack on Saturday, Sept. 30, approximate losses amounted to nearly 50,000 ETH. The trial of FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried is also set to begin in October. The trial is expected to last six weeks, beginning with jury selection on Oct. 3, followed by initial court proceedings on Oct. 4. Bankman-Fried faces seven charges connected to fraudulent activities, comprising two substantive charges and five conspiracy charges. The FTX founder has pleaded not guilty to all allegations. Despite numerous attempts to secure temporary release, Bankman-Fried remains in custody. Judge Lewis Kaplan denied his most recent request for release, citing concerns about the possibility of him fleeing. Source https://t.me/Blockchain_Explained

⚪️ Paypal Selects Crypto.com as ‘Preferred Exchange’ for PYUSD Stablecoin Crypto.com announced a partnership with Paypal that aims to establish the digital assets exchange as the preferred trading platform for the online payment provider’s new paypal usd (PYUSD) stablecoin. In a press release, the crypto firm highlighted it has already listed the new currency and is currently the exchange with the deepest liquidity for its trading pairs. Paypal introduced the stablecoin in early August with the stated goal to eventually making it an integral part of its payments infrastructure. PYUSD is issued by the New York-based Paxos Trust Company on the Ethereum blockchain and is reportedly redeemable 1:1 for U.S. dollars, backed by dollar deposits, short-term Treasury securities, and comparable assets. “PayPal has been a true pioneer in the digital commerce evolution and Paxos is a market-leading issuer of stablecoins. We are tremendously excited to team up with them to collectively advance the crypto frontier,” said Crypto.com’s Senior Vice President and Head of Payment Partnerships Joe Anzures. The partnership expands the integration between the financial giant and the crypto exchange which offers users of its Visa Card the option to top it up with Paypal. Furthermore, PYUSD deposits are already available to Crypto.com retail users via the platform’s app and the exchange promises trading features in the near future. Source https://t.me/Blockchain_Explained

🏦 Latest Gemini Genesis News Reveals $282 Million Withdrawal Before Bankruptcy In a recent Gemini Genesis news reported by Bloomberg, Gemini withdrew $282 million from Genesis before bankruptcy, triggering legal disputes in the crypto world. In a recent Gemini Genesis news, Gemini Trust Co. executed a significant move months before Genesis Global Holdco LLC faced a deposit freeze and eventual bankruptcy. Two anonymous sources have revealed that Gemini Trust Co., owned by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, withdrew approximately $282 million in cryptocurrency from Genesis in August 2022. Contrary to speculations, the withdrawn funds were not directed towards the Winklevoss twins. Instead, they were allocated to establish a reserve to facilitate immediate redemptions for Gemini Earn customers. The situation was complicated as FTX’s collapse sent shockwaves through the volatile crypto market. Genesis subsequently froze customer withdrawals and, in January, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in New York. In response, Gemini filed a claim seeking $1.1 billion for Earn users. Since the initial withdrawal freeze, negotiations involving Gemini, Genesis, and Digital Currency Group have been ongoing, marked by public disagreements between Barry Silbert, the founder of DCG, and the Winklevoss twins. A tentative agreement reached in February remained unresolved, leading to a lawsuit by Gemini against DCG for fraud in July. Source https://t.me/Blockchain_Explained