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Top 15 Countries by Global Cryptocurrency Adoption Index in 2023

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​​CZ, Binance, influencers face $1B lawsuit for unregistered securities promo While three American citizens brought the case, the lawsuit alleges that “millions” of people could be eligible for damages. Five days after Binance and its CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao were sued by the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for alleged trading violations, a new $1 billion lawsuit was filed against the crypto exchange, CZ and three crypto influencers for promoting unregistered securities. On March 31, the Moscowitz Law Firm and Boies Schiller Flexner filed the $1 billion lawsuit in the Southern District of Florida, claiming Binance’s involvement in trading unregistered securities and paying influencers for the unlawful promotion of such services, according to Fortune. While explaining the charges, the filing read: “This is a classic example of a centralized exchange, which is promoting the sale of an unregistered security.” In a previous lawsuit against Voyager, the law firm alleged that influencers promoting “unregistered securities” are liable for customer losses. Based on similar claims, Binance and the influencers — NBA Miami Heat star Jimmy Butler, and YouTubers Graham Stephan and Ben Armstrong (BitBoy Crypto) — are challenged with paying $1 billion for the damages caused to investors. “We’ve been investigating these same unregistered security issues against Binance for over a year,” added the lawsuit. Promoters and the exchanges facilitating trades of such assets “would be liable” for the customer losses. In addition, the suit claims that investors have no obligation to prove they were influenced by the advertisements.

​​Euler Finance hacked for over $195M in a flash loan attack Euler Finance was exploited in a flash loan attack that drained hundreds of millions of decentralized stablecoins and synthetic ERC-20 tokens. Ethereum-based noncustodial lending protocol Eurler finance faced a flash loan attack on March 13, with the attacker managing to steal millions in Dai, USD Coin, staked Ether (StETH) and wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC). According to on-chain data, as per the last update, the exploiter carried out multiple transactions, stealing nearly $196 million. The ongoing attack has already become the largest hack of 2023. The breakdown of stolen funds is as follows: According to crypto analytic firm Meta Seluth, the attack correlates with the deflation attack one month ago. The attacker used a multichain bridge to transfer the funds from the BNB Smart Chain (BSC) to Ethereum and launched the attack today. ZachXBT, another prominent on-chain sleuth, reiterated the same and said that the movement of funds and the nature of the attack seems quite similar to black hats that exploited a BSC-based protocol last month. After exploiting a protocol on BSC, the funds were deposited to the crypto mixer, Tornado Cash.

If you believe in crypto and the potential of web3, now is the time to make your voice heard with legislators and regulators. The crypto community has reached an important moment. Decisions being made by legislators and regulators in DC and around the country will impact the future of how we can build, buy, sell, and use crypto. We need thoughtful policymaking and smart regulation so that we can continue to advance crypto and web3, and make progress on our mission to increase economic freedom. Coinbase will empower the #Crypto435 community with information about how to contact specific politicians in their local districts, what those politician's records on crypto are, tips for making your voices heard in D.C., and more. So if you love crypto and want to see all that it can achieve, join us to shape the policies and regulations that will impact crypto and web3 for years to come:

Genesis creditors to expect 80% recovery under proposed restructuring plan Digital Currency Group (DCG) plans to hand its equity stake in Genesis’ trading arm to Genesis Global, which will then be sold, pending court approval. A Genesis creditor has revealed the new proposed restructuring plan between Genesis, Digital Currency Group and creditors will see creditors getting back at least 80% of their funds. On Feb. 6, Genesis Global announced it reached an “agreement in principle” with Digital Currency Group (DCG) and its creditors, which will eventually see its crypto trading and market-making arm sold as part of restructuring efforts. DCG would contribute its share of equity in Genesis Global Trading — Genesis’ brokerage subsidiary business — to Genesis Global Holdco, the holding entity for Genesis. The transaction would bring all Genesis-related entities under the same holding company. The terms of the agreement will see DCG exchanging an existing $1.1 billion promissory note due in 2032 for convertible preferred stock. It will also refinance its existing 2023 term loans with an aggregate value of $526 million and make them payable to creditors. The agreement will also see crypto exchange Gemini contribute $100 million for its Gemini Earn users who have funds frozen with the bankrupt firm. Pending the close of these transactions, which need the necessary court approval, Genesis will seek to put its then-owned Genesis Global Trading entity up for sale. A Feb. 6 user update from the Genesis creditor and crypto yield platform Donut said the plan “has a recovery rate of approximately $0.80 per dollar deposited, with a path to $1.00” for Genesis creditors. It added the recoverable amount depends on the “equity note, realized liquidation prices and considers the unknown costs associated with the remainder of this bankruptcy.” Genesis is currently restructuring as part of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings stemming from a liquidity crisis in November brought on by the bankruptcy of crypto exchange FTX. Genesis Global Trading was not included in the company’s Chapter 11 filing at the time, with Genesis Global Holdco saying the business would “continue client trading operations.“ At an initial bankruptcy hearing in January, Genesis lawyers said that the firm was looking for a quick resolution to its creditor disputes and expressed optimistic that the company would come out of Chapter 11 proceedings by late May.

​​Ethereum staking withdrawal testnet Zhejiang to go online Feb. 1 This is the first Ethereum public test since the Merge upgrade in September 2022. Developers said further testnets would be triggered in the coming week. According to a Jan. 31 post by Ethereum Foundation developer Parithosh Jayanthi, the “Zhejiang” public withdrawal testnet will launch on Feb. 1 at 3:00 pm UTC. Six days after Zhejiang, the Shanghai and Capella testnets will also be triggered at epoch 1350. Jayanthi noted: “This is also a great opportunity for all tools to test out how they want to collect, display and use the withdrawal information. You can attempt to convert 0x00 credentials to 0x01 and set a withdrawal address. You can test partial withdrawals and full withdrawals by exiting your validator.” The Shanghai upgrade, when fully implemented, will allow the withdrawal of users’ staked Ether assets and rewards. Since the success of the Ethereum Merge upgrade in September 202, users have been able to stake their ETH on the proof-of-stake network. However, funds remain locked, pending a new patch.

3AC, Coinflex founders collaborating to raise $25M for new claims trading exchange According to the project’s pitch deck, the company intends to launch as soon as possible and estimates the claims market to be worth around $20 billion. The founders of collapsed crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC), Su Zhu and Kyle Davies, are reportedly trying to raise money for a new cryptocurrency exchange in partnership with Coinflex co-founders Mark Lamb and Sudhu Arumugam. According to a pitch deck, they are looking to raise $25 million. The proposed new exchange is to be called GTX, according to the presentation. They propose to specifically target claims against bankrupt firms. “FTX users are selling claims at ~10% face value for immediate liquidity or waiting 10+ years for the bankruptcy to process disbursements,” the presentation said. It promised to crack the claims market: “Our legal team will streamline and automate claims onboarding to GTX and make it the dominant marketplace for FTX and other bankrupt companies’ claims.” Unlike competing claims market operators, GTX would allow customers to use claims as collateral for trading. In addition, they said, the proposed exchange could “fill the power vacuum left by FTX” and expand into regulated markets such as the stock market. Cryptocurrency exchange Coinflex halted withdrawals in June but resumed partial withdrawals the following month. It also sued an individual user in Hong Kong court that month as it sought to fill an $84 million hole in its balance sheet. It is now in the process of restructuring.

​​Crypto’s recovery requires more aggressive solutions to fraud After 2022, we need to do more to assure skeptical users that they can invest in cryptocurrency without fearing that their funds will be lost. It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that our industry is facing tough times. We’ve been in the midst of a “crypto winter” for some time now, with the prices of mainstays, including Bitcoin and ETH, tumbling. Likewise, monthly nonfungible token (NFT) trading volumes have fallen more than 90% since their multibillion dollar peak back in January of this year. Of course, these declines have only been exacerbated by the numerous black swan events rocking the crypto world, such as the FTX and Three Arrows Capital meltdowns. Taken together, it shouldn’t be a surprise that crypto is facing a trust deficit. While the destructive actions of reckless CEOs must be addressed and the individuals responsible for these events must be held accountable, our industry cannot stop there if we are to rebound. To address the trust deficit that crypto faces, better security for the end user against the threat of scams and hacks must be a priority. Don’t think so? According to research firm Chainalysis, $3.2 billion worth of digital assets were stolen in 2021. It’s not looking better for our industry this year, with $718 million in overall hacking-related losses having been reported in October alone. When it comes to scams, the picture darkens as report after report shows that known crypto scams, such as rug pulls and wallet drainers, are on the rise. Between July 2021 and August 2022, an eye-popping $100 million in investor funds were lost through unsophisticated NFT scams. And this number is likely an under-count given that most NFT scams are micro-scams impacting individual users that never get reported. Phishing links trick end users into emptying their wallets. Front-running schemes with videos promising “HUGE RETURNS” to convince people to download bogus software that gives con artists access to their assets. Even direct attacks that disrupt bridges like Ronin and Nomad. Look around and you’ll see that scams and hacks aren’t just costing the crypto industry billions in digital assets — they’re eroding trust in crypto in a more meaningful way than even the black swan events of 2022.

Gate io experiences slowdown in deposits and withdrawals due to node maintenance The crypto exchange says that user funds are safe and that transactions are still being processed. Users of the crypto exchange Gateio are facing slow deposits and withdrawals on transactions due to a node maintenance from a third-party cloud provider, according to a Dec. 18 announcement. Gateio said that transactions are still being processed and claimed that user funds are safe. The company stated: "At this moment, we are monitoring the network connection status of our cloud service providers and will expedite the deposits and withdrawals as soon as the network connection is restored." It is unclear if the delay in transactions is related to OKX's outage, which was caused by a hardware failure at a Hong Kong data center of its primary infrastructure provider, Alibaba Cloud. As reported by Cointelegraph, Alibaba's Cloud server went offline on Dec. 17 and failed to recover for over fifteen hours, during which users could not withdraw and deposit funds. While OKX trading services have resumed several hours later, while Gateio users on Twitter are still experiencing problems with transactions. Alibaba's Cloud services were interrupted a few days after the company announced it was developing its first Blockchain Node Service. Set for launch in the first quarter of 2023, the service aims to make it easier for organizations to build blockchain applications. According to Alibaba, the new platform-as-a-service solution will aid developers by reducing operational and maintenance time. The company claimed its infrastructure will allow node hosts to actively monitor nodes and automatically switch in case of an outage. "As it doesn’t require hands-on monitoring or problem mitigation, developers are free to concentrate on product development and thus speed up the pace of the product roll-out process.", Alibaba's said.