Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.
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Adoption news
International money transfer giant SWIFT is planning experiments in Q1 2022 to explore how it can support “interoperability in the development of the tokenized asset market,” per an announcement from the company. These experiments will use both established forms of payment and central bank digital currencies, they added.Pavel Durov, the co-founder and CEO of the popular messaging app Telegram, said he is proud that the Telegram Open Network (TON) technology is still being developed, even after Telegram officially abandoned the project last year, calling the project “years ahead of everything else in the blockchain realm.” The remarks came as Donate, a Telegram-verified payments service, said it will enable donations on Telegram using the Toncoin cryptocurrency.Accepting cryptocurrency payments gives businesses a competitive edge, according to respondents to a survey conducted by crypto payments firm Mercuryo. Moreover, 68% of respondents said B2B transaction fees are too high and that “it is time for an industry change,” according to the firm.The decentralized application (dapp) store DappRadar said it will extend its business-to-consumer dapp store to include business partners. The announcement comes after the company last week shifted to a more decentralized model and introduced its own RADAR token.
Exchanges news
Binance coin (BNB) is “moving closer to a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) structure than an ‘exchange’ coin,” Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said, after Binance announced a new “auto-burn” function had been integrated into the BNB protocol. The quarterly burn will be replaced with BNB Auto-Burn to provide greater transparency and predictability to the BNB Community, the company said.Coinbase said it will link up with software company Enfusion’s Order Execution Management System to give institutional customers with a Coinbase Prime account the opportunity to trade seamlessly from Enfusion’s platform.The decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap (UNI) has been deployed on the Ethereum (ETH) Layer 2 network Polygon (MATIC), according to a blog post from Polygon.
Metaverse news
The Sandbox, a subsidiary of Hong Kong-headquartered publisher of mobile games Animoca Brands, announced that consulting company PwC Hong Kong has acquired a LAND site in The Sandbox metaverse. “PwC Hong Kong thus becomes the first member of an internationally recognized professional services network, and the first member firm of the PwC global network, to publicly enter The Sandbox,” said the press release shared with Cryptonews.com. (Learn more: How to Buy Virtual Land in the Metaverse: A Beginner’s Guide)
Regulation news
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has removed regulatory exemptions for more than 100 companies working in the crypto sector in the city-state, per a Nikkei report. Many of the companies had reportedly applied for licenses to offer “digital payment token services,” but had later seen their applications either rejected or withdrawn, Nikkei wrote.The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has rejected a proposal by investment firm Kryptoin for a bitcoin (BTC) spot-based exchange-traded fund (ETF). The rejection comes after the regulator last month rejected a similar proposal from VanEck. So far, only bitcoin futures-backed ETFs have been accepted by the SEC.Wyoming Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis, one of the crypto industry’s staunchest supporters in Congress, is planning to introduce a comprehensive bill next year that would cover everything from how digital assets are taxed and categorized to consumer protections, Bloomberg reported.
Investments news
Crypto lending platform B.Protocol has raised USD 2.2m in a seed round led by the crypto investment fund 1kx, with participation from The Spartan Group, Robot Ventures, Dovey Wan’s Primitive Ventures, and others. BPRO tokens to investors will be gradually unlocked from a smart contract over a 4-year period, an announcement from B.Protocol said.The non-fungible token (NFT)-focused startup Arcade has raised USD 15m in a Series A round with investments from Pantera Capital, Castle Island Ventures, Franklin Templeton, Quantstamp CEO Richard Ma and BlockFi CEO Zac Prince, per an announcement.
Legal news
A Canadian teenager is wanted by the police as he allegedly got away with USD 16m he obtained by finding an exploit in a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol in October. The 19-year-old, named Andean “Andy” Medjedovic, is wanted after he failed to show up for a court hearing on December 22, per multiple media reports.
