Circle CEO says USDC is Empowered by US Banking crisis
Stablecoin USDC (COIN:USDCUSD) has emerged from the March banking crisis stronger and safer, Jeremy Allaire, CEO of broadcaster Circle Internet Financial, said on Wednesday onstage at CoinDesk’s Consensus conference. The USD Coin, a critical rail for moving money through the crypto industry, lost its peg to the dollar in mid-March after the bankruptcy of Silicon Valley Bank temporarily put billions of dollars of Circle’s cash reserves at risk. While it quickly regained ground, the event spooked investors and sparked huge outflows from the second-largest stablecoin. Circle held some of its USDC reserves at Silicon Valley Bank. “We successfully navigated this crisis and actually upgraded the market infrastructure behind USDC to be by far the strongest and most secure digital dollar on the internet today, undoubtedly”.
Raiffeisenlandesbank to offer digital assets with Bitpanda
European trading platform Bitpanda said it had agreed with one of Austria’s leading traditional banks, Raiffeisenlandesbank, to explore ways to offer digital assets to its customers. The bank “will become a pioneer in the European Union through this planned collaboration with Bitpanda,” the announcement said. The bank plans to offer its clients a wide range of cryptocurrencies, stocks, ETFs, precious metals and commodities through Bitpanda’s SaaS offering. The deal will not launch this week, they added, as this is just the beginning of the collaboration.
Binance.US allows free Web3 domain creation for users
Starting in May, Binance.US users will be able to set up decentralized domains that will serve as digital identities across the entire Web3 ecosystem through a new partnership with Unstoppable Domains. According to Cointelegraph, the new offering will provide users with easily understandable names for cryptocurrency wallets to buy, sell and transfer cryptocurrencies on the Binance.US app. These unique domains also serve as a digital identity on supported Web3 services, applications, and platforms. “Increasing accessibility to Web3 while maintaining a safe and secure ecosystem for customers is at the heart of Binance.US’ mission,” said Nandini Maheshwari, Vice President of Business Development at Binance.US.
Binance.US cancels $1 billion deal with Voyager
Voyager Digital was blindsided when Binance.US pulled out of a $1 billion deal to buy its assets on Tuesday, after making a bid for the bankrupt lender in December. “Debtors are in constant contact and communication with Binance.US and last Friday a desire was expressed to close the transaction as soon as possible,” said Christine Okike of law firm Kirkland & Ellis, representing Voyager, adding that “debtors reserve all rights against Binance.US for breach” of the agreement.
DWS and Galaxy enter into strategic alliance to develop digital asset management solutions in Europe
Crypto-focused financial services firm Galaxy Digital has partnered with asset manager DWS to develop a suite of exchange-traded products (ETPs) for listing in Europe. “The strategic allies also plan to further explore other digital asset solutions at a later date,” the press release said. The alliance is expected to combine DWS’s portfolio management, product structuring and distribution expertise across liquid and illiquid asset classes with Galaxy’s technical infrastructure and asset management and research capabilities for digital assets. “The alliance aims to be a catalyst for both companies to jointly profit from emerging digital asset opportunities”.
Nexo launches Nexo Private
Crypto lender Nexo has introduced Nexo Private, a unique suite of digital asset wealth management solutions designed for high-value private clients, which comes with “a number of complementary service features specific to dealings with high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) and family offices,” the tweet said . The benefits the service offers include dedicated relationship management, custom integration, customized terms and rates, superior OTC services and priority support.
Ray Dalio doesn’t ‘think of bitcoin much’ but still holds ‘a little’
In an interview with podcaster Chris Williamson, Ray Dalio said that while he prefers gold, Bitcoin (COIN:BTCUSD) still offers things that the metal cannot, such as transaction tracking and “not being liked by the government”. At the same time, he questioned why Bitcoin, with a market cap smaller than Microsoft’s, gets more attention – admitting, “Who knows, maybe there’s some element I don’t understand.” “Its size is about 30% the size of Microsoft, and Microsoft is one stock among many stocks. [But] it gets a lot more attention.” Dalio, billionaire and founder of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, has claimed that he owns “a little bit” of Bitcoin. But given its extreme volatility, it intentionally keeps its BTC allocation low to limit negative exposure.
WeChat Integrates Digital Yuan to Drive CBDC Adoption in China
WeChat, China’s largest messaging platform, said it has extended the use of the country’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) payments for transactions that take place through its short video and mini-app platforms, which cover merchants who range from small influencers to brands promoting products on WeChat. The update is an expansion of the yuan digital payments option that WeChat started offering last year. Only merchants that accept CBDC will be able to receive payments on it, the announcement said.
Circle reveals new method to move USDC between blockchains
USDC issuer Circle Internet Financial on Wednesday launched a new method called “Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol”. The technology debuts for USDC transfers between Ethereum and Avalanche, with more chains coming in the second half of 2023. The new method moves the stablecoin between blockchains that it says are faster, safer and cheaper than the so-called “bridges” that permeate finance decentralized (DeFi). “This milestone makes USDC a natively multi-currency digital dollar,” said João Reginatto, vice president of product, in a press release. Wallet company MetaMask, bridge operator Wormhole and bridge aggregator LI.FI are among the infrastructure providers with CCTP coverage at launch.
The NEAR Blockchain operating system goes live
The open-source Blockchain of NEAR Protocol was released as a Blockchain Operating System (BOS), “which makes Web3 usable for everyone,” the press release said. BOS establishes the NEAR protocol as the entry point for browsing and discovering applications and removes one of the key challenges of decentralization by allowing developers to deploy applications once and make them available anywhere, while providing users with an easy way to discover them. “With the launch of BOS and thanks to the FastAuth feature, users will enjoy a seamless web2-style integration experience, allowing the creation of an account for any application on the BOS without the need for encryption”.
NEAR Foundation Announces NEAR Horizon Accelerator
The NEAR Foundation announced NEAR Horizon, launched in partnership with Dragonfly, Pantera, Decasonic, Blockchange, Fabric Ventures, dLab, Hashed and Factomind. It is an accelerator intended to allow founding teams to scale their projects with the support they need, increasing the number of founding teams building products with real-world value on the NEAR protocol, the press release said. Startups will interact with NEAR Horizon through a dual-sided marketplace application built on the NEAR Blockchain operating system.
Cata Labs raises $4.2 million to develop ‘Bridging’ software
Cata Labs, a blockchain infrastructure startup, has raised $4.2 million in seed funding at an “eight-figure valuation,” according to CoinDesk. The fundraising round, which ended in March, was led by crypto venture capital firm Spartan Group and included participation from Robot Ventures, Maven 11, Alchemy Ventures, HashKey Capital, Circle Ventures and Superscrypt, among others. Cata Labs is building Catalyst, a chain bridge that aims to facilitate communication between blockchains. “There are ways to click a button and create a new blockchain. It really doesn’t make sense to have all these blockchains if they can’t communicate with each other,” said Jim Chang, co-founder of Cata.
Avalanche launches Cortina Upgrade
Avalanche, a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain developed by Ava Labs, has enabled the Cortina update on its mainnet, bringing changes intended to help streamline the network for developers. The update included migrating the X-Chain to run Snowman++ consensus, which means the entire network has been migrated to a single consensus mechanism – a necessary change to integrate Avalanche Warp Messaging (AWM) and allow X-Chain transactions. Avalanche’s native token (COIN:AVAXUSD) reacted positively to the news, jumping over 2% in the last 24 hours to press time. The token broke a week-long losing streak, during which it lost 15.06% of its value.
Helium IOT Token Increases 370% After Solana Migration
Helium’s new IOT token is up more than 370% in the last 24 hours following the successful migration of the protocol to the Solana blockchain last week. IOT is the Helium IoT network protocol token. The tokens will always be backed by Helium Network’s HNT token (COIN:HNTUSD) and can always be converted to HNT, with the redemption fee being set algorithmically by its treasury swap contract, according to CoinDesk. With a maximum token supply of 200 billion, there are around six billion tokens in circulation. The IOT token recently traded at $0.00248, with a fully diluted market capitalization of $495 million. Based on current supply, however, the current market value is around $15 million.
BTC Price at $30K Leads to $145 Million Liquidations
Bitcoin (COIN:BTCUSD)’s rise to $30,000 led to over $70 million in liquidations for short traders in the last 24 hours. According to CryptoSlate, the overall crypto market saw an estimated $145 million in liquidation during the period, mostly from traders holding short positions against BTC and other cryptocurrencies. 37,332 traders were liquidated – with the most significant liquidation being a $2.2 million BTC-USD short position on ByBit. Most liquidations took place on Huobi, Binance and ByBit. The three exchanges accounted for 73% of total liquidations — of which 83% were short positions.
Partnership between Cronos Labs and AWS drives the growth of Web3 Startups
Cronos Labs, a blockchain startup accelerator that focuses on decentralized finance, blockchain gaming and the development of the Cronos chain ecosystem, announced that it will use AWS Activate, an Amazon Web Services program, to support Web3 startups scale and grow through the Cronos Accelerator Program. According to the announcement, selected projects will undergo a 12-week acceleration program and receive seed funding of $30,000 from Cronos Labs, with a chance to secure up to $300,000 in additional funding.
Xirtam Token Scheduled Initial Airdrop Offer Canceled in the nick of time
On April 26, the Xirtam token’s scheduled initial airdrop offering (IAO) on decentralized exchange Arbitrum AlienFi was canceled minutes before launch. According to Cointelegraph, in a series of screenshots shared on Twitter, AlienFi alleged that, unbeknownst to the development team, Xirtam conducted “a seed sale sold 3x+ below the Fjord price” ahead of the scheduled IAO and the Xirtam “decided to cancel” after AlienFi developers found out about the event, leading to a pricing dispute. In a statement released on April 26, the developers of AlienFi said the launch was canceled “5 minutes before it started”.
Bitcoin white paper removed in macOS Ventura 13.4 beta 3
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) has removed the Virtual Scanner II app and with it the Bitcoin whitepaper in the latest macOS Ventura 13.4 beta, according to AppleInsider. The PDF document went viral three weeks ago and seems to have gone unnoticed by Apple users until 2020, when designer Joshua Dickens posted about it on Twitter. The whitepaper could have been used as a simple test file of conveniently small size, or a developer who created the test application could have been a Bitcoin investor or inserted as a joke, the report said.
FTX claims another victim: the Web3 video game Storybook Brawl
Bloomberg has revealed that Storybook Brawl, an online video game backed by Sam Bankman-Fried, is about to close. According to a tweet, SBB will close on May 1st after failed efforts to stay afloat following the FTX bankruptcy. This development comes after the team has exhausted all options to keep its operation running, as per the announcement. However, SBB’s game servers will remain functional and users will be able to enjoy the services until May 1st. In March 2022, FTX US acquired Storybook Brawl developer Good Luck Games LLC for its games unit, and shortly after the acquisition, FTX faced a liquidity crisis which led it to bankruptcy in November.