Alchemy, a pioneer in the blockchain developer platform, announced that it would partner with Astar Network to accelerate Web3 development on Polkadot.
The collaboration will allow developers to use Alchemy’s powerful API to create complex applications that implement functionality not available on the Polkadot blockchain.
Alchemy also said that web3 developers could earn basic income through staking rewards, a native feature of Astar.
Rob Boyle, Head of Product at Alchemy, said: “Alchemy infrastructure makes it easier for developers to build any dApp with infinite scalability, accuracy and reliability. We’re thrilled to combine forces with Astar to foster an era of better Web3 building that will power the decentralized applications of tomorrow.”
Astar allows developers to interoperate with the Polkadot ecosystem, building dApps using EVM and WASM smart contracts via the Polkadot blockchain’s Cross Consensus Messages (XCM).
Alchemy, which runs 70% of its applications on the Ethereum blockchain, provides a new business model that revolves around decentralized finance (DeFi).
The blockchain startup has also been backed by big-name investors such as Jay-Z, Will Smith, and John Schwab, among others. Founded in 2017 by two Stanford University classmates, Nikil Viswanathan and Joe Lau, Alchemy has come a long way since.
Fairfax County Retirements Systems, a $6.8 billion Virginia pension fund, seeks to expand its scope by entering the crypto lending market to boost its returns, according to Financial Times.
This quest became a reality after the board of trustees gave the pension fund the greenlight to start investments in yield farming, whereby investors lend out their digital assets to crypto projects. In return, they attain a fixed stream of income.
Katherine Molnar, the chief investment officer of the Fairfax County Police Officers Retirement System, pointed out:
“Some of the yields that you’re able to achieve in a yield farming strategy are really attractive because some of the people have stepped back from that space.”
It seems the Fairfax County Retirements Systems intends to fill the void left by various leading crypto lenders, with some filing for bankruptcy and others facing an uncertain future.
For instance, cryptocurrency hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC) filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy last month. The hedge fund’s woes were ignited by the collapse of LUNA-UST, given that it had a significant amount of exposure, Blockchain.News reported. Other embattled crypto lenders include Voyager and Celsius Network.
Fairfax County Retirements Systems is committed to entering this sector because it has already placed $35 million each at VanEck’s new finance income fund and Parataxis Capital’s digital yield fund. This move will be instrumental in providing investors with income through short-term lending arrangements with crypto assets.
Andrew Spellar, investment chief for Fairfax County Employees, noted:
“We started in venture capital and private equity. But once we got more comfortable in the space, we started to think a bit broader about how we might be able to use strategies in digital assets in other parts of the portfolio.”
Meanwhile, different crypto sectors continue attracting more players. For instance, Philcoin, a philanthropic blockchain movement, recently launched a staking mechanism enabling users to donate part of their earnings to charity.
Crypto exchange ZB.com has fallen victim to a possible hack as $4.8 million was withdrawn from its hot wallet, according to security firm PeckSheild.
The money was removed after the suspension of withdrawals from ZB.com, PeckShield reported.
The crypto exchange had halted client withdrawals on Tuesday, citing “temporary maintenance” of the platform, following which the suspected hacking incident was executed.
“Due to the sudden failure of some core applications, it still takes time to troubleshoot the problem. Deposit and withdrawal services are now suspended. Please do not deposit any digital currency before recovery,” ZB.com said in a statement.
PeckShield announced on Twitter that over 20 crypto tokens, including SHIB, USDT, and MATIC, were moved from ZB.com’s hot wallet to another address on Tuesday, which later liquidated all but five tokens.
The tokens were then sold on various decentralised exchanges for 2,224 ETH ($3.6 million), and the potential hacker then moved the funds to another address.
ZB.com deals with over $1 billion in trades every day and calls itself “the world’s most secure digital asset exchange.”
Meanwhile, another suspected wallet controlled by the potential hacker still holds around $1 million worth of the remaining five tokens. This wallet contained ZB.com’s funds from where it was first moved.
ZB.com is one of the oldest crypto exchanges. Formerly known as CHBTC.com, the company had to relocate from China after the country banned crypto trading in 2017. ZB.com is now relocated to Zurich, Switzerland, and has offices in Dubai, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, Russia, South Korea, Hong Kong and the United States.
Hacks in the crypto industry have become rampant. According to a report from Blockchain.News, hackers targeting the Solana ecosystem drained thousands of crypto wallets of funds on Wednesday.
The hack was executed after a flaw was exploited to suck out cryptocurrencies from 8,000 crypto wallets where owners stored their funds, the Solana Foundation announced. The report added that wallet providers, including Slope and Phantom, were also affected.
According to PeckShield, an estimated amount of about $8 million was stolen from four Solana wallets.
While earlier this week, bridge protocol firm Nomad lost around $200 million in security exploit hack. Nomad is a bridge protocol for transferring crypto tokens across different blockchains.
According to a June report from Elliptic, more than $1 billion has been stolen from bridges in 2022.
While in 2020, criminals stole $285 million in crypto from popular exchange KuCoin.
Oxford City Football Club (OCFC), one of the world’s most successful and coveted football clubs, has partnered with Isle of Man-based bitcoin company CoinCorner to offer bitcoin payments.
Starting Aug. 6, users can buy tickets, food, and drinks at its RAW Charging Stadium using bitcoin, which is accepted as an alternative to credit cards and cash.
Oxford City Football Club (OCFC) has become the first National League football club to accept BTC matchday payments.
CoinCorner has also launched a new limited-edition Oxford City FC branded bolt card, which fans can purchase at the club store.
As part of the partnership agreement, CoinCorner will also be a sponsor of the Oxford City shirts, which will feature a Bitcoin logo on the home and away shirts after the start of the season on August 6.
“We believe this move will set a trend across Non-league and Football League divisions as digital currency establishes itself as the new normal for sports fans and event-goers across the U.K.”, CoinCorner CEO Danny Scott noted.
Football clubs are not getting behind the cryptocurrency bandwagon. For example, Premier League giants Manchester City tokenized their players through Superbloke in August 2019.
Singapore-based Crypto.com – one of the most fastest-growing cryptocurrency exchanges, said on Jan 17 that it has signed a five-year partnership agreement with the Australian Football League (AFL).
Colorado-based bitcoin mining company Riot Blockchain, Inc. announced that its bitcoin production and mining operations produced 318 BTC in July, a decrease of about 28% from 443 BTC in July last year.
Riot said productivity fell as it closed some operations to accommodate high energy demand during the Texas heatwave. Still, from the electricity cost side, it earned the company $9.5 million in power credits and other benefits.
Riot’s official document reads, “As energy demand in ERCOT reached all-time highs this past month, the Company voluntarily curtailed its energy consumption in order to ensure that more power would be available in Texas. By providing power back into the ERCOT grid during periods of peak demand, the Company estimates that power credits and other benefits from curtailment activities totaled an estimated $9.5 million, significantly outweighing the reduction in BTC mined.”
At an average BTC price of $21,634, a $9.5 million power credit is equivalent to roughly 439 BTC.
As of July 31, the crypto mining company said it holds about 6,696 Bitcoins, all of which were mined and produced by the company itself.
Riot further mentioned that it sold 275 bitcoins in the last month for a net gain of about $5.6 million.
The company also revealed that it has currently deployed approximately 40,311 miners with a hash rate capacity of 4.2 exahash per second (“EH/s”).
In addition, Riot revealed that last month, the company took delivery of an additional 9,316 new S19j pros and deployed approximately 4,320 S19j pros in its immersion cooling buildings. The company said it expects to receive an additional 7,200 mining machines for deployment at the factories it operates.
The company ordered 9,316 S19j pros from Bitmain, which are expected to be received this month. Following the expected miner deployment, Riot revealed that 47,511 miners are expected to be deployed with a hash rate capacity of around 4.9 EH/s.
Crypto users in Portugal are facing new uncertainty after some major banks are closing down accounts involved with cryptocurrency trading.
This is a huge blow considering that Portugal is one of Europe’s most crypto-friendly jurisdictions.
Bloomberg media reported the matter on Wednesday after contacting some of the crypto market players in the region.
Last week, Banco Comercial Português, one of the largest private banks in the country, and Banco Santander, a global bank whose subsidiary branch runs in Portugal, closed bank accounts associated CriptoLoja, a Portuguese cryptocurrency exchange based in Lisbon.
Pedro Borges, CriptoLoja’s co-founder and chief executive, revealed the matter to Bloomberg media.
Borges further disclosed the shutdown after two smaller banks closed accounts associated with some countries’ crypto firms.
Another crypto agency called ‘Thoughts the Coin’ also has been unable to open an account for months after its bank accounts had been closed one year ago. Pedro Guimaraes, the crypto exchange founder, narrated the matter to Bloomberg.
Besides that, Chief Product Officer Ricardo Filipe stated that Luso Digital Assets, a crypto trading platform in Portugal, also had some of its bank accounts closed in the last twelve months.
Furthermore, more than two crypto exchanges in the country had also been hit by the menace in the last twelve months, as per the report.
In an email statement, Banco Comercial Português, the above-stated bank, clarified that it is its responsibility to inform relevant authorities every time it sees “suspicious transactions” and terminate accounts associated with such activities.
Meanwhile, A Banco Santander consultant also pointed out the bank acts in “accordance with its perception of risk”.
However, Pedro Borges, CryptoLaja CEO, told Bloomberg that they have always informed authorities about cases of any suspicious transactions.
“We now have to rely on using accounts outside Portugal to run the exchange. All the compliance and reporting procedures have been followed,” Borges said.
The fresh move by the Portuguese banks has impacted the operations of crypto exchanges in Portugal, which already have the central bank license.
Pedro Guimaraes, founder of Mind the Coin, also stated: “While there is no official explanation, some banks just tell us they don’t want to work with crypto companies. It’s almost impossible to start a crypto business in Portugal right now.”
Crypto-friendly Climate Changing
Portugal is one of the most crypto-friendly countries in the world. Lisbon hosted an Ethereum conference in October of 2021. The country has been is one of the most Bitcoin-friendly countries in Europe.
Portugal recently got wide attention with its tax-free cryptocurrency regulations and many incentives that benefit crypto dealers and miners in the crypto-friendly region. And that attracted international entrepreneurs, investors, and digital nomads to migrate to the country to trade cryptocurrencies without paying taxes.
The Central Bank of Portugal, Banco de Portugal, has issued licenses for crypto agencies, including Criptoloja and Mind The Coin, allowing them to operate as crypto exchanges.
However, the recent move by Portuguese banks could signal a shift and toughen of the environment in Portugal’s crypto sector. Portugal’s government announced plans to tax crypto income in May.
Crypto exchange MEXC Global has incorporated the MX/USDT perpetual trading pair to enhance the MX Futures market and propel the MEXC ecosystem to the next level.
Presently, MEXC Global supports the perpetual trading of more than 200 cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin (BTC), Binance Coin (BNB), Solana (SOL), and Polygon (MATIC).
Therefore, perpetual trading cuts across different crypto sectors like the metaverse, decentralised finance (DeFi), decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO), game and finance (GameFi), cross-chain and public chain.
With statistics showing that the MEXC Futures’ liquidity is the top in the world, the new MX/USDT pair is intended to offer more trading opportunities and options to institutional and retail traders.
Per the announcement:
“In terms of market depth and stability, MEXC keeps making efforts and remains competitive. MEXC’s futures trading system is independently developed by an experienced core technical team.”
“With constant optimisation and regular upgrades, the platform is able to avoid downtime events when extreme trading volume surges,” the report added.
Established four years, MEXC Futures has been rendering product advantages and technical experience in user experience, liquidity, risk control, fundamental transaction depth, trading mechanism, and system stability.
Therefore, MEXC Global seeks to continue enhancing futures trading by listing more tokens. The crypto exchange has also shown its commitment to boosting the globalisation of cryptocurrency trading. For instance, it permitted crypto purchases that attracted zero transaction fees through SWIFT and Fedwire earlier in June.
MEXC Global said that the direct deposit option with no charges would offer users convenience and affordability as they sought an enhanced crypto trading experience, Blockchain.News reported.
Crypto exchange MEXC Global has incorporated the MX/USDT perpetual trading pair to enhance the MX Futures market and propel the MEXC ecosystem to the next level.
Presently, MEXC Global supports the perpetual trading of more than 200 cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin (BTC), Binance Coin (BNB), Solana (SOL), and Polygon (MATIC).
Therefore, perpetual trading cuts across different crypto sectors like the metaverse, decentralised finance (DeFi), decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO), game and finance (GameFi), cross-chain and public chain.
With statistics showing that the MEXC Futures’ liquidity is the top in the world, the new MX/USDT pair is intended to offer more trading opportunities and options to institutional and retail traders.
Per the announcement:
“In terms of market depth and stability, MEXC keeps making efforts and remains competitive. MEXC’s futures trading system is independently developed by an experienced core technical team.”
“With constant optimisation and regular upgrades, the platform is able to avoid downtime events when extreme trading volume surges,” the report added.
Established four years, MEXC Futures has been rendering product advantages and technical experience in user experience, liquidity, risk control, fundamental transaction depth, trading mechanism, and system stability.
Therefore, MEXC Global seeks to continue enhancing futures trading by listing more tokens. The crypto exchange has also shown its commitment to boosting the globalisation of cryptocurrency trading. For instance, it permitted crypto purchases that attracted zero transaction fees through SWIFT and Fedwire earlier in June.
MEXC Global said that the direct deposit option with no charges would offer users convenience and affordability as they sought an enhanced crypto trading experience, Blockchain.News reported.
CoinSmart Financial Inc., a crypto asset trading platform based in Toronto, Canada, announced on Wednesday that it is on the hunt to buy crypto startups in Canad6a, Europe, and the US, according to Bloomberg.
In an interview, CoinSmart Chief Executive Officer Justin Hartzman said that the crypto-asset trading platform is sifting through distressed assets, custodial-services companies, and other exchanges and payment platforms.
“M&A is an interesting thing, something that I spend a lot of time on. The high cost of regulation — or lack of regulation — allows the firm to jump in and find some properties or some targets that are really advantageous to our growth there,” the executive stated.
Hartzman said the ongoing turmoil times have allowed CoinSmart to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of the company. “Across the board, over 56% of volume retail dropped internationally across all platforms,” he said. “We’re closer to a 30% reduction in volume.”
From the look, CoinSmart is using this market correction to buy distressed assets for cents on the dollar to revamp its business or initiatives it is planning on building for the next few years.
By leveraging its cash and corporate balance sheets to execute distressed asset purchases, CoinSmart is coming up with new and creative ways to expand its portfolio across the crypto ecosystem.
The Toronto-based firm has not been immune to the market plunge that has pushed some lenders and hedge funds, such as Celsius Networks, Voyager Digital, and Three Arrows Capital, among others, into bankruptcy.
According to Hartzman, CoinSmart’s shares have lost about three-quarters of their value this year, shrinking its market capitalization to just C$14 million ($11 million).
So far, the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, has appeared to be the greatest survivor of the recent chaos.
Earlier last month, FTX signed a deal to bailout crypto lending platform BlockFi and announced it was open to considering buying other troubled crypto firms to stem potential credit contagion amid the prolonged bear market.
Bankman-Fried has acted as a lender of last resort during the recent crypto meltdown, with his trading company, Alameda Research, providing a revolving credit facility to Voyager Digital.
On Wednesday, a group of Democratic and Republican members on the Senate Agriculture Committee introduced a bill that aims to give the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) authority over the markets for Bitcoin and Ether, as well as any other digital assets that are considered to be commodities.
Senators who sponsored the bill include U.S Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, and Sen. John Boozman, a Republican from Arkansas.
The lawmakers said the bill would offer much required regulatory clarity to the cryptocurrency market by placing a major portion of its oversight under a single regulator.
The new bill seeks to give the CFTC direct oversight of cryptocurrencies that qualify as “digital commodities.”
It would also require firms offering crypto platforms to register with the CFTC, including exchanges, custodians, and brokers.
“One in five Americans have used or traded digital assets — but these markets lack the transparency and accountability that they expect from our financial system. Too often, this puts Americans’ hard-earned money at risk,” stated Stabenow, chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, which oversees the CFTC.
Such registration would come with requirements from the CFTC to ensure that crypto companies maintain adequate financial resources, avoid conflicts of interest, prevent abusive trading practices, maintain fair pricin, and cybersecurity protections, including other consumer protection measures.
The bill further acknowledged other financial watchdogs have a role in regulating cryptocurrencies that are not commodities but function more like securities or other payment methods.
Stabenow told media journalists that the bill is not designed to cover the entire crypto market or undermine the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ‘s ability to oversee digital assets that function more like securities.
“We’re not defining what a security is. I have great confidence in Chairman Gensler to be able to use his authorities,” she elaborated.
The bill’s focus on Bitcoin and Ether as commodities fits with the views of SEC boss Gary Gensler, who in the recent past said most other cryptocurrencies are likely to be securities.
While Stabenow and Boozman stated that they wanted to move ahead with the bill as quickly as possible, they did not mention a precise timeline. The window for legislative action will come to an end before the November midterm elections.
Efforts Towards Crypto Regulation
The latest bill follows other lists of legislation proposed in the recent past to clarify the rules surrounding cryptocurrencies.
In June, as reported by Blockchain. News, U.S. Sens. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) proposed a bipartisan cryptocurrency regulation bill that aimed to give the digital assets market much-needed definitions that would enable a regulatory framework to fall into place.
The proposed bipartisan Senate bill set the stage for establishing definitions for digital assets. The bill further proposed to create an advisory committee to develop guiding principles and to give regulatory authority for digital assets to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
In March, the U.S. House of Representatives Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) introduced a bill that proposed the creation of a working group constituted of industry experts and representatives from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to evaluate the current legal and regulatory framework around digital assets in the U.S.
