Binance to Remove Liquidity Pools: ADA, APE, AVAX, DOT and More

Binance, one of the world’s premier cryptocurrency exchanges, has announced the removal of a significant number of liquidity pools from its Liquid Swap platform. This decision stems from Binance’s periodic review aimed at refining the trading experience for its users by concentrating liquidity. Traders should closely monitor these tokens, as the removal of token trading pairs may influence their prices.

The liquidity pools slated for removal on September 1, 2023, at 04:00 (UTC) include: ADA/BNB, ALICE/BTC, APE/BTC, AVA/USDT, AVAX/BNB, BTC/TUSD, CHZ/BNB, CHZ/BTC, CTSI/BNB, DOT/BUSD, ENJ/USDT, FIL/BNB, FRONT/BUSD, GALA/BNB, ICP/BNB, ID/BTC, KDA/USDT, LIT/USDT, MATIC/BNB, NEO/BNB, PAXG/USDT, PEPE/USDT, SANTOS/USDT, SUSHI/BNB, SUSHI/BTC, SXP/BNB, SXP/BTC, THETA/BNB, THETA/BTC, TKO/USDT, TLM/USDT, TRX/BNB, TRX/ETH, WBTC/ETH, XMR/ETH, XMR/USDT, XVS/BTC, XVS/USDT, and ZEN/USDT.

Users with positions in these liquidity pools will automatically have their deposited assets returned to their Spot wallets at the aforementioned date and time.

It’s crucial for users to understand that the removal of these liquidity pools won’t affect the trading of the corresponding pairs on Binance Spot. Starting from August 28, 2023, at 06:00 (UTC), the platform will cease accepting liquidity additions to these pools. However, users have the option to redeem their assets from these pools before the removal date. After September 1, deposits in these liquidity pools will be determined based on the prevailing composition ratios of each pool and will be automatically redeemed to users’ Spot wallets.

Binance has also emphasized that Liquid Swap positions might undergo changes in composition ratios due to the inherent nature of liquidity pools. For a deeper understanding, users are directed to the platform’s FAQ section.

The announcement was officially made on August 28, 2023, by the Binance Team.

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Cardano ADA Ecosystem Q2 2023: DeFi Growth, Stablecoins, and NFT Trends

Cardano ($ADA) ecosystem has witnessed significant growth and development in Q2 2023, according to Messari’s recent report. From the rise in stablecoin value to the expansion of decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), the network has seen remarkable progress.

Key insights from the report include a 34.9% QoQ growth in the total stablecoin market cap on Cardano, reaching $13.5 million, with Indigo Protocol leading the stablecoin and synthetic asset issuance.

Protocols created in the last ~6 months accounted for 47.4% TVL dominance in Q2. Cardano’s TVL (USD) was up 9.7% QoQ, moving from 34th to 21st in TVL ranking across all chains. Average daily dapp transactions were up 49% QoQ, with Minswap leading the growth.

In the DeFi sector, Minswap remained the liquidity king, ending Q2 with a TVL of $48.8 million. New protocols like VyFinance, Liqwid Finance, Djed, and Optim Finance also grew. Indigo and Djed emerged as the main stablecoin issuers, with Indigo witnessing a total liquidation volume of $3.6 million from 870 liquidations in Q2.

NFT transactions were down 35.7% QoQ, with total quarterly trading volume falling 41.9% QoQ to $46.2 million. Notable initiatives included the UN Refugee Agency using NFTs for charity. Milkomeda C1, launched in early 2022, brought EVM compatibility to Cardano, with daily unique contract callers surging 279.9% QoQ, driven by the gaming sector’s growth.

Project Catalyst, a decentralized fund for innovative projects, funded 1,163 proposals in nine rounds, with Fund 10 allocating 50 million ADA (~$14 million) among 13 Challenges. Cardano developers are building tools to support languages like Marlowe, Aiken, Plu-ts, Helios, and OpShin.

IOG launched a toolkit for building custom sidechains, and Wanchain announced its bridge on the Cardano preview testnet. Hydra, a family of scaling protocols, opened its first Head on the Cardano mainnet in March 2023, marking a significant step in scaling solutions.

Cardano’s ecosystem is expanding rapidly, with DeFi owning the spotlight in Q2. New protocols are emerging, and incumbent ones are building and maintaining a presence. The growth in stablecoins, NFTs, gaming, and Layer-2 solutions indicates a vibrant and evolving ecosystem.

With Project Catalyst Fund 10 in progress and continuous development in various sectors, Cardano’s future looks promising and filled with opportunities for innovation and growth.

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Tetra Partners with Kiln to Enhance Staking Service Including Ethereum and Solana

Tetra Trust Company (Tetra), Founded in 2019, Canada’s only licensed custody solution for digital assets, has announced the rollout of increased staking functionality through its strategic partnership with Kiln, a leading enterprise-grade staking platform.

The Tetra-Kiln Partnership

Starting today, Tetra clients can stake their assets with Kiln on the main Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchains such as Ethereum (ETH), Solana (SOL), Polygon (MATIC), Cardano (ADA), and Tezos (XTZ). This collaboration aims to provide secure and efficient methods for institutional clients to actively participate in blockchain networks and earn rewards on their digital asset holdings.

Kiln is the leading enterprise-grade staking platform, enabling institutional customers to stake assets, and to whitelabel staking functionality into their offering. Kiln runs validators on all major PoS blockchains, with over $2.2 billion of stake under management and over 3% of the Ethereum network.

Kiln, known for its high standards of operational excellence, manages over $2 billion worth of staked assets and is SOC 2 Type II certified. “We are excited to offer our clients staking opportunities thanks to our collaboration with Kiln,” says Didier Lavallée, CEO at Tetra. “The solution Kiln brings to the table is quite impressive, not only does Kiln meet our security and technical requirements, their all-encompassing capabilities make it a robust solution to offer our clients.”

Laszlo Szabo, CEO at Kiln, stated, “We strive to enable institutions to access staking. Being our first enterprise-grade custodian partner in Canada, we’re thrilled to collaborate with Tetra, with whom we share common values.”

Understanding the Staking Opportunity

In PoS blockchains, staking consists of locking native tokens to earn the right to help secure the chain via a validator. Staking plays a crucial role in network security, governance, and contributes to the growth of the Web3 ecosystem. By staking, token holders can earn rewards and grow their digital asset holdings.

This collaboration marks a significant milestone in both companies’ commitment to delivering the highest standards of security and service for institutional and corporate clients.

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Cardano ADA Q2 2023: Dapp Transactions Up 49%, TVL Increases 9.7%

Messari, a leading provider of crypto research and insights, has released its Q2 2023 report on Cardano, a prominent Proof-of-Stake (PoS) Layer-1 smart contract network. The report highlights key insights and developments within the Cardano ecosystem, providing a comprehensive overview of its performance, financial status, ecosystem, staking, and decentralization, along with notable community and development events.

Key insights include average daily decentralized application (dapp) transactions being up 49% QoQ, with Minswap experiencing the largest absolute growth. Total Value Locked (TVL) in USD was up 9.7% QoQ and 198.6% YTD, moving Cardano from 34th to 21st in TVL ranking across all chains. Hydra Head, an off-chain mini ledger, continued its development with proposed topologies and a demo shared. Projects like Milkomeda C1, Midnight, Wanchain, and IOG’s sidechains team are working towards increased interoperability within the Cardano ecosystem.

The average transaction fee increased 8.5% QoQ from $0.117 to $0.126, still down 50.8% YoY. Daily active addresses declined 4.0% QoQ from 60,200 to 57,800. Average daily transactions were up 1.9% QoQ from 67,500 to 68,800. Cardano’s average blockchain load increased from just under 40% in Q1 to over 50% in Q2.

ADA’s price pulled back 26.9% QoQ after a 53.5% increase in Q1 but is still up 12.0% YTD. Cardano’s Treasury balance grew 8.5% to 1.30 billion ADA during Q2, with the value in USD terms decreasing 20.7% QoQ from $452 million to $358 million.

Cardano’s total stablecoin market cap grew 34.9% QoQ from $10.0 million to $13.5 million. Minswap, an automated market maker (AMM), ended Q2 with a TVL of $48.8 million and 32.2% dominance.

There were 1,921 unique stake pool operators (SPOs) in Q2, with the top 188 pools (6.5% of pools) accounting for over 50% of the total stake.

The 2023 Cardano Summit was announced to take place in Dubai in November. IOG launched a toolkit for building custom sidechains for Cardano, and Wanchain’s bridge is now live on the Cardano preview testnet environment. Hydra, a family of scaling protocols, continued its development, with the first Head opened on the Cardano mainnet in March 2023.

Cardano’s Q2 2023 report showcases significant growth in various areas, including dapp transactions, TVL, and development initiatives. The continued focus on interoperability, scalability, and community engagement positions Cardano as a leading player in the blockchain space, with promising prospects for the future.

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Bitcoin Leads Bullish Trend with $125M Inflows in Overall Crypto Market

CoinShares reports a significant increase in investor bullishness towards digital assets, with a total inflow of $125 million in the past week. In the last fortnight, inflows totaled $334 million, representing nearly 1% of the total assets under management (AuM).

Bitcoin remains the primary choice for investors, with a massive $123 million inflow over the past week. Bitcoin investment products have bounced back to a net inflow year-to-date, overturning a net outflow position of $171 million just two weeks prior. Despite the recent uptick in price, short-Bitcoin investment products experienced a tenth consecutive week of outflows, now representing 59% of AuM.

However, short-Bitcoin remains the second-best-performing asset in terms of year-to-date inflows, with $60 million. As for altcoins, Ethereum leads the pack with inflows totaling $2.7 million, followed closely by Cardano, Polygon, and XRP. Multi-asset and Solana experienced minor outflows of $1.8 million and $0.8 million, respectively. Blockchain equities have also seen a resurgence, with inflows of $6.8 million following a 9-week streak of outflows.

The surge in digital asset investment and blockchain equities indicates growing investor confidence in the crypto industry.

The total AuM reached $37 billion during the week, matching the highest level since early June 2022 and the average AuM for 2022. Trading activity remains robust, with a weekly volume of $2.3 billion, substantially higher than the year-to-date average of $1.5 billion.

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Equities Up, Crypto Down: Robinhood’s May 2023 Trading Data and Upcoming Crypto Delisting

Robinhood Markets Inc., the popular trading platform known for democratizing investing, has released its operating data for May 2023, showing an increase in both equity and options trading but a decline in cryptocurrency trading.

In May, Robinhood’s Net Cumulative Funded Accounts (NCFA) reached 23.1 million, a growth of around 20,000 from the previous month. This figure, however, only represents unique users, as it does not count existing customers who have opened multiple accounts.

Despite the increase in the number of funded accounts, Robinhood reported a drop in Monthly Active Users (MAU), which fell by roughly 900,000 from April to May 2023, bringing the total to 10.6 million.

The trading platform experienced an uptick in Assets Under Custody (AUC), with a 6% increase from April to $81.8 billion by the end of May. Net deposits for the month of May totaled $1.6 billion, an annualized growth rate of 25% compared to April’s AUC. Over the past year, net deposits have reached $16.5 billion, reflecting an annual growth rate of 22% relative to May 2022 AUC.

However, when it comes to trading volumes, Robinhood’s report showed contrasting trends. While equity notional trading volumes rose 27% to $49.4 billion, and options contracts traded increased 29% to 97.5 million, cryptocurrency trading went down. Crypto notional trading volumes decreased significantly by 43% to $2.1 billion, reflecting a relative decline in the enthusiasm for cryptocurrency trading among Robinhood’s user base in May.

The company’s margin balances remained stable at $3.1 billion, showing no change from April 2023. Cash sweep balances, on the other hand, showed a marked increase, growing 16% from the end of April to $11.2 billion by the end of May.

The report provides insights into Robinhood’s performance in a volatile market environment, indicating the shifting preferences of its users. The contrasting trend in equities and options versus cryptocurrency trading may reflect changing investor sentiment in the evolving landscape of financial markets.

Adding to these dynamics that could significantly impact future trading volumes, Robinhood announced the delisting of cryptocurrencies Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA), and Polygon (MATIC). This decision follows recent charges by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against Binance and Coinbase, alleging that these platforms traded unregistered securities. Given these circumstances, a further decline in cryptocurrency trading activity on Robinhood can be expected.

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SEC Lawsuits Target Multiple Tokens: DCG Founder Points Out Absence of PoW Cryptos

In an unfolding legal battle against two major cryptocurrency exchanges, Coinbase and Binance, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has declared various tokens as securities. These tokens include SOL, ADA, MATIC, FIL, SAND, AXS, CHZ, FLOW, ICP, NEAR, VGX, DASH, and NEXO in the case against Coinbase. For Binance, the list features SOL, ADA, MATIC, FIL, ATOM, SAND, MANA, ALGO, AXS, and COTI.

This declaration by the SEC highlights its ongoing effort to regulate the cryptocurrency market and could have substantial implications for these tokens and their holders. If the SEC succeeds in classifying these tokens as securities, it would subject them to more stringent regulatory rules and obligations.

Barry Silbert, the founder of Digital Currency Group (DCG), commented on the situation via Twitter, noting, “No Proof of Work tokens in any of the lawsuits, I believe (BTC, LTC, XMR, ETC, ZEC, etc.).” Silbert’s tweet refers to the SEC’s decision to not include tokens that use Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism in their lawsuits. This includes Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), Monero (XMR), Ethereum Classic (ETC), and Zcash (ZEC), among others.

The implication of Silbert’s statement suggests that the SEC might be differentiating between PoW tokens and other tokens. This differentiation could lead to different regulatory standards and implications for tokens depending on their underlying consensus mechanism.

This ongoing case and the SEC’s decisions could set a precedent for future regulations and classifications in the crypto market. As such, all eyes within the crypto community are keenly focused on the developments. It is yet to be seen how these decisions will shape the regulatory landscape of digital assets.

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Binance US Faces SEC Accusations Over Alleged Securities Trading Violations

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has leveled a series of accusations against the US operations of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, casting a significant cloud over the future of the platform in the United States.

In a formal complaint, the SEC claimed that Binance US facilitated trading in a range of tokens identified as securities without the requisite permissions. The assets in question include Binance Coin (BNB), Binance USD (BUSD), Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA), Polygon (MATIC), Filecoin (FIL), Cosmos (ATOM), The Sandbox (SAND), Decentraland (MANA), Algorand (ALGO), Axie Infinity Shards (AXS), and Coti (COTI).

The SEC’s allegations also extend to investment schemes run by the platform. Binance’s BNB Vault and Simple Earn programs, as well as a staking investment plan, are accused of having operated outside of US regulatory oversight.

The accusations seem to point to a fundamental charge of intentional evasion of US supervision by Binance, a claim that could carry significant implications for the cryptocurrency exchange’s operations within the country.

However, it is important to clarify the nature of these charges. The allegations brought forth by the SEC, as well as those by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), against Binance are civil, not criminal in nature. This marks a distinction from the money laundering charges faced by other exchanges such as BitMEX in previous cases.

The fallout from the accusations is yet to be fully realized, but this could mark a pivotal moment in the ongoing tug-of-war between cryptocurrency exchanges and regulatory bodies. As Binance contends with these accusations, the crypto industry will no doubt be watching closely, aware that the outcome could have far-reaching implications for the future of digital asset trading in the United States.

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Cardano’s Vasil Upgrade is Finally Complete

Cardano’s Vasil upgrade has been completed. The much-awaited set-off will enable increased network capacity, higher throughput, and lower transaction costs on the peer-reviewed, proof-of-stake blockchain platform.

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“The Vasil hard fork moves us towards this goal by improving Cardano’s foundational features, upgrading the technology’s capacity to transform our traditional financial and social systems, and ultimately advancing decentralised economic empowerment,” Frederik Gregaard, CEO of the Cardano Foundation, told The Block.  

The Vasil hard fork focuses on optimisation, scalability and interoperability. It is part of Cardano’s Basho era — one of the critical development phases on the Cardano roadmap.

During the upgrade, Vasil required no action for regular ADA holders using Cardano for transactions and dApps as the transition happened behind the scenes.

The upgrade was initially planned for June, but the postponed upgrade also activated Plutus v2 enhancements to Cardano’s smart contracts.

The Vasil upgrade has taken the blockchain platform closer in line with the capabilities of Ethereum – the largest smart contract platform. It further opens up the potential for current and new Cardano DeFi projects to create more powerful, efficient, and cost-effective applications.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson said, “(We) knew that, over time, we could get to what Ethereum has done, but we understood a road map to get there,” ahead of the upgrade about the blockchain platform’s gradual approach to adding new capabilities.

The upgrade date was finalised earlier in September by the Cardano-focused research and development company, Input Output Global (IOG). The decision was made after the critical mass indicators required were completed and successfully gained assurances from staking pool operators, exchanges, and dApp communities stating that they were ready for Vasil.

According to The Block, the Vasil upgrade was conducted in collaboration with people from across the Cardano ecosystem from the core development team, the Cardano Foundation, IOG, Emurgo, and the wider Cardano community via technical Cardano Improvement Proposals (CIPs).

Cardano stated that the upgrade promises increased functionality, performance and scalability. The new Vasil capabilities will be available on the mainnet after one epoch, on Sept 27.

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Cardano Elbows Ripple to Take 6th Position, Thanks to Heightened Development Activity

Cardano (ADA) has been scaling the heights because it is now the sixth-largest cryptocurrency after dethroning Ripple (XRP) with a market capitalization of $20.71 billion, according to CoinMarketCap

Cardano is going through the roof based on factors like increased development activity. Market insight provider Santiment explained:

“Cardano is one of many altcoins that have enjoyed a great start to the week. Development activity has hit AllTimeHigh levels, as ADA’s team worked on innovating while prices were suppressed.”

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Source: Santiment

Cardano is a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain, which is designed to be a scalable, sustainable, and flexible network for running smart contracts needed when developing decentralized finance (DeFi) applications and new crypto tokens.

Therefore, Cardano is one of the sought-after networks in the development arena based on the latest trend of flipping Ripple’s market capitalization of $20.14 billion.

Market analyst under the pseudonym Tajo Crypto pointed out:

“Cardano pumped more than 25%, so it flipped XRP to become the 6th largest crypto by market cap. Cardano is doing well with over 5 million assets minted from its network recently. Cardano is also getting ready for the Vasil upgrade in June. ADA is doing well.”

ADA was up by 18.66% in the last seven days to hit $0.6124 during intraday trading, according to CoinMarketCap. 

Therefore, Cardano seems not to be relenting in its quest to flip other cryptocurrencies. For instance, it elbowed Polkadot (DOT) from the seventh position in January 2021. As a result, it became the biggest proof-of-stake network. 

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Bitcoin (BTC) $ 37,971.17 2.58%
Ethereum (ETH) $ 2,053.85 1.97%
Litecoin (LTC) $ 69.76 1.37%
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) $ 223.27 0.77%