Headline
US judge approves Binance's $4.3 billion fine plea deal
US Judge Richard Jones approved Binance's plea deal to pay a $4.3 billion fine during a hearing held in Seattle on Friday, February 23rd.
In a statement, a Binance spokesperson said, "Binance takes responsibility for its past actions and has made significant progress in implementing the measures required by the plea agreement."
Binance stated that the company has made "considerable compliance improvements" in KYC and anti-money laundering detection over the past few years and "looks forward to continuing efforts in compliance, security, and transparency, setting the benchmark for the industry in the coming months. We continue on the path to becoming the most trusted and secure digital asset exchange in the world."
US prosecutor motioned to have CZ surrender all passports before sentencing
The U.S. Attorney's Office has requested a federal judge to approve additional travel restrictions on former CEO CZ of Binance.
In a filing submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington on February 23, U.S. prosecutor Tessa Gorman requested Judge Brian Tsuchida to approve a motion that would specify the conditions for CZ during his pretrial release. The prosecutors are asking CZ to remain in the United States until the sentencing hearing on April 30 and to provide at least a three-day notice of any travel plans in order for the government to raise objections.
The U.S. Attorney's Office has requested CZ to surrender his Canadian passport to a third party supervised by his attorney and to hand over "all other valid and expired passports and travel documents" to his attorney. CZ also holds citizenship in the United Arab Emirates and had requested to travel there to visit his family, but the judge denied the motion.
According to the filing, "CZ's defense counsel have objected to this motion," suggesting that his legal team may continue to seek ways for CZ to leave the United States.
Satoshi Nakamoto mentioned Bitcoin's energy consumption and legal scrutiny in early emails
A batch of recently disclosed emails from early collaborator Martii "Sirius" Malmi sheds light on Satoshi Nakamoto's warning in a May 2009 email that Bitcoin could become a significant consumer of energy. Nakamoto wrote, "If it gets bigger and bigger and consumes more and more power, I don't see it stopping raw CPU power from taking over. Eventually, I think someone will square off with governments in an economic freedom vs. money laundering fight, and governments will be at a disadvantage. But if we must err, I think it's better to err on the side of freedom to expand. The cost will be less than building all the real [world] buildings, skyscrapers, and junk mail credit card offers, so it's low single-digits of the billions [banks] already waste. But it's ironic if we end up having to make a choice between economic freedom and protecting ourselves."
Layer 2 Network Blast has announced the results of the BIG BANG competition. Over 3000 teams participated in this event, and 47 winning projects were selected:
- Including 5 spot DEX projects, including Ambient Finance;
- Including 6 perpetual contract DEX projects, including 0x Finance and SynFutures;
- Including 8 lending projects, including Fragment, Particle, and Curvance;
- Including 6 GambleFi projects, including BetBIG;
- Including 10 NFT/Gaming projects, including BAC Games and nftperp;
- Including 10 Infra projects, including Tornado Blast and Banana Gun;
- The SocialFi project Fantasy and the music project Thunder.
Industry News
The US Department of Energy and the Energy Information Administration (EIA) have agreed to suspend mandatory investigations into the energy usage of Bitcoin mining companies.
Previously, court documents showed that several US mining companies, led by the Texas Blockchain Council and Riot Platforms, jointly filed a civil lawsuit against the US Department of Energy and the EIA, accusing the defendants of "illegally" collecting proprietary data from 82 Bitcoin mining companies, including Riot.
Recently, the EIA issued an "emergency" investigation to Bitcoin mining companies, demanding highly proprietary information such as machine specifications used in each mining facility, specific locations of mining operations, and contract information related to each commercial energy partner.
FTX agrees to repurchase FTX Europe from its founder for $32.7 million
The bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX has reached a settlement in a lawsuit in an attempt to recover the $323 million it spent on acquiring a European startup company.
FTX stated that it paid an excessive fee for an "unable to launch and operate" startup, and the founder of FTX Europe will repurchase the company for $27 million. It is reported that Digital Assets DA AG was acquired by FTX in 2021 and renamed FTX Europe. FTX claimed in the lawsuit filed in July 2023 that the acquisition was a "huge overpayment" made using FTX customer funds.
According to documents filed on Thursday with the bankruptcy court in Wilmington, Delaware, FTX stated that there were no other buyers willing to purchase its European subsidiary FTX Europe, and the proposed settlement is the best outcome for FTX creditors.
Grayscale CEO: Received frequent merger proposals after winning against SEC last year, open to it
Grayscale Investments CEO Michael Sonnenshein said in an interview with CNBC that since winning a high-profile legal battle with the SEC last year, Grayscale has been receiving proposals related to mergers and acquisitions. "Sometimes people come to us to discuss strategic cooperation," he said. While Grayscale is open to such opportunities, there are currently no developments to announce.
Ethereum Foundation researchers Michael Neuder and SMG Chief Researcher Max Resnick published a proposal titled "Concurrent Block Proposers in Ethereum" suggesting an increase in the number of proposers in a single Ethereum PoS slot.
Currently, block proposers have unilateral power over the transaction set within a 12-second timeframe, which can lead to centralization issues in the second-largest blockchain. Michael Neuder proposes introducing the simplest version of the "dual proposer construct" in the slot, electing two validators as eligible block proposers.
Previously, it was reported that Ethereum may see more changes in its validation design after the Dencun upgrade in 2024. Currently, validator deposits have been added to the Electra hard fork agenda, scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2024 to the first quarter of 2025.
Project News
friend.tech article suggests an airdrop may take place this spring
Friend.tech posted on X platform, saying "Preparing for the most dangerous task of this spring," accompanied by a picture suggesting an airdrop may take place.
Uniswap Foundation posted on X platform that the governance lead of Uniswap Foundation, Erin Koen, has published a new proposal titled "Activating Uniswap Protocol Governance." The Snapshot vote for this proposal will start on March 1, 2024, and the on-chain voting will begin on March 8, 2024. The proposal suggests upgrading the protocol to reward UNI token holders who delegate and stake their tokens with protocol fees. The proposed changes include:
1. Upgrading Uniswap protocol governance to enable permissionless and programmatic fee collection;
2. Distributing any protocol fees proportionally to UNI token holders who have staked and delegated their voting rights;
3. Allowing governance to continue controlling core parameters: which pools need to pay fees and the fee amounts.
Pandora: ERC-404 latest version to be officially released pending final audit
Pandora posted on X platform that the latest version of ERC-404 will be officially released. The team has provided the "V2" version to developers through the official GitHub and it will be launched after the final audit by Trail of Bits.
Curve: Lending contract deployed, users can now deposit or borrow
Curve posted on X platform that the lending contract has been deployed. Arbitrage traders can conduct research in advance to earn substantial arbitrage profits by entering liquidity before the UI is officially launched.
Curve also emphasizes that the lending platform has not been officially launched, but users can already make deposits or borrow through the contract.
Victor Zhang, founder of Smart Layer, responded to community questions about the airdrop on the X platform. He stated that Smart Layer collected on-chain and off-chain public data from users to identify over 60,000 highly active real users in the Smart Layer ecosystem. The most active users received between 266 and 2833 tokens, while others participated in a lottery with a chance to receive between 30 and 67 tokens per person.
A total of 2 million SLN tokens, worth over $10 million, were distributed in this airdrop. Smart Layer developed an algorithm specifically for this airdrop, which may have transparency issues, but it wouldn't make sense to disclose it in advance. There are also strict policies within Smart Layer regarding the airdrop, and any employees found participating will be immediately dismissed.
Currently, Smart Layer has prepared additional reward plans for users who hold Smart Cats, Adopted Cats, and Cat Toys. For other community members, Smart Layer apologizes for not being able to provide airdrop allocations to everyone, but they have strived for fairness as much as possible.
OP Labs: If Upgrade Proposal is Approved, Ecotone Mainnet Upgrade Planned for March 14
OP Labs stated on the X platform that the Ecotone upgrade will take place on Monday, March 14 at 00:00:01 UTC (8:00 AM Beijing time), pending approval of the upgrade proposal by Optimism governance. Node operators will need to take steps to prepare for the upgrade and set up basic Ecotone configurations. After that, they will need to configure the operation of their nodes with the new Beacon endpoint, as soon after the activation of Ecotone, bulk transactions will be sent as 4844 blobs and only Beacon nodes will be able to retrieve the blobs.
Analysoor posted on platform X, stating that they found a blocking vulnerability in the Dune Analytics NFT data, which forced the team to delay the release of their first External Mint project once again.
Analysoor explained, "Our machine learning model uses historical NFT holding period data and secondary market sales. However, Dune Analytics mistakenly analyzed TensorSwap sales and attributed many sales to TensorSwap Escrow instead of the actual buyers or sellers.
We have attempted multiple solutions, but we must parse the raw Solana instruction data from Dune Analytics and handle multiple exemptions and edge cases, which may take 1-2 days. Once fixed, we will announce the minting date. The classification machine learning model script and Solana on-chain smart contract are ready, and we just need to fix the input data from Dune Analytics. Tomorrow, we will send 10,000 USDC as a charitable donation and burn 21,000 ZERO tokens."
Analysoor apologizes for this and adds, "This is a serious error that we cannot control."
Huobi HK's application for a Hong Kong virtual asset trading platform license has been withdrawn
The official website of the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong (SFC) shows that the virtual asset trading platform license application submitted by Huobi HK has been withdrawn. The information reveals that the virtual asset trading platform operator company name submitted by Huobi HK is "HBGL Hong Kong Limited". The application was submitted on February 20, 2024, and the withdrawal took place on February 23.
According to the disclosed information by the SFC, reasons for the license application being returned, refused, or withdrawn include, but are not limited to: incomplete application or unresolved significant issues resulting in the application being returned by the SFC, as well as the application being refused or withdrawn.
EOS Foundation CEO states it will reverse token inflation and limit the supply to 2 billion tokens
EOS Foundation CEO Yves La Rose posted on platform X, stating that they will reverse inflation by minting around 818 million EOS tokens and limit the total supply to 2 billion tokens. The new minted tokens will be released over time, with a large initial release and a gradually decreasing release over time (according to a logarithmic curve). It was also mentioned that inactive holders will be diluted to reward active holders.
ETF Related
US SEC seeks public opinion on the possibility of introducing Bitcoin spot ETF and options trading
The U.S. SEC has sought public opinion on the possibility of introducing Bitcoin spot ETF options, and experts predict that the regulatory agency may approve it as early as March.
In a letter to the SEC on Friday, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) applied to change the rules to allow options trading on the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITC), Grayscale GBTC, and "any trust holding Bitcoin." The NYSE stated that Bitcoin spot ETFs are eligible for options trading under U.S. trading laws because they are commodity-backed exchange-traded products (ETPs).
It also stated that all exchange standard rules and regulations will guide various aspects of the listing and trading of spot ETF options, including "listing standards, expiration dates, exercise prices, minimum increments, position and exercise restrictions, margin requirements, customer accounts, and trading suspension procedures." In addition, Bitcoin spot ETF options will also be subject to the NYSE's ongoing listing standards, and if the relevant ETF fails to meet certain standards stipulated in Section 916 of the U.S. Securities Act and many other conditions, it can be delisted.
The SEC has officially acknowledged NYSE's latest submission and included the proposal in its official register, inviting public feedback within the next 21 days.
9 Bitcoin spot ETFs (excluding GBTC) have accumulated a net inflow of approximately $13 billion
Data estimated by HOD L1 5 Capital shows that the 10 Bitcoin spot ETFs in the U.S. have accumulated a net inflow of over $5.5 billion. Among them, 9 new Bitcoin spot ETFs (excluding GBTC) have accumulated a net inflow of about $13 billion since their launch, which means that GBTC has accumulated a net outflow of over $7.4 billion during the same period.
Opinion: Ethereum spot ETF may be approved as early as May 2024, but no later than mid-2025
Financial lawyer Scott Johnsson posted on platform X, saying: "The U.S. SEC simultaneously issued a preliminary comment letter on the registration statement for the issuer's BTC spot ETF on September 29, 2023. About two weeks later, we saw the revised S-1 appear, so it was about 90 days ahead of the final deadline of January 10."
Now there are 90 days left until the deadline of May 23 for the ETH spot ETF. There are many reasons to believe that the SEC may deviate from the BTC timeline but still approve the ETH spot ETF (including delaying the entire S-1 review process until after the 19 b-4 approval is obtained). If not in May 2024, it should arrive by mid-2025, with relatively high confidence."
Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart responded: "The SEC doesn't need to spend a lot of time dealing with documents for the Ethereum spot ETF like they did for the Bitcoin ETF. They are different, but the difficulty of bringing the BTC document from 0 to 1 is much greater than bringing the ETH document from 0 to 1 because you can build a fairly large foundation on BTC."
