⛏️ Tether's $500M Mining Bet
In today’s edition: 🛡️ Coinbase backs Tornado appeal, 📈 CoinShares eyes Valkyrie ETF, 💵 $180M Philippine bonds, 💳 Coinbase's new payment tech, and more!
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What’s Poppin’?
by Brandy Betz, Kollen Post, and Samyuktha Sriram
Tether to Invest $500M in Bitcoin Mining: Report
Stablecoin issuer Tether plans to invest half a billion dollars in building its own Bitcoin mining facilities and other miners across the world.
Coinbase-Backed Appeal Seeks Roll Back of Tornado Cash Sanctions
The research and advocacy group, Coin Center, is also planning an appeal.
Coinbase Introduces New On-Chain Payment Protocol
The crypto exchange introduced an on-chain payments protocol as part of a large upgrade to its Coinbase Commerce product.
CoinShares Secures Option to Buy Valkyrie’s ETF Business
The potential acquisition comes as Valkyrie’s spot bitcoin ETF awaits approval by the SEC.
Philippines Selling $180M in Tokenized Treasury Bonds
The sale of the real-world asset-backed securities to institutional investors will happen next week.
South Korean Pension Fund Buys $20M Worth of Coinbase Stock
The third-quarter purchase included 282,673 shares that have since gained about 40% in value.
In this episode of Unchained, Peter Van Valkenburgh, director of research at Coin Center, explains why the IRS's proposed broker rule for tax reporting in crypto could harm the crypto industry as well as the security and privacy of users. He explains how Coin Center thinks the IRS should accomplish its aims, and why that would even work for collecting taxes on DeFi gains.
Additionally, Peter explains why he believes the Bank Secrecy Act might be unconstitutional and how that could potentially affect developers building in crypto.
Daily Bits…✍️✍️✍️
🚔 The FBI arrested three men for a scheme that stole $10 million from banks and converted it into crypto using foreign exchanges.
🗳️ U.S. presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy revealed a crypto plan prioritizing software developer protection and classifying most cryptocurrencies as commodities. (Listen to him on this week’s episode of The Chopping Block)
⚖️ Terraform Labs' CEO Do Kwon's appeal in a fake passport case was denied by a Montenegro High Court, with potential extradition following the end of this four-month sentence.
🇰🇷 Prosecutors in South Korea appealed for an eight-year jail term for ex-Bithumb chair Lee Jeong-hoon in an alleged fraud case involving a failed takeover of the crypto exchange.
🔄 Aave Companies rebranded to Avara and acquired Los Feliz Engineering, a web3 startup behind the Ethereum wallet Family, marking its second major acquisition.
💫 Jupiter, a DEX aggregator on Solana, announced a retrospective airdrop of 1 billion tokens to over 950,000 wallets based on their swap volume on the protocol. Also, 🪙 Pyth network plans to airdrop 255 million tokens to 90,000 wallets next week.
Today in Crypto Adoption...
📜 XREX, an Asia-based crypto exchange, received in-principle approval for a Major Payment Institution license in Singapore, aiming to offer digital payment token services.
The $$$ Corner…
🧙♂️ Bitcoin-focused Ordinals project Taproot Wizards garnered $7.5 million in seed funding for its collection of wizard-themed Microsoft Paint images.
🤖 Bazooka Tango closed a $5 million round, led by Bitkraft Ventures, to revive 'Shardbound' as an NFT game, planning to expand its team and further develop the game.
🌉 Union Labs raised $4 million for developing a cross-chain bridge utilizing zero-knowledge proofs, with investment from several venture firms, including Galileo and Semantic Ventures.
What Do You Meme?
Recommended Reads
@DaveWangMIA on why emerging markets prefer stablecoins on Tron for payments
The horrific inefficiencies of monolithic blockchains by Polynia
📈 Your Market Update 📉
BTC is down 2.7%, trading at $36,356
ETH is down 4.1%, trading at $1,966
BTC dominance: 49.47%
Crypto market cap: $1.43T
*All data as of today, 06:07 am ET
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