Hello, Breet Gang!
It’s a wonderful new week — are you ready to seize the day? 🤩
And can you smell that?
Love is in the air (Valentine’s Day tomorrow!) & only single people are wearing face-masks to avoid it! 😁
But right now, it’s time for our favourite thing to bring to you every Monday — Crypto News! 🌎
Let’s get started:
1. The crypto market has in recent times bounced back greatly, but on Friday, it took a fall! Bitcoin (BTC) dipped to $21,793 after a 4.00% drop, while Ethereum (ETH) was at $1,537 after a 5.89% loss. Fingers crossed this week! 🤞
2. Trouble is brewing! The U.S. & U.K. have gone on to issue a joint sanction against seven members of the Russian cybercrime group Trickbot, known as the second-highest earning cybercrime group who’ve illegally obtained at least $724M in Crypto. Definitely been a long time coming! 🤝
3. Rihanna is returning to the stage soon, and her 2015 hit single — B* Better Have My Money — is also about to become an NFT! Deputy, the producer of BBHMM, has offered a limited-edition NFT with royalty sharing ahead of the Super Bowl, through Web3 music startup anotherblock. Love to see it! 🤑
4. Crypto Exchange Kraken has been getting the heat lately with probes from U.S. authorities, and now? They’re set to “immediately” end their crypto-staking-as-a-service platform for U.S. customers & pay a settlement charge of $30M to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Yikes 😬
5. Up next — Stablecoin Issuer Paxos is reportedly being investigated by the New York Department of Financial Services! Why? The exact motive is unclear, but an NYDFS spokesperson who chipped in stated that the department is “broadly working to protect consumers from risks associated with investing in the cryptocurrency market”. Let’s keep watching! 🌚
6. FTX drama is still on, and Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyers have proposed the installation of a monitoring software on Bankman-Fried’s phone, after a hearing where Judge Lewis Kaplan indicated he was ‘concerned about Bankman-Fried’s ability to hide or delete his communications’ & how this contradicts his bail terms.
7. In other news; founders of VAULTs DMC — a sort of NFT for music fans — have successfully raised $4M in a Series-A funding round led by Placeholder VC, for the purpose of furthering the DMC format and accelerating the development of an open-source Vault protocol. Congratulations! 🥳
8. Are two ‘heads’ better than one? Any day! And web3 payments firm MoonPay has teamed up with NFT marketplace LooksRare to allow users to purchase and sell cryptocurrency as well as NFTs on the platform using a credit card. Sounds good! 💪🏻
9. And lastly — some unfortunate news. Bitcoin exchange LocalBitcoins is shutting down this February after 10 years of operation due to the “ongoing very cold crypto winter” which has caused a slump in their weekly volume to a low of $5 million – $7 million. Harsh times 🙃
That’s it for this week!
Remember, to stay up-to-date with the latest news in the crypto scene, be sure you’re following us on our social media platforms & the blog too 💻
Have an exciting day! 🕺🏼
