An overview of current news in the crypto space
In our digest, we took a look at some important crypto industry news over the past week:
- NFT marketplace Blur gives $9.4 million to airdrop participant
- Raiffeisen Bank will allow retail customers to trade cryptocurrency through Bitpanda exchange
- Filmmaker invested money from Netflix in Dogecoin and made $27 million
- Binance agrees to pay $4.3 billion to U.S. Treasury – and Changpeng Zhao steps down as CEO
- For the first time in Russia, Sber issued a loan secured by a CFA
Now for more details. Reading time: 6 minutes.
- Popular NFT marketplace Blur has gifted a participant in the second season of Airdrop to a trader named Hanweh with $9.4 million.
Blur has allocated 300 million Blur tokens (BLUR) worth $123 million at the current exchange rate to reward users of the platform. On Nov. 20, the company summarized the results of the contest and began accepting applications for bonus awards.
Hanwe got 22.85 million BLUR worth $9.4 million. The trader made an impressive score, because he was active during the promotion: he bought and sold NFT, as well as gave tokens on credit.
Blur employees have already launched the third season of the airdrop, which will last until May 2024. The prize pool will be split in half between traders and BLUR coin owners. Traders earn points by trading NFTs and participating in the lending program, while BLUR holders get points for storing the cryptocurrency.
Thanks to Airdrop, Blur managed to attract new clients and become a leader in NFT trading volume, which reached $6.1 billion in the second season. Now the site accounts for more than 50% of the value of sold non-mutually exchangeable tokens.
- Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank is partnering with local crypto exchange Bitpanda to launch a digital asset trading service for retail customers by February next year. It will initially be available for residents of Vienna. Customers will be able to access Bitpanda via the Raiffeisen mobile app and confirm cryptocurrency transactions similar to bank transfers with the appropriate level of security.
Founded in 2014 in Vienna, Bitpanda is regulated by the Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA) and the German Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) and acts as a provider for other companies to offer trading, investment and custody services related to equities, exchange-traded fund (ETF) units, precious metals, commodities and cryptocurrencies.
Last September, German bank N26 also launched a cryptocurrency trading service via a mobile app in collaboration with Bitpanda. As with Raiffeisen, Bitpanda is responsible for executing the trades and storing the coins.
Santander Private Bank launched a BTC and ETH trading service for large clients in Switzerland this month, with other cryptocurrencies that meet the bank’s criteria to be added later. Switzerland’s leading bank SGKB also launched storage and trading services for two major cryptocurrencies in early November.
Earlier, Britain’s largest bank HSBC said it will launch a tokenized securities custody service for institutional clients in 2024 in partnership with a Ripple subsidiary.
- Hollywood filmmaker Carl Eric Rinsch used Netflix funds to trade Gilead Sciences stock options and cryptocurrency, specifically Dogecoin, spending $6 million on options and losing in the end, but winning through a lucky bet on the crypto, resulting in a $27 million increase in his balance sheet, writes Business Insider.
Rinsch took millions of dollars in production funding from Netflix and used it to trade stock options and cryptocurrencies. The company funded his sci-fi series “Conquest” for $44 million when he asked for it in 2020. The company then transferred another $11 million to him.
However, Rinsch transferred $10.5 million of that amount into his personal brokerage account and began making risky bets on stocks, such as the rise in shares of drugmaker Gilead Sciences, using options. However, the stock rose from $70 to a peak of $84 only in April of this year and failed to surpass its high.
The director, with whom Netflix has contracted to create a sci-fi series about artificial humans, also bet that the S&P 500 index would slip 30%. However, the underlying index quickly rallied from its mid-March low and recouped all of its losses.
As a result, Rinsch lost about $6 million in a matter of weeks, which didn’t stop him from transferring more than $4 million into his account at the Kraken crypto exchange and buying Dogecoin. That purchase won him big: between early April and early May 2021, the value of Dogecoin soared about 10 times, from $0.0063 to $0.64. Rinsch cashed out Dogecoin, increasing his account balance to nearly $27 million.
- Changpeng Zhao announced his resignation on Tuesday, November 21, which was the height of the workday in the Western Hemisphere. The resignation and a pledge not to take part in the exchange’s affairs was one of the terms of the deal.
“The businessman pleaded guilty to failing to maintain compliance with anti-money laundering (AML) program regulations and Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) regulations,” the Justice Department announced.
Binance Holdings also pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $4.32 billion to complete an investigation into violations of the BSA, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and failure to register as a money transfer operator.The huge sum will be paid gradually over a period of about 15 months and will go to several agencies, including the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Treasury Department. Another $50 million will have to be paid personally by the former CEO.
Changpeng Zhao published a lengthy appeal to Binance customers, hastening to assure that their funds on the exchange are not threatened. The former CEO was vague about his future:
“If there are listeners, I am now willing to be a coach/mentor to a small number of aspiring entrepreneurs, privately. At least I can tell them what not to do.”
Binance’s former chief compliance officer Samuel Lim remains at risk of criminal charges, Reuters writes, citing its sources. The US Department of Justice itself calls the deal the end of a multi-year investigation into the trading platform. That is, the high-profile litigation with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which began in June – just a fraction of the troubles of the largest crypto exchange in the world.The post of CEO of the exchange since November 21, Richard Teng (Richard Teng), who held the position of head of regional markets in Binance.
The native token Binance BNB for the last day fell in price by about 6%.
- For the first time in Russia, Sberbank tested the issuance of a loan with collateral in the form of digital financial assets (DFAs). The pilot was conducted to study client experience, legal form and mechanisms for implementing such a service. The bank’s representatives believe that DFAs as collateral allow for the design of more complex transactions tailored to the needs of a particular client.
Press Release
As part of the test, a loan secured by CFA was granted to Datsik Group, which owns the Omega shopping center in Togliatti.
“This is another step towards finding new niches of CFA instrument application in financial markets,” Sberbank (MCX:SBER) emphasized.
Earlier this month, Sberbank conducted the first transaction in Russia to provide a bank guarantee using a smart contract. The client received the service on the bank’s blockchain platform by initiating the smart contract using a transaction from his digital wallet.
In August, the bank was the first in Russia to issue a loan via CFA with collateral in the form of a real asset. In June, Sber opened access to CFA for individuals.
Also in November, the head of the Bank of Russia Elvira Nabiullina supported the use of cryptocurrencies and CFA in international settlements. Anatoly Aksakov, head of the State Duma Committee on Financial Markets, said that in December the development of a law on the use of tokenized gold in foreign settlements will begin.
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