Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.
Investments news
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Digital Currency Group, the parent company of digital currency asset manager Grayscale Investments, has announced its plan to purchase up to USD 250m worth of shares of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust. According to the press release, the company plans to use cash on hand to fund the purchases and will make the purchases on the open market, at management’s discretion. The share purchase authorization does not obligate DCG to acquire any specific number of shares in any specific period, it added.
- Crypto asset investment firm BlockTower Capital has raised a USD 25m fund for decentralized finance (DeFi) projects. Per Axios, investors include veteran American venture capitalist Howard Morgan, British historian Niall Ferguson, and Milwaukee Bucks co-owner Marc Lasry. The new fund will hold assets longer-term, giving it the ability to invest in a wider range of assets, including some that are more illiquid.
Security news
- Crypto lending startup BlockFi identified a malicious actor spamming the platform’s sign-up page with fake accounts earlier in the week, using offensive language, and flooding the system with hundreds of unfinished registrations, Forbes reported. On March 8, CEO Zac Prince tweeted that BlockFi was temporarily pausing new signups due “to a minor technical issue with the new account signup workflow on Sunday evening,” adding that “Deposits / Withdrawals / Trading etc continues to operate completely normally for existing clients.” BlockFi announced hours ago that they’ve “successfully completed [their] scheduled maintenance.”
Regulation news
- Former Barack Obama aide Jim Messina is joining the board of major crypto firm Blockchain.com in anticipation of enhanced regulation from the Joe Biden administration and other governments for its business trading and processing digital coins, Axios reported. “Crypto has been the Wild West, and now it’s time for some regulation,” Messina is quoted as saying, adding that “there’s no question that electronic currency is going to be the way that most transactions are done in the future. […] And it is incredibly important to get the regulatory part of this right.” Messina has reportedly been trading crypto for about a year.
Exchanges news
- Komodo (KMD) said it has launched a decentralized peer-to-peer (P2P) exchange devoted to the dogecoin (DOGE) token. The trading platform is named DogeDEX and made its official debut on March 1, with over 3,000 downloads on desktop and mobile, per an official blog post. On a landing page positively bursting at the seems with doggy-themed puns, the firm claimed that the new DEX would allow users “to hold their keys and swap directly from their wallets,” adding that crypto-to-crypto swap functionality had been enabled for tokens such as bitcoin (BTC), litecoin (LTC) and others.
- The South Korean crypto exchange Upbit gained almost 0.7m new users in February this year, reported Newsis. The media outlet also reported a massive rise in usership numbers in February of both stock trading apps and crypto apps on both Android and iOS platforms, with the majority of users aged 40-49, followed by the over-50s. Over 10.1m South Koreans now invest in app-based platforms, with at least 1.7m Upbit users, and 1.2m using Bithumb apps.
- Meanwhile, Bithumb has announced that it will block users from countries that do not have recognized anti-money laundering (AML) protocols in place as prescribed by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), in an apparent bid to pre-empt regulatory developments. Business Post reported that the FATF has compiled a list of 21 nations on its list of possible AML offenders and “high AML risk nations,” including Iran and North Korea. A spokesperson was quoted as stating that Bithumb would “continue to supplement regulations and systems to create a transparent cryptoasset market and protect investors.”
Tax news
- Crypto.com said it launched Crypto.com Tax for Canada, which “will soon be rolled out to other markets as well.” This service enables users to generate crypto tax reports, including transaction history and records of capital gains and losses, they added.
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