Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.
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Investment news
- Ripple announced today that it acquired Metaco, a Swiss-based provider of digital asset custody and tokenization technology, for $250 million. Ripple will become the sole shareholder of Metaco, which will continue to operate as an independent brand and business unit led by Founder and CEO Adrien Treccani, said the press release. It added that, through this acquisition, Ripple will expand its enterprise offerings, while Metaco will “dramatically accelerate” its growth trajectory.
- Starting this month, Tether will regularly allocate up to 15% of its net realized operating profits toward purchasing Bitcoin (BTC) as part of its latest investment strategy aimed at strengthening its reserves portfolio, said the announcement. Tether anticipates that the current and future BTC holdings in its reserves will not exceed the Shareholder Capital Cushion and will further strengthen and diversify the reserves, it added.
- A unit of Greenland Holdings, the largest developer in Shanghai, China, which is 46.4% owned by the Shanghai municipal government, is planning to apply for a licence to trade virtual assets in Hong Kong, the South China Morning Post reported, citing a senior executive. “By applying for a virtual asset operator’s licence in Hong Kong, it will further diversify our business and expand our international footprint,” said James Geng Jing, CEO of Greenland Financial Technology Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of Greenland Holdings.
Exchange news
- India-based WazirX released a statement claiming that Binance controls the WRX token, that it conducted the initial exchange offering (IEO) for WRX, and that it collected and kept all sale proceeds from the IEO (BNB 108,401 worth USD 2 million). It further said that “Binance currently holds a total of 580.78 Million WRX tokens, and the WazirX team has not received any token allocations. The responsibility of conducting the quarterly burn of WRX tokens lies with Binance. The last WRX burn event (7th burn) for the quarter of Oct-Dec 2021 was executed by Binance on 9th March 2022. Binance has not conducted the quarterly burn for the past 5 quarters, i.e., since Jan 2022 onwards.”
- Coinbase Global is extending the range of services it offers customers in Singapore, announcing a few USDC updates: no-fee USDC purchases with SGD, earning rewards for holding USDC on Coinbase, and making USDC order books available on advanced trading, which will allow users to trade 200+ assets against USDC, said the blog post. Also, the exchange is making staking available for ETH, SOL, ADA, ATOM, and XTZ, it added.
Regulation news
- The Supreme People’s Procuratorate of the People’s Republic of China published its guidelines for the treatment of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), recommending stronger “risk research and judgment” and to “accurately punish crimes.” It said that, while this type of token has “high popularity” and “certain development potential,” “it is very likely to cause financial risks, management risks, network security risks, etc., especially the legal risks. Prosecutors are paying close attention.”
- Crypto companies fleeing USA regulatory uncertainty have been offered a welcome in France. “In France, we are proud to be pioneers” with the crypto service asset provider regime (PSAN), legislated in 2019, Benoît de Juvigny, Secretary General of the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF), told reporters on Tuesday, CoinDesk reported. “If American players want to benefit, in the very short term, from the French regime, and from the start of 2025 from European arrangements, clearly they are welcome,” he added. “We have good relations and discussions with our US counterparts.”
NFT news
- Sky Mavis, the creator of the popular NFT project Axie Infinity, gave access to its Axie Infinity: Origins to Apple users across Latin America and Asia by launching the card game on the Apple App Store. Per the blog post, the initial set of countries includes Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Venezuela, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam. Sky Mavis is also launching Mavis Market, a curated NFT marketplace powered by the company’s Ronin blockchain.
DeFi news
- Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Compound Finance announced that it was deploying its latest iteration on the layer-2 scaling solution Arbitrum. “You can now use ARB, GMX, WETH, and WBTC as collateral to borrow USDC on Arbitrum,” said the tweet.
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