Headlines
US judge approves Binance's $4.3 billion fine plea agreement
US judge Richard Jones approved Binance's $4.3 billion fine plea agreement at a hearing held in Seattle last Friday (February 23).
A Binance spokesperson stated in a declaration, "Binance takes responsibility for the company's past actions and has made significant progress in taking the measures required by the plea agreement terms."
Binance stated that the company has made "considerable compliance improvements" in KYC and anti-money laundering detection over the past few years, and "we look forward to continuing to work on compliance, security, and transparency in the coming months to set a benchmark for the industry. We continue to walk the path of becoming the most trustworthy and secure digital asset exchange in the world."
US prosecutors motion for CZ to surrender all passports before sentencing
The US Attorney's Office has requested a federal judge to approve additional travel restrictions on former Binance CEO CZ.
In a filing submitted to the US District Court for the Western District of Washington on February 23, US prosecutor Tessa Gorman requested Judge Brian Tsuchida to approve a motion that specifically outlines CZ's conditions during bail. The prosecutor requested CZ to stay in the US until the sentencing hearing on April 30 and to notify the government of his travel plans at least three days in advance to allow for objections.
The US Attorney's Office requested CZ to surrender his Canadian passport to a third party supervised by his lawyer and to hand over "all other valid and expired passports and travel documents" to his lawyer. CZ also holds citizenship in the United Arab Emirates and had requested to visit family in the UAE, but the judge denied this motion.
According to the filing, "CZ's defense counsel has objected to this motion," suggesting that his legal team may continue to seek ways for CZ to leave the US.
Satoshi Nakamoto mentioned Bitcoin's energy consumption and legal scrutiny in early emails
Recent publicized emails from early Bitcoin code collaborator Martii "Sirius" Malmi show that in an email from May 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto warned that Bitcoin could become a significant consumer of energy. Nakamoto wrote, "If it gets large enough, it might be worth it to run a server farm to generate bitcoins. It's more cost effective than mining gold or minting dollar bills."
Nakamoto also foresaw non-financial uses for blockchain, stating, "Bitcoin is a distributed secure timestamp server for transactions, you can create a transaction with a few lines of code that includes any extra hash value you need to include."
Nakamoto also expressed concern that labeling Bitcoin as an investment could trigger legal scrutiny from authorities. He wrote, "I'm still not sure that it's safe to say 'treat it as an investment', that's dangerous. You should delete that point. It's OK if they arrive at that conclusion themselves, but we shouldn't describe it that way."
Blast BIG BANG competition results announced: Over 3000 teams participated, with 47 projects winning
Layer2 network Blast has announced the results of the BIG BANG competition. The event saw over 3000 teams participate, with 47 winning projects:
- Including 5 spot DEX projects such as Ambient Finance;
- Including 6 perpetual contract DEX projects such as 100x Finance, SynFutures;
- Including 8 lending projects such as Fragment, Particle, Curvance;
- Including 6 GambleFi projects such as BetBIG;
- Including 10 NFT/Gaming projects such as BAC Games, nftperp;
- Including 10 Infra projects such as Tornado Blast, Banana Gun;
- SocialFi project Fantasy and music project Thunder.
Industry News
The US Department of Energy and the Energy Information Administration (EIA) have agreed to suspend the mandatory investigation into the energy usage of Bitcoin mining companies after being sued.
Earlier, court documents showed that the Texas Blockchain Council and multiple US mining companies, led by Riot Platforms, jointly filed a civil lawsuit against the US Department of Energy and the Energy Information Administration (EIA), accusing the defendants of "illegally" collecting proprietary data from 82 Bitcoin mining companies, including Riot.
Recently, the EIA issued an "emergency" investigation to Bitcoin mining companies, requesting highly proprietary information such as the specifications of machines used in each mining facility, specific locations of mining operations, and contract information related to each commercial energy partner.
FTX agrees to sell FTX Europe back to its founder for $32.7 million
Bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX has reached a settlement in a lawsuit where the company attempted to reclaim the $323 million spent on acquiring a European startup.
FTX stated that it overpaid for a "non-operational" startup and the founder of FTX Europe will repurchase the company for $32.7 million. It is reported that Digital Assets DA AG was acquired by FTX in 2021 and renamed FTX Europe, and in a lawsuit in July 2023, FTX stated that the acquisition was made with a "massive overpayment" using FTX customer funds.
According to documents filed on Thursday with the Wilmington Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, FTX stated that there were no other buyers willing to purchase its European subsidiary FTX Europe, and the proposed settlement is the best outcome for FTX creditors.
Grayscale Investments CEO Michael Sonnenshein stated in an interview with CNBC that since winning a high-profile legal battle with the SEC last year, Grayscale has been receiving proposals related to mergers and acquisitions, "sometimes people approach us to discuss strategic partnerships." While Grayscale is open to this, there are currently no developments to disclose.
Ethereum Foundation researchers Michael Neuder and SMG Chief Researcher Max Resnick proposed "Concurrent Block Proposers in Ethereum," suggesting an increase in the number of proposers in a single Ethereum PoS Slot. Currently, block proposers have unilateral power over the transaction set within a 12-second period, which can lead to centralization issues in the second-largest blockchain. Michael Neuder proposed introducing the simplest version of a "dual proposer construction" in the Slot, electing two validators eligible to propose blocks.
Earlier reports indicated that Ethereum may see changes in its validation design after the 2024 Dencun upgrade, with validator deposit issues added to the 2024 Q4 to 2025 Q1 Electra hard fork agenda.
Project News
friend.tech hints at a potential airdrop in the spring with a post and accompanying image
friend.tech posted on X platform indicating that they are "preparing for the most dangerous mission of this spring," accompanied by an image with an airdrop theme, hinting at a potential airdrop.
Uniswap Foundation releases a new proposal to distribute protocol fees to staked UNI token holders
The Uniswap Foundation posted on X platform that Uniswap Foundation governance lead Erin Koen has released a new proposal titled "Activating Uniswap Protocol Governance." The snapshot vote for the proposal will begin on March 1, 2024, with on-chain voting starting on March 8, 2024. The proposal suggests upgrading the protocol to reward UNI token holders who delegate and stake their tokens with a proportionate share of any protocol fees. The proposed changes include:
- Upgrading Uniswap protocol governance to enable permissionless and programmatic collection of protocol fees;
- Distributing any protocol fees proportionally to staked and delegated UNI token holders;
- Allowing governance to continue controlling core parameters: which pools need to pay fees and the size of the fees.
Pandora: Latest version of ERC-404 set to be officially released pending final audit
Pandora posted on X platform indicating that the latest version of ERC-404 is set to be officially released. The team has provided the "V2" version to developers via the official GitHub, and it will be audited by Trail of Bits before its release.
Curve: Lending contracts deployed, users can now deposit or borrow
Curve posted on X platform stating that lending contracts have been deployed, allowing arbitrage traders to conduct research in advance to gain substantial arbitrage profits. Some liquidity may enter before the official UI launch. Curve emphasized that the lending platform has not been officially launched, but users can deposit or borrow through the contracts.
Smart Layer founder Victor Zhang posted on X platform in response to community queries about the airdrop, stating that Smart Layer collected users' on-chain and off-chain public data to identify over 60,000 highly active genuine users within the Smart Layer ecosystem. The most active users received between 266 and 2833 tokens, while the remaining users participated in a lottery, with each person potentially receiving 30 to 67 tokens. The airdrop distributed a total of 2 million SLN tokens, worth over $10 million. Smart Layer developed an algorithm specifically for this airdrop, and while transparency issues may exist, disclosing it in advance would be meaningless. Smart Layer has strict internal policies regarding the airdrop, and any Smart Layer employees found participating in the airdrop will be immediately dismissed. Smart Layer is preparing additional reward plans for users holding Smart Cats, Adopted Cats, and Cat Toys. The company expressed regret for not being able to provide airdrop allocations to every community member but stated that fairness has been prioritized.
OP Labs: Ecotone mainnet upgrade set for March 14 if upgrade proposal is approved
OP Labs posted on X platform that the Ecotone upgrade will take place on Monday, March 14, 2024, at 00:00:01 UTC (8:00 AM Beijing time), pending approval from Optimism governance. Node operators need to prepare for the upgrade, set the basic Ecotone configuration, and use the new Beacon endpoint configuration for operational nodes. This is because shortly after Ecotone is activated, batch transactions will be sent as 4844 blobs, and blobs can only be retrieved from Beacon nodes.
Analysoor: External Mint project delayed again due to a bug found in Dune Analytics NFT data
Analysoor posted on X platform that they found a blocking bug in the Dune Analytics NFT data, forcing the team to delay the release of their first external Mint project once again. The team explained, "Our machine learning model uses historical NFT holding period data and secondary market sales, but Dune Analytics incorrectly analyzed TensorSwap sales and attributed many sales to TensorSwap Escrow instead of the actual buyers or sellers. We have tried multiple solutions but must parse the original Solana instruction data from Dune Analytics and handle multiple exemptions and edge cases, which may take 1-2 days. Once fixed, we will announce the mint date. The classification machine learning model script and the Solana on-chain smart contract are ready, and we only need to fix the input data from Dune Analytics. Tomorrow, we will send a $10,000 USDC charity donation and burn 21,000 ZERO." Analysoor apologized for the issue and added, "This is a serious error that we cannot control."
Huobi HK withdraws application for virtual asset trading platform license in Hong Kong
The official website of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission shows that the virtual asset trading platform license application submitted by Huobi HK to the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission has been withdrawn. According to the disclosed information, the virtual asset trading platform operator company name submitted by Huobi HK is "HBGL Hong Kong Limited," with the application submitted on February 20, 2024, and the withdrawal date being February 23. The reasons for the rejection, refusal, or withdrawal of the license application by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission include, but are not limited to, the application being incomplete and/or significant issues remaining unresolved.
ETF Related
Yves La Rose, CEO of EOS Foundation, posted on X platform stating: to reverse inflation, approximately 8.18 billion EOS will be minted, limiting the supply of EOS to 2 billion tokens. New minted tokens will be released over a period of time, with a large release at the beginning and gradually decreasing releases over time (according to a logarithmic curve). It is also mentioned that inactive holders will be diluted, while active holders will be rewarded.
Opinion: Spot Ethereum ETF may be approved as early as May 2024, but no later than mid-2025
Financial lawyer Scott Johnsson posted on X platform, "The U.S. SEC also issued a preliminary comment letter on the registration statement for the BTC spot ETF by the issuer on September 29, 2023. About two weeks later, we saw a revised S-1, so the final deadline of January 10 was advanced by about 90 days.
Now, there are 90 days left until the May 23 deadline for the ETH spot ETF. There are many reasons to believe that the SEC may deviate from the BTC schedule but will still issue approval for the ETH spot (including delaying the entire S-1 review process until after the 19b-4 approval). If not in May 2024, it should arrive no later than mid-2025, with relatively high confidence."
Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart responded, "The SEC doesn't need to spend as much time on the spot Ethereum ETF documents as they did with the Bitcoin ETF. They are different, but the difficulty of taking BTC documents from 0 to 1 is much greater than taking ETH documents from 0 to 1, because you can build a fairly large base on BTC."
The U.S. SEC seeks public opinion on the possibility of introducing Bitcoin spot ETF options trading
The U.S. SEC has sought public opinion on the possibility of introducing options trading for Bitcoin spot ETFs, with experts predicting that the regulatory agency may approve it as early as March.
In a letter to the SEC on Friday, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) applied for rule changes to allow options trading on Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITC), Grayscale GBTC, and "any trust holding Bitcoin." The NYSE stated that under the U.S. Exchange Act, Bitcoin spot ETFs qualify for options trading as they are commodity-backed exchange-traded products (ETPs).
It also mentioned that all exchange standard rules and regulations will guide various aspects of the listing and trading of spot ETF options, including "listing standards, expiration dates, exercise prices, minimum increments, position and exercise limits, margin requirements, customer accounts, and trading halt procedures." In addition, Bitcoin spot ETF options will also be subject to the NYSE's ongoing listing standards, and if the related ETF fails to meet certain standards specified in Section 916 of the U.S. Securities Act and many other conditions, it may be delisted.
The SEC has formally acknowledged NYSE's latest submission and will invite public feedback in the next 21 days.
9 Bitcoin spot ETFs (excluding GBTC) have seen a cumulative net inflow of approximately $13 billion
Data estimated by HODL15Capital shows that 10 U.S. Bitcoin spot ETFs have seen a cumulative net inflow of over $5.5 billion. Of these, 9 new Bitcoin spot ETFs (excluding GBTC) have seen a net inflow of approximately $13 billion since their launch, meaning that during the same period, GBTC has seen a cumulative net outflow of over $7.4 billion.
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
