The United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority, or FCA, has announced the inspection of sites across the country “suspected of hosting illegally operated crypto ATMs.”In a May 5 announcement, the FCA said it had coordinated with local authorities in the cities of Exeter, Nottingham and Sheffield to raid facilities suspected of operating unregistered cryptocurrency ATMs. The enforcement action followed similar operations from March in East...
Bitcoin transaction fees surged in early May, reaching their highest point over the past two years, according to data from Crypto Fees.On May 3, the total amount of fees paid on the Bitcoin blockchain reached $3.5 million, jumping about 400% from late April. The average Bitcoin transaction fee reached as much as $7.2, according to YCharts.The ongoing trading frenzy of memecoins like Pepe Coin (PEPE) has triggered an unwanted consequence for...
Crypto exchange Coinbase is stopping the issuance of new loans through its Borrow service — a product that allows certain United States customers to post crypto as collateral to receive a cash loan.In an email sent to Coinbase Borrow customers on May 3 which was shared by recipients on Twitter, the exchange said — without providing a reason — that from May 10 customers won’t be able to take out new loans with Coinbase Borrow.It added ther...
The United States securities regulator is holding off from ratifying the definition of the term “digital assets” in rules that govern reporting disclosures for hedge and private equity funds, despite proposing to do so some nine months ago.On May 3 the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published amendments to Form PF — a form that SEC-registered funds complete to disclose basic information about their fund so the regulator can asse...
Cryptocurrency exchange FTX is seeking to recover around $4 billion from similarly bankrupt crypto lender Genesis and a still-solvent British Virgin Islands-based entity — part of efforts to recover value for creditors.In a May 3 court filing in a New York Bankruptcy Court, lawyers for FTX sought $1.8 billion in loans and a $273 million collateral pledge allegedly given to Genesis from FTX’s sister trading firm Alameda Research.FTX is als...
Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind, recently predicted that artificial intelligence (AI) systems would reach human-level cognition somewhere between “the next few years” and “maybe within a decade.” Hassabis, who got his start in the gaming industry, co-founded Google DeepMind (formerly DeepMind Technologies), the company known for developing the AlphaGo AI system responsible for beating the world’s top human Go players. In a rece...
Lawyers representing cryptocurrency and stock trading app Robinhood faced off against those for the Secretary of the Commonwealth for Massachusetts over the legality of a state regulation that could affect how the company markets itself to potential investors.Under Secretary of the Commonwealth for Massachusetts William Galvin, the state securities division filed a complaint against Robinhood in December 2020, alleging the platform illega...
In this week’s newsletter, read about Sotheby’s auction house launching a secondary nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace. Find out about the popular marketplace Blur introducing an NFT lending protocol, and learn how a neobank has introduced soulbound NFTs for Know Your Customer (KYC) information. In other news, sellers are dominating the NFT market, and Meta is offsetting losses in its metaverse unit with artificial intelligence efforts. ...
On May 3, layer-1 blockchain Fuse announced that it would pledge $10 million to "reinvigorate the Fuse ecosystem and drive growth in multiple areas." The program, dubbed "Fuse Ignite," is structured between liquid incentives and grants. As told by developers:"Teams can apply for grants of between $5,000 and $25,000, depending on the focus of their project or service. DeFi projects can apply for incentives designed to boost liquidity and g...
Bitcoin (BTC) hit daily lows at the May 3 Wall Street open as markets counted down the hours to the Federal Reserve interest rate decision.As in March, however, the Fed would be hiking into a banking crisis exacerbated by already high interest rates. Multiple United States regional bank stocks fell considerably the day prior, raising concerns that the crisis has gone nowhere.“The regional bank sector, KRE, just posted its 3rd biggest dail...
