- Bitcoin Tops $41K After Yellen’s Crypto Statement Inadvertently Published Early
Bitcoin (BTC) rallied early on Wednesday, pushing the broader crypto market higher after U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s inadvertently published remarks revealed that President Joe Biden’s impending crypto order would take a constructive approach in regulating the digital asset industry.
“A presidential executive order on cryptocurrencies would ‘support responsible innovation’ as it coordinates U.S. policy across agencies,” Yellen said in a statement, which was scheduled for release on Wednesday, but was published on late Tuesday.
“Under the executive order, Treasury will partner with interagency colleagues to produce a report on the future of money and payment systems,” Yellen added.
Bitcoin picked up a bid and rose nearly 7% to $41,900 after CoinDesk reported Yellen’s comments, soothing market nerves. Other prominent cryptocurrencies like ETH, SOL, LUNA followed suit, according to CoinDesk data.
“Based on remarks, crypto EO is positive and calls for coordinated and comprehensive approach to digital asset policy that will support responsible innovation,” Gemini Trust’s Cameron Winklevoss tweeted.
- Crypto Bank Sygnum Singapore Secures Additional Regulatory Approval
Upon obtaining full approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the digital asset bank will be able to leverage its existing tokenization and finance options to grant asset managers and Web3 participants additional solutions.
First, Sygnum Singapore will provide advisory services to firms seeking to raise capital. It will also offer technical expertise to tokenize capital market products and cryptocurrencies.
Second, the company will grant access to a broader base of institutional investors based in Singapore who are looking for fully-regulated investment options and digital assets.
Third, Sygnum will provide custodial services for asset and security tokens.
These features will be added to the other ones offered by the company, which started providing investors with exposure to the cryptocurrency universe in 2019 via its mixture of asset management products.
Sygnum also operates a tokenization platform, where asset owners could issue non-fungible tokens representing various traditional objects. Some of the examples include a Picasso painting and a CryptoPunk NFT.
https://cryptopotato.com/crypto-bank-sygnum-singapore-secures-additional-regulatory-approval/
- Ex-Robinhood employees launch money transfer fintech Atlantic Money
Atlantic Money, a money transfer fintech founded by former Robinhood employees Neeraj Baid and Patrick Kavanagh, emerged from stealth today, pitching itself as a second-generation challenger to Wise, PayPal and Revolut.
While at Robinhood, both Baid and Kavanagh were involved in the US broker’s international projects, where they were tasked with researching expansion into Europe. Although Robinhood ultimately decided to abandon its UK launch, the two say this experience was what ultimately sparked an interest in launching a remittance fintech catering to the UK market.
At launch, the service will initially be available to UK residents looking to move sums of £1000 to £1 million to nine other currencies — including US dollars, Australian dollars and euros.
- Kava Deploys Ethereum Developer Support on Testnet
Kava added Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) smart contract support with the alpha launch of its Ethereum Co-Chain, developers shared in a release on Tuesday.
The EVM launch enables developers and decentralized applications, or dapps, from the Ethereum ecosystem to build and deploy on Kava. EVM refers to a virtual computer accessible anywhere in the world through participating Ethereum nodes.
Kava is built on Cosmos SDK – a framework for building public proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchains – and aims to combine the Ethereum and Cosmos chains into a single network. This allows developers to build and deploy applications on a single chain that is accessible to users and assets of both Ethereum and Cosmos.
Over 15 protocols will be deployed to the closed testnet of the Ethereum Co-Chain as part of the Kava Pioneer Program, including yield farming protocol Beefy Finance, yield aggregator AutoFarm, and liquidity protocol RenVM. These projects will test the interoperability between Kava’s Ethereum and Cosmos Co-Chains prior to their mainnet launch.
“Ethereum is still where the vast majority of developers and protocols are, but Cosmos is growing fast and it offers so much more in terms of scalability and interoperability,” shared Scott Stuart, CEO of Kava Labs in a prepared statement.
https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2022/03/09/kava-deploys-ethereum-developer-support-on-testnet/
- US Treasury Secretary Yellen Applauds Biden’s Crypto Executive Order
United States Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, in a statement, commended President Biden’s executive order relating to the crypto market. In a statement now archived, she said that the agency would work with other agencies to facilitate responsible innovation and prevent risks.
United States Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen issued a statement on March 9 concerning President Joe Biden’s executive order on digital assets. Her remarks applauded the move towards creating a policy on the cryptocurrency market, emphasizing the need for responsible innovation, and consumer protection. The piece was originally published on the U.S. Department of Treasury website but has since been removed.
https://beincrypto.com/us-treasury-secretary-yellen-bidens-crypto-executive-order/
- Crypto Exchange CoinZoom To Block New Accounts In Russia
CoinZoom, a U.S.-based crypto exchange, will stop accepting applications for new accounts in Russia over its invasion of Ukraine and the latest economic sanctions against the country.
The exchange will allow access for existing Russian users, but will screen them against sanctions lists, Reuters reports. The company suspended new accounts because it was unclear how users would fund their accounts, given the withdrawal of most major payment services from Russia, CoinZoom CEO Todd Crosland said.
Card operators Visa, Mastercard and American Express have all suspended their Russian services, while payment gateway Paypal was the most recent among its peers to cease its Russian operations.
https://coingape.com/crypto-exchange-coinzoom-to-stop-accepting-new-russian-accounts/
- President Biden Is Expected to Issue an Executive Order on Crypto This Week
President Joe Biden is expected to sign an executive order on cryptocurrency this week, according to a report by Bloomberg, which was later corroborated by multiple other prominent news outlets. Such an order could mark the White House’s first concrete step toward regulating digital currency.
The executive order is expected to outline what government agencies, including the Treasury Department, need to do to develop policies and regulations on cryptocurrencies, the reports said. It is also expected to call on the State Department to make sure U.S. cryptocurrency laws align with those of U.S. allies, and task the Financial Stability Oversight Council to investigate any illicit financial concerns. Additionally, the order will reportedly touch on the possibility of a new central bank digital currency. We reached out to the White House to try and confirm the reports about an executive order coming this week, and will update this story if we hear back.
https://time.com/nextadvisor/investing/cryptocurrency/latest-crypto-news/
- $95M of Shorts Liquidated as Bitcoin, Ether Rise 8%
More than $95 million worth of short positions were liquidated in the past 12 hours as the crypto market rebounded from yesterday’s support levels.
Almost 88% of traders betting against an increase in crypto prices booked losses as exchanges closed leveraged positions due to a partial or total evaporation of the trader’s initial margin, data from analytics tool Coinglass show.
Crypto exchange OKX saw $44 million worth of short losses, the most among all crypto exchanges, followed by $22 million on Binance and $11 million on Bybit, data show.
Some $47.45 million of bitcoin futures were liquidated in the past 12 hours, the most among major cryptocurrencies. Ether futures had $22 million in losses, followed by LUNA with $12 million.
https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2022/03/09/95m-of-shorts-liquidated-as-bitcoin-ether-rise-8/
- Avalanche Launches $290 Million Incentive Program to Accelerate Growth of Subnets
A popular crypto analyst says Avalanche (AVAX) and other leading layer-1 platforms are starting to flash signs of weakness.
Pseudonymous analyst Smart Contracter tells his 205,000 Twitter followers that smart contract platform Avalanche looks bearish after printing consecutive lower highs in its USD and Bitcoin (BTC) pairs.
“AVAX still looks very very unhealthy, against BTC and USD.
[It is] starting to look how Solana distributed in November. [I] wouldn’t be surprised to see another -50%.”
Back in November, fellow smart contract platform Solana (SOL) printed an all-time high of $259. The Ethereum (ETH) competitor has been in a downtrend since and is now exchanging hands for $83.06.
- Crypto Policy Is on the Agenda in Seoul as South Koreans Head to the Polls
Koreans are voting today in a presidential election that pollsters and observers say is the closest in the country’s democratic history, with a record-high turnout.
During the campaign, both major parties announced crypto policy in a bid to get young voters out to the polls.
The Democratic Party’s Lee Jae-myung pledged to use Security Token Offerings as a way to create a dividend from real estate speculation distributed to the public.
In his official booklet of campaign pledges, Lee promised to “issue tokenized securities to give ill-earned profits from real estate speculation back to the people” and “give citizens the opportunity to invest in large-scale state development projects.”
Lee vowed in January to establish a “digital asset management and supervision agency,” but this has since been toned down to “a monitoring agency” of sorts.
Lee has also said he would consider bringing back ICOs, which were banned in South Korea in 2017.
