- P2P Bitcoin Marketplace Paxful Reopens After Abrupt Closure
Paxful, the peer-to-peer Bitcoin marketplace, is back online after a month-long hiatus.
The platform was shut down in April allegedly due to a lawsuit filed by one of the co-founders, Artur Schaback, against the then-presiding CEO and another co-founder Ray Youssef in January 2023.
Youssef told Decrypt that “nasty” lawyers from Schaback drove key officials from the firm, crippling the workforce to a limit where it couldn’t function.
Get it!
On April 10, a judge on Delaware Chancery Court appointed a legal custodian to oversee Paxful withdrawals for safeguarding customer funds.
Youssef resigned from the CEO’s position following the dispute and dissolution of the exchange on April 21. Before leaving, Youssef attempted to shrink the team to secure customer funds and process withdrawals smoothly.
https://decrypt.co/139419/p2p-bitcoin-marketplace-paxful-reopens-after-abrupt-closure
- Galaxy Digital Posts $134M First-Quarter Profit on Strong Showing for Crypto Market
Cryptocurrency-focused financial services firm Galaxy Digital (GLXY) returned to the black in the first quarter for the first time since end-2021 as the crypto market rebounded.
The New York-based company reported $134 million in net income for the three months ended March, compared with net losses of $111.7 million for the equivalent quarter a year ago and $288 million in fourth-quarter 2022.
Following the turbulent 2022, brought to a head by the collapse of crypto exchange FTX in November, the cryptocurrency market has rebounded of this year. The world’s largest cryptocurrency, bitcoin (BTC), added around 70% in value for its strongest quarterly performance in two years.
- Crypto Exchange Bittrex Enters Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection Following SEC Lawsuit
Bittrex Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware on Monday, while its parent company Bittrex Global will continue to operate outside the United States. This development comes after the exchange announced its decision to sunset U.S. operations in early April. By mid-month, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sent the company a Wells notice.
On April 17, 2023, the SEC took action against the exchange by charging it for operating an unregistered exchange, clearing agency, and broker. The lawsuit also classified OMG, ALGO, and DASH as “unregistered securities.” Recently, Randall Reese from Chapter 11 Dockets revealed that the crypto platform has 100,000 creditors. To keep them informed, the company has enlisted the help of Omni Agent Solutions to provide regular email and website updates.
- Bitcoin’s Fees Explode Amid BRC-20 Memecoin Mania, Miners Benefit
Bitcoin’s blockchain was flooded with volume over the weekend by transactions involving so-called “BRC-20” Ordinals – an emergent standard for issuing fungible tokens on Bitcoin.
The surge caused network fees to skyrocket to the point where transaction fee revenue for miners briefly surpassed the natural block subsidy for the first time since 2017.
Meme Tokens on Bitcoin
According to data from Dune Analytics, over 3.7 million BRC-20 Ordinals transactions have already occurred, versus just 631,630 non-BRC-20 Ordinals transactions.
A separate dashboard shows that over 4.7 million Ordinals inscriptions are now on Bitcoin, most of which appeared within the past two weeks alone. This indicates that much of the recent activity isn’t so much related to Ordinals NFTs as in early February, but to new fungible assets created by the BRC-20 standard.
https://www.binance.com/en/news/flash/7545450
- Estonia squeezes out 400 crypto firms after new laws
Almost 400 virtual asset service providers (VASPS) have voluntarily shut down or had their authorizations revoked in Estonia following the government’s recently enhanced Terrorist Financing Prevention and Anti-Money Laundering laws (AML) that came into effect in March.
The amended laws expanded the defined scope of VASPs, required firms to have legitimate links to Estonia, increased licensing fees, and capital and information reporting requirements, along with introducing the Financial Action Task Force Travel Rule.
According to a May 8 statement from the Estonian Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), the amendment to the AML laws on March 15 has since seen almost 200 domestic crypto service providers voluntarily shut down.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/estonia-squeezes-out-400-crypto-firms-after-new-laws
- Binance to Bring Bitcoin NFTs to Its Marketplace Through Ordinals Support
The leading cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, Binance, announced today that it will support Ordinals inscriptions on its NFT marketplace later this month, dipping its toes into the buzzy Bitcoin-based market.
The update to Binance’s NFT marketplace is expected to roll out “in the coming weeks,” the company said, enabling users to purchase and trade Ordinals inscriptions via their Binance accounts.
The NFT marketplace expanded its roster of supported networks in March when it added certain NFT collections from Polygon to the platform. Offered alongside NFTs on Ethereum and BNB Chain, Binance’s Head of Product Mayur Kamat called support for Bitcoin—crypto’s largest token by market cap—a notable addition.
“Bitcoin is the OG of crypto,” he said. “We believe things are just getting started here and can’t wait to see what the future holds in this space.”
- Crypto Trader Pays $120K in Fees to Buy $156K of Meme Coin Four
Crypto traders are paying through the roof to get in early on newly-issued meme coins and rack up a large percentage of the supply.
On-chain data shows a trader paid over 64 ether (ETH) in fees on Monday to get 84 ether worth of four (FOUR), a newly-issued meme token on the Ethereum blockchain likely based on the Crypto Twitter meme of “4.”
This means that the trader spent over $120,000 to get $156,000 worth of FOUR tokens. However, some sleuths pointed out that the trader was only the second entity to buy FOUR – and is now sitting on an unrealized profit of nearly $240,000.
- Study Reveals Top Countries Fueling Meme Coin Interest in 2023
On May 3, 2023, crypto market aggregator coingecko.com unveiled a report detailing the leading ten countries propelling the meme token trend. As of this writing, the meme coin economy boasts a value of $18.25 billion, with dogecoin (DOGE), shiba inu (SHIB), and pepe (PEPE) as the top three meme coins. This week, PEPE has emerged as the frontrunner in terms of seven-day gains, skyrocketing 216% against the U.S. dollar.
Study Reveals Top Countries Fueling Meme Coin Interest in 2023
The top five countries according to coingecko.com’s study.
The Coingecko analysis establishes that the U.S. spearheads the meme coin movement accounting for 23.6% of interest in 2023. Researcher Lim Yu Qian explains that two million views stem from top meme coin pages in the United States. In America, shiba inu (SHIB) is the most sought-after meme coin, followed by pepe (PEPE), bonk (BONK), and volt inu (VOLT).
India holds second place in contributing to the meme coin frenzy with 20.3% of interest. SHIB also earns its position as India’s most popular meme token followed by baby doge coin (BABYDOGE). In the Philippines, floki inu (FLOKI) tops their list of preferred tokens while Nigeria’s favorites are floki and arbdoge ai. According to Coingecko’s report, lesser-known meme coins also gain traction in both countries.
https://decrypt.co/139277/sui-pepe-lead-market-losses-down-double-digits-overnight
- Crypto Options Liquidity Provider OrBit Markets Offers Bitcoin and Gold-Hybrid Derivative
Orbit Markets, an institutional liquidity provider of crypto options, is rolling out the first bitcoin and gold hybrid-focused derivative product with execution broker PI Digital.
The initiative is among the latest developments among crypto industry firms to provide steady returns during periods of macroeconomic uncertainty. It aims to give investors exposure to gold and digital assets, two assets that hold their value.
“This hybrid asset product is a perfect fit for investors that have experience in traditional assets such as gold and are now starting to dip their toes into digital assets,” OrBit Markets said in a press release.
The derivative product, XAUT, is a gold-backed token issued by Tether. At maturity, the product will be settled in either USDT, XAUT or bitcoin as designated by OrBit, the Singapore-based company said.
In its statement, OrBit noted that traditional financial service firms (TraFi) commonly offer hybrid products, including those combining stocks and commodity assets.
https://www.binance.com/en/news/flash/7545598
- Estonia squeezes out 400 crypto firms after new laws
Almost 400 virtual asset service providers (VASPS) have voluntarily shut down or had their authorizations revoked in Estonia following the government’s recently enhanced Terrorist Financing Prevention and Anti-Money Laundering laws (AML) that came into effect in March.
The amended laws expanded the defined scope of VASPs, required firms to have legitimate links to Estonia, increased licensing fees, and capital and information reporting requirements, along with introducing the Financial Action Task Force Travel Rule.
According to a May 8 statement from the Estonian Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), the amendment to the AML laws on March 15 has since seen almost 200 domestic crypto service providers voluntarily shut down..
https://cointelegraph.com/news/estonia-squeezes-out-400-crypto-firms-after-new-laws
