The U.S. Department of Justice is seeking more than $4 billion in fines from Binance Holdings Ltd. to end a years-long investigation into the exchange and allow it to continue operating, Bloomberg reported. Negotiations between the U.S. Department of Justice and Binance include the possibility that its founder CZ will face criminal charges in the United States to resolve investigations into alleged money laundering, bank fraud and sanctions violations, according to people familiar with the matter. An announcement could come before the end of the month, but the situation "remains uncertain." The exact timing and structure of the proposed settlement, as well as the specific fines, are unclear, but Binance could be required to pay more than $4 billion in fines, which would be one of the largest ever fines in a cryptocurrency criminal case. The investigation was led by the Criminal Division’s Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Team, the National Security Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday accused crypto exchage Kraken of mixing customer funds with the company’s own funds while operating unregistered brokers, clearing houses and traders, CoinDesk reported. The SEC said Kraken violated federal securities laws and cited a report from Kraken's independent audit that said Kraken mixed up to $33 billion in customer cryptocurrency with the company's own assets, creating "significant risks." The lawsuit alleges that Kraken at times held more than $5 billion worth of customer cash, and that it also commingled some customer cash with the company's own cash. In fact, Kraken sometimes pays operating expenses directly from bank accounts that hold customer cash. In addition, the SEC also claimed that Kraken simultaneously operated an unregistered brokerage, clearing house and exchange, which is the same reason why the SEC sued Binance and Coinbase earlier this year.
Bittrex Global will close operations on December 4
According to official news, Bittrex Global announced that it will close its business and all trading activities will be terminated on December 4. All funds and tokens on the Bittrex Global platform remain secure and can be withdrawn at any time in accordance with applicable laws and the platform’s terms of service. All customers are advised to withdraw funds as soon as possible. After December 4, customers can only withdraw assets during the liquidation process. Additionally, Bittrex Global clients cannot withdraw USD directly. Users have until December 4 to convert their USD balances to Euros or cryptocurrencies. According to previous news, Bittrex filed for bankruptcy protection in May this year. After being sued by the US SEC, Bittrex chose to close its US operations and return assets to customers. In August, the company reached a $24 million settlement with the SEC.
Pacman, the founder of NFT market Blur, announced on the X platform that he founded Blast, a new company dedicated to building universal L2, and it has been launched today. Pacman explained why he started the company, saying: “We believe the two biggest opportunities for NFTs are reduced transaction costs and institutional-grade NFTs. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent trading NFTs in GAS, and perpetual trading volume is 6 times the spot trading volume. . These opportunities require L2. At the same time, there is another problem with the Blur protocol. There is $100 million of TVL in the Blur Pool that is not profitable, which means that Blur users are losing money due to devaluation. As I dug deeper, I realized that almost all chains Every dApp on the Internet has this problem. I researched L2 and realized there is a way to solve all these problems at once. The new L2 that provides native revenue for dApps and users will allow the Blur ecosystem to avoid asset depreciation, reduce NFT transaction costs and Launching NFT perps. This L2 is not only useful for Blur, but for all dApps. L2 is not just an execution environment, but an execution + liquidity environment. L2 with native yield opens up possibilities for the entire on-chain economy. Perpetual Products , indices, loans, NFTs, and even SocialFi will all benefit from this.”
Additionally, Pacman announced that it has raised another $40 million (or funding including Blast) to contribute to the Blur ecosystem. The funds will be used to build L2 applications for NFTs and continue to advance NFTs on Ethereum L1. Pacman will oversee the development of BLUR and BLAST, and as the Blast team is formed, BLUR will test it and deploy its own L2 applications (i.e. NFT perps) on Blast, and Blast will in turn reward the Blur community.
According to Blast official news, Blast has completed US$20 million in financing, with several angel investors including Paradigm, Standard Crypto, eGirl Capital, and Mechanism Capital co-founder Andrew Kang, Lido strategic advisor Hasu, and The Block CEO Larry Cermak participating. Blast early access is now online and is only open to invitees. Everyone who joins will be rewarded with Blast points. Users who gain access can earn income (4% for ETH + 5% for stablecoins) and Blast Points before the launch of the mainnet in February 2024. Early access members can earn more points based on the number of bridges and invitees.
Earlier today, it was reported that Blur has opened applications for the second season airdrop and started the 6-month third season airdrop.
Foreign media: OpenAI approaches Anthropic about merger
According to The Information, people familiar with the matter revealed that the OpenAI board of directors approached its rival Dario Amodei, the co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, a large language model developer, about the possibility of a merger between the two companies. The OpenAI board fired the chief executive last Friday. executive Sam Altman, and the move is part of OpenAI's efforts to convince Amodei to succeed Altman as CEO. It's unclear whether the merger proposal sparked serious discussion. Because of his position at Anthropic, Amodei was quick to turn down the CEO offer.
It was reported earlier today that more than 90% of OpenAI employees signed an open letter asking the board of directors to resign, otherwise they will collectively leave Microsoft; OpenAI investors seek legal measures against the company's board of directors; Microsoft CEO said Sam Altman may return to OpenAI; OpenAI's customers consider Turn to Anthropic, Microsoft, Google .
Ark 21Shares Bitcoin Spot ETF will charge 0.8% management fee
According to Bloomberg, ARK Investment Management and 21Shares became the first major applicants in the United States to announce management fees for Bitcoin spot ETFs. According to documents updated on Monday, the Ark 21Shares Bitcoin ETF will charge a 0.8% management fee. Although higher than the average fee of 0.54% for U.S.-listed ETFs, the fee is lower than the 0.95% charged by the largest Bitcoin futures ETF, the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF, and far lower than the 2% charged by Grayscale GBTC. Ophelia Snyder, co-founder and president of 21Shares, said the "inherent complexities" of U.S.-listed spot products contribute to the 0.8% fee. While traditional ETFs can use "package and bundling" services such as custody, accounting and management, etc., this is not the case for crypto products. In fact, different vendors are used for almost every part of the crypto product, which does increase operational costs. We think this is a reasonable price to sustain these markets in the long term.
Cryptocurrency exchange Bullish acquires 100% of CoinDesk in all-cash deal
Bullish, a cryptocurrency exchange led by former New York Stock Exchange president Tom Farley, acquired 100% of CoinDesk in an all-cash deal, the Wall Street Journal reported. CoinDesk said former Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Matt Murray will serve as chairman of the independent editorial board.
CoinDesk cited people familiar with the matter as saying that Celsius’ plan to form a new company has encountered obstacles at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). There is ongoing "back and forth" discussions between the SEC, the Celsius Committee of Creditors and Fahrenheit regarding information on Celsius' holdings. In May, Fahrenheit won an auction for Celsius' assets. People familiar with the matter said the SEC requested more information in order to make a decision. It is reported that Celsius’s reorganization plan was approved by the bankruptcy court earlier this month. The plan involves the distribution of approximately $2 billion worth of Bitcoin and Ethereum to creditors, as well as equity in a new company. The new company will inherit Celsius' business and be managed by Fahrenheit Group, and will operate Celsius's Bitcoin mining business, pledge Ethereum, liquidate illiquid assets and develop new business opportunities. If this plan falls through, the approved backup plan is to close the Celsius business and liquidate the assets.
DeFi protocol Panoptic completes US$7 million in seed round financing, led by Greenfield Capital
According to The Block, Panoptic, a DeFi protocol based on Uniswap, has raised $7 million in seed funding to help develop its perpetual options decentralized trading platform. Greenfield Capital, a European cryptocurrency investment company, led the investment, with participation from HashKey, gumi Cryptos Capital (gCC), L1D, Heartcore Capital, Comma3 and Zee Prime Capital. Panoptic and Greenfield did not disclose the valuation of this round of financing. The funding will help Panoptic further develop the platform during its current beta testing phase ahead of Ethereum mainnet launch and V2 product launch.
It was reported last year that DeFi protocol Panoptic completed US$4.5 million in financing, with Coinbase Ventures and others participating in the investment .
Tether freezes 225 million USDT linked to international crime syndicate
After investigations by Tether, OKX and the U.S. Department of Justice, Tether voluntarily frozen 225 million USDT related to international criminal groups. The wallets were linked to an international human trafficking syndicate in Southeast Asia responsible for the global "pig killing plate" love scam.
Alameda related addresses are receiving PYTH airdrops and currently hold 63.5 million PYTH
Addresses starting with "9un5wq" (related to Alameda) are receiving PYTH airdrops through multiple addresses. This address currently holds 63.5 million PYTH (approximately $20.47 million), making it the seventh largest holder.
The FTX address transferred 75 million TRX, of which 25 million were transferred to Binance
According to Paidun’s monitoring, 75 million TRX (approximately US$7.6 million) were transferred out of the FTX address, of which 25 million were transferred to Binance.
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