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Binance has inked a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to potentially acquire Brazilian securities brokerage Sim;paul Investimentos, the crypto exchange announced on Monday. 

The firm said that it would “explore the acquisition” of Sim;Paul under the MOU, with the aim of further developing Brazil’s cryptocurrency and blockchain ecosystem.

In an announcement statement, Binance underscored that Sim;paul is authorized by Brazil’s central bank and its securities exchange commission (CVM). The transaction would require approval from Brazilian regulators, including the central bank. The companies did not disclose any timeframe for closing a possible deal. 

Binance has faced regulatory scrutiny in Brazil in the past few years. The exchange suspended futures trading on its Brazilian website last year, as the website Portal do Bitcoin reported. That came after a July 2020 alert from the CVM, which named Binance Futures as one of three entities that were not registered to operate in the Brazilian securities market at the time. 

“In a fast-developing market like Brazil, crypto can transform and facilitate people’s lives and as such we believe — in full collaboration with local authorities — that Binance has a lot to contribute in developing the community and ecosystem in Brazil,” Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said in a press statement. 

 Sim;paul was born in 2019, according to a timeline on its website. The firm then received Central Bank approval on October 2020 and launched services in December 2020. The firm lists a location in Porto Alegre, Brazil. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Larva Labs, the creators of the popular non-fungible token (NFT) projects CryptoPunks and Meebits, enshrined the private keys for a pig Meebit worth 10 ETH (or about $25,000) in some digital artwork last year. 

No one found the prize — at least, not until three friends managed to crack the code on March 14.

The three friends were a programmer named Andrew Badr, a person who goes by Apely.eth on Twitter, and an anonymous third person. As Badr describes on Twitter, a private collective of 1,000 artists called Proof created an NFT drop composed of 20 artworks from 20 anonymous artists, where the artists’ names would be released after the mint closed. 

One piece — Grail #11, as it was known — turned out to be from Larva Labs. The piece in fact was a prototype for Autoglyphs, a collection of mathematically generated art. Grail #11 soon because the most valuable piece in the Proof NFT drop. 

On March 5, someone by the name of “iceman” on the Proof Discord server pointed out the unusual pattern aligned at the top of Grail #11.

A person by the name of “iceman” pointing out the clue to solving the hidden pig Meebit puzzle.

“His message caught my eye right away, because that part of the image really did look separate from the main part of the artwork. Also, the Ls weren’t in any kind of regular pattern, so they seemed more than ornamental,” Badr wrote on Twitter. 

Badr then wrote code to turn the L’s into 0s and 1s, which could be interpreted using the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII), or a system in which numbers correspond into 128 English characters. 

The seemingly random combination of L-shapes read the hidden message, “SECRET IS IN THE PIG NUMBERS, LL.”

“Andrew figured it must be referring to the Meebits pigs and after poking around a little, he and another friend honed in on the pigs wearing jerseys, each of which has one digit on it,” wrote Apely.eth on Twitter, one of the two friends Andrew recruited to help with the treasure hunt. 

So the team tried various methods to interpret the numbers on the pig jerseys, such as mod 2, intervals between the IDs, ASCII, base 32 and Caesar Ciphers.

“All kinds of crazy things,” Andrew wrote. After days of fruitless searching, the team noticed something unusual: when you place the Meebits in order of their jersey number, the NFT IDs create a 64 digit string that can be used as an Ethereum private key. 

Sure enough, the team found a wallet address containing 0.025 ETH and the Meebit #2858. The year-old puzzle was finally solved. 

“Overall this was a really fun experience,” Badr wrote. 

Badr and Apely.eth did not respond to a request for comment by press time as to what they will do with the NFT prize going forward.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Ukraine has launched a crypto donations website to raise funds for its ongoing defense against Russia with the help of crypto exchange FTX.

The initiative, dubbed Aid for Ukraine, is a collaboration between FTX, staking service Everstake and Ukraine. FTX converts the crypto donations to fiat and sends them to the fundraising account of the National Bank of Ukraine, according to the site.

“This marks the first-ever instance of a cryptocurrency exchange directly cooperating with a public financial entity to provide a conduit for crypto donations,” said the site.

Donations will be used to support humanitarian aid programs and the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

“Help Ukraine with crypto, don’t leave us alone with the enemy,” reads the site. The notice is followed by options to donate in bitcoin, ether, tether, polkadot, solana, dogecoin, monero, icon and neo N3. Though the site is geared towards crypto donations, it also has an option to donate in fiat.

Ukraine’s Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov posted the site in his Telegram channel today.

“We are raising funds for cyber defense, information counteraction to Russian propaganda and technical assistance to the Armed Forces,” he said in a translated message to the channel.

The site touts over $48 million raised thus far from Ukraine’s collective efforts. It sets a goal of $200,000,000. However, it’s difficult to put a definitive marker on how much Ukraine has raised in crypto thus far given price swings and the many funding streams.

Still, those donations have already turned into tangible resources. Alex Bornyakov, Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine on IT industry development, tweeted a list of supplies that have been bought since March 1, including 5,550 bulletproof vests, 410,000 packed lunches and 500 helmets. Bornyakov pointed to the forthcoming non-fungible token collection as the next boost to the fundraising process in a statement.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

A member of Congress has filed new legislation on crypto and Russian financial sanctions.

Public records show that Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) submitted the measure on March 13. The bill’s summary states: “To impose sanctions with respect to the use of cryptocurrency to facilitate transactions by Russian persons subject to sanctions, and for other purposes.”

Little else is known about the measure, which has no known co-sponsors. Sherman’s office did not respond to a request for comment sent Monday morning.

Per a public note regarding the states of the bill, Sherman’s legislation was “[r]eferred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and in addition to the Committee on Financial Services, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned.”

The legislation’s filing comes as Capitol Hill increasingly focuses on the subject of cryptocurrency in the context of Russian sanctions amid the invasion of Ukraine. Senator Elizabeth Warren is also said to be working on legislation related to this area, though it’s not currently known when that bill would be filed. 

Despite the high-alert posture among government officials, little tangible evidence has emerged that Russia is using crypto to dodge the array of sanctions imposed since last month. Last week, the Financial Crime Enforcement Network issued an alert on the matter, with Acting Director Him Das  saying that “we have not seen widespread evasion of our sanctions using methods such as cryptocurrency.”

Sherman is a long-time critic of cryptocurrency, having once called for legislation to ban the purchase of cryptocurrencies in the United States. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The EU’s Markets in Crypto Assets regulation, or MiCA, has advanced in the European Parliament.

European Parliament’s ECON Committee passed the MiCA regulation on March 14, per committee voting tallies shared with The Block. 

The final committee vote was 31 for, four against, and 23 abstentions, with the Green and Left parties showing the most opposition to the regulation while the European People’s Party and Renew Europe showing the greatest support. 

Earlier today, their motion to bring back provisions that would push proof-of-work mining out of the EU failed to pass the committee. 

Disputes over proof-of-work had delayed the committee votes from the end of February. 

MiCA’s rapporteur and the ECON Committee’s leader, Dr. Stefan Berger, tweeted that it was “a good day for the crypto sector.”

ECON-Ausschuss hat meinen #MiCA-Bericht angenommen. Ein guter Tag für den Krypto-Sektor! Das EU-Parlament hat den Weg geebnet für eine innovationsfreundliche Krypto-Regulierung, die weltweit Maßstäbe setzen kann. Der Prozess ist noch nicht vorbei; Schritte liegen noch vor uns /1

— Stefan Berger (@DrStefanBerger) March 14, 2022

Separate votes of 33 for and 25 against will move the regulation to trilogue debates to consolidate with the European Council and the European Commission. The regulation, which if passed, will be binding throughout the EU’s member states.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Magic Eden, the largest NFT marketplace on the Solana blockchain, has raised $27 million in a Series A funding round.

Paradigm led the round, with Sequoia Capital, Solana Ventures, Greylock Partners, Electric Capital and others participating.

The raise was an equity funding round and will help Magic Eden focus on the blockchain gaming sector, the firm’s co-founder and CEO Jack Lu told The Block. To that end, Magic Eden has today launched Eden Games, a content hub for game publishers. The hub will allow publishers to share their landing pages custom-built by Eden Games, said Lu.

“We hold over 90% of market share for NFT secondary trading volume for all gaming NFTs on Solana,” said Lu. “Game publishers really struggle to get enough eyeballs when sharing news and we want to serve as that platform.”

Magic Eden is also looking to launch a venture unit, dubbed Magic Ventures, “in a few weeks.” Lu declined to provide further details on the unit but said it will back community projects. The firm is also expanding its current team of 60 people by hiring across functions, including operations and marketing.

Magic Eden was launched as a side-project late last year and now leads the Solana NFT market in terms of both the number of traders and trading volume, according to data from DappRadar. Its dominance on Solana can be seen as equivalent to OpenSea on Ethereum.

The Series A round brings Magic Eden’s total funding to date to $29.5 million. It raised $2.5 million in a seed round in October. The firm could raise more funds in the near future, said Lu.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Crypto startup Gauntlet has raised $23.8 million in a new funding round led by Ribbit Capital.

VC firms Polychain and Paradigm also participated in the round. Bloomberg first reported the news. Gauntlet raised a $4.3 million round in 2020 led by Paradigm, following a seed round in 2018. 

Gauntlet’s platform provides services for DeFi protocols and decentralized organizations to assist with areas such as risk management. Users of Gauntlet’s platform include protocols like Aave, Compound and SushiSwap, among others. 

The deal is said to have valued Gauntlet at $1 billion. 

This is a developing story and will be updated with additional information. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The European Parliament has once again stripped a landmark piece of crypto legislation of language that many feared would target proof-of-work cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.

On March 14, the ECON committee of the European Parliament voted down amendments to the Markets in Digital Assets, or MiCA, regulation that would target PoW networks as an environmental concern, potentially forcing the phase-out of such mining throughout the EU.

The regulation’s rapporteur and leader of the ECON committee, Dr. Stefan Berger, was opposed to earlier more aggressive language against proof-of-work mining but had faced difficulties assembling a coalition.

“The Greens/Socialists attempt to ban PoW failed,” a representative for Berger told The Block. “The crypto-friendly proposal of Dr Berger MEP was adopted.”

The full bill will face another vote before the committee Monday afternoon, but Berger’s team expects a broad majority.

If the bill passes the committee, it will face a larger vote before parliament and then trilogues, or debates involving the European Commission and the European Council, which has already passed its own distinct version of the same bill. 

As The Block reported this weekend, the new language appeared at the eleventh hour that could similarly target PoW mining. 

The MiCA vote was originally delayed due to disputes over earlier similar provisions. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon has accepted a $1 million bet on the price of his own project Terra (LUNA) with the pseudonymous Sensei Algod. A crypto personality known as Cobie is acting as the escrow for the wagered funds.

According to the details of the bet, Sensei Algod wins if the price of LUNA is lower in one year’s time, while Kwon will be the winner if it is higher than today’s price. The price of LUNA as of the time the wager was accepted was about $88.

Both parties in the wager agreed to use the time-weighted average price (TWAP) for LUNA on Coingecko on March 14, 2023. TWAP refers to the average price of an asset within a specific time.

Cobie volunteered an address under his control as escrow for the wagered funds. Data from Etherscan shows both parties have already deposited $1 million in tether (USDT) each.

LUNA is already up almost 5% since the time of the wager, with Coingecko showing the coin’s price at $93 as of the time of writing.

Kwon, meanwhile, has also accepted another wager from a crypto personality named GCR to the tune of $10 million. The details of the bet are the same and Cobie has also volunteered to act as an escrow for the bet. Cobie’s wallet shows a $10 million USD Coin (USDC) deposit from DCR but Kwon has yet to respond as of the time of writing.

Will UST continue to maintain its peg?

Sensei Algod has previously criticized the Terra ecosystem, on the basis that it relies on LUNA to maintain the peg of its major stablecoin TerraUSD (UST). As an algorithmic stablecoin, UST maintains its peg not by having reserves of cash or commercial paper but by burning LUNA tokens to mint each UST coin.

Periods of increased UST demand on DeFi protocols often cause massive LUNA burning, which critics like Sensei Algod say will eventually lead to a significant decline in the price of LUNA. Since LUNA is what keeps UST pegged as a stablecoin, a big drop in the price of LUNA could potentially cause UST to permanently lose its peg.

The Luna Foundation Guard recently raised $1 billion to create a bitcoin reserve for UST, something that would make it less reliant on LUNA.

Kwon is confident, however, that LUNA will not suffer a price crash and challenged Sensei Algod to another bet that UST will not lose its peg by this same time next year. Kwon offered 2:1 odds to Sensei Algod if the latter accepts the wager.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Robert Iger, CEO of the American entertainment conglomerate Disney for fifteen years, has joined the board of a Los Angeles-based metaverse firm Genies. 

Genies offers services to allow users to create virtual avatars that can be used in the metaverse, complete with accessories that can be purchased as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The firm has a partnership with Warner Music Group, a major American record label, to create avatars and digital goods for artists. 

While head of Disney, Iger spearheaded the acquisitions of Marvel Entertainment, Lucasfilm and Pixar, as well as the creation of the streaming platform Disney+. As per a report from the Wall Street Journal, Iger joined the Genies board because he believes the entertainment industry will play a strong role in the metaverse and thus needs an avenue to create and sell virtual goods – especially those tied to existing intellectual property. 

Iger is an investor in Genies. Other investors in the firm include Bond Capital, Breyer Capital and New Enterprise Associates. 

An increasing number of traditional media firms have already onboarded people to lead metaverse efforts, such as Spotify, YouTube and even Disney.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.