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Crypto exchange Bitfinex just paid $23.7 million in transaction fees to send $100,000 of tether (USDT) in what was presumably a bit of a slip up. 

The exchange made the transaction around two hours ago, according to block explorer Etherscan. The transaction was sent from one of Bitfinex’s main wallets and the money ended up at one of Deversifi’s wallets — a non-custodial exchange that was spun out of Bitfinex in 2019.

The transaction was a smart contract interaction with the amount of tether sent to one wallet before being passed along to Deversifi’s wallet. It used the newly implemented EIP-1559 type of transaction, which was designed to make Ethereum fees easier to predict.

The transaction was included in a block that was mined by an unknown Ethereum miner, who ranks in the top ten miners by blocks mined over the last seven days.

This may be the largest Ethereum transaction fee ever paid in dollar terms. Previous notable occasions include two transactions that were made in June 2020 that added up to $5.2 million in fees.

We have reached out to Bitfinex for comment and will update this article if we hear back.

H/t to Crypto_BenBen

© 2021 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.

Quick Take

• Disclaimer: The Block Research team has, is, and will be experimenting with the various protocols, projects, and applications mentioned in this series. The projects mentioned in our reports are not recommendations from our team and should not be misconstrued as investment advice. Many projects that appear in this series are highly experimental and, as such, will come with risks. Readers should evaluate their own risk tolerance before experimenting with these projects.
• DeFi Digest is a series that summarizes recently launched projects and applications that our research team found interesting.
• This week’s digest looks at Sherlock, Boto and Polynomial Protocol

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This may seem like a small step, but Huobi Wallet invested a significant amount of time and capital into developing this feature.

According to Huobi Wallet, each chain or each DApp requires different operations for collecting staking rewards. In order to collect the various rewards of different Dapps across different chains in a single wallet app, a unified compatible adaptation structure for all Dapps was needed.

Only with significant R&D effort was Huobi Wallet able to build such a rewards-oriented technology architecture to support all DApp types.

During the first phase, Huobi Wallet’s new function is supporting 18 HECO projects such as MDEX, FilDA, and EarnDeFi; this list is likely to expand to more mainstream DeFi projects over the next two months.

“Our research and development team has worked diligently to obtain feedback from our customers, build out the infrastructure for HClaimer, and ultimately introduce this product to our user base,” said Liser Lee, Head of Huobi Wallet. “We hope that this small step forward can drive other industry players to develop new functions and improve their products, so that we can all provide the best user experience.”

What to expect?

In the past, wallets may not have had many application scenarios, but the development of DeFi has created more room for imagination.

The crypto wallet market is still in its early stages, but for DeFi mining, the introduction of one-click collection and real-time tracking of mining rewards has enabled Huobi Wallet to differentiate itself from its peers.

Huobi Wallet could leverage this opportunity to increase user balances and stickiness; it could even compete with other market players such as MetaMask, TokenPocket, and MathWallet.

As crypto wallets continue to become mainstream, they are not only a tool to store digital assets, but also the gateway to DeFi, NFTs, and GameFi. With the fast development of the crypto world, Huobi Wallet will not only keep up with the fast pace, but also create more leading functions for users in the future.

© 2021 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.

Hangzhou-based Sparkpool, which was launched in 2016, is discontinuing both its domestic and international Ethereum mining pool services.

The firm, currently the second largest Ethereum mining pool, said in an announcement on Monday that in response to regulatory changes, it has already suspended the services for new China-based mining customers following its statement last Friday.

In addition, Sparkpool said it will now suspend the mining pool services for all of its existing China-based — as well as international — customers by the end of this month. 

The real-time Ethereum hash rate connected to Sparkpool has already dropped by more than eight percent over the past 24 hours as result of China’s intensified crackdown over crypto mining and trading activities.

That Sparkpool is not just suspending services for home-based customers is a sign of the harsher crackdown measures taken by China, which appear to the most severe since 2017.

Crypto exchange Huobi, one of the major trading venues catering to China-based customers, also said over the weekend that it will retire all existing China-based user accounts by the end of this year.

© 2021 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.

Shares in OakNorth have changed hands in a deal that values the British fintech bank at $5 billion — more than double its last reported valuation.

Indiabulls Housing Finance Limited, which took a 40% stake in OakNorth in 2015, has sold a portion of its stake for 251 crores (roughly $34 million), according to a regulatory filing on September 24. It is not clear which investors bought the shares.

Three people familiar with the matter said the secondary transaction valued OakNorth at $5 billion. They added that Goldman Sachs, the investment bank, had acted as an advisor on the deal.

Late last year, Indiabulls sold roughly 7.7% of its stake in OakNorth in two transactions for approximately $145 million. The sales took place at a valuation of around $2 billion, representing a discount to OakNorth’s previous valuation of $2.8 billion — negotiated when it raised $440 million from SoftBank Vision Fund and Clermont in February 2019.

A spokesperson for OakNorth declined to comment. Goldman Sachs was contacted for comment but did not respond by press time.

A profitable fintech

Founded in 2013 by Rishi Khosla and Joel Perlman, OakNorth is a challenger bank that lends primarily to small and medium-sized businesses in the United Kingdom. It is advised by former chancellor of the exchequer Lord Philip Hammond and Lord Adair Turner, former chairman of the Financial Services Authority.

From an early stage, the company has proven an outlier within the fintech sector by consistently turning a profit. Earlier this year, it reported pre-tax profits for 2020 of £77.6 million.

Khosla has often spoken of how OakNorth’s use of artificial intelligence — a system it also licenses to other lenders including NIBC and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation — gives it an edge underwriting loans. Khosla used to tell conference audiences that OakNorth had never suffered a default, but the Financial Times reported a rash of some £97 million in defaults in February 2021 (roughly 2% of the bank’s loan book at the time).

Khosla has history with Indiabulls. More than two decades ago, he managed the venture capital and private equity activities of Indian steel magnate Lakshmi N. Mittal’s family office. In this role, he oversaw an investment in Indiabulls, where he then served as a director.  

© 2021 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 exchange Binance announced Monday that it will no longer offer certain services to Singapore users on its main platform, Binance.com.

The services include fiat deposit, spot trading of crypto, and the purchase of crypto through fiat channels and the Liquid Swap application. These are “regulated payments services” and will no longer be provided from October 26 to comply with local regulation, said Binance.

It is not clear whether these services will instead be offered via Binance.sg, Binance’s Singapore platform. It is also not clear whether Binance.com will continue to offer other services such as crypto-to-crypto and derivatives trading to Singapore users. The Block has reached out to Binance and will update this story should we hear back.

The restrictions come three weeks after Binance.com was placed on the investor alert list by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) earlier this month. At the time, Binance ceased Singapore dollar trading pairs and payment options. 

A Binance spokesperson at the time told The Block that Binance.com and Binance.sg are separate exchanges. Binance operates in Singapore through Binance Asia Services Pte. Ltd., and this entity has applied for a license under the Payment Services Act with the MAS. Currently, the entity operates under the relevant exemption granted by the MAS.

© 2021 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.

Quick Take

• The net amount of Bitcoin flowing into exchanges was only weakly related to the amount of Bitcoin being traded
• The amount of Bitcoin being traded is predicted by its internal structure over time much better than are the net amount of Bitcoin flowing into exchanges
• Despite a clear relationship between Bitcoin trading volumes and price, trading volumes slightly decrease explanatory power when modeling price with its internal structure over time

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Huobi Global, one of the major crypto exchanges that cater to mainland China customers, has said it will suspend all China-based user accounts later this year.

The exchange said in an announcement on Sunday that it has already discontinued account registration for new users in mainland China, effective on Friday, shortly after the People’s Bank of China released toughened measures in cracking down crypto trading activities. 

“Huobi Global will gradually retire existing Mainland China user accounts by 24:00 (UTC+8) on Dec 31, 2021, and ensure the safety of users’ assets,” the exchange said in the Sunday announcement.

It’s the first major crypto exchange that has reacted to China’s latest crackdown order, which said it will now treat all crypto-related transactions as illegal, including services that let Chinese users exchange fiat currencies to crypto assets. 

HT, the exchange token of Huobi, has plunged by 15% within the hour after the exchange made public the news, extending the loss to more than 27% over the past 24 hours. HT is now changing hands at $6.6 on Huobi.

OKEx, another major crypto exchange that caters to Chinese users, has not yet made any announcement about user account suspension in China.

Binance, on the other hand, has already suspended new mainland China user registration using Chinese mobile phone numbers. 

© 2021 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.

Quick Take

• Crypto wallet Phantom has become the de facto wallet on Solana.
• Here’s how it has evolved, what features are coming and whether it will issue a token.

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China’s intensified crackdown on crypto trading appears to have spooked some retail users into selling USDT on over-the-counter (OTC) markets on crypto exchanges.

Within a day of China releasing its toughened measures, the quotes for buying and selling USDT against the Chinese yuan on OTC merchants on Huobi, OKEx and Binance have dropped below 6.3 yuan per USDT.

As of press time, merchants on the three biggest exchanges that cater to Chinese crypto users are posting quotes for around 6.27 yuan per USDT.

Historical data seen by The Block shows that prior to China’s release of the intensified measures, the quotes on these exchanges were above 6.37 yuan per USDT, which already represented a 1.5% negative premium compared to the exchange rate between the US dollar and the Chinese yuan.

But over the past day, the negative premium has enlarged to now 3%. In the foreign exchange market, one US dollar is worth about 6.47 Chinese yuan. 

The People’s Bank of China, along with nine government and judicial agencies, said in the latest crackdown statement that all crypto-related services are now treated as illegal, which included any service that lets users exchange fiat currencies for crypto assets.

So far, Huobi, OKEx and Binance have not made any moves regarding their yuan OTC marketplaces. The peer-to-peer method through OTC merchants is currently the only way for China-based users to fund their crypto trading with fiat currencies and also the only way for them to cash out.

Quotes for USDT among OTC merchants on Huobi

© 2021 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.