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Turkish crypto exchange Vebitcoin announced Friday that it ceased operations, making it the second Turkish venue to collapse after the nation’s central bank barred cryptocurrency as a payment option earlier this month.

“We would like to state with regret that this situation has led us to a very difficult process in the financial field,” the company said in a translated statement. “We have decided to cease our activities in order to fulfill all regulations and claims.”

Soon after it decided to cease operations, four people from Vebitcoin were detained on fraud charges, according to a Turkish prosecutor cited by Reuters. Turkey’s Financial Crimes Investigation Board (MASAK) also blocked onshore bank accounts associated with the exchange.

The Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT) barred cryptocurrency as a payment option on April 16, citing reasons including crypto’s association with crime and its unregulated financial market. Specifically, payment service providers are not allowed to incorporate crypto assets directly or indirectly into their business models.

The first exchange to falter was Thodex on April 18. The exchange’s CEO, Faruk Fatih Ozer, allegedly traveled to Albania in the days after with $2 billion in investor’s funds to flee fraud charges — though that has been disputed on the Thodex website. Still, local police arrested 68 people as of Sunday for their links to Thodex, according to the state-run Turkish news agency Anadolu. MASAK has since opened an investigation and blocked the exchange’s bank accounts.

Turkey’s legislation against cryptocurrency will go into effect on April 30, though it is not intended as a direct prohibition, said CBRT Governor Şahap Kavacıoğlu on the state-run channel TRT. He suggested that crypto’s legal definition and the method in which institutions should hold crypto assets will be clarified, reports Decrypt.  

While the CBRT’s stance on crypto payments is clear, the Bank plans to pilot a central bank digital currency (CBDC) sometime the second half of 2021 — a year later than originally planned. CBRT Chairman Naci Ağbal told Turkish news site Koin Bülteni that the research and development phase of the project is in motion and the “conceptual phase” has been completed. 

© 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

• A crypto billionaire who goes by the name MetaKovan recently paid $69 million for an NFT by the digital artist Beeple.
• Who is MetaKovan and why does he think this art is actually worth $1 billion?

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Kansas City Chiefs player Sean Culkin will become the first NFL player to covert his entire salary into bitcoin using a third-party payments application. 

According to a press release shared with The Block, the entirety of Culkin’s $920,000 salary will be paid in weekly USD installments and converted instantly to bitcoin via Strike by Zap, an application that enables users to make bitcoin payments using a bank account or debit card. 

“Considering my career — particularly its physical demands, and brevity – it makes the most logical sense to be paid in sound money that I believe protects its purchasing power over time,” Culkin said in a statement. “From a macro standpoint, I believe we are in the beginning stage of Bitcoin’s shift away from being extremely speculative, to a legitimate asset class viewed as a store of value.”

Culkin is one of several athletes converting their earnings to bitcoin. In December 2020, Carolina Panthers player Russell Okung became the first player from any major sports league to publicly use a service to convert half of his paycheck into bitcoin. Okung also used Strike by Zap.

Culkin joined the league in 2017 after playing for the University of Missouri, where he also studied finance. He said while he thinks the cryptocurrency will provide him with “the best asymmetric return available, going forward,” he isn’t suggesting everyone convert 100% of their salaries to bitcoin. He stressed this was a decision he made only after seriously considering his current assets and expected future expenses. 

“So many people now realize the high value of scarcity — which can be seen in Gen Z and Millennial groups’ growing interest in cryptocurrencies,” Culkin said. “This isn’t just a domestic play — it’s global, and I hope to encourage and inspire other athletes around the world to consider that.”

© 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.

The LCX Exchange is a next generation of cryptocurrency exchange. LCX is an international fintech company with users from more than 100 countries. LCX recently received 8 blockchain-related approvals by the Liechtenstein regulator. Liechtenstein is a reputable country next to Switzerland with direct market access to Europe and with a AAA country rating from Standard & Poor’s – the highest rating possible.

Now LCX launched a new sweepstake and trading competition aiming to give every trader a chance to win. This competition is called the LCX Rolex Trading competition, as users have the opportunity to win a Rolex Milgauss and other prizes.50,000 LCX Token. 

You can still enter and join the competition until May 1st. To be eligible to win, you only have to reach a daily trading volume of over $1,000 USD for 20 days. On May 23, the LCX Rolex trading competition winners will be announced.

LCX Exchange offers a variety of different crypto currencies, including BTC, ETH, USDC, LINK, UNI, ENJ, Mana, HOT, POLK, OGN, DAG and LCX Token.

LCX announced the listing for the fast growing decentralized marketplace Origin Protocol and it’s cryptocurrency OGN and the listing of Constellation Network and it’s cryptocurrency DAG. LCX announced a strategic partnership with Quant to pioneer Central Bank Digital Currencies. Furthermore LCX had been chosen by DigiByte Foundation as their exclusive partner for a new stealth project. 

LCX.com, the Liechtenstein Cryptoassets Exchange, is a regulated fintech company that focuses on digital asset trading, compliant token offerings and tokenization.

Learn more about LCX today.

© 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.

JPMorgan, the largest bank in the U.S., is reportedly preparing to offer its own actively managed bitcoin fund to private wealth management clients.

CoinDesk reported the news on Monday, citing anonymous sources. The JPMorgan bitcoin fund could launch as soon as this summer, “two sources familiar with the matter” told CoinDesk.

Bitcoin broker NYDIG will serve as the fund’s custody provider, per the report.

JPMorgan declined to comment to The Block when contacted. NYDIG did not return The Block’s query by press time.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has previously called bitcoin a “fraud.” In 2017, he said: “governments are going to crush it one day” and “if you’re stupid enough to buy it, you’ll pay the price for it one day.”

In light of bitcoin’s meteoric price rise this year, a number of major financial institutions have warmed up to the world’s largest cryptocurrency. Goldman Sachs said last month it would offer bitcoin and other crypto investment vehicles to private wealth management clients in the second quarter of this year. Morgan Stanley has also started offering clients investments in the crypto space.

© 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.

Securrency, a blockchain-based compliance tools provider for banks and financial institutions, has raised $30 million in a Series B funding round.

The round was backed by asset manager WisdomTree Investments, State Street, U.S. Bank, and Abu Dhabi Catalyst Partners — a joint venture between Abu Dhabi state investor Mubadala Investment and Falcon Edge Capital, among other investors.

With fresh capital at hand, Washington, D.C.-based Securrency aims to launch new products and expand internationally.

Specifically, Securrency said it has applied for licenses to establish the business in the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), an international financial center in the capital city of the UAE.

As for new products, Securrency’s co-founder and CEO Dan Doney said the firm would deliver “compliant decentralized finance (DeFi) and other powerful products” in the coming year.

“We believe the Securrency team is uniquely suited to lead in blockchain-based fintech and regtech going forward,” said WisdomTree founder and CEO Jonathan Steinberg. “Our ongoing financial commitment reaffirms the strength of our support and partnership in shaping the future of financial services with Securrency and our fellow investors.”

WisdomTree led Securrency’s $17.65 million Series A round last year. The Series B brings Securrency’s total funding to date to $64.5 million, according to Crunchbase.

© 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

• Founded in 2018 by Daniel Shin, Terra is a blockchain protocol that enables the usage of fiat-backed stablecoins for global payments
• Aside from payments, Terraform Labs, the firm behind the development of Terra, is working on other financial solutions to bring decentralized finance (DeFi) to its ecosystem
• In total, The Block has identified 80 projects and companies across 9 different verticals currently expanding on its ecosystem

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members of The Block Genesis.
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The market capitalization of Tether (USDT) stablecoin has crossed the $50 billion mark.

The development means there are now more than 50 billion USDT in circulation, each pegged to track one U.S. dollar.

This is an “incredibly important milestone,” said Tether’s CTO Paolo Ardoino. “Tether’s success is a blueprint for a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and a banking system of the future,” he added.

In another interesting development, Tether’s issuance or supply on the Tron blockchain has surpassed that of Ethereum, according to The Block Research. The distribution on Tron stands at $26 billion, while on Ethereum, it is at $24.4 billion.

“Tether on Tron is preferred at the moment as a result of lower transaction fees and faster confirmation times,” Ardoino told The Block.

Most of the Tron-based Tether’s supply is on Binance, Huobi, and OKEx, according to The Block Research. That means users of these exchanges prefer trading in USDT.

USDT is cheaper compared to fiat wire transfers and faster compared to credit cards and traditional payment systems, according to Tether. Besides trading, other top use cases of USDT include payments, remittances, and usage in decentralized finance (DeFi), said the company.

Tether remains the largest stablecoin in the market, with about 66% market share, according to The Block Research. USDC and BUSD stablecoins follow next, with about 17% and 9% share, respectively.

© 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.

Legislation introduced earlier this year in Wyoming to create a legal link between decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and the state government is now the law of the land.

The law, first introduced in February, won final approval in the legislature earlier this month before being signed by Governor Mark Gordon on April 21, according to public records. 

As previously reported, the law allows DAOs to become registered as limited liability corporations, or LLCs, in the state. It goes into effect in July.

More broadly, the law serves as a novel bridge between the world of traditional business structures and DAOs, which are governed by the way of blockchain-based smart contracts. Though the history of DAOs is a bumpy one, proponents of the law say it provides a new degree of legal clarity for such organizations.

“Digital asset stakeholders made it clear to us they were concerned about facing general partnership liability in the absence of a well-defined corporate structure. Our DAO LLC legislation should dispel that concern,” Wyoming Sen. Chris Rothfuss told CoinDesk earlier this week.

The measure has also drawn criticism from the legal world as well. 

© 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 exchanges have seen some $1.3 trillion in volume, according to data collected by The Block, the most-ever on record. 

The amount eclipses the previous all-time high seen in February on legitimate exchanges, as shown in the chart below. April’s figure also represents the third month in a row that volumes have exceeded $1 trillion. 

Significant market events this month include an all-time price high for bitcoin as well as a new single-day record for crypto futures liquidations after a market plunge last weekend. 

At press time, bitcoin is trading hands at just over $50,000, according to data from Coinbase. 

© 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.