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Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is scheduled to hold a closed-door meeting with House Democrats on Wednesday morning. 

The meeting, organized with lawmakers from the New Democrat Coalition, will center around digital-asset legislation and related issues, including tax regulations, national security implications, privacy concerns and climate considerations, Bloomberg reported, citing Democratic aids familiar with the matter.

Brian Armstrong has been actively pushing for clearer regulations and guidance on digital assets in Washington and has called on lawmakers to consider two bills currently in circulation.

The meeting takes place as Coinbase, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, faces a lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) amid a broader crackdown on the crypto industry by Chair Gary Gensler, including exchange rival Binance.

The SEC sued Coinbase on June 6, alleging the crypto exchange had violated U.S. securities laws, naming several tokens it offers as securities. The tokens included SOL, ADA, MATIC, FIL and SAND.

Denying the SEC’s allegations, Coinbase filed a motion to dismiss the suit on June 29, branding it “an extraordinary abuse of process.”

Coinbase stock surged more than 24% last week to trade over $100 for the first time in over a year, following Ripple’s partial victory against the SEC regarding whether sales of XRP tokens constituted unregistered securities. 

Coinbase did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Block.

© 2023 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.

Synthetix founder Kain Warwick described the recent XRP ruling as one of crypto’s first major wins over the SEC. 

“It was unexpected, I would say,” Warwick said, in an interview at ETHCC in Paris. “My view was that I thought there were a number of aspects of the case that we — the DeFi crypto community — were right about that maybe weren’t going to win. To actually have almost all of those validated, and then some that we weren’t even expecting to get wins on, it’s pretty amazing right?” 

The ruling came in the lawsuit between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Ripple Labs. The judge ruled sales of XRP to institutional investors counted as unlawful securities sales but programmatic sales on exchanges didn’t. 

“The implications of that are going to take a while to play out. And obviously, there’s a chance of appeals and I don’t think everyone should get too excited about this. There’s an ongoing legal dispute and the SEC may appeal. And things could shift over time,” said Warwick.

“But certainly it’s probably one of the first major wins that crypto’s had over the SEC in a while,” Warwick added.

Synthetix operates as a decentralized derivatives trading protocol with total deposits exceeding $487 million on Ethereum and the Optimism Layer 2 network.

© 2023 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.

South Korea’s Shinhan Bank completed a feasibility test for stablecoin remittance payments using Hedera’s distributed ledger technology.

The project’s goal was to rectify cross-border payments problems arising from high fees, lengthy settlements times, and the absence of tracking features. The pilot also involved SCB TechX, Siam Commercial Bank’s technology innovation business unit, amongst other other financial institutions.

“Stablecoins offer a low-cost, fast, and reliable way to transfer value across borders, which can help to increase financial inclusion and improve access to financial services for individuals and businesses in underserved communities,” said Byunghee Kim, who leads blockchain at Shinhan Bank.

The stablecoin remittance pilot is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), as it uses Hedera’s smart contract capabilities. According to Hedera, EVM-based stablecoin issuers will be able to participate in future pilots using the same tested framework.

“With this next phase, we are pleased to have demonstrated how the use of Hedera’s EVM-compatible technology helps eliminate intermediaries, reduce costs, and speed up the remittance process,” Byunghee Kim added.

Stablecoins for cross-border payments

The average cost of remittances is 6% according to the World Bank. Cross-border transfers between countries with limited liquidity and network connections often incur high intermediary fees. These transactions can also take three to seven days to process, with no transaction visibility for customers. 

Shinhan Bank claims its stablecoin solution offers individuals and organizations the ability to send and receive funds denominated in a local stablecoin at significantly lower fees than the traditional remittance process. “The successful completion marks an important step forward in our efforts to make cross-border payments faster, cheaper, and more accessible to people around the world,” Byunghee Kim added.

© 2023 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 wrapped up the public sale of ARKM tokens for Arkham Intelligence, a provider of on-chain analytics. The public sale, hosted on Binance Launchpad, reached its hard cap of $2.5 million. Notably, the sale elicited a high level of interest from investors, resulting an oversubscription by 990 times, according to figures released by Binance.

The total token supply for Arkham is 1 billion ARKM, of which 50 million were allocated to the Binance Launchpad, accounting for 5% of the total supply at a pre-determined sale price of $0.05.

Given it had a hard cap of $2.5 million, the sale used a subscription format, where Binance tracked users’ BNB balances over a six-day period starting from July 11. The final allocation of tokens for each user was determined based on their average BNB balance during this period.

A total of 114,454 participants committed 10,182,983 BNB ($2.4 billion) during the subscription period.

The final conversion rate for the sale was 4.92 ARKM tokens per BNB. This meant that users who committed 50 BNB during the subscription were allotted 246 ARKM tokens to purchase (at the sale price of $0.05), according to Binance. 

Binance announced that it would commence trading of ARKM tokens on its platform at 8 a.m. ET today.

Arkham token opens for airdrop and DEX trading 

Meanwhile, ARKM tokens can also be claimed as an airdrop by early Arkham users, separate from the Binance launch. These were allocated to early Arkham users. At the time of writing, ARKM is trading at $0.65 on the Uniswap decentralized exchange, which is 13 times its public sale price.

Arkham Intelligence operates as a blockchain analytics platform, facilitating the anonymous exchange of data related to the owners of blockchain addresses. The token sale was preceded by Arkham’s plan to launch an on-chain intelligence exchange, enabling users to anonymously buy and sell data related to the owners of blockchain addresses.

The platform, named “Arkham Intel Exchange,” will serve as a decentralized protocol for the purchase and sale of data and wallet labels, according to its whitepaper.

© 2023 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.

Bankrupt crypto lender Celsius reached a settlement with Series B holders to distribute $25 million from the sale of crypto custodian GK8.

Under the settlement, $24 million will be allocated to cover legal expenses, and the remaining $1 million will be distributed among the Series B holders, according to a filing late Monday. CoinDesk first reported the news.

“The Settlement brings an end to nearly a year of highly contentious litigation and removes one of the largest obstacles to confirmation and emergence in exchange for a $25 million cash settlement from the proceeds of the GK8 sale and a mutual release of claims between the Initial Consenting Series B Preferred Holders and the Estate Parties,” the filing stated.

The settlement was agreed, despite some dispute over the proposed allocation of funds. The largest group of Series B shareholders is now urging the court to approve the settlement and move forward with the bankruptcy process.

Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital agreed to purchase GK8 from Celsius in December for an undisclosed sum. GK8 was originally acquired by Celsius for $115 million in 2021.

Celsius filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in July 2022 after the collapse of Terra’s ecosystem left the company insolvent.

Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit against Celsius and its ex-CEO Alex Mashinsky, accusing them of raising billions through fraudulent and unregistered sales of “crypto asset securities,” lying to investors about the company’s financial standing and manipulating the price of the Celsius native token.

Celsius is scheduled to appear in the United States Bankruptcy Court Southern District of New York at 10 A.M. ET today.

© 2023 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.