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NFT trading volume on the Ethereum blockchain last week had the biggest jump since February. 

Volume last week rose 63% from the previous one to $88 million, according to calculations based on The Block’s Data Dashboard.

Ethereum NFT trading volumes hadn’t seen that much of an increase since the final week of February, when they jumped 109%. 

The contentious Azuki Elementals mint accounted for much of last week’s spike, in which the sale of 10,000 NFTs brought the project $37.5 million.

© 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.

Web3 architectures aren’t built for AI, but they could be, says Jesus Rodriguez, CEO of IntoTheBlock. And there are risks if we don’t build.

Belarus is working on legislation that would ban peer-to-peer crypto transactions in an effort to combat crime.

P2P crypto services are in demand among fraudsters, Alexander Ringevich, deputy chief of a crime division within Belarus’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, said in a statement Sunday. Fraudsters are using P2P crypto services to cash out and convert stolen funds, as well as to transfer money to participants of criminal activities, Ringevich said.

Since 2023, the ministry of internal affairs has halted activities of 27 individuals who were providing “illegal” crypto exchange services, with illicit income amounting to nearly 22 million rubles ($8.4 million), according to Ringevich.

To prevent such incidents, the ministry is looking to restrict crypto P2P services, meaning only crypto transactions via registered exchanges will be allowed.

Belarus legalized crypto transactions in 2017, according to Freeman Law. Subsequently, in November 2018, the Supervisory Council of the Hi-Tech Park approved additional guidance for the relegation of token-related activities.

© 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.

The rise in real yields is more of a headache to blue chip stocks than to markets like technology or crypto and will not disrupt the medium-term growth story, one observer said.

The company plans to look for acquisition opportunities in the “highly fragmented” market, CEO Brandon Mintz said.

China’s ruling Communist Party has appointed bitcoin and crypto skeptic Pan Gongsheng as the top Party official of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), according to The Wall Street Journal, citing sources that say he will eventually rise to governor.

Pan, previously deputy governor at China’s central bank, will replace the retiring Yi Gang.

Pan has significant experience in the financial sector and joined the PBOC in 2012. Pan previously led the central bank’s group on internet financial risks remediation, which included regulating crypto firms and clamping down on cryptocurrency use in the country.

A long-term skeptic of the industry, Pan once said at an event in 2017, “If you sit by the river and watch, one day the corpse of Bitcoin will float in front of you,” local media reported at the time.

He also cited an article by French scholar Eric Pichet which stated, “The Bitcoin bubble is just the latest incarnation of crazy speculation,” with his appointment putting a damper on hopes of a crypto revival in China, despite more positive signs from Hong Kong.

© 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.

Blockchain development firm Phi Labs has rolled out Archway, a Layer 1 blockchain within the Cosmos ecosystem.

The project, supported by venture firms CoinFund and Hashed, was conceived to foster business sustainability for blockchain developers by offering automatic rewards derived from each block’s smart contract usage. The network plans to distribute a portion of the token emission from Archway directly to decentralized apps. It will allocate 25% to app developers and the remaining 75% to validators.

“What’s unique about our network is that it’s the only Layer 1 today that natively offers developer rewards, and this is integrated into the project’s architecture. This mechanism, built into the protocol, has never been done before,” said Archway co-founder Griffin Anderson, who was previously head of product at Ignite (formerly Tendermint).

The Archway mainnet has gone live with participation from teams across various sectors, including decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and gaming. The teams involved include Archgregator, Pipapo, BonusBlock, Vectis, and Astrovault.

“The developers building on top will have a major stake in the underlying protocol, similar to how validators and miners are rewarded for validating the network,” added Anderson.

He added that Archway will also address a notable void in the Cosmos ecosystem for a Layer blockchain that can natively accommodate generalized smart contracts.

Archway mainnet follows public token sale

Recently, Archway core team concluded a $10 million public sale through CoinList. This came a few months after a private token sale, co-led by CoinFund and Hashed, in which the project raised $21 million. This brought its total funds raised to $31 million.

Archway will join the expanding Cosmos ecosystem, which comprises 60 different Layer 1 chains, each referred to as a zone. This includes Osmosis, Cosmos Hub, Axelar, Evmos, Cronos, Kava, and many others. According to data from Map of Zones, these Cosmos Layer 1 zones have a cumulative market cap of over $10 billion.

© 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-friendly neobank Revolut is set to delist Polygon (MATIC), Solana (SOL) and Cardano (ADA) tokens from its trading platform in the United States.

The news means Revolut’s users in the U.S. can no longer buy the three crypto assets and will have to sell their existing holdings in these tokens before September 18, according to an email it sent to U.S. users seen by The Block. The move was “due to the changing laws and regulations around cryptocurrency in the U.S.,” the email stated.

Revolut is delisting the tokens because its U.S. crypto services provider, Bakkt, recently decided to delist them, a Revolut spokesperson told The Block.

Bakkt and Revolut are not the only platforms to delist these tokens. Robinhood and eToro also recently ceased trading in them. All these decisions came a few days after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed lawsuits against crypto exchanges Binance, Binance.US and Coinbase, alleging that they offer unregistered securities to customers. In the complaints, the SEC alleged for the first time that MATIC, SOL and ADA are securities, among several other tokens.

If Revolut’s customers don’t sell their existing holdings in MATIC, SOL and ADA before September 18, the firm will sell the tokens on their behalf using the market price at the time of sale and deposit the USD proceeds into their Revolut accounts, according to the email.

While Revolut is delisting these tokens for U.S. users, the spokesperson said there are no plans to delist them in other markets where they remain available.

© 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.

The Hong Kong government has established a web3 task force to provide recommendations on sustainable and responsible crypto development in the region.

Chaired by the Financial Secretary, the task force includes 15 non-official members from relevant market sectors, alongside key government officials and financial regulators, with an initial two-year term from July 1, according to an announcement on Friday.

The task force builds upon the government’s policy statement on the development of virtual assets, issued in October 2022, outlining Hong Kong’s stance and approach toward the virtual asset sector.

“The blockchain technology underpinning web3 features characteristics in respect of disintermediation, security, transparency and low cost. It has the potential to solve many difficulties and pain points encountered in finance, trade, business operations and even day-to-day life,” Hong Kong government Financial Secretary Paul Chan said. 

“Premised on a balance between appropriate regulation and promoting development, Hong Kong seeks to lead and drive innovative exploration and development, create more new application models, and strives to draw together top-notch companies and talent in the arena to build a thriving ecosystem,” Chen added.

Hong Kong’s crypto ambitions

Chen previously discussed the need to “nurture a web3 ecosystem and establish a task force on the development of virtual assets” in his 2023-2024 budget speech in February. It was referenced again in a recent government study highlighting concerns the region was lagging behind East Asia and Gulf countries for web3 development.

In another nod to Hong Kong’s crypto ambitions, its banking regulator, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), has recently been applying pressure on HSBC, Standard Chartered and Bank of China — who hold a special role as issuers of the city’s currency — to accept crypto exchanges as clients.

Meanwhile, USDC stablecoin issuer Circle is also setting its sights on Hong Kong, with CEO Jeremy Allaire seeing “enormous demand for digital dollars” in the region.

© 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.

Hong Kong wants to be a Web3 hub, Financial Secretary Paul Chan said.