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The Nevada Financial Institutions Division has petitioned for an appointment of receivership over crypto custodian Prime Trust with the Eight Judicial District Court of Nevada, the regulator said Tuesday in a statement.

“This action resulted from the Division’s determination that Prime is operating in an unsafe and unsound manner and is insolvent as specified in the Cease-and-Desist Order issued on June 21, 2023,” the regulator said.

The petition seeks a receiver to take over the day-to-day operations of the company and “thoroughly examine all its finances to determine the best option to protect Prime’s clients, either by rehabilitating and returning the company to private management or by liquidating the company.”

The Nevada Financial Institutions Division said last week that the company could not meet all customer withdrawals.

© 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.

Apple cited violations of its in-app purchase guidelines as the primary reason for the delisting, according to Damus founder William Casarin.

The ETF saw $500 million worth of trades in the first 15 minutes.

Revolut, a UK-based neobank, said Tuesday that it’s reducing some of its crypto trading fees.

The decision came as a response to customer feedback, signaling the firm’s commitment to offering competitive cryptocurrency market rates.

“We’ve been listening to your feedback, and have decided to update our fee structure,” the company said in email sent to customers seen by The Block. “We’re happy to announce a reduction to some of our crypto trading fees.”

The new structure will bring a decrease in trading fees for both standard and premium users. Standard and Plus customers will see crypto trading fees drop from 1.99% to 1.49%, while Premium and Metal customers will get reductions from 1.49% to 0.99%.

Revolut, well-known for its banking, investing, and currency exchange services, has allowed cryptocurrency trading on its platform since November 2017.

© 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.

Cryptocurrencies Cardano (ADA) and Solana (SOL) fell more than the broader crypto market on Tuesday, just before trading app Robinhood was set to delist them later in the day at 6:59 p.m. ET.

Popular NFT collection Azuki ended a fresh mint with 20,000 ETH (around $37.5 million) in the bag — before it was ever open to the public.

The new collection, called Azuki Elemental Beans, contains 20,000 NFTs tied to Azuki’s existing BEANZ spin-off collection, in which small anthropomorphic beans act as side-kicks to the human Azuki characters. Consuming an Azuki Elemental Bean reveals the user’s Azuki Elemental, an avatar that can control water, fire, earth or lightning, according to the collection’s OpenSea page. Half of the NFTs were given to Azuki and BEANZ holders for free.

The auction started at 12:00 p.m. ET for Azuki holders, who could mint one Elemental for every Azuki NFT owned. At 12:10 p.m. ET, holders of BEANZ, a spin-off collection to Azuki, could mint one Elemental for every NFT owned, with additional constrictions if they hold an Azuki NFT and minted in the presale. Finally, at 12:20 p.m. ET, the Elemental mint opened up to the public. 

The Azuki Elemental sale used a dutch auction structure, in which the starting mint price was 2 ETH and would decrease by 0.1 ETH every five minutes until no NFTs were left.

Within 15 minutes, the collection sold out — and was never available to the public. 

Azuki’s expanding universe

The launch of Elemental adds one more facet to the Azuki universe. The project launched its own virtual city called Hilumia in January 2023, which included blended physical and digital worlds. The connector between the two would be the Physical Backed Token, or PBT, which facilitates how physical items show up in the Azuki virtual universe.

Hilumia launched to commemorate Azuki’s one-year anniversary. Released on January 12, 2022, the Azuki NFT collection brought in a total of 574,722 ETH (around $1.08 billion) and maintains a floor price of 14.25 ETH, or $26,700. The BEANZ sidekick collection netted an additional 162,634 ETH ($305 million) at a 0.85 ETH ($1,594) floor price, according to OpenSea.

Azuki brought in the most trading volume within the first five months of its launching, bringing in an all-time high of $121 million in the second week of May 2022, The Block’s Data Dashboard shows. The most valued Azuki NFT sold for $1.4 million on March 30, 2022.

The firm behind Azuki, the Los Angeles-based Chiri Labs, brought in $30 million in Series A funding in November 2022. At that point, the firm’s valuation laid between $300 million and $400 million, The Block previously reported.

© 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.

A federal judge denied Sam Bankman-Fried’s motion to dismiss or sever most of the criminal charges he faces.

The disgraced FTX co-founder’s lawyers asked Judge Lewis Kaplan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York last month to dismiss most of the charges Bankman-Fried faces, in part arguing that some violated laws against charging a defendant with the same crime twice.

In a response on Tuesday, Kaplan denied the motions, calling them “moot or without merit.”

Bankman-Fried faces over 100 years in prison if convicted and given maximum sentence on all counts, including fraud-related charges regarding allegations that he and other FTX executives used billions in customer assets to make their own failed investments. He is currently under house arrest, confined to his parents’ home.

The criminal trial is currently scheduled for October, though Bankman-Fried’s lawyers have also requested a delay in that proceeding.

 

 

© 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.

U.S. Judge Lewis Kaplan denied several of Sam Bankman-Fried’s motions to dismiss criminal charges against him. He had previously denied the FTX founder’s remaining motions to dismiss charges.

Bitfinex has launched a peer-to-peer exchange servicing clients in Argentina, Venezuela and Colombia, the company said in a statement.

Users can buy and sell bitcoin, ether, USDT, EURT and Tether Gold. 

“By offering a reliable and efficient platform for P2P token trading, we are empowering our customers to engage with the marketplace in a way that affords maximum convenience based on their needs and preferences,” Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino said in the statement.

The move could help fill a hole left by the closures of P2P exchanges LocalBitcoin in February and Paxful in April.

© 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.

Fidelity previously applied for a spot bitcoin ETF in 2021, but the effort was rejected by the SEC.