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The path of least resistance for bitcoin may be on the higher side due to inter-market factors, optimism from BlackRock’s ETF filing and safe haven flows.

Binance Markets Limited (BML), the United Kingdom-based subsidiary of Binance, has officially canceled its registration with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

The UK watchdog confirmed that BML is not permitted to undertake any regulated activity in the United Kingdom following the cancellation of BML’s permissions, according to a June 7 update on its website. 

“Binance Markets Limited has recently submitted a cancellation request of their FCA permissions which was completed on 30 May 2023 and is reflected on the FCA Register,” it said. “Following the completion of the cancellation of permissions the firm is no longer authorised by the FCA. No other entity in the Binance Group holds any form of UK authorization or registration to conduct regulated business in the UK.” 

The UK regulator originally issued Binance a notice to “seek prior written consent of the FCA in order to undertake any regulated activities in the UK” in 2021.

Ilir Laro, Binance’s sub-regional manager for growth in the UK and Europe, said the deregistration with the FCA does not impact the exchange’s operations, since BML had never conducted any regulated business in the UK, Finance Magnates reported. BML was acquired by Binance Group in 2020, intending to launch a regulated business, but the plan did not come to fruition.

Earlier in May at the Financial Times Crypto and Digital Assets Summit, Binance’s chief strategy officer Patrick Hillmann said the crypto exchange was looking to become regulated in the UK amid regulatory challenges in the U.S.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Binance earlier this month, alleging it had violated U.S. securities laws.

Last week, Binance also announced it was exiting the Netherlands after failing to acquire regulatory approval. It also applied to deregister its local entity in Cyprus and is reportedly under investigation in France for alleged money laundering.

© 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.

An Ethereum-based CryptoPunks NFT has been “migrated” to Bitcoin, the first time this has happened intentionally. This means it was removed from circulation on Ethereum and linked to a newly created Ordinals inscription on Bitcoin. 

CryptoPunk #8611 sold for approximately 55 ETH ($95,000) over the weekend. Shortly after, it was burned and recreated as Ordinals inscription 12,456,749 on Bitcoin, mirroring the image of the original Ethereum CryptoPunk. Ordinals launched earlier this year to create NFT-type assets on Bitcoin despite its lack of native support for tokens and NFTs. 

The BRC-721E token standard, unveiled in May, enabled a “bridge” for users to move NFTs from Ethereum to Bitcoin Ordinals via “teleburning.” It’s a one-way move, so there’s no turning back, and the NFT cannot now return to Ethereum ecosystem. Plus, when this happens the new token won’t have the same privileges as those in the original collection.

The idea behind the move was a collaborative initiative led by Nathan Stein, a Wolf Capital developer supported by the Bitcoin Bandits NFT collection community, Decrypt first reported. Around 150 individuals pooled their funds together for the cause, which aimed to demonstrate the symbolic transition of valuable assets from Ethereum to Bitcoin. The goal is to create a series of Ordinals inscriptions that represent fractional ownership in the CryptoPunk, even though the NFT itself is no longer owned on its original chain.

When an asset is burned, it is permanently stored in an address beyond anyone’s control. CryptoPunk #8611 was sent to one such burn address, which also contains over $50 million worth of ether and other tokens — that can no longer be spent.

While it appears to be the first-ever CryptoPunk to have migrated from Ethereum to Bitcoin intentionally, this transition has happened before. In March, CryptoPunk #685, which was owned by Brando Riley and worth 77 ETH ($129,000), was mistakenly sent to a burn address, causing significant loss for the trader. 

In response, community member Olliesblog resurrected the NFT on Bitcoin to become the first CryptoPunk Ordinal. “Huge thanks to @olliesblog for being so kind and selfless in resurrecting Punk 685 for me. He now lives on the Bitcoin blockchain as an ordinal, inscribed on a satoshi from over a decade ago,” Riley said at the time.

In February, Bitcoin-focused investor Jason Williams burned Bored Ape #1626 from the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection for an Ordinals inscription. “The NFT community is moving to BTC, where Ordinals have brought true scarcity to collectibles. I forever inscribed “The Blonde Don” BAYC #1626 on the world’s scarcest and most secure chain burning him off ETH forever using teleburn. It’s done. Over. Not coming back to ETH,” Williams said.

© 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.

Ethereum core developers are considering raising the maximum validator balance from the current 32 ether (ETH) to 2,048 ether per validator.

As it stands, Ethereum validators are subject to an effective balance cap set at both the minimum and maximum of 32 ETH. This forces large-scale staking operations to spin up multiple validators if they want to earn yield on any amount greater than this.

Unsurprisingly, this practice has led to a big increase in the number of validators. There are currently 600,000 active validators and an additional 90,000 awaiting activation in the queue.

Michael Neuder, an Ethereum Foundation researcher and key proponent of the proposed change, made the case for this increase, during the most recent Ethereum core developer consensus meeting held on Friday. He said while the current validator cap promotes decentralization, it inadvertently leads to an inflation of the validator set size.

Neuder said that raising the cap could slow down the expansion of the active validator set — ultimately improving the network’s efficiency in terms of achieving finality within a single Ethereum slot.

Auto-compounding validator rewards on Ethereum

The proposed increased cap will also introduce the possibility of auto-compounding validator rewards, according to Neuder. At present, rewards earned beyond the 32 ETH cap must be redirected elsewhere to generate any staking yield. If the cap were to be lifted and raised, these rewards could immediately be compounded, providing validators with an effective means to earn more from their staked ETH.

Moreover, the proposal claims to address the operational concerns of larger node operators, including exchanges like Coinbase, which currently maintain tens of thousands of validators due to the existing 32 ETH cap per validator.

Raising the maximum effective validator balance would allow such operators to manage fewer, but higher stake validators, which could potentially translate into less complexity. Neuder warned, however, of the associated risks, including potentially higher penalties for accidental double attestations or proposals, also known as “slashing.”

This proposal continues to be under debate among the core developers, who have agreed to further discuss the implementation details of this proposal on social platforms such as ETHMagicians and Discord.

© 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 AMF wants industry stakeholders to contribute to a discussion about its views on supervising DeFi, DAOs and associated risks.

Frax Finance’s founder Sam Kazemian expressed support for a proposal from Ouroboros Capital that pushes for a more aggressive token buyback strategy.

Frax Share (FXS) is known for its current buyback strategy, where the project buys and burns the same amount of FXS over a predetermined timeframe, irrespective of any price fluctuations. The project has a $20 million fund for this purpose.

Ouroboros Capital, a cryptocurrency investment research firm, put forward a proposal on June 16 calling for a proactive optimization of the current token buyback strategy.

The proposal suggested a time-weighted average price (TWAP) buyback worth $1 million to be initiated when the FXS price dips below $5. If the price further slides to below $4, an additional $1 million buyback, set for a 1-month duration, is proposed to be activated. The key premise here is to purchase more FXS tokens for subsequent burning, as the price falls further.

This comes as the price of FXS — currently at $5.30 — falls toward $5, according to CoinGecko.

“I believe that the most judicious use of our revenue and capital is to buy and burn the FXS supply,” Kazemian told The Block. “Especially given the low valuations in a mature ecosystem due to macro market conditions and the state of the global economy, I can’t envisage a more effective use of capital.”

Kazemian expressed agreement with the general idea of accelerating the TWAP mechanism as the price drops to $4, $3 and $2, echoing Ouroboros Capital’s suggestion. “If the price continues to fall, we should buy back more tokens more aggressively,” he 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.

At one point, Wyre was set to be acquired for over $1 billion. Now, it’s shutting down. 

The crypto payments firm said Friday evening that it plans to wind down its operations, citing “market conditions.”

“We made this decision to protect the best interest of our key stakeholders and customers,” the firm said in a tweet. “This decision is not due to any regulatory agency direction. Wyre continues to secure customer assets.”

The firm plans to keep withdrawals open to clients until July 14 after which point it will have a process to recover assets left on the platform.

Founded in 2013, Wyre has offered fiat-to-crypto infrastructure to companies operating in the crypto market. 

In April 2022, the firm was set to be acquired by checkout and shopper network firm Bolt in a deal that valued Wyre at a $1.5 billion — making it one of the biggest crypto deals to be announced. 

The firms’ ambitions at the time were to “decentralize commerce — uniting their technologies to evolve and simplify digital shopping.”

The firms announced in September the deal’s termination, joining a flurry of fintech deals that have fallen apart including deals between UBS and Wealthfront and Galaxy Digital and BitGo. 

Wyre initially raised nearly $30 million from a number of investors, including the Stellar Development Foundation and crypto venture fund Pantera.

© 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 Crypto.com has been operating internal proprietary trading teams, according to a report by the Financial Times. 

Citing five anonymous sources, the business publication reported Monday that the Singapore-based exchange has attempted to obfuscate the trading operations, with one source telling the FT that employees were requested by management to “say there is no internal market maker type operation.”

Crypto.com denied any improper relationship between the internal trading operation, which it described as an internal market maker, and its exchange. People familiar with the operations told the FT the desks trade on Crypto.com’s exchange as well as other venues with the goal of making money “and not facilitating an exchange.”

“We have an internal market maker that operates on the Crypto.com exchange and that internal market maker is treated exactly the same as third-party market makers that identically facilitate tight spreads and efficient markets on our platform,” a Crypto.com spokesperson told the FT. 

Internal trading operations have long been a controversial, yet common occurrence in crypto, with firms like BitMEX and Binance historically operating desks to maintain liquid markets. Still, opponents of the business model say it could open the door to conflicts of interest and the potential for front-running of customer trades. 

In its suit against Coinbase and Binance, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission called out the integrated model of both venues. 

“The Coinbase Platform merges three functions that are typically separated in traditional securities markets—those of brokers, exchanges, and clearing agencies,” the SEC said in its complaint. 

© 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 bank said it expects blockchain infrastructure and tokenization to transform financial and non-financing infrastructure and markets over the next five to 10 years.

The total value locked has increased by 12% in one week, according to data source L2Beat.