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Economic Secretary to the Treasury Andrew Griffith reiterated the government’s position that crypto should not be treated like gambling.

The team behind Hong Kong-based Chain of Demand has built investment analytics engines for financial institutions and data providers like Bloomberg.

Trading platform eToro announced changes to its crypto offering for customers in the United States on Monday. The decision is part of eToro’s ongoing review framework, which evaluates the crypto assets it provides in light of the rapidly evolving regulatory landscape. 

eToro cites “recent developments” for the move, referring to the legal action taken by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against crypto exchanges Coinbase and Binance last week.

From 6 am ET on July 12, eToro’s U.S. customers will no longer have the ability to open new positions in Algorand (ALGO), Decentraland (MANA), Dash (DASH), and Polygon (MATIC). However, it is important to note that existing positions in these coins can still be held and sold by customers.

Collaborating with regulators

In the respective suits, the SEC alleged that all four of these cryptocurrencies, alongside others such as Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA) and Cosmos (ATOM), are securities. Despite this, eToro underlined its support for crypto assets alongside its stocks, ETFs and options offerings. It added that it was “committed to working closely with regulators around the world to shape the future of the crypto industry and champion access for the ordinary investor.” 

eToro’s delistings follow a similar announcement from Robinhood last week, with the fintech app ending support for Solana (SOL), Polygon (MATIC) and Cardano (ADA) from June 27.

© 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 core issue is whether countries should use securities law framed decades ago to categorize crypto tokens, without realizing the efforts of blockchain networks’ to transform existing financial systems, the report said.

MACD histogram is a technical indicator widely used to gauge trend strength and trend changes.

Apple has warned the creators of the decentralized social media app Damus that it will remove the app from its platform if it doesn’t issue an update to stay compliant with its policies.

“To ensure there is no interruption of the availability of your app on the App Store, please submit an update within 14 days of the date of this message,” Apple told Damus, according to a tweet by the project today. “If we do not receive an update compliant with the App Store Review Guidelines within 14 days, your app will be removed from sale.”

The warning concerns Damus’s “zaps” feature, which allows users to earn bitcoin on posts. “The simplest way to think about Zaps is that they are simply tips. Tips which are transmitted over the Lightning network at the speed of light with basically no transaction fees,” according to the Nostr protocol, on which Damus is based.

Damus integrated a Layer 2 Lighting Network widget to make bitcoin payments and tips directly on the platform.

“We noticed that your app allows users to send ‘tips’ associated with receiving content from digital content creators with a mechanism other than in-app purchase,” Apple said. “Although tips or donations may be optional, if they are connected to or associated with receiving digital content, they must use in-app purchase in accordance with guideline 3.1.1.”

Damus will have to remove the zaps feature 

Damus core developer William Casarin told The Block that the zaps feature will have to be removed to stay on the App Store, “which we will likely do,” but the app “will be removed in its current form if we don’t.”

Damus said it doesn’t sell any digital goods or provide features for selling digital goods. “It simply has a tip button for facilitating p2p [peer-to-peer] transactions like Venmo or CashApp,” it added.

If Apple removes the Damus app, it will be “a dead platform for bitcoin applications trying to innovate on lightning,” Damus said.

Nostr-based Damus was launched in February as “the social network you control.” Nostr is a decentralized social network protocol backed by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

© 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.

Decentralized lending protocol Sturdy Finance offered a $100,000 bounty to the attacker who siphoned 442 ether ($800,000) from the platform on Monday.

Sam Forman, the project’s founder, confirmed in a tweet published earlier today that his team had sent an on-chain message to the unknown attacker’s address. This message offers the perpetrator a bounty of $100,000 to return the stolen funds to a specified address owned by Sturdy, adding that the team will “advocate for no criminal charges” if the funds are returned.

“We are willing to offer you $100k as a bounty, and will not pursue you further if you send the remaining funds to 0x4e…89F5,” read Forman’s tweet, suggesting a potential reprieve for the attacker if they choose to comply.

This offer follows a security incident in which an attacker exploited a reentrancy vulnerability in one of Sturdy Finance’s liquidity pools. The vulnerability allowed the hacker to manipulate a price oracle and eventually siphon off funds.

In response to the attack, Sturdy Finance promptly suspended all of its markets to prevent further potential losses. The team reassured users that no other funds were at risk and that the platform’s security would be thoroughly investigated.

© 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.

Demand for tokenized versions of short-term U.S. government bonds has been increasing as crypto investors turn to real-world assets to earn returns on their investments.

eToro cited “recent developments” as the reason for the move, referring to the SEC’s legal action against Coinbase and Binance and the regulator labelling certain cryptocurrencies as securities.

The attackers are believed to be the infamous North Korean hacker group Lazarus, as per blockchain security firm Elliptic.