FreeCryptoCurrency.Me

Uniswap, the world’s largest decentralized exchange protocol by trade volume, has officially launched on BNB Chain, a decentralized EVM-compatible smart contract blockchain initially founded by crypto exchange Binance. The move comes after a successful governance proposal in February to deploy on BNB Chain and contentious governance deliberations to decide on a bridge solution for the deployment.

With this expansion, Uniswap Protocol users will be able to leverage BNB Chain’s low transaction fees, compared with Ethereum, to trade and swap tokens across the network.

“With BNB Chain’s thriving and dedicated community, scalability, and accessibility, it is a launchpad for all things web3, where protocols looking to reach larger audiences can grow,” said Alvin Kan, director of growth at BNB Chain. “We are delighted to see Uniswap’s continued commitment to delivering value to its users and building for the future of decentralization.”

In February, a governance proposal by 0x Plasma Labs to deploy Uniswap v3 on BNB Chain passed with more than 55 million UNI token holders voting in favor. 0x Plasma Labs stated at the time that Uniswap could look to capture up to 50% of PancakeSwap’s market share. PancakeSwap is the leading decentralized exchange on BNB Chain with $2.5 billion in total volume locked.

Uniswap’s deployment on BNB Chain means that it can capture a larger share of the decentralized exchange niche and marks a significant step towards increasing accessibility and liquidity for its users.

Wormhole was chosen as the protocol’s designated bridge to BNB Chain in a contentious governance vote, helping users transfer assets from Ethereum mainnet to BNB Chain. The vote pitted two of the space’s most active venture firms, Andreessen Horowitz and Jump Crypto, against each other. Venture firm A16z put its considerable UNI holdings to use by voting against the proposal to pick Wormhole.

© 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 tumbler ChipMixer is the target of law enforcement as American and European federal authorities took action to seize assets and dismantle the platform, according to announcement from the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation, or Europol. 

U.S. and German authorities took down the ChipMixer infrastructure for its alleged involvement in money laundering activities and seized four servers, about 1,909 bitcoins (worth $46 million) and 7TB of data. Belgian, Polish and Swiss authorities also supported the investigation.

The platform, operating since 2017, may have facilitated the laundering of 152,000 BTC ($3.8 billion) worth of crypto assets, connected to darkweb markets, ransomware, illicit goods trafficking, child exploitation material and stolen crypto.

Ransomware actors such as Zeppelin, SunCrypt, Mamba, Dharma and Lockbit have used this service to launder ransom payments, police said in the report. 

Regulators have previously eyed crypto mixers with suspicion. In August the U.S. Treasury sanctioned crypto mixer Tornado Cash for money laundering suspicions in August 2022. The protocol developer is currently detained in the Netherlands awaiting trial. 

© 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.

UK taxpayers must for the first time split out profits from crypto when filing their tax returns, the government said today. 

“The government is introducing changes to the Self Assessment tax return forms requiring amounts in respect of cryptoassets to be identified separately,” according to a statement released to accompany the government’s budget, released Wednesday. 

The changes will be introduced from the 2024-25 tax year, which would affect returns filed from 2025. 

The majority of British taxpayers don’t file tax returns, with sums owed instead removed directly from their pay. Only higher earners, the self-employed, those with complex tax affairs or those who need to declare investment income tend to need to complete forms. UK tax authorities estimate that 12 million people were due to file this year. 

Elsewhere in the announcement, the government estimated that the change will bring in £10 million ($12 million) a year from the 2025-26 fiscal year. 

© 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.

Starknet DAO is set to begin its decentralized governance with the community’s inaugural vote to green light the launch of its latest protocol upgrade, called Starknet Alpha v0.11.0.

This first phase of Starknet’s governance will focus on protocol upgrades. Community members will be able to vote on every protocol upgrade released by the Ethereum scaling solution. Every successful vote will lead to the launch of a new protocol version on the Starknet mainnet.

The Starknet Foundation says it will be playing a pivotal role in kickstarting the DAO’s governance. Established in October 2022, the Starknet Foundation is in charge of leading grants and funding for the Ethereum scaling protocol. The foundation plans to share some of its voting power with several independent delegates. This move is to ensure a diverse governance environment for the project. Other participants in this early governance period will include investors, core contributors, and other delegates.

The DAO has chosen March 21 as the start of the voting period for its next upgrade. The vote, which will happen via Snapshot, is expected to take six days to complete.

Starknet’s planned protocol upgrade will be launched on the Goerli testnet while the vote is ongoing. This will then be followed by a mainnet launch if the vote passes.

© 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 Securities and Exchange Commission will vote on new rules and changes to bolster requirements for cybersecurity, privacy and tech infrastructure that officials said could encompass cryptocurrencies. 

The five-member commission will vote Wednesday morning on issues relating to cybersecurity, the privacy of consumer financial information and technology infrastructure, such as cloud services.  

The SEC will vote on whether to propose changes to require brokers-dealers, investment companies, registered investment advisers and transfer agents to tell people when they have been affected by data breaches. A current rule requires “covered firms” to let customers know about how they use their financial information, but there is no requirement now to let them know about breaches, SEC Chair Gary Gensler said. 

“Critically, firms would need to help customers understand how to protect themselves from harm that might result from the breach,” Gensler said.  

The SEC also will vote on whether to propose a new rule requiring broker-dealers, clearinghouses and other entities to have written policies to address their cybersecurity risks. It would require market entities, excluding smaller broker-dealers to disclose to the public a description summarizing cybersecurity risks that could “materially affect the entity” and also “significant cybersecurity incidents in the current or previous calendar year,” Gensler said. 

“I believe such disclosure would help investors make informed decisions when deciding to which firms they might entrust their finances, data, and personal information,” Gensler said.  

Market entities and capital markets rely on “complex and ever-evolving information systems,” Gensler said, adding that they are systems owned or used by the entity. 

Those two proposals wouldn’t include a special carve-in or carve-out for crypto, according to an SEC official. To the extent that information systems interact with crypto, that would be covered by the cybersecurity changes, the official said.  

The last proposal would broaden Reg SCI to include the largest broker dealers, swap data repositories and certain exempt clearinghouses while bulking up policies.

Regulation SCI was adopted in 2014 to strengthen the tech infrastructure of U.S. securities markets. The rule currently applies to national securities exchanges, among others.  

An SEC official said if a national securities exchange is trading crypto securities, then the rule would apply.  

The meeting starts at 10 a.m. EDT on Wednesday.

© 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.

Ark Invest, Cathie Wood’s investment management firm, added 186,284 Block shares to three funds on Tuesday. The purchases were estimated at around $13.7 million.

Ark added 159,654 Block shares to its Ark Innovation ETF, 25,783 shares to Ark Next Generation Internet ETF and 847 shares to the Ark Fintech Innovation ETF, according to its latest trade filing. Block closed up 6% yesterday to $73.63. The purchases came to around $13.7 million based on the price at close. 

Ark added around $6.4 million worth of Block shares on Monday. Wood’s firm has been busy adding crypto and blockchain-related stocks to its various funds throughout the year. This month, the asset manager added nearly $30 million in Coinbase shares to different ETFs.

© 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 startup Tari Labs has won a temporary restraining order against bitcoin developer Lighting Labs’ Taro protocol.

Lightning announced the protocol in April of last year. It aims to be used for issuing assets on the Bitcoin blockchain, which can then be transferred over the Lightning Network. Lightning Labs itself has been around since 2016 and develops software to power Bitcoin’s Layer 2 Lightning Network.

Tari Labs founded its Tari protocol, which enables the transfer of digital assets from tickets to virtual goods, in 2020. Tari owns the U.S. registered trademark for Tari for various cryptocurrency trading and exchange services. The blockchain platform filed a complaint in the Northern District of California against Lightning Labs last year for copyright infringement. It alleges that its Taro protocol and platform bears similar name to its own trademark and offers similar services.

Temporary restraining order

U.S. District Judge William Orrick granted a motion on Monday that restrains Lightning Labs from making external updates to its Taro protocol and from announcing the next stage of the  protocol. The order will restrain Lightning Labs until a hearing on any motion for dissolution of the temporary restraining order occurs.

“Tari makes a strong showing of success on the merits and meets the statutory rule for a rebuttable presumption of irreparable harm, which Lightning fails to rebut,” said Orrick in the motion filing. “The balance of equities and public interest factors are less strong but at this stage, favor Tari.”

Tari Labs is backed by investors including Pantera, Blockchain Capital and Multicoin. It’s also developed the Tari Aurora wallet for holding digital assets. 

“We cannot allow a competitor to sow confusion in the marketplace by trading on the good will associated with our name and offering nearly identical services under a nearly identical name, which we were using first,” said Naveen Jain, CEO of Tari Labs, in a release. “Consumers and developers will be harmed if they get confused between whether they are dealing with Tari or Taro assets.  We hope Lightning Labs will do the right thing and change their name.”

© 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.

CNHC Group, the issuer of the CNHC stablecoin that is pegged 1:1 to the offshore Chinese yuan, raised $10 million in funding.

KuCoin Ventures led the deal, the crypto investment firm said Wednesday. Other investors included Circle and IDG Capital.

This was a Series A+ equity funding round, CNHC co-founder Joy Cham told The Block. CNHC began raising the round last March and closed it in August, Cham said, adding that the company has previously raised “tens of millions dollars in the time span of last two years,” without disclosing an amount.

The CNHC stablecoin was launched in 2021 for use cases including money transfers and cross-border trade settlements. It is currently issued on the Ethereum and Conflux blockchains, and its total supply is around 15 million tokens (worth roughly $2 million), according to Cham. Tether’s CNHT’s current total supply is about 20 million tokens.

With the fresh funding, CNHC aims to grow the adoption of its stablecoin, especially in the Asia Pacific region. To that end, the company is moving its headquarters to Hong Kong from the Cayman Islands, Cham said.

Hong Kong crypto hub

Hong Kong recently announced its ambition to become a crypto hub by unveiling a plan to lift a ban on retail crypto trading. Last month, Hong Kong’s financial secretary Paul Chan reportedly said he will establish and lead a task force on “virtual-asset development, with members from relevant policy bureaux, financial regulators and market participants, to provide recommendations on the sustainable and responsible development of the sector.”

Cham said CNHC wants to become “part of the foundation and infrastructure in Hong Kong web3 ecosystem” and will look to list the stablecoin on more centralized and decentralized exchanges and expand its on- and off-ramp services.

To that end, CNHC also plans to increase its team of around 60 people by hiring across functions, including operations, compliance and business development, said Cham.

Along with its investment in CNHC, KuCoin Ventures today also disclosed its $10 million investment in Conflux made early last year. Conflux, a Layer 1 blockchain developer, recently raised $10 million from DWF Labs.

Last week, New York State Attorney General Letitia James sued the KuCoin crypto exchange, saying it is an unregistered commodities and securities broker or dealer in the state. 

© 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.

Episode 23 of Season 5 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Architect Founder & CEO Brett Harrison.

Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Feedback and revision requests can be sent to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.

After leaving his role as President of FTX.US late last year, Brett Harrison has moved on to become the Founder and CEO of Architect — a soon-to-be-released trading platform aiming to unify crypto’s CeFi and DeFi capital markets.

In this episode, Harrison discusses the market opportunities created by Silvergate’s and Signature Bank’s closures, as well as why his long-term vision is that “the trading of crypto looks very much like the trading of everything else.”

During this episode, Chaparro and Harrison also discuss:

• What pain-points Architect’s product addresses
• Regulators’ evolving views towards crypto
• How Harrison’s relationship with SBF deteriorated

This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Circle, Railgun, Flare Network

About Circle
Circle is a global financial technology company helping money move at internet speed. Our mission is to raise global economic prosperity through the frictionless exchange of value. Visit Circle.com to learn more.

About Railgun
Railgun is a private DeFi solution on Ethereum, BSC, Arbitrum and Polygon. Shield any ERC-20 token and any NFT into a Private Balance and let Railgun’s zero-knowledge cryptography encrypt your address, balance and transaction history. You can also bring privacy to your project with Railgun SDK, and be sure to check out Railgun with partner project Railway Wallet, also available on iOS and Android. Visit Railgun.org to find out more.

About Flare
Flare is an EVM-based Layer 1 blockchain designed to allow developers to build applications that can use data from other blockchains and the internet. By providing decentralized access to a wide variety of high-integrity data from other blockchains and the internet, Flare enables new use cases and monetization models. Build better and connect everything at Flare.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.

Cosmos Hub, the first of the Cosmos-based blockchains, released Replicated Security in a bid to position itself more centrally in the Cosmos ecosystem.

Originally called Interchain Security, this mechanism will let other blockchains drop their own validators and switch to Cosmos Hub’s security and set of validators. The new product should provide more security options for chains in the Cosmos ecosystem and boost the presence of the Cosmos Hub.

“It will allow projects to launch [application-specific blockchains] but then also be able to have the full security of the Cosmos Hub,” Jehan Tremback, product manager for the Cosmos Hub team at Informal Systems, said in an interview.

Boosting options for app-chains

Since every application in the Cosmos ecosystem has its own blockchain, it can be expensive for each chain to maintain its own level of security. This will provide an alternative way for those chains to operate without disregarding security.

“It really leverages one of the Cosmos Hub’s big strengths. It has a high market cap and a lot of recognition, having been around the longest,” said Tremback. “Replicated Security allows the Cosmos Hub to leverage that high market cap to do something useful with it — to lend the security to other chains.”

Replicated Security will also help to make Cosmos Hub a bigger presence in the wider ecosystem and provide more use for its native atom token.

“Right now atom is a staking token but just for Cosmos Hub. With Replicated Security it’s going to become a staking token for Cosmos Hub and all the projects that are getting security from Cosmos Hub,” Tremback said.

How will it work?

For a blockchain to take part in Replicated Security, the team behind it will need to go through the governance process on the Cosmos Hub. This will let validators en masse decide which chains they’re willing to support. (Tremback noted that a future update should let validators select chains they want to support on a one-by-one basis — providing more flexibility).

When this happens, the stake that’s put up on Cosmos Hub will be used to secure the transactions made on the other networks that are using this system. It means Cosmos Hub validators will need to run validators for the other networks. If the validator doesn’t conform to the requirements, their stake on the Cosmos Hub could get slashed.

Such validators can use the atom they have staked on the Cosmos Hub and earn extra rewards from these other chains. These rewards will be paid out in either atom or the blockchain’s native token. Validators will need to decide whether the rewards are worth the cost of running the extra validators on the other chains.

Growing demand for more security options

Replicated Security is one approach targeting the need in the Cosmos ecosystem for application-specific chains to have more ways of securing their networks.

Osmosis, another chain in the Cosmos ecosystem, is pushing for its own solution called Mesh Security. This works similarly to Replicated Security but it allows for any validator set to provide security for another blockchain.

A project called Babylon has taken quite a different approach to solving the same problem. It has looked outside the Cosmos ecosystem to Bitcoin for security. The idea here is that any chain can, through its network, have their blocks confirmed on the Bitcoin blockchain. This isn’t set to replace the blockchain’s security, but to enhance it.

© 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.