FreeCryptoCurrency.Me

AntPool, operated by mining giant Bitmain, said that it will not maintain clients’ assets on Ethereum after the blockchain moves to proof-of-stake next month in The Merge.

The Merge will transition Ethereum from proof-of-work (PoW) consensus to proof-of-stake (PoS), which will remove the need for transactions to be verified by miners. 

AntPool is a mining pool on Ethereum where several users can plug in their computational resources and share processing power to mine rewards. Antpool pays users’ mining rewards into their accounts.

In a Saturday blog post, the company said it won’t be able to maintain clients’ assets on the Ethereum 2.0 network and revealed a plan to settle up with them before The Merge.

After Ethereum’s PoS upgrade, the firm will cease maintenance of individual client assets mainly because of the “risk of censorship.” This stems from growing concerns that Ethereum validators may be coerced into engaging in censorship of transactions tied to US sanctions on Tornado Cash.

“As ETH2.0 (The Merge) comes along with the risk of censorship among different countries, ANTPOOL, for the sake of clients’ asset security, will not be able to maintain the user’s ETH assets on the PoS chain,” it said

When Ethereum transitions to proof of stake, validators will be processing transactions on the network. However, validators are largely controlled by staking providers. For example, US-based providers including Lido Finance, Coinbase, Bitcoin Suisse, Kraken and staked.us control about 60% of the 416,000 validator nodes on the Ethereum network. 

If staking validators agree to comply with the US sanctions, they can start filtering transactions associated with Tornado Cash on the base layer. Still, it remains to be seen if such censorship will happen as Ethereum transitions to PoS.

AntPool asked its clients to add their own private addresses to their accounts by September 3. The firm will then distribute the accumulated PoW mining payouts to the private addresses.

Meanwhile, AntPool has also thrown its weight behind proof-of-work (PoW) blockchains, including Bitcoin and Ethereum Classic, which it says rely on “decentralized PoW consensus.” Earlier, AntPool had not only supported Ethereum Classic but also made a $10 million investment in its ecosystem.

© 2022 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.

It was relatively calmer in crypto this week. Still, there were some key developments in the last several days. 

Major crypto assets slid, the Ethereum Foundation confirmed dates for The Merge, and finally stablecoin issuer Tether said that it wasn’t yet complying with Tornado Cash-related sanctions.

Ether and Bitcoin slide after Fed chair speaks on interest hike

First up, here’s a quick review of the market. This past week ended with major cryptocurrencies, bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH), declining in price after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said he plans to raise US interest rates further to bring down inflation.

Usually, an interest rate hike means bad news for riskier assets like cryptocurrencies. As such, the certainty of Fed rate hikes hit crypto markets. Since Powell’s remarks on Friday morning, bitcoin has fallen 7% as it went from $21,750 to now trading at $20,200, per CoinGecko.  

Ether (ETH), the second-largest crypto asset, took a steeper downturn. Since Friday, ETH has fallen by more than 11%, declining from about $1,700 to now around $1500. ETH hit a new multi-week high of about $2,000 on 14 August. Still, that rally has faded amid weak buying interest as the Fed’s monetary policy news took precedence over market sentiments.

The Merge dates confirmed

Even if the market trend remains bearish, The Merge brings hope regarding a development to which many in the crypto space are looking forward. On Wednesday, the Ethereum Foundation confirmed that The Merge is now less than three weeks away. The Ethereum team has planned a switch to proof of stake since 2016 and it looks like it’s finally closing in on the goal.

The foundation released a final update detailing The Merge schedule. The process will begin with the Bellatrix upgrade on September 6. After this, the proof-of-work chain will migrate to proof-of-stake upon hitting a specific total difficulty value, estimated to occur on September 15. 

Tether says it’s not freezing Tornado Cash addresses

On August 8, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) placed sanctions on Tornado Cash, a smart contract privacy tool and mixer on Ethereum, saying that criminals had used the service to launder more than $7 billion worth of virtual currency. OFAC also placed sanctions on 44 crypto addresses tied to the app. 

 During the week, Tether, issuer of USD Tether (USDT), released a statement saying that it cannot now comply with the sanctions by freezing assets in the sanctioned addresses. Tether said it had not received any requests from US law enforcement regarding the sanctioned addresses with ties to Tornado Cash. Tether added that “unilaterally freezing secondary market addresses could be a highly disruptive and reckless move.” 

This came in sharp contrast to Circle, the USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin, which had voluntarily frozen more than 75,000 USDC held in addresses sanctioned by OFAC shortly after the sanctions were announced. 

Meanwhile, the crypto sector is monitoring the discussion on potential implications of Tornado Cash sanctions. On Tuesday, Representative Tom Emmer, R-Minn., wrote a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen asking how the department will enforce the sanctions.

© 2022 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.

Vivek Sharma, vice president of Meta’s Horizon social media virtual reality (VR) software, is leaving the company, CNBC reported on Friday, citing a company spokesperson. 

Sharma had been with Meta for six years in various positions. 

The report said that Sharma oversaw VR projects including the Horizon Worlds social media service, Horizon Workrooms and the Horizon Venues app. 

The Horizon team will now report directly to Vishal Shah, Meta’s VP of the metaverse, CNBC said. 

Last month, Meta reported earnings of $28.8 billion and earnings per share of $2.46 for the second quarter, both below estimates. 

© 2022 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 Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is asking for detailed information from licensed cryptocurrency companies and from some applicants, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

“In light of the various insolvencies and counterparty defaults which have plagued the crypto industry recently, the MAS is likely to be assessing the need for additional regulatory measures to mitigate the risks that led to these distressed scenarios,” Hagen Rooke, a partner at law firm Reed Smith LLP in Singapore, told Bloomberg.

In particular, Singapore-based hedge fund Three Arrows Capital filed for bankruptcy in early July, while later that month crypto exchange Zipmex filed for protection against creditors and crypto lender Vauld halted withdrawals.

Bloomberg said the MAS is asking companies for detailed information on crypto assets they hold, lending and borrowing counterparties and amounts loaned as well as top tokens staked via decentralized-finance protocols.

An MAS spokesperson told Bloomberg in response to a query about the requests: “Licensees and applicants are expected to notify MAS of any events that materially impede or impair the operations of the entity, including any matter which may affect its solvency or ability to meet its financial, statutory, contractual or other obligations.”

© 2022 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 crypto exchange SushiSwap’s governance community has voted to reduce the compensation for its chief executive position – or “Head Chef,” in its parlance.

In SushiSwap’s initial proposal, the compensation for the Head Chef role was 800,000 USDC in base salary and 600,000 vested SUSHI tokens, among additional incentives.

The initial proposal and bonus incentives faced significant pushback from the community. This concern was made clear in the first line of the new proposal. “The community has expressed concerns around incorporating both the compensation and the candidate together into one proposal,” the text of the newer proposal, shared by community lead Tangle, states. 

This separation would give the community more flexibility to align on the compensation without having to vote against the broader plan.

The incentives initially included price target incentives for the new hire, which, if maintained over a one-year period, would exceed over $10 million.

The new incentive structure passed today will reduce the base salary to 500,000 USDC. It also will reduce the total amount of SUSHI tokens for the incentive structure from 1.2 million to 1 million tokens.

A vote that would maintain the current price target ranges was the biggest point of contention but passed with a 53% to 47% split among the 40 voters.

In addition, the community will also revote on the previously confirmed new hire to ensure community alignment on the proposal.

Jon Howard, who was proposed as the new Head Chef in the initial proposal, won that previous vote. Now, SushiSwap will hold another poll to vote on Jon Howard’s appointment to the Head Chef role, potentially alongside other candidates.

SushiSwap’s search for a new leader followed the departure of former Head Chef Maki in September 2021. The exchange holds roughly $661 million in total locked value as of press time, according to DeFiLlama.

© 2022 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.

Voyager is extending the timeline for its bidding and restructuring processes, the firm said in a blog post this week.

Originally, bids were to be submitted by today with a sale hearing slated for September 8. Now, the firm says it’s moved the deadline to September 6 at noon EST with a sale hearing to take place on September 29.

“Separately, since the establishment of a bid deadline for Voyager, existing and potentially new bidders have requested additional time to get information and submit their offers,” said the firm.

Bids may take a variety of forms, from simply offering to purchase the firm’s assets to proposing a restructuring plan or even offering assistance in the reorganization. When all the bids are in, Voyager counsel will examine which proposals provide the most value for customers and creditors, though the proposals may range considerably in what they offer, from a dollar amount to level of assistance in the reorganization.

Bidders are kept confidential during the process, with approved parties signing confidentiality agreements and the court-approved bidding procedures stipulating, “there must be no communications between and amongst Acceptable Bidders, unless the Debtors, after consultation with the Committee, have previously authorized such communication in writing.” However, FTX and its sister firm Alameda caused a stir when it publicized its offer two weeks after Voyager declared bankruptcy. Though the bidding procedures were not yet finalized, the move put the firms at odds with Voyager’s counsel, who said that FTX had submitted a lowball offer and by publicizing it the firm had failed to respect the bidding process.

FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried has touted the offer as a means of providing early liquidity and a way for customers to receive a portion of their assets without a longer and more expensive bankruptcy process.

“The goal of our joint proposal is to help establish a better way to resolve an insolvent crypto business – a way that allows customers to obtain early liquidity and reclaim a portion of their assets without forcing them to speculate on bankruptcy outcomes and take one-sided risks,” he said in a statement in late July when FTX and Alameda announced their bid.

Because of FTX’s public statements, counsel said in a recent hearing presentation, some companies had expressed concerns that FTX had a leg up in the process, discouraging them from bidding. Counsel sought to dispel that notion, saying it had already received bids “that are higher and better than AlamedaFTX’s proposal.” Counsel also sent a cease and desist letter to the firm regarding its public statements, saying its tweets, press releases, and a TV interview were inaccurate. FTX did not immediately respond to request for comment.

Voyager entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in July after halting activity on its platform. As of August 4, Voyager counsel said 22 parties were in meaningful discussions to place bids and that multiple offers had been received. 

© 2022 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 crypto market was in the red on Friday, in line with broader financial markets.  

Bitcoin is down over 4% in the past 24 hours, trading at $20,689 at the time of writing, Coinbase data show. Elsewhere, ether shed 7.8% in the same period to trade at $1,582.  

Ether had enjoyed several weeks of unbridled growth, rising 18% in a week, as traders bet on The Merge – the Ethereum Foundation confirmed the dates this week. However, it appears the Merge rally has dissipated for now, as the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization dropped 14.5% in the past seven days.  

Friday’s market movement is broadly in line with wider financial markets, which appear to be reacting to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s speech today in Jackson Hole, Wyo. Crypto markets initially dipped during the speech before showing brief signs of stabilizing prior to a sell-off before lunch. 

Price stability is the responsibility of the Federal Reserve and serves as the bedrock of our economy. Without price stability, the economy does not work for anyone. 

As Powell spoke, and in the hours following, stocks sank lower, the yield curve inverted further and short-term yields rose. The Nasdaq 100 composite is down more than 2.5% so far on Friday, while the S&P 500 sank a little more than 2%, at the time of writing, according to data via TradingView. 

Bitcoin’s correlation with stocks has risen throughout the year, growing incrementally since the beginning of January as inflation soared around the globe and the Fed first started murmuring about rate hikes. 

© 2022 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 Taliban are clamping down on cryptocurrency traders in Afghanistan, according to a report from Bloomberg.  

A senior Afghan police officer, Sayed Shah Sa’adaat, spoke with Bloomberg about the crackdown, which has seen 13 people detained so far. Saadat said it came as a response to some Afghans storing their money in crypto to keep it away from the Taliban. 

“The central bank gave us an order to stop all money changers, individuals, and businesspeople from trading fraudulent digital currencies like what is commonly referred to as Bitcoin,” he said.

More than 20 crypto-related businesses have been shut down in the country’s third largest city, Herat, where three-quarters of the country’s crypto brokerages are located, per Bloomberg’s report. 

Afghanistan’s economy has suffered in the year since the Taliban took control, according to the Financial Times, as large parts of the country have been pushed further into poverty. As shown in the chart below, unemployment in the country jumped sharply last year according to data collected by the World Bank.

Source: tradingeconomics.com

The Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan prior to the US-led invasion in 2001, retook control of the country amid the final withdrawal of US forces. The BBC reported in March that the use of crypto had grown more attractive in Afghanistan amid sanctions imposed by the US following the Taliban takeover. 

© 2022 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 Senate Agriculture Committee is preparing a hearing on a bill that would drastically alter regulation for crypto exchanges, according to five sources with knowledge of the matter. 

The bill in question is the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act, which if passed and signed into law would establish a mandatory regime for crypto exchanges to report to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Committee chair Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and ranking member John Boozman, R-Ark., introduced the bill at the beginning of August. 

The committee is currently planning the hearing for the middle of September, with three sources naming the 15th as the likely date. The witness list remains in flux, which is often the case until days before a hearing.  

A representative for Stabenow said in an email to The Block that he couldn’t confirm the hearing “yet.”

With midterms looming in November, the bill’s chances of becoming law during the current congressional session are slim. The hearing does, however, indicate optimism for the survival of the bill — or at least its core provisions — in the next Congress, which will begin in January.

Currently, crypto exchanges operating in the US do not report to a federal trading regulator, instead relying on a combination of state money transmitter licensing regimes and making certain disclosures to federal anti-money laundering authorities. 

Particularly, as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) under chairman Gary Gensler has suggested that crypto exchanges are actually unregistered securities exchanges, the crypto industry has grown friendlier with the CFTC and begun pushing for a licensing and regulation regime with the smaller regulator. FTX has been particularly active in the conversation, with the firm hiring Hill staffers and former CFTC Commissioner Mark Wetjen, and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried becoming a mainstay presence in Washington. 

The CFTC, for its part, stands to expand significantly with new authorities over a burgeoning market. In traditional commodities markets, the CFTC does not have regulatory authority over spot markets. Chairman Rostin Behnam noted the need to increase the CFTC’s budget and staff in a February hearing before the committee — a hearing at which Bankman-Fried also appeared. 

Behnam is also popular with the Agriculture Committee and formerly served as Stabenow’s senior counsel.

“To say I was excited about Russ’s nomination would be an understatement. I was very fortunate to work with Russ for several years,” said Stabenow at his confirmation hearing. “I’ve even heard that Russ keeps a poster of Michigan Agriculture in his office.” 

The SEC and its Congressional overseers, the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee, remain obstacles to the bill’s future uptake. The Senate and House Agriculture Committees maintain that by sticking with select digital asset commodities, namely bitcoin and ether, they avoid treading on the other’s jurisdiction. 

© 2022 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 giant Coinbase is open to listing tokens associated with the Ethereum proof-of-work (PoW) fork after the blockchain’s merge to a less energy intensive system.  

The planned fork, known as ETHPoW, aims to split away from the Ethereum main network and continue mining operations after Ethereum transitions to a proof-of-stake system (PoS) consensus during what’s called the Merge. That would result in two blockchains, each with their own versions of the protocols and tokens running on the chain. Ethereum’s transition into a PoS system promises to reduce the blockchain’s energy consumption and carbon emissions by 99%. But miners want a PoW fork to continue mining profitable coins.

“At Coinbase, our goal is to list every asset that is legal and safe to list, so that we create a level playing field for all the new assets being created in crypto while continuing to protect our customers,” Coinbase wrote in a recently updated blog post. “Should an ETH PoW fork arise following The Merge, this asset will be reviewed with the same rigor as any other asset that is listed on our exchange.” 

While Coinbase is promising to review assets from the ETH PoW fork, it’s also planning ahead for the PoS fork. The exchange launched its own liquid staking service and token to diversify the Ethereum staking market on August 24.  

Crypto exchanges Poloniex, MEXC and BitMEX are also promising to list tokens from the miner-led fork.

© 2022 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.