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Ava Labs has launched a new bridge solution allowing users to directly transfer funds between Bitcoin network and Avalanche, a high performance Layer 1 blockchain that offers compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine.

On Wednesday, Ava Labs released the Avalanche-Bitcoin bridge as part of its new browser-based web3 wallet called Core. The bridge will tokenize the top crypto asset as an Avalanche-based token called BTC.b, allowing it to be used on Avalanche’s DeFi protocols including Platypus and TraderJoe.

The bridging process works by locking up an amount of bitcoin and issuing an equivalent number of tokens on Avalanche, a process called wrapping. The team claims that the wrapping setup on the bridge is non-custodial, unlike other popular Ethereum-based tokenized bitcoin solutions, including wrapped bitcoin (WBTC).

For every WBTC that exists on Ethereum, there is a bitcoin that is held in a centrally controlled smart contract, which some critics believe exposes users to counter-party risk and trust issues. Ava Labs claims its bridge does not have the same issues.

“We are still wrapping BTC to BTC.b. The difference is that we are starting with native BTC (instead of wrapped WBTC on Ethereum), then wrapping the asset on Avalanche to BTC.b,” a spokesperson from Ava Labs told The Block.

The bridge’s browser extension page says the bridge relies on Intel SGX (Software Guard Extensions), the same technology used in Avalanche’s bridge connecting with Ethereum. In the future, this bridge will also give bitcoin users access to Avalanche subnets such as DeFi Kingdoms and Swimmer, as well as other blockchain networks like Ethereum.

© 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.

Coinbase Pro, a tool for advanced traders using Coinbase, will be shut down later this year. 

The exchange said on Wednesday that its advanced trading platform will be phased out by the end of 2022. The pro platform was launched in 2018 for advanced traders looking to conduct technical analysis and place trades by interacting directly with the Coinbase order book. 

Coinbase is instead incorporating advanced trading features into Coinbase.com, giving customers access to its decentralized app wallet, staking and borrowing.

These new features were announced at the beginning of March and are currently available online. Advanced trade features will be available on the Coinbase mobile app in the coming weeks, according to Wednesday’s announcement.

This comes as the exchange faces renewed competition from competitors, including Binance. The exchange’s US affiliate, Binance.US, revealed it was removing fees for certain bitcoin trades on Wednesday.

Shares in Coinbase, which laid off 18% of its staff on June 14, plunged during trading on Wednesday — closing down 9.7%.

© 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), the country’s central bank and financial regulator, will not tolerate bad behavior in the crypto industry, according to its chief fintech officer, Sopnendu Mohanty.

“We have no tolerance for any market bad behaviour,” Mohanty told The Financial Times in an interview published on Thursday. “If somebody has done a bad thing, we are brutal and unrelentingly hard.”

Mohanty’s comments come amid crypto market turbulence caused by the collapse of Singapore-based Terraform Labs’ two tokens — terraUSD (UST) and terra (luna) — which wiped out $40 billion of investor wealth.

The implosion of Terra has led to crises for another Singapore-based crypto firm, hedge fund Three Arrows Capital. The fund suffered significant losses on its luna investment and the subsequent market downturn led to forced liquidations. Three Arrows Capital is unable to pay its debt, and as a result, several lenders are facing financial problems, including BlockFi and Voyager. Both recently received credit facilities from FTX’s sister firm, Alameda Research.

According to Mohanty, the current market turmoil is a result of the world at large being lost in “private currency.”

He went on to suggest that the MAS will not easily grant licenses to crypto firms. The regulator has enforced a “painfully slow” and “extremely draconian due diligence process” for licensing crypto firms, he said.

To date, the MAS has approved only 14 companies to offer crypto services. Earlier this week, the regulator gave in-principle approval to Crypto.com, Genesis and crypto trading platform Sparrow.

Overall, there has been a stark change in how Singapore views the crypto industry. The country previously openly courted the sector, but in recent months amid its harsher approach, crypto firms have moved to other countries, including Dubai.

© 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.

Most bitcoin mining stocks were down on Wednesday, as bitcoin’s price again dipped below $20,000.

As of press time, Bitcoin’s price was at around $19,800, according to TradingView.

Argo Blockchain fell 13.49% on the London Stock Exchange and -3.15% on Nasdaq, after seeing its stock rise the day before by 13.91% and 18.09%, respectively.

Riot, Cipher Mining and Iris Energy also had significant losses — 9.63%, 8.82% and 7.91%, respectively.

Bit Digital announced its first-quarter 2022 financial report. By the end of the trading session, its stock was down by 4.64%.

Here’s how crypto mining companies performed on Wednesday, June 22:

© 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 Ontario Securities Commission has scored more courtroom wins against unregistered crypto exchanges. 

In two legal proceedings finalized on June 21 and 22, the OSC has barred Kucoin from Ontario and settled with Bybit, which has committed to working with the OSC to register its platform.

As part of the decisions, the regulator is fining Kucoin CAD$2,096,550.35 (USD$1,621,597.83). Bybit has apparently already disgorged CAD$2,468,910 (USD$1,909,603.13) of its proceeds to the regulator, which is fining the exchange another CAD$10,000 (USD$7,734.60) to pay for its investigation.

In its announcement, the OSC noted: “Unlike KuCoin, Bybit responded to the OSC’s enforcement action, maintained an open dialogue, provided requested information, and committed to engaging in registration discussions.”

The move is part of a string of actions the OSC has taken against crypto exchanges following a decision from the national Canadian Securities Administrators early in 2021 to treat custodial exchanges as securities exchanges regardless of whether the cryptocurrencies are themselves securities. The first such enforcement action was against Poloniex. 

The OSC is a provincial regulator, but Canada lacks a true federal equivalent to the Securities and Exchange Commission. As the OSC oversees the largest securities market in Canada, it is often the tip of the spear when it comes to enforcing the determinations of the CSA. 

© 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.

Do Kwon, CEO of Terraform Labs, expressed confidence today in the latest efforts to rebuild the Terra blockchain following the collapse of its predecessor in May.

Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published Wednesday that he has “great confidence” in the company’s ability to “build back even stronger” than before.

Kwon’s proposal to relaunch the Terra blockchain and create a new token was passed in late May following majority votes among holders of Terraform Labs’ Luna governance token. The votes paved the way for the creation of the new blockchain called Terra, while the old version was renamed Terra Classic. 

“Many builders are in the process of relaunching their apps on the new chain,” Kwon said.

As previously reported by The Block, the Terra ecosystem dramatically imploded in early May as both the value of the UST stablecoin as well as Terra’s native asset, Luna, fell sharply in value. The resultant market chaos took place amid broader macroeconomic turmoil and set the stage for the continued volatility in the crypto market seen in recent weeks.

Kwon said he was “devastated” by the Terra crisis. “[I] hope that all the families who’ve been impacted are taking care of themselves and those that they love,” he added. 

Following the collapse, Kwon and Terraform Labs were hit by a class-action lawsuit that accused them of selling unregistered securities and making false statements about the stability of the TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin and related token LUNA. Other defendants named in the case are Jump Crypto, Jump Trading and Three Arrows Capital.

Kwon and the company are already the subjects of another ongoing lawsuit in South Korea, with prosecutors barring Terra developers from leaving the country.

Some in the crypto community have accused Kwon of running a sophisticated scam, as reported by the WSJ. Cory Klippstein, the CEO of Swan Bitcoin, called Kwon, as quoted by the WSJ, “a fraudster.”

Kwon rejected that description, saying he made confident bets and statements on behalf of the UST because he “believed in its resilience and its value proposition.”

“I’ve since lost these bets, but my actions 100% match my words,” Kwon added. “There is a difference between failing and running a fraud.”

© 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.

Terra Pool, a joint project from bitcoin miner Argo and Canada-based DMG Blockchain Solutions, is now open to the general public.

DMG announced Wednesday that testing for Terra Pool had concluded. The pool was launched privately in December of last year, with hash rate initially coming from Argo’s and DMG’s mining sources.

The emphasis of the project is on the use of clean energy for mining, with the ultimate goal of achieving 100% clean renewable energy power sources from each miner.

Per the announcement, Terra Pool will be audited by a third-party independent auditor firm every year. Members have to meet the pool’s clean energy requirements to maintain their status. The company does KYC and also verifies the power sources of applicants.

“Today, Terra Pool has been extensively tested to work at scale and has become the backbone of DMG’s mining operations. The opportunity to further scale Terra Pool provides the market with a readily available supply of ‘green’, clean-mined bitcoin that can be made available to the market,” said DMG CEO, Sheldon Bennett.

Argo CEO Peter Wall recently said that the company was re-evaluating its relationship with the Terra Pool.

Wall said that Argo mined about 20 BTC less in May than in the month before because of “essentially luck” from the Terra Pool.

Unlike other pools, where miners are paid based on hash rate, in this case, Argo is paid based on the number of blocks produced. The company now wants to ensure “consistent bitcoin rewards” from whatever pool it is using.

The Terra Pool Hashrate currently stands at 673.89 petahash per second, according to real-time data posted on its website.

© 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.

Quick Take

• Bitcoin’s hashprice has reached the lowest point since summer 2020 amid recent market tumble. 
• Although the network’s hashrate has decreased over the past week, it is still up 11.3% year-to-date.
• Mid-tier ASIC miners launched in 2019 are now struggling to produce meaningful profits at a global average energy rate.
• This piece reviews the bitcoin mining’s landscape over the first half of 2022.

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members of The Block Research.
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this Research content on The Block Research.

The owner of CryptoPunk #5822, one of only nine “Alien Punks” in the collection, has listed the non-fungible token (NFT) for sale at 9,000 ETH ($9.9 million), less than half the dollar price paid four months ago. 

Data from the CryptoPunk dashboard shows the NFT’s owner — Chain CEO Deepak Thapliyal — offered it for sale today. He bought it for 8,000 ETH on February 12, when 8,000 ETH was worth $23.7 million. 

Thapliyal stated at the time of purchase that he leveraged the DeFi protocol Compound to acquire the NFT. Compound’s founder Robert Leshner even congratulated him on the acquisition. Thapliyal’s wallet, tagged as Deepak.eth, transferred the punk to another wallet a month after buying it.

Despite the new listing being for 1,000 ETH more than the price it was bought, Thapliyal stands to make a loss in dollar terms if the transaction goes through. 

Ether, like the rest of the crypto market, has seen a significant price decline throughout 2022. The price of ETH has lost almost 70% of its dollar value since the start of the year.

NFTs have also followed the broader market downturn with floor prices of even the popular collections falling by almost 33% in June. The floor price refers to the lowest listed price of a piece in the collection.

CryptoPunks in particular have experienced a sharp value drop, with the collection’s floor price tanking 50% between April and May. This decline has reversed somewhat in the last few days amid the announcement that CryptoPunks’ owner Yuga Labs hired Noah Davis, the head of NFTs at British auction house Christie’s.

While Thapliyal could lose out, the previous owner made a profit of $23.7 million on the piece. This previous owner bought the NFT from the original minter in the summer of 2017 for 8 ETH ($1,646 at the time) and held on to it for almost five years before selling it.

© 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.

Coinbase rolled out a redesign of its noncustodial wallet on mobile devices on Wednesday.

According to an announcement, the new features will include a dark mode, a new tab to access and explore decentralized finance (DeFi) projects and Solana blockchain support. (The desktop browser version added Solana last year.)

Other new features include price charts and a proprietary NFT indexing infrastructure that allows for a token to appear immediately after purchase. At launch, this feature will support Ethereum and Polygon but other networks will be added in the future. 

With a noncustodial wallet, users hold assets themselves rather than a centralized entity and provide unrestricted access to the DeFi ecosystem.

With its new iteration of the wallet, Coinbase wants to target a more mainstream audience than its previous web3 early adopter demographic, the head of Coinbase Wallet Siddharth Coelho-Prabhu said in an interview with The Block. This is despite the fact that it could expose them to volatility in the current DeFi market, which continues to reel from the shock of recent market events including the May collapse of the Terra blockchain.

“With this wave, we’re targeting a mainstream audience. Users are expecting the same kind of high-quality and polished experience as they have with fintech or in social media,” he said. “We are now trying to cater to people who have never heard of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) or don’t know what decentralized exchanges (DEXs) are.” 

Unlike Robinhood’s upcoming self-custodial wallet, however, there are no plans with this redesign to cover the cost of gas fees. Instead, Coinbase has added what it sees as scalable blockchains such as the new addition of Solana, with support already in place for Ethereum layer two solutions such as Optimism and Polygon. 

The announcement comes a week after the company announced an employee cull. The public cryptocurrency exchange cut 18% of its workforce, citing volatility in the market. Its stock fluctuated downwards by 5% in response to the news.

Earlier today, The Block reported that its share price dropped as Binance’s US arm announced it would eliminate trading fees for certain bitcoin pairs. 

© 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.