Regulators in Hong Kong will soon decide which crypto tokens its citizens can invest in amid a raft of new digital asset policies coming this year.
The move is the latest crypto regulatory step taken by Hong Kong in a market that has a long association with significant digital asset trading volume.
Hong Kong to Issue Consultation Paper
Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) is preparing a list of crypto assets open to retail traders, Reuters reported on Wednesday. The SFC’s new CEO, Julia Leung Fung-yee, said these whitelisted crypto tokens will be highly liquid ones deemed safe enough for non-professional investors. Leung made these comments during a panel session at the Asian Financial Forum held in Hong Kong on Jan. 11.

“Some virtual assets platforms have

Digital Currency Group (DCG), the parent company of wholly-owned subsidiary, crypto brokerage firm Genesis, is reportedly looking to offload some of its venture capital portfolios to raise funds to cover part of the latter’s debt crisis.
Genesis halted withdrawals in November, becoming the latest crypto lender to face a financial crisis.
According to the Financial Times on Tuesday (January 12, 2023), anonymous sources revealed that Genesis is currently swimming in a debt worth over $3 billion.
The crypto lender earlier hired Moelis, a New-York headquartered global investment bank, to explore options, but there seems to be no interest in injecting capital into Genesis.
Meanwhile, parent company DCG is trying to raise funds to offset the debt, as revealed by people familiar

Woo Network is a DeFi liquidity provider for institutional platforms and has attracted equity investments from backers like Binance.
Revamped Tokenomics for Woo
The Woo Network tokenomics revamp involves a series of improvements to its token distribution, the team announced on Monday, (January 10, 2023). These improvements are part of efforts to address issues regarding the current token distribution.
Woo’s token revamp will begin with a planned burn of 705 million WOO tokens, currently worth $127 million. Token burning in crypto is when coins are destroyed by sending them to a burn address, forever removing them from circulation. The planned burn will see 24% of the WOO token supply destroyed.
The tokens to be burned will come from the allocations given to WOO Ventures,

Fintech company and USDC issuer Circle has terminated a business combination deal with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Concord Acquisition Corp., but it has not scrapped its plan to go public.
Circle’s announcement is the latest in the growing list of SPAC deals that have failed to materialize.
Circle and Concord Go Separate Ways
Circle announced the termination of the deal in a press release on Monday (December 5, 2022). The decision was mutual between both parties, with the termination approved by Circle’s and Concord’s boards of directors.
The business combination proposal was first announced in July 2021 when Circle was valued at $4.5 billion. The deal was later amended in February 2022 when the firm’s valuation doubled to $9 billion, with the USDC issuer

Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of the now-bankrupt FTX, tried to rally financial support for his beleaguered crypto exchange. This comes as the platform is facing bankruptcy amid an $8 billion black hole in its balance sheets.
FTX collapsed in spectacular fashion over the past week, triggering a contagion that has impacted the broader crypto space. Several projects have now reported having funds stuck in limbo with the exchange.
Sam Bankman-Fried tried to source funds from investors to bail out his bankrupt crypto exchange, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday (November 15, 2022).
The report stated that Bankman-Fried and a few remaining employees at the bankrupt exchange attempted to secure a financial commitment from potential investors over the weekend.
This

Major venture capital firm Sequoia Capital has written down the value of its investment in the beleaguered crypto exchange FTX, to zero.
Notably, the company was part of the investors who participated in FTX’s $900 million funding round in July 2021, which brought the exchange’s valuation to $18 billion at the time.
Sequoia Marks Down FTX Investment to $0
In a note to limited partners (LPs), which was revealed via Sequoia’s Twitter handle on Thursday (November 10, 2022), the venture capital firm stated that its investment in FTX and FTX.US – the American-based unit of the exchange – totaling $213.5 million, is marked down to $0.

Here is the note we sent to our LPs in GGFIII regarding FTX. pic.twitter.com/Cgp1Yxk1pz
— Sequoia Capital (@sequoia) November 10, 2022

Sequoia

Amid the problems plaguing cryptocurrency exchange FTX, the Securities Commission of the Bahamas (SCB) has frozen the firm’s assets.
The Bahamian regulator also got the court to appoint a provisional liquidator for FTX.
In a press release posted by Nassau Guardian via Twitter on Thursday (November 10, 2022), the Commission revealed it had frozen assets of FTX Digital Markets (FDM) “and related parties.”
Back in September 2021, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried announced that the company’s headquarters will be in the Bahamas.
An excerpt from the announcement reads:

“The Commission is aware of public statements suggesting that clients’ assets were mishandled, mismanaged and/or transferred to Alameda Research. Based on the Commission’s information, any such actions would have been

Solana’s Epoch 370 is set to end in a little under 24 hours, and with it will come the unlocking of over 47 million SOL tokens by validators.
This massive token unlock is coming at a time of significant market tumult, not just for Solana but for the entire crypto space following the FTX collapse.
According to data from the Solana dashboard, 47,289,526 SOL, worth nearly $1 billion, is set to be unlocked in Epoch 370. An epoch in Solana is a period where validators cannot unlock their staked tokens on the network.
Following the expiration of Epoch 370, which will end in less than 24 hours, the unstaked SOL will be withdrawn by validators.
Meanwhile, it remains uncertain if the validators will sell their withdrawn SOL considering the current price performance of the token.

The United States Department of Justice (DoJ) announced the historic seizure of over $3 billion worth of bitcoin from a fraudster who allegedly scammed the defunct online darknet marketplace Silk Road and stole more than 50,000 bitcoin.
The defendant pled guilty to a wire fraud crime committed a decade ago and could face up to 20 years in prison.
In a press release on Monday (November 7, 2022), the DoJ revealed the seizure of over 50,000 bitcoin from indicted Silk Road scammer James Zhong.
The BTC amount was initially seized almost a year ago, on November 9, 2021, and was worth about $3.4 billion at the time.
According to the DoJ, Zhong, in September 2012, allegedly defrauded Silk Road by creating nine accounts to hide his identity and trigger the release of approximately

Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX, has come out to allay fears about the state of the crypto exchange’s finances.
Bankman-Fried said the platform has excess cash and clients’ funds are safe while also calling on Binance CEO to collaborate with him to improve the ecosystem.
In a recent tweet thread on Monday (November 7, 2022), Sam Bankman-Fried, also known as SBF, said the crypto exchange which he spearheads has sufficient funds to cover clients’ holdings.
The CEO also doused claims of insolvency, arguing that the exchange is capable of processing customer withdrawals. “FTX is fine. Assets are fine,” stated SBF, adding:

“It’s heavily regulated, even when that slows us down. We have GAAP audits, with > $1b excess cash. We have a long history of safeguarding client assets, and

Money transfer services giant MoneyGram will now allow customers to trade and hold some major cryptocurrencies using the company’s mobile app.
The move marks an expansion to MoneyGram’s native crypto support as it previously enabled users to buy and withdraw Bitcoin in the United States.
According to a press release on Tuesday (November 1, 2022). MoneyGram introduced a new feature that will allow customers to buy, sell, and store Bitcoin, Ether, and Litecoin. The company plans to add more crypto assets to its platform in 2023.
This latest development was possible through a partnership with the crypto exchange Coinme. The ability to trade and hold crypto is available to MoneyGram customers in almost all U.S. states and the District of Columbia (DC).
Today’s announcement

Venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z, has been affected by the ongoing crypto winter, with the company’s flagship cryptocurrency fund losing nearly half of its value in the first six months of 2022.
The declining performance is a massive difference from the gains experienced last year when the company’s investments grew over 1,000%.
A16z Not Immune to Crypto Winter
According to the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday (October 26, 2022), a16z’s flagship crypto fund, launched in 2018, has seen a sharp drop in value at 40%, as revealed by anonymous sources. The decline is significant compared to other venture funds, which shed between 10% and 20%.
Previously, the VC’s first crypto fund saw its initial investment grow almost 11-fold as of the end of 2021.

Gaming and metaverse DAO giant Merit Circle voted to burn all remaining tokens left in the Community Incentives wallet as a way to reduce the total supply.
The project has been carrying out monthly token burns but decided in favor of bulk destruction.
A proposal to burn 200 million MC tokens saw an overwhelming number of votes supporting the motion. Out of 232 votes, only three were against the idea.
Following the creation of the Community Incentives wallet, 294 million tokens, which represent nearly 30% of the total one billion MC supply, were assigned to the wallet. The assets were supposed to be used for community rewards.
However, the tokens have been sitting dormant in the Community Incentives wallet without utility since the allocation. Meanwhile, 6,125,000 MC tokens

Legendary billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones revealed that he still holds a small portion of bitcoin while stating that the U.S. economy might be going into recession or already is in one.
Tudor Jones also said the value of assets such as ETH and BTC could increase amid inflation and excessive fiscal spending.
Jones Remains Optimistic About Bitcoin
In a CNBC interview on Monday (October 10, 2022), Jones stated that there has been a “massive experimentation with monetary policy” in the last 12 years while saying that the next United States President come 2024 would be dealing with extreme debt dynamics that could cause fiscal retrenchment.
Speaking about cryptocurrency, the hedge fund manager said Bitcoin and Ethereum could rise in value in the future amid

Mt. Gox creditors could be one step closer to reclaiming their funds after nearly a decade of waiting.
This is as the Rehabilitation Trustee has released a deadline for them to select their preferred repayment method.
Nobuaki Kobayashi, the man in charge of the Mt. Gox rehabilitation process, published a new update for creditors on Thursday (October 6, 2022).
In it, creditors were told that they had until January 10, 2023, to choose a payment option and register payee information otherwise known as selection and registration, via an online claim form.
According to the statement, those who fail to do so run the risk of not receiving an early lump sum repayment and part in cryptocurrency. Also, failure to complete the selection and registration process will exclude affected

Major stablecoin issuer Tether has further reduced its commercial paper holdings to less than $50 million, with more than half of its backing in US Treasury Bills.
The continuous reduction in Tether’s commercial debt holdings is in line with the firm’s plans revealed earlier in the year.
In an update posted on Twitter on Monday (October 3, 2022), Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino announced that the company’s total US Treasury portfolio is currently at 58.1% as of September 2022. This signals an increase from 43.5% on June 30.
Ardoino also mentioned that the firm also slashed its commercial debt holdings to less than $50 million.
The latest development comes shortly after a US District Court in New York in September ordered Tether to provide financial records to access USDT backing.

Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has accused Bitkub, the country’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, and four other offenders of their alleged involvement in wash trading.
The individuals will have to pay a fine of over $600,000.
Bitkub Involved in Wash Trading Case?
According to a press release on Tuesday (September 27, 2022), the Thai SEC claimed that two individuals – Mr. Anurak and Mr. Sakon Srakawee – carried out wash trading on the Bitkub platform.
Wash trading, as concerns the crypto industry, is a practice where a trader buys and sells digital assets to themselves, thereby creating a false market activity and also inflating their trading volume.
Meanwhile, the SEC noted that the agency initially decided to apply civil sanctions against the three

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has accused two companies, their executives, and a supposed international gold trader, of running a fraudulent scheme to boost demand for their digital token.
The false promotion of the token netted proceeds of over $36 million for the defendants, the agency said.
A Fake $10 Billion Gold Bullion Acquisition
According to a lawsuit filed on Friday (September 30, 2022), a Bermudan company called Arbitrade, a Canadian firm Cryptobontix, Troy Hogg, founder and owner of Cryptobontix, James Goldberg, Stephen Braveman, COO of Arbitrade, and Max Barber, a so-called international gold trader ran an alleged pump and dump scheme involving a cryptocurrency called Dignity (DIG) from 2017 to 2019.
As stated in the SEC’s

While institutional traders are not prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa, the region is known to have the highest number of small retail transactions globally.
Part of the driving force for cryptocurrency adoption there is fiat currency devaluation, high unemployment rate, and economic instability.
Crypto P2P Thriving in Africa Despite Regulatory Problems
According to a report by blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, retail users make up the bulk of crypto-related activities in Sub-Saharan. Institutional presence in the region is smaller than is the case in other countries.
Retail volume on the continent, though, is largely driven by economic factors such as the need for wealth preservation. This is because the currencies of many of these countries have suffered decades of

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is objecting to a motion by troubled cryptocurrency lender Celsius, seeking to reopen withdrawals for selected customers.
Since Celsius halted withdrawals in June, the company has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, while the CEO recently resigned from his position.
A United States Trustee for the DOJ, William Harrington, on Friday (September 30, 2022), filed an objection, asking the bankruptcy court to deny Celsius’ motions to reopen withdrawals for certain creditors and sell its stablecoin holdings.
As previously reported by CryptoPotato, the firm filed for the resumption of withdrawals for customers whose assets are held in its Custody Program and Withhold Account.
The US trustee described Celsius’ motions as “premature,” stating that the

The Texas-based bitcoin mining giant is entering a merger agreement with SilverSun Technologies, a publicly-traded business technology solutions provider, as Rhodium is planning to list on Nasdaq after an initial delay.
Meanwhile, the fall in the price of BTC and the ongoing crypto winter has caused bitcoin mining companies to struggle to stay afloat.
Rhodium Makes Another Shot to go Public
In an announcement on Thursday (September 29, 2022), the merger between SilverSun and Rhodium saw unanimous approval from the Board of Directors of both companies.
Part of the terms of the deal includes each SilverSun shareholder will receive a cash dividend of a minimum of $1.50 per share, approximately equal to $8.5 million. The shareholders will also get one share of a stock dividend

Uniswap Labs, which developed the Uniswap protocol, is reportedly holding talks with potential investors for a new funding round.
The potential new round would value the startup at a unicorn valuation.
According to TechCrunch on Friday (September 30, 2022), four anonymous sources revealed that Uniswap Labs is looking to raise between $100 million and $200 million in a new funding round, with a valuation of $1 billion.
The startup is reportedly speaking to participants such as Polychain, and a Singaporean foreign fund, although the terms of the deal may change as talks with potential investors is yet to reach the final stage.
Meanwhile, neither Uniswap Labs nor Polychain has issued a statement about the matter.
In August, Uniswap token holders voted in favor of launching an

Brett Harrison, President of the United States subsidiary of major cryptocurrency exchange FTX, is leaving his leadership position but will act as an advisor for the company.
Nevertheless, the exec will continue to have an advisory role.
The FTX US boss announced his resignation in a tweet thread on Tuesday (September 27, 2022) after serving as CEO of the company for nearly one and a half years.

1/ An announcement: I’m stepping down as President of @FTX_Official. Over the next few months I’ll be transferring my responsibilities and moving into an advisory role at the company.
— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) September 27, 2022

While Harrison will no longer head the US division of FTX, the former executive said:

“I’m remaining in the industry with the goal of removing

Harmony Protocol, which suffered a hack in June, has shared an update on its recovery plan for the community.
The team stated that there would be zero percent minting, at least for now.
In an amended recovery proposal published in a Medium blog post on Friday (September 23, 2022), the Harmony team said there are no plans to mint additional ONE tokens, nor would there be a hard fork.
The latest development shows a shift from an earlier recovery plan in July, which proposed a hard fork to mint billions of ONE tokens. However, the community kicked against the proposal, which caused a change in the reimbursement plan.
Harmony, in this week’s update, said the team listened to the concerns shared by the community and validators and stated plans to use the treasury for

With the much-anticipated Ethereum Merge only days away, Bobby Ong, co-founder and COO of major cryptocurrency data aggregator CoinGecko, has shared some ways on how ETH holders can best take advantage of the upcoming event.
In a tweet thread on Monday (September 5, 2022), Bobby Ong said that one of the best ways for existing ETH holders to get ETH proof-of-work (POW) airdrops will be to have their tokens in a hardware wallet.
Meanwhile, Ong noted that it would be easier for the investor if their ETH coins were held on exchanges that support the impending fork.
Other ways to ensure receipt of ETH POW tokens is to withdraw liquidity from decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, while also advising traders to borrow ether from Aave and Compound.
The CoinGecko executive also

NFT marketplace giant OpenSea announced support for the layer-2 blockchain Polygon on its new Web 3 protocol Seaport. The integration comes with an expanded list of features, including the ability for users to use Polygon’s MATIC as a payment option.
In a blog post on Tuesday (August 30, 2022), OpenSea said that the migration of Polygon to Seaport, with the blockchain formerly powered by the Ox protocol, will enable more features for a robust buying and selling experience using Polygon.
Some of the added features include bulk transfers, multiple creator fees, the absence of listing thresholds, and the ability to list and transact using Polygon’s native token, MATIC.

“As part of the shift to Seaport, OpenSea now supports using MATIC, Polygon’s native token, as a payment

Major stablecoin issuer Tether has refuted claims made in an earlier story by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), stating that the publication discredited the company’s transparency efforts and questioned Tether’s profitability.
The USDT issuer is no stranger to controversy, especially regarding questions surrounding its reserves. So far, the company has reduced its exposure to commercial paper holdings by 58%.
Tether Planning to Release an Audit Soon
In a statement released on Tuesday (August 30, 2022), Tether said that the WSJ made several “unsubstantiated conclusions” that the stablecoin issuer needed to clarify.
The Wall Street Journal, on August 27, published an article noting that Tether is yet to give an audit, expected since 2017. According to the publication, the

The CEO of institutional crypto brokerage firm Genesis Global Trading, Michael Moro, will step down from his leadership position while the company is planning to cut off 20% of its workforce.
According to Bloomberg, on Wednesday (August 17, 2022), Genesis announced that Maro will leave his position as CEO, in line with the company’s leadership shuffle.
In the meantime, Derar Islim, chief operating officer, will take over as interim CEO, pending a permanent replacement. Genesis also added more executives to risk, compliance, and technology.
Interim CEO Islim said in a statement:

“The changes and investments we’re announcing today affirm our commitment to operational excellence as we continue to expand our services to meet the needs of our clients today and into the

Cryptocurrency exchange giant Huobi will cease offering its derivatives trading services to New Zealand customers two months after the company obtained registration from the country’s regulators.
In an announcement on Tuesday (August 16, 2022), Huobi said it would restrict users in New Zealand from accessing derivatives trading services starting from August 23, 2022.
According to Huobi, its action was in “commitment to local compliance policies.” Consequently, affected customers will not be able to use functions like coin-margined futures, options, exchange-traded products (ETPs), coin-margined swaps, and USDT-margined contracts.
The crypto exchange also said it will update its user agreement to add New Zealand as a “restricted jurisdiction,” will allow users in the

Solana mobile wallet provider Slope Finance, said to be responsible for the recent multi-million dollar incident, has admitted to a security vulnerability while adding that there is no evidence linking the security flaw to the hack.
This is despite the fact that Solana Labs researchers have fingered the wallet provider’s security lapses as the cause of the over $4 million hack that occurred earlier in August.
Slope issued a statement on Thursday (August 11, 2022), revealing details of its own investigation into the matter. This was done in collaboration with cybercrime company TRM and auditors OtterSec and SlowMist.
According to Slope, there is “no conclusive evidence” linking the vulnerability in its system to the hack. Slope stated that only 1,444 of its wallet addresses