Category: Crypto News

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Australia Crypto News Scams

Billionaire Australian Racehorse Investor Breaks Ties After Frozen Prize Money Amid Crypto Scam

Aquis, one of the largest racehorse investor in Australia, has broken ties with Phoenix Thoroughbreds, a Dubai-based company that was recently accused of money laundering through horse racing.

Billionaire Tony Fang, director of Aquis, was a partner of Aamer Abdulaziz, Chief Executive Officer at Phoenix Holding Group, but terminated the relationship with the firm after the US authorities accused Abdulaziz of taking part in a cryptocurrency scheme called OneCoin.

An unnamed horse bought by Tony Fung and Phoenix for $1.8 million at Magic Millions in January – source

Australians Have Reportedly Lost AU$779 Million Through OneCoin Scam

In January, Both Aquis and Pheonix invested around US$11.6 million on 19 horses at the Magic Millions auctions, located on the Gold Coast. However, racing authorities decided to freeze the prize funds as the investigation is ongoing.

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Australians have lost an estimated €500 million (AU$779 million) buying OneCoin, an accused Ponzi scheme promoted as a cryptocurrency, in which Abdulaziz was an investor.

A spokesman for Aquis said Phoenix didn’t tell them about the frozen funds. The firm has denied their involvement in money laundering, claiming the prize money is not affected, and their co-owned horses can still race.

“We have sought further clarification from Phoenix multiple times since late last week over matters of their relationship with racing regulatory bodies in Australia, but they completely failed to answer questions. The matter has been placed in the hands of our lawyers.”

— The Aquis spokesperson said

OneCoin, A US$4 Billion Crypto Scam

Ruja Ignatova, the head of OneCoin, allegedly sold over US$4 billion through OneCoin. The company gained notice when the FSC (Bulgaria’s Financial Supervision Commission) issued a warning of potential risks in new cryptocurrencies, citing OneCoin as an example.

The firm immediately ceased all activity in Bulgaria and used foreign banks to handle wire transfers from investors. One of them was Abdulaziz, which according to government lawyers, received €185 million in a wire transfer from the Bank of Ireland.

The ASIC to Support the Crypto Space Despite Scams

According to official data, Australians have lost over US$634 million to scams in 2019 to all kinds of scams, including cryptocurrency schemes and fake invoice emails

Despite the scams, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has expressed its support to the crypto industry in the country, according to ASIC commissioner Cathie Armour.

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Crypto News Ripple

SEC Accuses Ripple of “Harassment” For Trying to access Internal Records

On April 9, a judge granted Ripple executives access to various internal records from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The records contain information about XRP, Bitcoin, and Ethereum, where the SEC classifies these three assets as “cryptocurrencies.”

Now the SEC accuses Ripple of “harassment,” for gaining access to the documents, claiming the defendants are not seeking relevant evidence but to “derail the case’s focus away from its merits.”

SEC Asks Judge To Block Access to Documents

The SEC sent a letter to judge Sarah Netburn on April 21, requesting limited access to the records. Lawyer Jeremy Hogan found a document in which the SEC refers to XRP as a “digital currency” in 2016.

The court order requires the SEC to search between tens of thousands of external emails of at least 19 custodians for documents related to XRP, BTC, and ETH. However, the SEC claims:

It has become evident through the meet-and-confer process that Defendants are seeking to ignore the limitations of this Court’s Order and to mire the SEC in indefinite discovery disputes and, if successful, document review.

Gary Gensler, MIT professor and crypto advocate, was announced as the new SEC Chairman. Many in the XRP community speculate that Gensler could withdraw the lawsuit, which could give XRP a dramatic boost in price.

On April 19, the XRP community filed a motion to intervene in the case. The file, which contains a Memorandum of Law, emphasizes that many US government agencies recognize XRP as a currency, and developers, businesses, and holders had to halt their work due to the delisting of the currency across exchanges, causing further price decrease.

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Crypto News Investing

Tech Investor Puts $100 Million into Blockchain.com Startup

Tech Investor Puts $100 Million into Blockchain.com Startup

Baillie Gifford, one of the world’s renowned asset management companies, has invested in Blockchain.com, which is a Bitcoin wallet and blockchain explorer. In the announcement on Tuesday, the crypto company said that Gifford’s investment is the largest single funding they have ever received.

Baillie Gifford Invested $100 Million in Blockchain.com

The Edinburgh-headquartered asset manager reportedly invested about $100 million USD in the cryptocurrency company. The investment comes as part of the recently-concluded Series C funding, wherein Blockchain.com secured about $300 million USD. DST Global partners led the investment round, and it included Lightspeed Ventures and VY Capital, per the announcement. 

Baillie Gifford is a 110-year-old asset management company with an early record of investment in today’s biggest tech companies, including Amazon, Google, Tesla, Airbnb, and so on. The investment in Blockchain.com marks its first move in the cryptocurrency space as a startup investor. 

As one of their first investments in a crypto company, we’re honored to include them on our journey to bring the next 1B people into crypto. It’s also a validation that a balanced and diversified retail/institutional business has incredible growth potential in the coming years.

Peter Smith, the CEO, and co-founder of Blockchain.com, wrote.

Blockchain.com is currently valued at $5.2 billion following the latest funding round.

Blockchain.com is Interested in Going Public

Besides being a household name in the crypto space, Blockchain.com is also one of the digital currency companies interested in going public, following Coinbase’s stock debut on NASDAQ last week. While speaking with The Telegraph, Smith said they are planning to debut on the public market “when the moment’s right for us, and we’re figuring out when that is.”

Kraken and eToro are two other crypto-related companies expecting to go public in the coming years. 

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Crypto News Ethereum

Bullish: Ethereum 2.0 Deposit Contract Exceeds $12.9 Billion as ETH Soar

The value of Ether (ETH) staked on the Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract has surpassed $12.9 billion AUD (i.e., $10 billion USD), according to the information on Eth2 LaunchPad. 

This coincides with the recent increase in the price of the cryptocurrency. 

Over 4 Million ETH Has Been Staked

During press time, a total of 4,010,886 ETH was staked on the deposit contract, meaning about 3.46 percent of the total circulating supply of ETH has been locked for Ethereum 2.0. These staked coins are worth over $10.2 billion USD, following the price of Ether at $2,560 USD on Coinmarketcap. 

Additionally, the number of validators totaled 122,254, and the current annual percentage rate (APR) for staking on the network is 7.8 percent. The APR decreases as more ETH is staked on the deposit contract. 

What’s Behind the Increase in Eth2 Deposit Contract

The increase in the value of assets locked in the deposit contract can be attributed to the massive growth of the value of ETH. On Wednesday, ETH reached another record high of $2,641 USD on Coinmarketcap.

The number of coins staked on Eth2 deposit contracts is also another factor. It increased significantly since the beginning of the year. This shows that many crypto enthusiasts are supportive of Ethereum 2.0 development, which will transition the second-largest blockchain to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) era, although some might be staking for profit’s sake.

Why More Staking is Bullish For ETH

The coins staked on the deposit contract cannot be withdrawn until the development phase with such functionality is deployed – which might take two years. Hence, more staking on the network reduces the number of ETH supply in the market, thereby creating scarcity for ETH. This is bullish for the ETH holders as scarce assets are more likely to see increases in price, provided there’s high market demand for it.

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Crypto News Ethereum

Ethereum Settled $1.9 Trillion Transactions in Q1 of 2021

Ethereum Settled $1.9 Trillion Transactions in Q1

Ethereum, the second-largest blockchain network, settled about $1.9 trillion AUD ($1.5 trillion USD) in transactions within the first quarter of 2021.

Despite the congestion on Ethereum, the record today is the largest quarterly transaction volume ever settled on the blockchain, according to data from Messari, a cryptocurrency on-chain analytics platform.

Ethereum on Pace to Settled $6 Trillion Transactions in 2021

Messari’s analysis shows the quarterly transaction volume on Ethereum having dramatically increased recently. The transaction volume in Q1 of 2021 ($1.9 trillion AUD) surpasses that of the previous seven quarters combined. Based on this record, Messari predicts that about $6 trillion USD transactions will be settled on the Ethereum blockchain, including ERC-standard stablecoin transactions.

Two factors could be causing high transaction volume on Ethereum: the increase in Ether (ETH) price prompting trades, and other network usage. The former might be the primary reason for such record as ETH increased by over 150 percent within the first quarter of 2021 and 230 percent year-to-date (YTD).

Ethereum Network Usage

TRON and Binance Smart Chain (BSC) might be the leading blockchain networks in terms of daily transactions; however, Ethereum is still a big player. On Tuesday, Ethereum recorded about 1.55 million transactions, which is the highest since the network’s history. On a YTD chart, the daily transaction volume on Ethereum is up by over 32 percent.

Ethereum daily transactions chart [etherscan.io]

Ethereum has been battling network congestion for quite a while. Coupling that with relatively slow transactions and high fees, some projects and users have left Ethereum in favour of alternative blockchains. This scalability issue might be resolved with the complete deployment of Ethereum 2.0 – a major upgrade that apparently will not be completed until the next two to three years.

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Binance Crypto Exchange Crypto News

Former Trump Administrator Brian Brooks Becomes The New CEO of Binance USA

Former Trump Administrator Brian Brooks Becomes The New CEO of Binance USA

Former Coinbase executive and US banking regulator, Brian Brooks, has been appointed to head Binance.US operations as the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Brooks will assume the new office from next month, replacing Catherine Coley, the current CEO of the US-based cryptocurrency exchange.

Brooks to Join Binance.US From May

Following the new appointment, Brooks will work together with Binance.US’s team to expand the exchange’s operation while also promoting its culture of compliance with US regulators. In a welcome statement, Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance Global, attested that Brian’s expertise would be invaluable to expand Binanace.US. 

Brian is an esteemed leader with an unparalleled blend of experience across traditional financial services, government, and the digital assets industry. Binance.US’s ability to attract an executive of Brian’s caliber is a testament to the strength of its platform.

Changpeng Zhao

Brooks Introduced Crypto-friendly Guides for US Banks

The new Binance.US CEO previously worked with Coinbase as Chief Legal Officer, before servicing as the Acting Comptroller of the Currency under President Donald Trump’s administration. Brian stepped down from public service in January as Joe Biden took over the US presidential office.

Brooks is well-known in the cryptocurrency space following his active and regulatory-friendly stance on emerging digital assets. OCC awarded the first national bank charter to Anchorage, a digital asset bank, under Brooks. During Brook’s administration, the OCC published regulatory guidelines on how banks in the country can interact with cryptocurrencies and stablecoins.

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Australia Bitcoin Crypto News Cryptocurrencies

All Australians Can Now Get Wages Paid In Bitcoin

Australian fintech company Living Room Of Satoshi released a service allowing its users to automatically set aside a portion of their salary as Bitcoin savings.

In order to use the service, the customer must switch the bank account where their salary is received to the one provided by Living Room Of Satoshi. The company will then automatically deduct the indicated amount from the user’s wage, converting it to Bitcoin and placing it in their wallet. The remainder will be sent to the bank account indicated by the user.

Set Up Savings in BTC

Living Room Of Satoshi is not a new player in this space. The company has been involved in cryptos since 2014. Their focus seems to be on allowing anyone to pay their bills, expenses and credits directly with cryptocurrencies, without having to convert them to cash first.

According to Daniel Alexiuc – chief executive of Living Room Of Satoshi – the company was founded when he spotted the opportunity to build a service addressing those who would like to hold cryptocurrencies, but don’t want to spend time managing a balance in cryptos. Instead, the process works more like a “route to savings account” option, similar to what is often offered by many banks.

Bitcoin has seen its price rise astronomically in the last 6 months, which has triggered an unprecedented buy-in from institutional investors. We wanted to provide an option for regular folks in Australia to also join this burgeoning ecosystem — and the simplest and most pain-free way is to have a small percentage of your wage converted and sent to you when you get paid.

Daniel Alexiuc, CEO of Living Room Of Satoshi

The name of the company came from the idea that at the end of the day, Satoshi Nakamoto might be sitting down in his living room paying his bills using the vast amounts he mined shortly after inventing Bitcoin.

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Australia Blockchain Crypto News

EFTPOS Australia Plans To Use Blockchain For Micropayments, Autonomous Vehicles, and Digital Identity

During the Australian Blockchain Week conference, Australia’s leading point-of-sale technology provider EFTPOS announced that they plan to use blockchain-powered technologies to run autonomous vehicles and power smart cities with Hedera Hashgraph.

Ben Tabell, EFTPOS chief investment officer, stated that the partnership formed with Hedera will allow them to put in a shared effort to bring a combination of digital identity and payment solutions to Australia.

We’re going to be looking at smart cities. […] We’re going to be looking at autonomous vehicles and things that we haven’t even thought about yet. All of this needs new infrastructure, and EFTPOS needs to be informed by that.

Robert Allen, deputy chair of Blockchain Australia
Hedera Token Service launches with a fully supportive ecosystem of over 60 initial partners including leading exchanges, custody and wallet providers, members of the Hedera Governing Council, and applications that will issue tokens using HTS

This is a big part of our work and effort at the moment to bring in digital identity and transactions so that we can securely support payments and other transaction clubs in the Australian digital ecosystem.

Ben Tabell, chief investment officer at EFTPOS

Hedera Implementing Blockchain Use Cases in Australia

Hedera Hashgraph had previously also made local headlines in Australia in July 2020, when EFTPOS announced that they would be using Hedera technology to build a proof-of concept for an Australian stablecoin. The pilot focused on micropayments, such as real-time payments for streaming and pay-per-click content.

In January 2021, EFTPOS became Hedera’s 17th governing council member and Australia’s first Hedera node operator. Hedera has also been expanding its governing council recently, with Shinhan Bank joining earlier this month, French utility giant Électricité de France onboarding in March, and Standard Bank Group becoming the network’s first African node operator in February.

Hedera is the only next-generation network that will support those kinds of use cases. So, we wanted to test it, and it has operated beautifully. […] Now, because we’ve got all this digital strategy, we are in a position where we can start looking at ways that problems can be solved in a way which is maybe non-traditional and more distributed.

Ben Tabell, chief investment officer at EFTPOS
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Bitcoin Blockchain Crypto Exchange Crypto News

Lightning Network Goes Live on OKEx Exchange for Faster BTC Deposits and Withdrawals

Crypto exchange OKEx has announced the integration of the Lightning Network into its platform, allowing faster and cheaper BTC withdrawals and deposits.

The Lightning Network is a layer 2 protocol with a bi-directional payment channel, designed to provide scalability and higher throughput.

By integrating layer 2 solutions like the Lightning Network, OKEx is able to offer an improved trading experience to its users — with lower costs and faster transactions — alongside supporting the Bitcoin ecosystem by increasing the number of participating nodes.

OKEx

Number of Nodes Doubling as BTC Grows

The number of nodes in the Lightning Network has doubled as corporations have started adopting BTC and Blockchain. According to data from Bitcoin Visuals, the number of active nodes reached 10,000 this month, with $69 million in locked value.

Before OKEx, Bitfinex was one of the first exchanges to adopt the Lightning Network, followed by Kraken, CoinCorner and OKCoin. The number of companies embracing BTC has doubled in the last five months and it looks like it keeps growing.

Bitcoin is trading at $73,225 AUD, slowly recovering from the market crash that happened this weekend. Its price tumbled below $67,300 AUD following the massive liquidation of high leveraged traders on Binance and other exchanges, causing a market crash that dragged most altcoins with it.

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Crypto News NFTs

Singer Boy George Says NFTs are “a New Way of Connecting With Fans”

Singer Boy George Says NFTs is "A New Way Of Connecting With Fans"
LONDON, ENGLAND - SEPTEMBER 05: Boy George of Culture Club performs in concert at Eventim Apollo on September 5, 2015 in London, England. (Photo by Brian Rasic/WireImage)

UK singer and songwriter George Alan O’Dowd – professionally known as “Boy George” – has signed a deal with a cryptocurrency payment company to issue exclusive digital contents on its new Crypto.com NFT Marketplace.

Prior to the partnership with Crypto.com, Boy George said he had previously sold some artworks for a huge amount of money, although the proceeds were donated to charity.

NFTs Making Arts Available to People

Speaking with Maria Bartiromo on Morning with Maria, Boy George said he was excited about the deal to create exclusive NFT content for the Crypto.com NFT marketplace. He added that the booming NFT market provides people with the opportunity to fully own their content and have relationships with it.

Boy George recently auctioned an artwork for the UK National Health Service (NHS).

[…] so far this year I’ve sold stuff and it’s been for charity, which has been amazing. That’s a nice kind of acknowledgment for being a creative person. I don’t think this is a replacement for large shows because this is a new emerging sort of world that’s happening and people are collecting art in a different way. Also, art is now available to more people.

Boy George

Crypto.com Targets Celebrities

When Crypto.com launched its NFT marketplace in March, it collaborated with celebrities including Axel Mansoor, Bag Raiders and Snoop Dogg to feature exclusive NFTs from them.

The NFT market has gained massive attention since the beginning of the year. The industry isn’t limited to digital visual artists. For example, some musicians, journalists, and even wrestlers have got involved.