Crypto News Weekly roundup April 24

Crypto adoption has risen to the skies, with different concepts like crypto casinos becoming popular. We at TheCoinRise summarize this crypto market week, ranging from regulatory involvement to urging adoption.

Regulatory involvement in the crypto industry

Ukraine’s Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, has expressed appreciation to the entire crypto community for continuing to support Ukraine as it fights the Russian invasion of its borders.

Additional sanctions have been announced by the government of Iran against individuals or businesses found illegally mining cryptocurrency in the country. According to local media, the government is particularly displeased with the usage of subsidized electricity intended for household consumption for crypto mining, claiming that it will continue to cause problems with the National Grid.

According to a report published by a local news agency on Monday, the Association of Banks of Russia, a prominent Russian banking association that represents more than 300 banks and financial institutions, has encouraged lawmakers to make it illegal to hold digital currencies on noncustodial wallets outside of centralized exchange platforms.

The Bank of England or BoE is looking into ways to tax the financial companies it regulates as it seems to tighten its grip on the cryptocurrency market in the UK. It would reportedly gather funds through its Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) branch to hire up to 100 new regulators to help promote its regulatory objectives in the emerging industry.

In reaction to last month’s Ronin Bridge, the FBI has teamed up with the CISA or Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to sound an alarm to crypto investors regarding North Korean state-sponsored hacks targeting blockchain-powered firms.

New York’s state government intends to make it mandatory for BitLicense holders to pay assessment fees to demonstrate their compliance with the rules. According to the rule included in the Additional York state’s FY2023 budget passed into law last week, the state’s DFS has been given “new authority to collect supervisory costs from licensed virtual currency businesses.”

The US Secret Service presently has more than $100 million in digital currencies in its possession, which it seized from at least 254 cybercrime investigations it has been following since 2015.

Partnerships, launches, fundings, and plans

The blockchain-based Play-2-Earn (P2E) game, Blast Royale, has completed a $5 million seed investment round recently. According to the announcement, Animoca Brands, the company behind The Sandbox game, led the round, with participation from big names like Dragonfly Capital, Play Ventures Future Fund, Double Peak, DeFiance Capital, Polygon, C2 Ventures, DWeb3, Merit Circle, Morningstar Ventures, Shima Capitol, Ancient 8, AvocadoDAO, and notable angel investors Santiago R Santos and Nick Chong.

AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc, an American movie cinema chain known for its pro-crypto stance, has modified its smartphone app services to support Dogecoin (DOGE), Shiba Inu (SHIB), and other crypto tokens as modes of payment in the United States.

The Ethereum Foundation published a report detailing how its $1.6 billion treasury is made up primarily of Ether, with non-digital assets accounting for 18.8% of the total. The EF Non-profit organization now owns 0.3 percent of the total ETH supply. According to the current market prices, which can be verified by Etherscan, this equates to around $1.3 billion. Furthermore, the organization’s non-crypto holdings make for a $302 million share.

Polygon has launched a new Web3 development network, with $100 million worth of funds available to early adopters who can help accelerate adoption. According to the company, the Polygon Supernet chain allows developers to construct apps in a customizable environment with no hosting or operational costs.

Kadena Eco, a blockchain firm, has announced the introduction of a $100 million grant program to help developers build Web3.0 applications on its platform. Kadena is using the awards to deliver more useful solutions to the rising digital world while also growing its ecosystem as needed as a pioneer in the blockchain ecosystem.

H.E. Justin Sun, TRON’s Founder, revealed today on Twitter in an open letter that an all-new decentralized stablecoin, USDD, is debuting on the TRON blockchain, marking TRON’s official entry into the realm of decentralized stablecoins.

Fidinam Group, a Swiss multinational corporation, has announced that Shiba Inu (SHIB) token is now one of its payment options. Shiba Xanders, one of the Admins of Shiba Venezuela, posted the news on Twitter, congratulating memecoin users.

Robinhood Markets Inc, a commission-free stock trading and investing app, has announced plans to acquire Ziglu Limited, a UK-based electronic money institution and crypto assets startup. This Tuesday, the trading platform with a strong interest in digital assets trading acknowledged the move, noting that regulatory permits are still pending.

Framework Ventures, a crypto-focused venture capital firm based in San Francisco, has secured $400 million in a funding round. The firm intends to invest in early-stage firms and entrepreneurs in the Web3, decentralized finance (DeFi), and blockchain gaming sectors.

On reports that the network will launch an airdrop a token for its community, native token prices for Optimism, the well-known Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution, have risen by around 20%. Optimism executes a huge number of transactions using Optimistic Rollups. The project claims to be able to operate smart contracts for five to 500 times less than Ethereum’s layer one costs.

Aura FAT Projects Acquisition Corp. or AFARU, a Cayman Islands-based special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), has announced that it has generated $115 million through its Nasdaq IPO. With its April 13 IPO under the ticker code “AFARU,” the SPAC has raised an incredible $100 million, with a $15 million over-allotment bringing the total to $115 million.

Atari recently issued comments revealing that the business has terminated all license agreements with its joint venture company ICICB Group and its subsidiaries. Previously, the two firms had collaborated on developing the Atari Chain and the Atari utility token (ATRI).

Crypto exchange

Exmo.com, a cryptocurrency trading platform, has announced that it is selling its business divisions in Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan to avoid jeopardizing its global expansion plans. The new company units in these three locations, according to the release, are now under the supervision of a Russian software company that has been serving the Exmo.com exchange for the past three years.

Gulf Energy, Thailand’s foremost energy development firm, has effectively invested funds in Binance US, the world’s largest crypto exchange, marking yet another milestone in the company’s growth in the digital asset sector.

Binance has assisted Axie Infinity’s Ronin Network in recovering part of the cash lost in the March Bridge hack. Binance Chief Executive Officer Changpeng Zhao announced the good news on Twitter, explaining that a portion of the $620 million stolen from the Ronin Bridge was funneled through the exchange platform.

Various media sites, including the Financial Times, have reported that investment banking behemoth Goldman Sachs is considering forming a partnership with the crypto exchange company FTX.

The digital asset exchange Bitfinex experienced a brief outage on April 19, according to the trading firm’s Twitter account. While the exchange could not provide enough information regarding the source of the problems, trading was paused, and the platform stated that it was examining the matter.

NFT and Metaverse

Next Earth, a metaverse-based duplicate of Earth, took the major leap of donating 10% of all purchases to environmental causes, raising over $1 million in just a few months.

Limitless, the team behind Next Earth, the newest Metaverse unicorn, announced the introduction of a new cutting-edge Metaverse integrator solution for brands and enterprises on April 21. Limitless provides a simple and straightforward process for becoming the go-to full-stack solution for big brands and startups across all industries in the Metaverse, building on the proven frameworks from their pioneering projects, which include the land ownership mega-hit Next Earth.

The Ethereum-based Moonbirds NFT project has rocketed to the top of the trade volume rankings after only four days, generating $290 million in sales. There was 10,000 computer-generated pixel owl avatar NFTs available, which sold out rapidly on April 16 for 2.5 Ether (ETH) each, or $7,700 at the current market price. The floor price on secondary markets has risen dramatically, with OpenSea currently showing a startling 18.45 ETH ($56,800).

MetaMask and iCloud phishing attack

The well-known Ethereum-based crypto wallet service, MetaMask, has warned the crypto community about current Apple iCloud phishing assaults. Because default device settings save a user’s seed phrase or “password-encrypted MetaMask vault” on the iCloud if the user has permitted automatic backups for their app data, the security vulnerability impacts iPhone, Mac, and iPad users.

DEX: A shift toward concentrated liquidity

According to a recent report by TheCoinRise, DEX protocols have become an important part of the DeFi ecosystem, where liquidity and liquidity providers are vital to maintaining the fast-expanding market movement.

On the one hand, the liquidity market is gradually changing away from traditional liquidity methods and toward concentrated liquidity as DEX protocols see daily trading volumes in the billions.

Is crypto dead?

Andre Cronje, the founder of Yearn.finance, has been making news this week after his decision to leave the DeFi and crypto space went viral on social media. He reappeared on Monday with a Medium blog article titled “The Rise and Fall of Crypto Culture.” He voiced his sadness for the crypto culture in the posture and urged for a strict regulatory framework and stronger legislation in the business.

The massive growth of Cardano

The Cardano blockchain is gaining traction, with 400 new projects in development and 100,000 new wallets created in the last month alone.

According to a tweet by Cardano’s founders, Input-Output (IOHK), the network now has around 900 projects in development. Since IOHK Vice President Tim Harrison reported on Linkedin on March 11 that the total sat at around 500, the number has grown by roughly 400.

Exclusive announcements

The MetaBlaze Token (MBLZ) initial coin offering (ICO) was a resounding success. On April 20, the firm launched its second ICO phase, reaching 93 percent of its funding goal on the first day. This follows the completion of the first round of the ICO, which began in late February and raised $1.5 million in two weeks.

MetaBlaze (MBLZ) launched its second ICO phase at noon UTC, giving investors one last chance to buy MetaBlaze tokens at lower prices. 

MBC GROUP is releasing seven ultra-rare NFTs from its Fananees Genesis NFT Collection this Ramadan, which will be marketed at OpenSea, utilizing current technology like the blockchain.

TheCoinRise will be back with another crypto weekly roundup next Friday.