Crypto News Weekly roundup March 6

This week has seen a bit of recovery in the crypto market after the Russia-Ukraine crisis, with the market finally recovering back to normal. We at TheCoinRise are here to summarize it for you.

Russia-Ukraine Crisis

The actions by Russia to perform a special military operation on Ukraine have driven massive sympathy and support to the latter. Investors have donated heavy crypto funds to Ukraine through BTC, ETH, and USDT.

Within two days, Ukraine raised over $8 million through crypto donations. It started urging for a crypto crackdown on Russian citizens, which was not majorly welcomed by the crypto community.

Brian Armstrong, the Coinbase CEO, said that the exchange would not ban Russians unless the law complies to do so. Other CEX have also followed the same path by refusing a crackdown.

Ukraine has received a slew of crypto wallet addresses that are related to Russian leaders after making an effort to survey.

The war brings tons of suffering to citizens. Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s SpaceX comes as a savior for Ukraine’s internet after Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov directly reached out to him on Twitter.

The country has announced that it will accept crypto donations in DOGE and set up an official DOGE wallet for the same. Before this, it announced that DOT donations would also be accepted, after which DOT Founder donated $5.8 million. However, the crypto community is still struggling for more altcoin acceptance in Ukraine for crypto donations. 

The decentralized exchange platform Uniswap has launched an interface for the conversion of ERC-20 tokens like Aave, LINK, and MANA to ETH. These coins will be sent in a single transfer to Ukraine’s official crypto wallet addresses.

Russian-British Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of financial technology company Revoult, Nik Storonsky, has called for peace in the current war between Russia and Ukraine.

The two largest payment services companies in the United States, Mastercard and Visa, have said in separate statements that they are planning to follow the imposed sanctions and could soon halt their services in Russia, citing “unacceptable” actions by the country.

The data by Russia- dominated crypto exchange platforms has revealed that the country’s trading activities have dropped by 50%, debunking the theory that it would use cryptocurrencies to evade imposed sanctions.

On the other hand, the Central Bank of Russia is still proposing a crypto mining and trading ban in the nation.

Regulatory involvement in the crypto industry

Israeli authorities have recently seized 30 crypto wallets from 12 exchange accounts related to terrorism funding involved in the terrorist organization Hamas, located in the Gaza Strip.

Australia’s cybersecurity advisor, the Cyber Security Industry Advisory Committee, recently highlighted multiple crypto-related possibilities for the officials to explore as it decides for the growing worldwide crypto acceptance.

The European Union this week announced that it is planning to exclude seven Russian Banks from the Society of the Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT). The scrutinized banks list contains Russia’s second-largest bank VTB, Bank Otrkitie, Promsvyazbank, Novikombank, Bank Rossiya, Sovcombank, and VEB.

The White House and Treasury Department have issued a warning to the U.S.-based companies and individuals not to support crypto transactions addressed to particular Russian banks and individuals.

South Korea’s Digital Asset Industry Committee, whose members are leading blockchain experts, has urged the creation of a government committee focused on helping and advancing digital asset businesses in the nation.

Partnerships, Launches, and plans

The Switzerland’s City of Lugano has been on headlines this week after it revealed its plans on crypto adoption in the form of tax payments after joining hands with the company behind the largest stablecoin, Tether, Tether Operations Limited.

The multibillion-dollar hedge fund and financial services company Citadel has decided to finally try its hands on the crypto world after the CEO and ex-crypto critic Ken Griffin admitted that he was wrong about crypto.

Crypto exchange

The biggest crypto exchange platform in the world, Binance has returned to Malaysia following a strategic investment in the nation’s regulated crypto trading platform MX Global.

One of the most established crypto exchanges in South Africa, VALR has raised $50 million via a Series B equity funding round. Some of the major investors in the round were Pantera Capital, Alameda Research, and Coinbase Ventures.

Premier League Champion, Manchester City, has tapped crypto exchange OKX to become its official crypto exchange partner in a multi-year agreement that will link the duo.

NFT and Metaverse

A report by Reuters reveals that the America-based e-commerce company eBay Inc. is planning to enter the crypto space by exploring options for payments. The company has previously said that it is planning to enter the NFT space. 

21st-century blockchain-based auction house Portion, which is also a collector’s community for rare high-end physical and digital art items, has teamed with fashion icon Phillip Plein to launch the world’s first collection created in the Metaverse at Milan Fashion Week. 

South Korea’s Ministry of ICT, Science, and Future Planning invested $187 million in building the Metaverse ecosystem, aiming to support digital content and corporate growth in the country.

OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace, has decided to ban Iranian users from using its services, causing anger and debates among NFT collectors over the decentralization of the digital asset industry.

NFT infrastructure startup Rarify has grabbed important funding of $10 million from the Series A funding round, resulting in a valuation of $100 million. The event was held by the company’s primary supporter, Pantera Capital.

As per the data from the recent Google Search Trends, NFT and Metaverse have seen a declining interest this year. Despite the declining interest in NFT and uncertainty in upcoming Major League Baseball (MLB), Topps Trading Cards are witnessing a massive craze among NFT collectors. The first edition of Topps’ “Timeless Series” has been sold for around $471k in an OpenSea auction.

Polker is all set to launch an early access release for 500 people ahead of the original launch, where the participants will get a limited edition of “Beta” NFT.

Exclusive Reviews

Uquid: It offers over 2 million real-world items such as ‘Jewellery,’ ‘Men’s & Women’s Fashion,’ ‘Computers,’ ‘Toys,’ ‘Luggage’ and much more.

Universe Finance: It is Uniswap V3- based active liquidity management platform that works on risk ranking and quantitative strategies. 

Oz Finance: It is an open zone digital asset project connecting a network of special economic zones (ecozones) via TOTOZ token.

Exclusive announcements

GXChain has announced that its native utility token, $GXC, will split and be renamed $REI, with the number of tokens increasing from 100 million to 1 billion.

The leading decentralized marketplace for cross-chain lending, Trava Finance has revealed that it is launching its latest product TraDAO to benefit the Trava Finance ecosystem.

The MENA partners with ANCORE Strategy and AFTERMEDIA to bring the region’s first non-fungible token (NFT) premium content media project.

The crypto exchange, which is well-known for its association with Cardano, Bitrue, has started a special round of yield farming on March 4, aiming to enable users to successfully farm for the exchange’s native token, BTR.

TheCoinRise will be back with another weekly roundup next Friday.