Kategorie: Crypto Markets

• The Lima upgrade is the 12^th upgrade on the Tezos protocol.
• Tezos is referred to as the “self-amending blockchain” for its ability to seamlessly upgrade using its on-chain governance.
• Lima upgrade reduces the risk of bugs in smart contracts among other benefits.

Tezos, one of the original Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchains, has activated its 12^th upgrade, the Lima upgrade, which was voted upon and approved by the Tezos community. The new upgrade which introduces several new features also reduces the risk of bugs in smart contracts.

Lima marks the fourth protocol upgrade in 2022 and the 12^th upgrade since the Tezos protocol was unveiled. Tezos is known for its ability to seamlessly upgrade through its on-chain governances which allows the protocol participants to propose and vote on upgrades and changes that they believe are important for the protocol.

Key improvements introduced by Lima upgrade

The Lima upgrade introduces several key improvements to Tezos functionality including faster processing speeds, the introduction of consensus keys, and improvements to tickets.

The Lima upgrade continues with the ‘Pipelining validation project’ that speeds up the processing of blocks and operations on Tezos by separating validation processes from application processes. A new block on Tezos is first validated before being forwarded to other peers; a feature that speeds up block propagation on the network and reduces the block time to 15 seconds and increases the overall throughput for the blockchain.

The consensus keys will allow validators (known as bakers in Tezos) to designate a special key for signing blocks and consensus operations. This feature prevents backers from losing delegators due to a change in setup or the need to coordinate with delegators off-chain to move them to a new address.

Tickets are a type of data unique to Tezos smart contracts and a great foundation for the scalable solutions that have allowed for many use cases including tokenization, authentication, and voting among others. Lima upgrade in particular deprecates the creation, storage and transfer of zero-amount tickets thus reducing the risk of bugs in smart contracts.

In addition to the improvements to the current Layer 1 Tezos solutions, the Lima upgrade also finalizes the development work towards Smart Rollups, which is an innovative Layer 2 scaling solution that is expected to debut in the subsequent Tezos upgrade proposal.

The post Tezos activates the 12th upgrade “Lima” appeared first on CoinJournal.

• Authorities have arrested Sam Bankman-Fried in the Bahamas.

• Binance reserves are accounted for, says CryptoQuant.

• Ark Invest continues to invest in Coinbase.

Sam Bankman-Fried has been arrested

Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of FTX cryptocurrency, was arrested in The Bahamas earlier this week. The former billionaire now faces extradition to the United States, where he would face numerous charges by both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.

A Bahamian judge denied SBF bail as he is deemed a flight risk. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York charged SBF with eight criminal counts. Meanwhile, the SEC also charged Sam Bankman-Fried with allegedly orchestrating a scheme to defraud equity investors in FTX Trading.

According to John J Ray III, FTX had no record-keeping whatsoever and accused the cryptocurrency exchange of committing old-fashioned embezzlement. 

Binance reserves are accounted for

Blockchain analytics provider CryptoQuant revealed earlier this week that it had verified Binance’s proof of reserve in its recently released audit report. The report analysed the recently released proof-of-reserves by Binance. 

There has been a lot of FUD around Binance over the past few days, with a surge in withdrawals on the platform. Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, told CNBC that the cryptocurrency exchange could meet 100% of withdrawals on its platform. He said;

“People can withdraw 100% of the assets they have on Binance; we will not have an issue on any given day. Binance doesn’t operate on a fractional banking system.”

Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest mops up more Coinbase stocks

Ark Invest acquired Coinbase stocks on two separate occasions last week. At the start of the week, Ark Invest acquired over 78,000 Coinbase stocks, despite the declining price of the company’s shares.

Before the end of the week, Ark Invest spent $3.2 million on Coinbase shares, bringing its total to 58 million. The investment came despite the fact that Coinbase’s CEO revealed the company expects its 2022 revenue to decline by 50% or more from what it generated in 2021.

Microsoft drops the hammer on cryptocurrency mining on its online services

Cloud computing giant Microsoft announced earlier this week that it had placed new restrictions on activities like cryptocurrency mining. As a result of this latest development, users will now require written pre-approval from the company before they can be allowed to use Microsoft Azure for mining cryptocurrencies.

Brazil is next to launch a CBDC

The president of the Brazil Central Bank, Roberto Campos Neto, announced earlier this week that they are preparing to launch a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) in 2024.

The central bank is also planning to carry out a pilot program alongside other financial institutions before the implementation of the CBDC.

The post This week in crypto: SBF arrested in The Bahamas appeared first on CoinJournal.

• Investor Kevin O’Leary is a hired FTX spokesperson in the ongoing FTX hearing.
• O’Leary has asserted that Binance was behind the collapse of FTX.
• Kevin however told the committee that that was an opinion and didn’t have records.

Kevin O’Leary, a hired FTX spokesperson, on Wednesday told the US Senate Committee hearing on the collapse of FTX that Binance was the cause of the FTX problems.

Kevin told the committee that when he inquired about Sam Bankman-Fried’s usage of customer funds, he was told that more than $3 billion were used in repurchasing the FTX shares that Binance held. When pressed by Senator Patrick Toomey on why FTX failed, Kevin said he only had an opinion but didn’t have the records.

Binance move to sell FTX tokens hurt FTX’s balance sheet

Kevin claimed that Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao’s move to sell the FTX tokens that it held was made to hurt FTX’s balance sheet. In Kevin’s words:

“In my view, my personal opinion, these two […] in an unregulated market […] with this incredible business in terms of growth were at war with each other, and one put the other out of business, intentionally.”

Kevin further added:

“Maybe there is nothing wrong with that, maybe there is nothing wrong with love and war, but Binance is a massive unregulated global monopoly now, and they put FTX out of business.”

Last week on Friday, Changpeng Zhao and Sam Bankman-Fried engaged in a Twitter feud defending the legality of their business empires and former remarks by Kevin O’Leary in a previous interview with CNBC were brought up in the argument.

The post FTX collapse hearing: Kevin O’Leary says Binance caused the FTX implosion appeared first on CoinJournal.

• FTX lawyers are seeking permission from a US bankruptcy court to be allowed to sell their businesses.
• The businesses that FTX seek to auction were only acquired recently.
• FTX wants to auction the businesses before they lose too much value or have their licenses permanently revoked.

FTX lawyers have filed for permission from a US bankruptcy court to be allowed to auction four of its active businesses. According to the filing made on December 15, FTX seeks to auction its Japanese and European FTX branches, stock-clearing platform Embed, and recently acquired derivatives exchange LedgerX.

According to the lawyers, the mentioned businesses have been under pressure since the collapse of FTX which is the main reason they seek auctioning. They note:

“The longer operations are suspended, the greater the risk to the value of the assets and the risk of a permanent revocation of licenses.”

FTX Japan and FTX Europe currently suspended

FTX Europe currently has its licenses and operations suspended while FTX Japan is currently under business suspension and improvement orders.

Besides the businesses’ suspensions, the lawyers argue that the businesses have lost customers and employees since FTX filed for bankruptcy. The lawyers also argue that selling the businesses now would enable them to resume operations and maximize value for the FTX estate.

The lawyers also point out that the four businesses were recently acquired by FTX and had been operating relatively independently of FTX which would make their auction process less complicated.

Set auction dates

If their prayers were to be allowed by the US court, the auctioning of the businesses would start on February 21 2023 assuming there is more than one bidder.

Embed would be the first to be auctioned on February 21, followed by Ledger which would be auctioned on March 7. FTX Japan and FTX Europe would both be auctioned on March 21.

The post FTX seeking to auction its functioning businesses including LedgerX appeared first on CoinJournal.

• Binance has faced a FUD storm in the past few days about its reserves.
• Binance has also been in the spotlight amid the ongoing FTX collapse hearing.
• Blockchain analytics provider CryptoQuant has verified Binance reserves in its new audit report.

Blockchain analytics provider CryptoQuant has verified Binance’s proof of reserve in its recently released audit report analyzing the recently released proof-of-reserves by Binance. This settles the FUD storm that has been circulating within the internet especially following the recent surge in withdrawals.

Over the past few days, Binance has seen crypto assets worth as much as $3 billion leave the exchange in a span of 24 hours making investors worry about the future of the exchange seeing that FTX’s troubles started in a similar manner.

Binance scrambling to reassure customers

Amid the heightened customer worries after reports of increased outflows from Binance, the crypto exchange has been scrambling to reassure its customers and investors that it has sufficient reserves that are fully backed.

Earlier this month, Binance released a proof-of-reserves report for transparency purposes but it ended up being criticized for not being a full audit but rather an “agreed-upon procedure.” The tussle led to some customers withdrawing their crypto assets; something that sent shock waves throughout the crypto space since FTX’s fall started in a similar manner.

However according to CryptoQuant, the liabilities that Binance reports are close to audit firm Mazars’ estimation of 99%.CryptoQuant notes:

“The report shows Binance’s BTC liabilities (customers’ deposits) are 97% collateralized by the exchange assets. Collateralization increases to 101% when the BTC lent to customers is accounted for.”

CryptoQuant also added that Binance’s stablecoin and Ether reserves don’t show an “FTX-like” behaviour. The firm reported:

“Additionally, Binance has an acceptable ‘Clean Reserve,’ which means its own token, BNB, is still a low proportion of its total assets.”

According to data provider Nansen, only about 10% (Approx. $6.2 billion) of Binance’s reserves ($60.2 billion) are held in its native token BNB.

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