Kategorie: Crypto Markets

Dapper Labs, the Vancouver-based company behind Flow blockchain, has suspended Russian accounts following the sanctions imposed on Russia and Russian nationals by the European Union on Thursday.

Dapper Labs stated in a press release:

“It is now prohibited to provide crypto-asset wallet, account, or custody services of any value to accounts with connections to Russia. However, Dapper has not closed the accounts.”

What the suspension means

Besides Flow blockchain, Dapper Labs specializes in non-fungible token (NFT) collectables. It has launched several NFT collectables including the famous Cryptokitties, Cheeze Wizards, and NBA Top Shot.

Dapper Labs was directed to take action on Russian accounts by its payment processing and store value partner which is subject to European Union regulations.

The Russians impacted by the suspension will not be able to buy, sell, or gift UFC Strike, NBA Top Shot, and NFL All Day NFT collectables. They shall not also be able to withdraw funds from their Dapper accounts or buy anything with their account balances.

The Russian users will however be able to still access accounts and view the digital assets that they purchased. Dapper maintained that the affected users still retain their ownership rights over the assets that they had purchased although they cannot sell them.

Dapper stated:

“Regardless of this new regulation, any NFT previously purchased by an impacted user continues to belong to that user. Any Moments you own and any Dapper Balance continue to be your property.”

Through its UFC Strike NFT collection, Dapper allowed the sale of NFTs related to Russian fighters like Khabib Nurmagomedov who have participated in the UFC.

EU sanctions

The updated sanctions against Russia and Russian nationals are an escalation of the previous sanctions established in April, especially on crypto.

The existing prohibitions on crypto assets have been tightened by banning crypto services regardless of a wallet’s value. The wallet value was previously capped at €10,000.

Last week, Russia also took steps to restrict crypto transactions and backlisted OKX, which is one of the world’s leading crypto exchanges.

More crypto and web3 companies are expected to follow suit with restrictions following the updated EU sanctions.

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Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao, has stated that the global leading digital-asset platform may spend more than $1 billion on investment by the end of this year. Zhao, commonly referred to as CZ within the crypto space, revealed this in an interview with Bloomberg.

The statement from Zhao comes after an attack on the BNB chain, and a day after Binance acquired a license to operate in Kazakhstan.

According to CZ, the bulk of the funds will go to investments and asset purchases.

Binance investment plan

In the recent past, Binance has invested in excess of $325 million in more than 67 projects despite the bear crypto market. The Venture Capital arm of Binance has made a number of investments in Aptos, a firm founded by former Meta employees.

FTX, a close Binance competitor has embarked on purchasing assets from distressed crypto firms, and answering a question about buying out crypto firms, Zhao said:

“Many of them, they just take a user’s money and give it to somebody else. There’s not a lot of intrinsic value. In that case, what’s to acquire? We want to see real products that people use.”

Not interested in acquisitions

Binance is yet to show interest in any distressed crypto firm. On the contrary, Binance is focused on offering solutions for DeFi and NFT Protocols. To be precise, it is focused on addressing persistent problems within the crypto market like software attacks and tightening regulations.

Zhao claimed that Binance has been investing heavily in non-fungible tokens (NFTs), fan tokens, and traditional payment service providers. He also stated that Binance has remained economically viable despite the current economic turmoil across the crypto markets and the largest financial sector.

On traditional payment service providers, Zhao said that Binance might venture into acquiring minority stakes in traditional gaming and eCommerce companies. 

Binance has an additional $7 billion fund for partnerships and it has a team of more than 30 members focused on acquisitions and mergers.

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In a tweet released by Crypto.com today, the cryptocurrency exchange company announced that it will be adding Google Pay and Apple Pay support for Crypto.com Visa Card users in Canada.

Crypto.com users in Canada who use the Crypto.com Visa Card will now be able to link their cards to Apple Pay and Google Pay. All that is required is for a user to add their Crypto.com Visa card details to his or her Apple Pay wallet or Google Pay. The service will also be available to iOS users who use Apple watches.

Although the services are currently limited to Canadian users only, the Crypto.com community are optimistic that the services will soon be available for users in other parts of the world as well.

Crypto.com has been on a wild expansion lately and it has acquired regulatory approvals in several countries with the latest being securing approval as a crypto asset business from UK’s FCA on August 17, 2022.

About Crypto.com

Crypto.com is a Singaporean-based cryptocurrency exchange company. Besides operating a crypto exchange platform, Crypto.com also has an official cryptocurrency known as Cronos (CRO).

Crypto.com currently have a customer base of over 50 million across the world and it offers a variety of products and cryptocurrency-based financial services that include the Crypto.com app, the Crypto.com Exchange, the Crypto.com DeFi wallet, and the Crypto.com NFT.

The Crypto.com app allows users to buy and sell cryptocurrencies while the Crypto.com Exchange is designed for institutional traders. The Crypto.com DeFi wallet is a non-custodial wallet that allows users to hold and stake crypto assets.

The Crypto.com NFT is an NFT marketplace that allows users to collect and trade NFTs.

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In September, the world’s second-largest stock exchange Nasdaq announced that it will offer custody services for Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) to institutional investors. Nasdaq hired Ira Auerbach, a former Gemini employee, to head the new Nasdaq Digital Assets unit.

The main reason the new Nasdaq Digital Assets Unit was targeted toward institutional investors is the remarkable growth in crypto adoption among this class of investors in the past few years. While investing in cryptocurrencies is one thing, safeguarding the accumulated crypto holdings is another and company-owned crypto funds require special handling thus the need for custodial services.

While many crypto exchanges already offer crypto custody services for institutional investors, many believe the institutional investors’ space is largely neglected and Nasdaq is not late for the party.

No plans for a Nasdaq crypto platform yet

Despite Nasdaq jumping into the crypto space with the crypto custody services, the company’s executive vice president and head of North American markets, Tal Cohen, said that the company shall wait for further clarity in crypto regulations and global crypto adoption before it decides on whether to launch a crypto platform.

Speaking to Bloomberg TV, Cohen said:

“Those are discussions we are happy to have. But right now, on the retail side, the market is fairly saturated. There’s a number of exchanges servicing the retail customer base.”

Nasdaq instead plans to stick to its crypto custody services citing massive demand and opportunity from customers.

Cohen said:

“We think if you can safe-keep peoples’ assets, they’ll trust you to do everything else afterwards.”

Cohen also said that besides the custody services, the stock exchange was working on facilitating the transfer of digital assets.

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• Crypto funds saw a third straight week of inbound investments last week. However, CoinShares’ James Butterfill says the low inflows suggest there’s “continued investor hesitancy.”

The crypto market has struggled to tag a positive sentiment, with September again proving a tricky month for bulls as prices remained largely within a long term downtrend going back to November 2021.

So while institutional investors continue to size up opportunities in the digital assets sector, flows into investment products have significantly remained low over the past few weeks.

James Butterfill, Head of Research at digital asset manager CoinShares, says the low inflows seen last week imply a “continued hesitancy” from investors.

Butterfill shared the outlook in the latest edition of the “Digital Asset Fund Flows Weekly Report”, which CoinShares published on Monday.

Crypto funds see third week of inflows

Fund outflows year-to-date are at more than $42 million, with the past three weeks seeing positive flows.

US$10m inflows into digital assets last week, highlights continued investor hesitancyhttps://t.co/VQJY2oicLC

— James Butterfill (@jbutterfill) October 3, 2022

According to Butterfill, the low flows suggest institutional investors are still weighing up the market, particularly given the global macroeconomic environment.

“Digital asset investment products saw inflows totaling $10.3 million last week representing the third week of inflows. The flows remain low implying continued hesitancy amongst investors, this is highlighted in investment product trading volumes which were $886 million for the week, the lowest since October 2020,” Butterfill wrote.

Bitcoin recorded minor inflows for a third week in a row, with $7.7 million (short bitcoin saw inflows of $2.1 million). Meanwhile, Ethereum registered $5.6 million in inflows last week to post a second positive week – but short Ethereum products hit outflows of $0.9 million.

Across the altcoin market, negative sentiment saw investors pull $3.5 million. Top outflows were in Polygon, Cardano and Avalanche.

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