Schlagwort: crypto market news

The crypto division of the popular trading app Robinhood has been fined $30 million by the New York State Department of Finance Services for allegedly violating cybersecurity regulations and anti-money laundering laws.

The New York State Department of Financial Services accused the trading app company of failing to use proper resources to stop illicit trading activities on the platform.

A press release on this matter notes:

“All of these deficiencies resulted from what the department found were significant shortcomings in the management and oversight of RHC’s compliance programs, including a failure to foster and maintain an adequate culture of compliance. The department also discovered that adequate resources were not devoted to RHC’s compliance programs, particularly as it grew, which exacerbated these issues.”

Robinhood is now being investigated further and will be required by the department to hire the services of an independent monetary consultant who will regularly evaluate its compliance efforts and enforce remedies when necessary.

Failing to hire and train staff

In addition to failing to prevent anti-money laundering activities, Robinhood was also accused of failing to hire and train its staff to prevent illicit financial behaviour. The department said that Robinhood did not take note of the apparent trading risks and therefore didn’t take the necessary actions to prevent illicit behaviour.

In its defence, Robinhood through its associate general counsel, Chery Crumpton said in an interview:

“We have made significant progress building industry-leading legal, compliance, and cybersecurity programs. We will continue to prioritize this work to best serve our customers. We remain proud to offer a more accessible, lower-cost platform to buy and sell crypto and are excited to continue to grow our business in a responsible manner with new products and services that our customers want.”

The post Robinhood’s crypto division slapped with a $30 million fine appeared first on CoinJournal.

Babylon Finance, the protocol for DeFi asset management, has issued a statement saying that it shall shut down its services on November 15.

This comes after the firm failed to recover from the $80 million Rari/FEI hack that took place in April this year.

Babylon Finance is shutting down

– Details on the claim process will be shared by the end of this week
– Withdraw your funds before Nov 15thhttps://t.co/dICvgxpDUF

— Babylon Finance (@BabylonFinance) August 31, 2022

The Rari/FEI hack

Prior to the Rari/FEI hack, Babylon Finance was operating perfectly and it had established a top 10 lending pool on Rari, a protocol that allows users to supply and borrow any asset from its Fuse pools to generate yield.

Rari users can create pools with a selection of Ethereum-based digital assets, like Babylon Finance’s native token, BABL, and other users can contribute money to those pools to receive rewards. At its peak, Babylon Finance held $30 million worth of different cryptocurrencies on Rari and was one of the top lending pools on Rari. $10 million worth of the assets were supplied by users.

The Rari/FEI hack caused the protocol $3.4 million and in the following two days, customers had withdrawn 75% of the TVL.

Following the exploit, Babylon’s $10 million loan market on Rari, Fuse, was suspended because BABL could no longer be used as security in borrowing funds on Rari.

The Babylon Finance token, BABL

Following the news, the price of the BABL token has dropped by over 91% in the last 24 hours and it is currently trading at $0.4563 according to Coinnmarketcap.

According to a press release by Babylon Finance:

“Since the token supply is finite, non-inflationary, and only 10% remains in the treasury, the fall has eliminated any chance of further fundraising initiatives.”

The Babylon Finance team has said that starting on September 6, the firm would combine all its treasury holdings and distribute them to BABL holders. In addition members of Babylon Finance must withdraw their money before November 15.

The post Babylon Finance to shut down on November 15: BABL price falls by 91% appeared first on CoinJournal.

• Laguna Labs CEO Stefan Rust says MakerDAO’s quest to free float DAI is a great move.
• However, he says the whole idea of DAOs isn’t the utopian democracy people think they are.

Stefan Rust, CEO of blockchain innovation hub Laguna Labs, says proposals to have Maker DAO’s native token fully depegged from the US dollar might not be the only problem out there for the crypto platform.

According to Rust, even more pressing could be the structure of decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs). He says this is what Maker and the broader crypto industry needs to focus on even as events elsewhere inform the desire to depeg Dai.

The Laguna Labs CEO’s comments, shared with CoinJournal on Wednesday, come a few days after MakerDAO co-founder Rune Christensen discussed why depegging the native token DAI from USD Coin (USDC) might be Maker’s way forward.

The Maker co-founder’s advice to the community was tempered with what he summed as concerns over a “physical crackdown against crypto” by an authoritarian system. The views followed the US Treasury’s sanctions on crypto mixing service Tornado Cash.

Rust says DAOs are broken

According to Rune, and in reference to Maker’s DAI plans, the whole DAO ecosystem is “broken” and needs fixing if the crypto industry is to see even more growth.

“This is a great idea and one I’m excited to watch Maker DAO explore,” Rust said referring to the DAI depeg discussion. “[But] the US dollar is not, however, Maker’s only problem: the governance model of all decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs), needs serious attention if the cryptocurrency industry is to thrive,” he added.

The problems bedevilling the decentralised finance (DeFi) ecosystem as seen over the past few years, with hacks and Ponzi scheme-like projects seeing many people lose huge amounts of money adds to the whole outlook of the DAO ecosystem being broken.

Not the utopian democracy you think

Rust also notes that, even though most users find DeFi an “intimidating space,” the DAOs governing many of the protocols within the industry simply do not work. 

He believes DAOs do not run on the kind of utopian democracy that most within the crypto space would like to think they are.

“Indeed, as we saw recently with Maker DAO and its “community” vote to allow US banks to borrow DAI while adding US Treasuries to the portfolio, like all democracies, DAOs are open to outsized influence from those with the largest share of tokens, or the ability to sway opinion.”

In his opinion, Rust sees the best path forward for crypto following the recent booms and busts would be for the sector to pivot to its original mission of a “decentralised, censorship-resistant financial ecosystem.”

The post USD isn’t Maker’s only problem: DAOs are broken appeared first on CoinJournal.

Busan city, the second-largest city in South Korea which is commonly referred to as South Korea’s ‘Blockchain’ city, has partnered with the leading cryptocurrency exchange FTX to build a local crypto exchange. In addition, the partnership is also aimed at fostering blockchain development in the city.

According to the agreement according to a statement issued by the Busan Metropolitan City on August 30, FTX will assist in creating a local crypto exchange duped by Busan Digital Asset Exchange. The Bahamian-based crypto exchange led by Sam Bankman-Fried shall also support Busan city in fostering the growth of the local blockchain industry.

Busan City’s crypto exchange

Busan City will leverage FTX’s technology and infrastructure to build its own cryptocurrency exchange and promote blockchain-specific education in local universities and projects within the city’s ‘Blockchain Special Free Zone’ established in 2019.

FTX, through its Investment Division CEO, Amy Woo, said that it will establish a Korean FTX branch in Busan City in the next 12 months to help make Busan a digital financial hub in Asia.

Besides signing an agreement with FTX, Busan also partnered with Binance, the largest crypto exchange by trading volume, on August 26. Binance entered into a memorandum of understanding to provide infrastructure and technological support to the city for its blockchain development effort.

Both FTX and Binance are therefore set to establish a presence in South Korea over the coming 12 months.

From the time Busan was designated as South Korea’s Blockchain city in 2019, several projects have already been rolled out. These projects include a propriety blockchain-based ID system, a blockchain-powered driver’s license platform, and cryptocurrency support for various services.

The post South Korea’s 2nd largest city Busan partners with FTX for a local exchange appeared first on CoinJournal.

Bitvavo now supports staking for three new tokens- SOL, ATOM and LUNA2.

Dutch crypto platform Bitvavo has added three new cryptocurrencies to its staking rewards service.

Now with Solana (SOL), Luna (LUNA2) and Comos (ATOM), customers can leverage their holdings to enjoy staking rewards of up to 10% APY.

Stake SOL, LUNA and ATOM

Staking is one way cryptocurrency holders participate in the network transactions and security of a blockchain network. By locking up their assets for a given period, holders help facilitate the said activities, with a reward earned as part of the incentivisation process.

Bitvavo now supports the above coins, offering a flexible staking feature that allows users to stake or unstake their crypto assets at will.

In their latest update the Dutch-based platform noted the following as the new yearly yield (annual percentage yield, or APY) for the three proof-of-stake digital assets.

Here is what you earn when you stake with Bitvavo:

• Solana (SOL): earn up to 5% reward
• Luna (LUNA2): earn up to 6% reward
• Cosmos (ATOM): earn up to 10% reward

The update means the maximum yearly reward for staked assets on the De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) regulated platform is higher than the 7.5% initially offered on Icon (ICX).

Users can access and keep tabs on their staked assets in the Bitvavo app.

Cardano (ADA) staking reward update

Apart from adding Solana, Cosmos, and Luna, Bitvavo has updated the staking reward for Cardano (ADA). This has been reevaluated from 5% to 4.25%.

Factors that help determine the yield rate include the average pool rate, blocks per Epochs, amount of ADA pledged and staking costs relating to the percentage of the reward pool operators take.

Bitvavo has over 1 million users and offers up to 180 digital assets, including Bitcoin and Ethereum.

The post Bitvavo adds staking support for SOL, LUNA2, ATOM appeared first on CoinJournal.