Headlines
Boston-based State Street Corp. announced the reorganization of its digital asset team. Its digital asset department has begun recruiting, less than six months after the department laid off employees. It is reported that the bank plans to provide cryptocurrency custody services. This move reflects State Streets growing confidence in the digital asset market, and that cryptocurrencies and tokenized assets will be more integrated into the financial system. (The Information)
Optimism plans to allocate 600,000 OP for Onchain Summer incentives
Optimism announced on the X platform that it will allocate 600,000 OP for Onchain Summer incentives. From now on, creators and builders can display their on-chain works on Superchain and receive rewards, covering networks including Base, Frax Finance, Metal L2, Mode, Zora, Redstone Chain, Cyber and OP Mainnet.
First up is the Onchain Summer Rounds: from June 3rd to August 30th, 60,000 OPs will be distributed to eligible superchain network creators and builders.
OKX launches exchange and Web3 wallet services in the Netherlands
On June 3, 2024, OKX announced the official launch of its centralized virtual asset exchange and OKX wallet in the Netherlands. In terms of centralized exchanges, Dutch customers can now enjoy spot (buy and sell) trading and exchange services for more than 150 virtual assets, including more than 60 virtual currency euro pairs. OKX also provides seamless euro deposit and withdrawal services in the Netherlands, as well as industry-leading Web3 capabilities through the OKX wallet.
In addition, OKX has integrated iDEAL, the most popular online payment system in the Netherlands, allowing Dutch customers to deposit funds into their accounts instantly and for free. Dutch customers can also make free deposits and withdrawals through the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA).
Industry News
Shenzhen Financial Bureau issues Risk Warning on Virtual Currency Trading Speculation
Shenzhen Local Financial Management Bureau issued a Risk Warning on Virtual Currency Trading Speculation. In response to the recent increase in virtual currency trading speculation, the risk warning pointed out that some gangs use virtual currency and overseas digital options as gimmicks to induce the public to participate in trading speculation, disrupting the economic and financial order, breeding gambling, illegal fundraising, fraud, pyramid schemes, money laundering and other illegal and criminal activities, and seriously endangering the property safety of the people.
In order to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the general public, the Shenzhen Local Financial Administration reminds the general public: First, virtual currency does not have the same legal status as legal currency. Second, virtual currency-related business activities are illegal financial activities. Those who conduct related illegal financial activities that constitute a crime shall be held criminally liable in accordance with the law. Third, overseas virtual currency exchanges providing services to residents in my country through the Internet are also illegal financial activities. Fourth, there are legal risks in participating in virtual currency investment and trading activities. If it violates public order and good morals, the relevant civil legal acts will be invalid, and the losses caused by it shall be borne by the person himself; if it is suspected of disrupting financial order and endangering financial security, the relevant departments shall investigate and deal with it in accordance with the law.
The risk warning points out that virtual currencies lack a clear value basis and are extremely susceptible to malicious speculation and price manipulation. It is necessary to prevent individual illegal enterprises from using virtual currencies or foreign digital options as gimmicks to carry out illegal fundraising and other fraudulent activities. The general public is requested to enhance risk prevention awareness and be careful not to become victims of illegal fundraising and other fraudulent activities. For those who have participated in relevant trading activities, it is recommended to withdraw as soon as possible, pay attention to collecting and retaining relevant evidence, and actively report to local regulatory authorities and public security organs.
Roundhill Submits Ethereum Covered Call Strategy ETF Application to SEC
Investment institution Roundhill has recently submitted an application to the U.S. SEC for the Ethereum Covered Call Strategy ETF (Roundhill Ether Covered Call Strategy ETF, code name YETH), with an effective date of August 14, 2024.
Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said this is a new application related to spot Ethereum.
Dubai Financial Services Authority updates its cryptocurrency token regime
The Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) has announced amendments to its cryptocurrency token regime to strengthen and advance the regulatory framework for tokens within its special economic zones.
The DFSA is an independent regulator in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that oversees entities registered in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), a special economic zone in the country.
On June 3, the DFSA said it had amended its crypto token regime to reflect changes to Consultation Paper 153, which was published in January 2024. The revisions covered several important areas, including funds investing in crypto tokens and the identification process for crypto tokens.
On the fund side, the amendment affects the ability to offer units of external and foreign funds that invest in recognized crypto tokens. Previously, the DFSA restricted fund activities involving crypto tokens. The DFSA said in a recent consultation paper that funds and asset managers considered the regime too strict. (Cointelegraph)
Australias first Bitcoin spot ETF has officially started trading
Australias first Bitcoin spot ETF has officially started trading. (Bitcoin Magazine)
Earlier news, Australias first Bitcoin spot ETF, Monochrome Bitcoin ETF (IBTC), will begin trading on Tuesday.
It is reported that there are already several ETP products in Australia that provide exposure to Bitcoin, but Monochrome Asset Management is the first company to be approved under the new crypto asset license category established under the Australian Financial Services (AFS) Licensing Rules 2021.
The ETF allows the ETF to hold Bitcoin directly. Monochrome said IBTC’s assets are stored offline in devices that are not connected to the internet and use a crypto custody solution that complies with “Australian institutional custody regulatory standards.”
Project News
TNA Protocol will conduct a new token BN airdrop event on June 5
According to official news, the TNA Protocol new token BN airdrop event will start at 18:00 Beijing time on June 5. This airdrop event is open to all users, and the number of airdrops will be related to domain name holdings, interactions, and TNA token holdings. Users can view the task board and points at the official link.
TNA Protocol is a Bitcoin asset and security protocol that integrates full-chain domain name asset issuance and DA solutions, and has received investment from institutions such as MH Ventures, Cogitent Ventures, and CSP DAO. BN tokens are an important part of the strategic upgrade of domain name + DA, aiming to expand trading and liquidity scenarios, promote user growth, and promote product development.
Ultiverse: ULTI token will be launched on June 6 at 18:00
Ultiverse posted on the X platform that the ULTI token will be launched at 6 pm Beijing time on June 6.
According to previous news, OKX Jumpstart launched ULTI (Ultiverse).
Decentralized content distribution and social protocol RSS3 announced on X Platform that its mainnet Beta version has been launched.
This version introduces RSS3 Beta nodes, namely Public Product Nodes (PGN), and the rewards generated will be used to support builders to contribute to the future digital world.
In addition, RSS3 VSL becomes the first L2 to integrate NEAR Protocol DA, further upgrading its performance.
SingularityNET announces the merger of FET, AGIX, and OCEAN into ASI, which will start on June 11
SingularityNET (AGIX) has officially announced the final date for the merger of the Artificial Super Intelligence Alliance (ASI) tokens with Fetch.ai and Ocean Protocol. The merger will begin on June 11, unifying under a decentralized artificial intelligence (AI) network, FET will be renamed ASI, and will be completed on June 13.
For FET, AGIX, and OCEAN token holders, the merger will involve converting these tokens into ASI tokens at a specific exchange rate.
FET tokens will be converted to ASI at a ratio of 1:1, AGIX at a ratio of 1:0.433226, and OCEAN at a ratio of 1:0.433226.
The ERC-20 token will be launched on June 11, and users can exchange FET for ASI tokens through the token migration contract. The AGIX and OCEAN token swap will then be enabled on June 13.
The migration process will be carried out on SingularityNETs decentralized artificial intelligence platform, and users can redeem tokens using the audited token migration contract provided by SingularityNET. (Cointelegraph)
Decentralized public network Nillion announces launch of incentivized testnet
Nillion, a decentralized public network based on Nil Message Compute (NMC), announced on the X platform that its incentive testnet (Coordination Layer testnet) has been launched and Phase 1: Genesis Sprint has been started.
In 2022, Nillion announced that it had completed a US$20 million financing round, led by Distributed Global, with participation from AU 21, Big Brain Holdings, Chapter One, GSR, HashKey, OP Crypto and SALT Fund.
Nostra Announces Token Economics: 11% of Token Supply Will Be Airdropped to the Community at TGE
Starknet ecosystem DeFi protocol Nostra announced the upcoming launch of NSTR tokens on the X platform and announced the token economics. NSTR totals 100,000,000 tokens, which will be 100% unlocked at launch, of which 11% of the token supply will be airdropped to the community at TGE.
In addition, Nostra also stated that a snapshot will be taken soon, and the liquidity bootstrap pool (LBP) will be snapshotted from June 10 to 13; TGE will be conducted on June 17, including airdrops.
Binance: Plans to restrict users in the European Economic Area from using unauthorized stablecoins
Binance officially announced that on June 30, 2024, the new EU Crypto-Asset Market (MiCA) stablecoin rules will take effect throughout the European Economic Area (EEA). This will be the first step into the new regulatory framework and will have a significant impact on the EEAs stablecoin market. Binance will restrict the use of unauthorized stablecoins by users in the European Economic Area, implement phased changes and product restrictions to ensure compliance and minimize market disruption. With the increase in regulated stablecoins on the market, Binance intends to transition users from unauthorized stablecoins to regulated stablecoins to smoothly achieve MiCA goals.
Pacmoon: Beeple ranked first in Season 4, but he voluntarily gave up all token incentives
Pacmoon, a meme project in the Blast ecosystem, announced on the X platform that crypto artist Beeple ranked first in Season 4 that ended last week, but he voluntarily gave up all token incentives. This means that all other creators will receive more PAC token airdrop incentives.
According to community user Aalasady (Ali), the total value of the tokens Beeple gave up this time is approximately US$200,000, and other creators will receive approximately an additional 8% of token incentives.
Character*Voice
Jupiter co-founder meow posted on the X platform: I dont tend to participate in political games - all political parties are concentrated forces of nepotism (as far as I am concerned), and all individuals (including myself) can become complete assholes if they have enough power. Therefore, the decentralization of all markets must be achieved first, because this will lead to the decentralization of finance and ultimately the decentralization of power. This is why the emergence of DeFi and Meme coins can serve as a bulwark against global centralized forces, not just a meme. By showing that we as individuals, small distributed teams and decentralized communities can collaborate and create value, even better than the best of them - we will eventually decentralize value creation, financial channels, and ultimately power.
Also, this is why I am deeply disturbed by the crypto industry celebrating ETFs — if the whole world owns ETH/SOL through BlackRock — are we more decentralized, or less decentralized?”
On June 1, Frax Finance’s X account was hacked. In order to regain control, Frax Finance CEO Sam Kazemian called on his fans to help contact X customer service.
Users reported that it took X about 72 hours to handle complaints related to stolen accounts. While X staff recommended changing passwords during the account breach, Kazemian insisted that passwords had not been tampered with and said that any problems within Frax Finance could not have caused the breach. Instead, he suspected that Xs internal staff was involved: The Frax Finance X account was compromised and appears to be an X internal job or social engineering incident, as Frax itself did not reset passwords or other issues. (Cointelegraph)
Wall Street Journal: Roaring Kitty may be removed from stock trading platform ETrade
YouTuber “Roaring Kitty” (Keith Gill), who helped drive a surge in GameStop Inc.’s stock price, may be delisted from retail stock trading platform ETrade.
ETrade, a subsidiary of investment giant Morgan Stanley, has become increasingly concerned that his recent purchase of GameStop (GME) shares may involve stock manipulation, people familiar with the matter said.
Kittys long-inactive Reddit account posted a screenshot of an investment account on Sunday that held more than $200 million worth of GameStop shares and call options.
Morgan Stanley employees have been monitoring Kitty’s ETrade account since Roaring Kitty reappeared on Platform X in mid-May. ETrade employees “discovered that he purchased call options prior to his tweets” and that “Kitty’s trades may have generated profits due to share price movements triggered by his tweets.” With the new surge of activity in GME, ETrade appears to be considering halting Kitty’s trading.
According to the Reddit post, if his latest bet (GME stock will be priced over $20 on June 21) proves true, he will make a ton of money. Those who follow him will also benefit.
Morgan Stanley has hired its financial crimes unit and outside counsel on the matter, but the firm knows that taking action would mean attracting the attention of his meme army, and Morgan Stanley employees are also concerned that shutting down Kittys account could cause the firm to lose ETrade clients.
Today alone, the Roaring Kitty account grew 48%, or about $85 million, according to investment tracker @unusual_whales on X. (The Wall Street Journal)
Earlier news, Roaring Kitty (Reddit ID: DeepFuckingValue) posted on the Superstonk sub-forum of the Reddit platform again after three years. The picture showed that she owned GameStop stock call options worth US$65.7 million, with an exercise price of US$20 and an expiration date of June 21.
SBF has returned to the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center in New York
FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried is now back at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, after being transferred to prisons in Oklahoma and Pennsylvania last month.
The transfer is understood to be in compliance with Judge Lewis Kaplans request to facilitate access to his appellate lawyers. Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison last year for multiple fraud counts related to the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Another FTX official, Ryan Salame, was sentenced to 7 and a half years in prison last week. (Bloomberg)
Daniel Yan, co-founder of Matrixport, founder and chief investment officer of Kryptanium Capital (KRYPTM 1 KY Equity), posted on the X platform that Bitcoin has once again broken through the key level of 70k, but before the release of Fridays non-farm payrolls data, the market should not be too optimistic, and it is expected that the BTC price will consolidate around $70,000 this week.
Anthony Scaramucci, founder and managing partner of Skybridge Capital, wrote on the X platform: “According to Google data, 93 million people in the United States own cryptocurrency.
The older Democrats (Biden and Warren) believe that the crypto electorate is so small that it doesn’t matter to denigrate the industry and try to force industry players out of the country. This is irrational. If 1% of them were interested in voting, they lost 930,000 votes. We all know there’s more to it than that. This level of arrogance is astounding in such a hotly contested election.”
It added: “(According to a report released by Security.org at the beginning of the year) Cryptocurrency ownership in the United States increased by 10 percentage points in 2023. The adoption rate has risen from 30% a year ago to 40% today. As a measure of how many Americans own cryptocurrencies today, our estimates suggest that as many as 93 million people may hold one or more cryptocurrencies.”
NYSE: Price range issue resolved, affected stocks resume trading
The New York Stock Exchange said the affected stocks have resumed trading and the price range issue has been resolved.
Investment and Financing
Milady Meme Coin (LADYS) Receives $5 Million Investment from DWF Labs
Milady Meme Coin (LADYS) announced that it has received a $5 million investment from DWF Labs, and the new funds will be used to promote innovation.
Officials said that this cooperation is expected to open up new avenues for development, collaboration and community participation in the LADYS and Meme ecosystems. (Cointelegraph)
Earlier in late May, @bwenews disclosed that DWF Labs transferred 5 million USDT to a deployment address that had minted LADYS.
Blockchain interoperability platform Connext announced that it is undergoing a strategic transformation and rebranding to Everclear, while also completing a $5 million financing round through the sale of NEXT tokens to Pantera Capital.
In addition to the rebranding, the project is also developing a clearing layer for intent-based cross-chain bridges, solving challenges associated with rebalancing and settlement of intents. Everclear will serve as the new foundation of the modular stack, leveraging an open network of intent solvers and Everclear Chain, an optimistic Rollup. The so-called clearing layer will serve as its own blockchain, acting as a backend liquidity platform to provide order matching services for intent-based cross-chain bridges.
Play AI, an artificial intelligence and blockchain solution provider, announced the completion of its first round of financing of US$4.3 million, with participation from P2 Ventures, Jump Crypto, Alphage Ventures and MH Ventures, aiming to promote the application of artificial intelligence and blockchain in games and virtual reality. The new funds will be used to develop its AI decentralized technology, while using the blockchain decentralized network to increase transparency and encourage gamers to share data to train AI models. (nftplazas)
Hypersonic Laboratories Completes $7 Million Series A Funding, Led by Play Ventures
Hypersonic Laboratories, the company behind the metaverse platform HELIX, announced the completion of a $7 million Series A financing round led by Play Ventures, with participation from AppWorks, WTIC, KB Investment and Alex Ekvall. The new funds will be used for the further development of Helix. It is reported that Helix will launch a closed alpha test version later this year, aiming to promote the creation of role-playing game modules and servers.
According to previous news, Hypersonic Laboratories completed a $3.5 million Pre-Seed round of financing in 2022, led by Play Ventures, with participation from Samsung Next, GSR, Third Kind, Alex Chung (founder of Giphy) and Scott Belsky (founder of Behance). (gamesindustry)
Security incidents
X user @CryptoNakamao posted that his browser cookies were hijacked due to the malicious Chrome plug-in Aggr. The hacker manipulated his Binance account in this way, purchased corresponding tokens in the USDT trading pairs with abundant liquidity, and placed limit sell orders above the market price in the BTC, USDC and other trading pairs with scarce liquidity.
Finally, the hacker used the users account to open leveraged trading, made large excess purchases, and completed cross-trading, ultimately causing a loss of $1 million.
Earlier in late May, SlowMist founder Yu Xian posted on the X platform that users need to pay attention to the browser extension AggrTrade, which will steal the users exchange cookies and other permission information, causing significant user losses. Installed users should delete it as soon as possible, and change the account passwords and 2FA of each platform, reset the trading API, etc. Be cautious when installing and using extensions.
The privacy project Nym posted on the X platform that its CEO @harryhalpins X account has been hacked. Please do not believe the false airdrop information it released and do not interact with suspicious links.
OKX: The information about stolen platform user accounts has been followed up immediately
OKX said on the X platform that it has noticed the information about OKX platform user accounts being stolen on the Internet, and has followed up on the incident as soon as it happened, and has been assisting relevant parties in handling it. It is currently in the judicial process stage, and according to the requirements, the progress of the incident cannot be announced for the time being.
