The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the top financial authority in the United Kingdom, has raised concerns over Binance’s recent partnership with Paysafe, a retail payment processor. The U.K. financial watchdog said the latest partnership of Binance gives it access to the extensive retail payment network via Faster Payment Services (FPS), a critical service that was discontinued for the crypto exchange citing regulatory concerns. FCA had ordered Binance to halt all its services in June. Prominent banks like Barclays have withdrawn their support to the exchange, resulting in the suspension of banking services. Binance managed to facilitate its consumers with Sterling …

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has reportedly launched a probe into major crypto exchange Binance's U.S. arm regarding trading firms connected to Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao. According to a Tuesday report from the Wall Street Journal, the SEC is looking into the relationship between Binance.US and trading firms Sigma Chain AG and Merit Peak. The federal regulator has reportedly requested information from the U.S. crypto exchange on the two companies, and is investigating how it may have disclosed its potential links to the market makers to users. The news outlet reported that corporate documents from 2019 as well as …

Decentralized blockchain ecosystem Binance Smart Chain (BSC) today announced that it is taking a new name, BNB Chain, in a bid to reflect its connection with the native token of the ecosystem Binance Coin (BNB). According to the release, BNB now stands for "Build and Build" instead of short for Binance Coin. Powered by BNB, the BNB Chain would introduce advanced capabilities and focus on building Web3 infrastructure. Under the freshly-named BNB Chain umbrella, the chain governance part, the Binance Chain, where staking and voting happens, has become BNB Beacon Chain. On the other hand, the EVM-compatible, multichain-supporting Binance Smart …

The rise of blockchain-based play-to-earn (P2E) gaming was one of the leading stories in 2021 as games such as Axie Infinity exploded in popularity and players realized that they could make life-changing amounts of money while also having fun. According to data from Footprint Analytics, the Ethereum network remains the leader when it comes to the number of games launched on-chain, but persistently high fees and network congestion have pushed a growing number of players to layer-2, cross-chain, bridge-supporting networks and competing blockchains that offer lower-cost transactions costs. Here’s a look at a few non-Ethereum blockchain networks that are gaining …

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volumes, is making a strategic investment in the 104-year old magazine Forbes to improve consumer understanding of cryptocurrencies and blockchain. Forbes and Magnum Opus Acquisition Limited, a publicly-traded special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), officially announced Thursday securing a $200 million strategic investment from Binance. Forbes previously announced plans to go public through a business combination with Magnum Opus in August 2021, with the deal expected to close in Q1 of 2022. Binance’s strategic investment will be through Binance’s assumption of subscription agreements representing $200 million of commitments in the $400 million private …

SegWit has come a long way since its first appearance during the 2015-2017 blocksize war. However, despite its relative success as a Bitcoin upgrade, crypto exchanges including Binance and Gemini are still not committed to using SegWit addresses for sending Bitcoin (BTC). Implemented in 2017, segregated witness (SegWit) is a soft fork upgrade that separates “witness” data from the base transaction. In an “explain like I’m five” kind of way, SegWit allows for a safer and faster Bitcoin, making scaling the network easier. While most exchanges and individuals were quick to upgrade their infrastructure to take on SegWit, reaching the …

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has alerted the crypto community against a 'massive' SMS phishing scam targeting Binance customers. On Friday, CZ tweeted alerting users of a phishing scam campaign directed at Binance users through SMS. There is a massive Phishing scam via SMS with a link to cancel withdrawals. It leads to a phishing website to harvest your credential as in the screenshot below. NEVER click on links from SMS! Always go to https://t.co/9rMMAmtCxH via a bookmark or type it in. Stay #SAFU pic.twitter.com/erNwe90FN1 — CZ Binance (@cz_binance) February 4, 2022 As per the screenshot shared by CZ, the scam …

Major cryptocurrency exchange Binance continues pushing operations in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) by preparing a new crypto payment card in Ukraine. Binance is looking to reach a dominant position in the crypto market of Ukraine by offering a wide range of local crypto services, Binance Ukraine’s new general manager Kirill Khomyakov said in a Monday interview with Forbes Ukraine. "Binance card is not yet available for Ukrainian users, but we are actively working on its launch. This is one of our top priorities for 2022," Khomyakov told Cointelegraph. Apart from launching a crypto payment card, Binance Ukraine is …

Binance, the world’s leading crypto exchange by trading volume, announced its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) reached a $1 billion valuation. The user protection insurance fund was set up in July 2018 to protect users’ interests. Binance committed a portion of the trading fee towards SAFU and began allocating 10% towards the funds. The crypto exchange also revealed the two wallet addresses where the funds are being held in order to ensure transparency. The two wallets contain a billion-dollar worth of crypto in BUSD, BNB and BTC. Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, urged other crypto platforms to follow …

In the crypto market volatility continues to reign supreme, and fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) run rampant. This makes it challenging for any project to rise above the noise and post positive price gains but there are a few projects that are showing strength during the current downturn. Kyber Network (KNC) is a multi-chain decentralized exchange (DEX) and aggregation platform designed to provide decentralized finance (DeFi) applications and their users with access to liquidity pools that provide the best rates. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that since hitting a bottom of $1.18 on Jan. 6, the price …

Even though the digital asset market seems to be witnessing a bit of a lull at the moment, the adoption of crypto-centric tech has continued to move forward with a full head of steam globally. Africa, in particular, is a continent where a growing list of mainstream financial entities have continued to make their presence felt, as they have begun to realize that the economic opportunities presented by the region are immense. To put things into perspective, a recent report released by Singapore-based crypto data provider Triple A shows that the North African country of Morocco currently boasts one of …

In a report published on Friday, Reuters laid out the findings of its investigation into the regulatory compliance practices of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume. The authors suggest the existence of a recurring pattern whereby the company’s CEO Changpeng Zhao, while proclaiming its openness to government oversight, ran an organization that systematically denied regulators’ requests for financial and corporate structure information and shirked proper client background checks. The reported findings are based on the accounts of Binance’s former senior employees and advisers, as well as the review of documents such as internal correspondence and confidential messages …