In January, the brother of a former Coinbase product manager was sentenced to 10 months in prison for wire fraud conspiracy in what prosecutors called the first case of insider trading involving cryptocurrencies. In September 2022, Nikhil Wahi entered a guilty plea for executing trades based on private data obtained from his brother, Ishan Wahi, a former product manager for Coinbase. Most countries have laws against insider trading, which carry stiff penalties like jail time and heavy fines. The recent insider trading investigation against crypto exchanges by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission indicates that regulatory bodies are prepared …

Binance has announced that it is temporarily suspending bank transfers in United States dollars (USD) beginning Feb. 8. No other trading methods will be affected, the exchange said in a tweet on Feb. 6. The news came with no explanation, although the company, which is the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, added in the same tweet that: “We are working hard to restart the service as soon as possible. […] All other methods of buying and selling crypto remain unaffected.” Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) said in a separate tweet: “It is worth noting that USD bank transfers are leveraged by …

For many countries, the tax season is right around the corner, which means companies in the crypto industry will need to be ready to help their users comply with local regulations. On Feb. 6, crypto exchange Binance announced it is launching a tax reporting tool to help users stay on track of their crypto transactions for tax reporting purposes. According to the announcement, Binance Tax lets its users download a tax summary report which includes any gains or losses which have occurred throughout the year in their Binance account. This includes spot trades, crypto donations and blockchain-based fork rewards. The …

The Binance-native blockchain BNB Chain has continued to show steady activity growth in the fourth quarter of 2022 despite the broader crypto bear market according to recent research. In a “State of BNB Chain Q4 2022” report published on Feb. 5, Messari researcher James Trautman revealed that the Binance network had continued with an “aggressive strategy to deploy financial and human capital across its ecosystem.” Due to these ongoing updates and developments, average daily active addresses and transactions “bucked a downward trend and grew by 30% and 0.2%, respectively,” the researcher noted. Bear markets are usually quiet periods in terms …

The National Bank of Kazakhstan (NBK) has launched a digital tenge pilot project, according to a report published jointly by the bank and Binance on Feb. 3. The report looked at global approaches to digital asset regulation, the digital asset industry and decentralized finance (DeFi) in Central Asia and the Commonwealth of Independent States in particular. In his introduction to the report, NBK Deputy governor Berik Sholpankupov wrote about the bank’s vision of a “collaboration between Traditional Finance and DeFi” that could increase financial inclusion and support international trade. He added: “In Kazakhstan, we also started a practical R&D project …

The debacle between the global cryptocurrency exchange Binance and Zanmai, the operator behind the Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX, continues in a new blog post from Binance banning the latter from utilizing its services. On Feb. 3, Binance released a post that acknowledged the ongoing “public debate” with Zanmai over its claims of Binance involvement in running WazirX. Binance said on Jan. 26 it gave WazirX the ultimatum of retracting its statements and continuing using Binance wallet services or terminating its usage. According to the announcement, Zanmai made no retraction and now has until Feb. 3, 2023, 23:59 UTC, to remove …

Major cryptocurrency exchange Binance is coming back to South Korea with a new acquisition of the local crypto trading platform Gopax. Binance has acquired a majority stake in the troubled crypto exchange Gopax, re-entering South Korea after exiting the market two years ago, Bloomberg reported on Feb. 3. The funding for the transaction reportedly came from a Finance-initiated investment project known as the Industry Recovery Initiative, to which Binance pledged $1 billion. Binance chief business officer Yibo Ling said that Binance has acquired a “meaningful” equity position at Gopax without disclosing the terms of the deal. The acquisition comes a …

The FTX saga and the developments that led to the crypto exchange's collapse will be framed in a new documentary focusing on the volatile relationship between Sam Bankman-Fried and one of his fiercest critics, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the production is a partnership between media outlet Fortune and Unrealistic Ideas, a non-scripted production company co-founded by American actor Mark Wahlberg, Stephen Levinson and Archie Gips. "The tumultuous relationship between SBF and CZ has played out to a certain extent in articles and on Twitter, but this definitive documentary will give people a 360 degree personal …

BNB Chain, a blockchain platform launched by crypto exchange Binance, revealed interest in building a blockchain-based Web3 infrastructure in its new BNB Greenfield white paper. The white paper explains it as a decentralized storage infrastructure within BNB Chain, which allows users and decentralized applications (DApps) full ownership of the data. Potential use cases include website hosting, personal cloud and data storage, publishing and more The testnet of the proposed Web3 infrastructure — built by the BNB Chain core team — is supported by community developer teams from Amazon Web Services, NodeReal and Blockdaemon. BNB Greenfield is being built as a …

Bitcoin (BTC) had a rough year all throughout 2022. But fresh on-chain and futures market data show positive signs that the leading cryptocurrency by market capitalization has started to recover. After a bevy of short liquidations, the futures market is pointing toward renewed equilibrium. According to data from Glassnode, short position liquidations cleared out unhealthy market speculators, on-chain and exchange data now point to an improving spot market and exchange netflows. A large group of investors that were previously at a loss is now back in the category that Glassnode analysts label as “unrealized profits.” Massive short liquidations set the …

Credit card giant MasterCard has teamed up with the world’s largest crypto exchange Binance to launch another prepaid crypto card in Latin America. On Jan. 30, Binance announced the launch of the Binance Card in Brazil. The new card is issued by Dock, a payment institution regulated by the Brazilian Central Bank. It will allow new and existing Binance users in the country with valid national IDs to make purchases and pay bills with crypto assets. The card is in a beta testing phase and will be “widely available in the coming weeks,” according to Binance. Brazil is the second …

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has been silently shutting down multiple accounts on the platform in relation to the Bitzlato investigation, according to several users. On Jan. 18, a group of Russian-speaking Binance clients complained about blocked accounts and not being able to withdraw their funds from the exchange. The affected users created a Telegram group chat to report about the issues, stating that the accounts were blocked without a warning. The members of the group — now counting more than 1,000 members — promptly drew parallels between the blockages and enforcement action against the crypto firm Bitzlato by the United States …