American billionaire and CEO of crypto exchange FTX Sam Bankman-Fried announced that his company acquired Japanese crypto firm Liquid Group and its subsidiaries. As a part of the deal, FTX will acquire Quoine Corporation, a Financial Services Agency (FSA)-approved crypto exchange. As Cointelegraph previously reported, Quoine acquired a Type I Financial Instruments Business license under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act from the Japanese regulatory authorities. FTX is pleased to announce the acquisition of the Liquid group of companies, including an FSA-registered crypto-asset exchange to provide products and services to our customers in Japan! https://t.co/rO5TznWFCU — SBF (@SBF_FTX) February 2, …

As the Department of the Treasury has announced its regulatory agenda for the fiscal year earlier today, many in the web3 space have likely experienced flashbacks to December 2020, when the agency had first proposed to impose know your customer, or KYC, rules on transactions that involve self-custodied crypto wallets. The Treasury’s semiannual agenda and regulatory plan, a document that is meant to inform the public of the department’s ongoing rulemaking activities includes and encourage public feedback, features a clause entitled “Requirements for certain transactions involving convertible virtual currency or digital assets.” Ascribed to the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, …

The Twitter account of the Russian crypto exchange Latoken seems to have been breached by a hacher that started posting allegations that the exchange is a scam. According to the posts, the exchange is promoting “scam IEOs” and misleading their customers. WARNING - THIS IS A SCAM EXCHANGE They are promoting scam IEOs. They are promoting IEOs promising growth of 100% to 500%. They are cheating and lying to founders and employees. They are misleading founders to think they will have successful IEOs while it never happens. — LATOKEN (@latokens) January 24, 2022 The profile picture of the account was …

FTX Trading Limited (FTX) will be the naming rights sponsor for Australian Blockchain Week 2022, which will run from March 21 to 25. Blockchain Australia is the peak industry network in Australia, bringing together industry, academia and government to discuss the opportunities of blockchain technology. I'm incredibly excited to announce @FTX_Official as the Naming Rights Sponsor for Blockchain Week 2022. A huge to @SBF_FTX for your support of the Australian ecosystem pic.twitter.com/B6cUWaTWIE — Steve Vallas (@stevevallas) January 17, 2022 Over 200 speakers across 75 events will present at Australian Blockchain Week, including FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. Launched in May 2019, …

Crypto exchanges FTX US and Bitstamp USA are working on offering stock trading, which would be a further blow to Robinhood as its share price slumps to new lows. FTX US President Brett Harrison tweeted on Tuesday that the crypto exchange is “hard at work on stocks,” commenting that a launch would be coming in “a couple months.” We’re hard at work on stocks! Features we’re planning for day 1: -Live BBO and historical candles -Stock screening/search functionality -Basic fundamentals (market cap, P/E ratio, dividend yield) -Portfolio performance tracking, order/trade details What else should we have? pic.twitter.com/q2bTpsfuna — Brett Harrison …

The hack was first identified by PeckShield, a blockchain security company, based on the suspicious transfer of ERC-20 tokens from LXC to an unknown Ethereum (ETH) wallet. Liechtenstein-based crypto exchange LCX has confirmed the compromise of one of its hot wallets after temporarily suspending all deposits and withdrawals on the platform. hot wallet compromised? @lcx https://t.co/uL5a7oCFfM — PeckShield Inc. (@peckshield) January 9, 2022 The probable hot wallet compromise was soon confirmed by the exchange as it announced the loss of numerous tokens including ETH, USD Coin (USDC) and other tokens including its in-house LCX token. Ethereum blockchain based assets such …

Bitcoin (BTC) exchange reserves are back near record lows as 2022 sparks renewed appetite among buyers. Data from on-chain analytics firm CryptoQuant shows reserves across 21 exchanges at 2.308 million BTC as of Jan. 4. Exchanges return to overall BTC balance downtrend Late December saw a macro low of 2.303 million BTC left on exchanges’ books, CryptoQuant recorded, before a brief uptick to 2.334 million. As institutional entities return to the market after the holiday period, however, the downtrend has resumed, this in line with expectations that larger-volume buyers would step in beginning in Q1. Exchange balance data is a …

Bitcoin (BTC) bears lost out at the last minute as 2021 came to an end — and consensus is building around China again being the reason for weakness. China "last hammer" could now provide optimism on BTC Hours before the yearly close, BTC/USD dived $2,000 to lows of $45,630 on Bitstamp before a modest recovery drew a line under 2021 at $47,200, data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows. While something of an anticlimax and far below many popular projections, the lack of parabolic upside for Bitcoin has recently seen explanations shift to exchanges. Chinese users, following years of …

Bitcoin (BTC) balances rising on exchanges may not be a sign of investors preparing to sell, new research argues. Unveiling the latest data from across exchanges on Dec. 28, Glassnode on-chain analyst TXMC pointed the finger at fresh changes in China for rising balances elsewhere. Binance "absorbing" orphaned Huobi users The end of December is seeing nerves fray as a rangebound BTC price combines with increased inflows to exchanges. A classic indicator that traders are at least arming themselves to de-risk in the event of further price weakness, Binance has been particularly closely eyed as its BTC stocks rise. At …

Indian entrepreneur and the CEO of crypto exchange WazirX Nischal Shetty envisions a race between countries to launch their local versions of central bank digital currencies (CBDC) in the coming year. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Shetty said that the year 2022 would be an extension of the ongoing discussions around crypto regulations, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and the emergence of the metaverse: “We’re optimistic that we’ll get regulatory clarity, see institutional participation fuel retail adoption. We also expect to see more metaverse projects making an entrance.” Shetty pointed out that the crypto industry today — directly or indirectly — employs about 50,000 …

Cryptocurrency ATMs offer people the convenience of either physically cashing out their crypto, or in some cases, buying some right off the street. Their spread represents the growing interest in and acceptance of cryptocurrencies. However, despite their growth, most of these ATMs operate in a way that goes against some of the core principles of the underlying blockchain technology. Existing crypto ATMs are not only rather centralized physically, with nearly 75% located in North America and roughly the other quarter in Europe, but have also been monopolized and are anti-privacy by design. In keeping with core blockchain principles of privacy …

As new blockchain applications arise, the number of different projects, independent chains and tokens have only risen in proportion. While some networks have excelled in accelerated payments, others have provided new staking opportunities or improved functionality for nonfungible tokens (NFTs). The use cases may all be there; however, taking advantage of this diverse set of functionality becomes an issue of complexity as users attempt to get involved in multiple project opportunities and are unable to swap one token for the next. As it turns out, the most pressing problem faced by the decentralized exchanges that manage these transactions is liquidity. …