Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you significant developments over the last week. 2023 started on a bullish note for the entire crypto market, including the DeFi ecosystem, with most of the tokens posting double-digit gains in January and recording multi-month highs. Aside from the bull rally, January also saw a 93% year-on-year decline in losses from DeFi exploits and hacks. The slew of regulatory action against the Mango Markets exploiter is being hailed as a big win for the DeFi sector. The United States Securities and …

United States lawmakers with the Senate Banking Committee have scheduled a second hearing exploring the impact of a crypto market crash. In a Feb. 3 announcement, Senate Banking Committee chair Sherrod Brown said senators would convene on Feb. 14 in a hearing titled ‘Crypto Crash: Why Financial System Safeguards are Needed for Digital Assets’. The hearing will come two months after lawmakers met and discussed the collapse of crypto exchange FTX in a Dec. 14 hearing. As the second hearing scheduled for the Senate Banking Committee following the start of the 118th session of Congress, there will be some changes. …

An economic bubble is a time of fast economic expansion that is driven by speculative enthusiasm and excessively high asset prices. A bubble is characterized by an increase in demand for an asset, such as commodities, stocks or real estate, which drives up its price. A number of factors, including easy access to credit, low interest rates and investor optimism, frequently combine to create financial bubbles. The asset’s price rises as more individuals invest in it, luring even more capital. Its price eventually falls below a level that can be sustained, which causes a sell-off and a sharp collapse in …

Following the global regulatory race, Australia opened the public consultation on its own taxonomy of crypto assets. The national regulators propose to distinguish four major types of products related to the crypto industry. On Feb. 3, the Australian Treasury released a consultation paper on “Token Mapping,” announcing it as a foundational step in the Government’s multi‑stage reform agenda to regulate the market. It seeks to inform “a fact‑based, consumer conscious and innovation-friendly” approach to policy development. The paper, based on the “functional” and technology-neutral method, proposes a number of basic definitions for all the things crypto. At the first level, …

Crypto mining firm Core Scientific made a deal with the New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG) to pay off an outstanding debt of $38.6 million by handing over more than 27,000 mining machines used as collateral. In a court filing, the company said that the mining rigs were no longer essential to its operations and any future plans. The firm is now waiting to get the approval of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, which is in charge of the proceedings. While the company accepted that the move will have a short-term negative impact on …

The Australian government is bolstering its market regulator's digital asset team as part of a “multi-stage approach” aimed at clamping down on crypto and ensuring proper risk disclosures from crypto firms. A Feb. 2 joint statement by Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones explained that the new measures are aimed at protecting consumers dealing with cryptocurrency. The treasurers said the multi-stage approach would involve three elements, including strengthening enforcement, bolstering consumer protection, and establishing a framework for its token mapping reform. This is why we're taking action on crypto. pic.twitter.com/17HG5nhsTz — Stephen Jones MP (@StephenJonesMP) February 2, …

CryptoZoo and Logan Paul have been named as defendants in a newly filed class-action lawsuit, which alleges they stole millions of dollars worth of purchaser's cryptocurrency via a "fraudulent venture." In a court filing on Feb. 2 in the District Court of the Western District of Texas, plaintiff Don Holland alleged that Paul and executives at CryptoZoo "executed a 'rug pull'" by promising purchasers of the nonfungible tokens (NFTs) exclusive access to crypto assets among other benefits but ultimately abandoned the project and kept the funds. "As part of Defendants’ NFT scheme, Defendants marketed CZ NFTs to purchasers by falsely …

Crypto bank Silvergate is reportedly being probed by the United States Department of Justice fraud unit over its involvement with the bankrupt FTX exchange and its affiliates. The probe is investigating Silvergate’s hosting of accounts linked to former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s businesses, according to “people familiar with the matter” as reported by Bloomberg on Feb. 3. The California-based crypto bank is not accused of any crime, but investigators are attempting to discover how deep the dealings with FTX and Alameda went. Silvergate was heavily impacted by the collapse of FTX in November, reporting a $1 billion loss last quarter. …

Indonesia’s Ministry of Trade is reportedly aiming to roll out a national crypto exchange by June this year, six months after its previous target of December 2022. Trade Minister Zulkifli Hasan shared the new target launch date on Feb. 2 at the opening of Crypto Literacy Month in Jakarta, noting that the government is currently reviewing which companies meet their criteria to become part of the exchange, according to local reports. There are five active crypto exchanges which are currently registered with the country's regulators, and according to Zulkifli the ministry’s crypto exchange could encompass all of them. While these …

Lawyers representing a crypto user allegedly behind a $116-million exploit of decentralized exchange Mango Markets have consented to detention in the criminal case involving commodities fraud, commodities market manipulation and wire fraud. According to accounts of social media users present on Feb. 2, Mango Markets user Avraham Eisenberg’s legal team waived his right to bail at a hearing in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Federal Judge Richard Betman, who will be presiding over the criminal case, has reportedly set a followup court date for Feb. 14, suggesting that Eisenberg may remain in detention until at …

The number of crypto-related enforcement actions in the United States grew notably in 2022, according to a survey released by blockchain risk monitoring firm Solidus Labs. Both federal and state regulators broke records for enforcement actions. There were 58 actions carried out by the four main U.S. federal agencies engaged in crypto enforcement in 2022. That number surpassed the previous high of 40 recorded in 2020 and rose 65% over the 38 actions seen in 2021. The agencies – the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and the Office …

Finnish company Membrane Finance has released a fully-reserved stablecoin backed by the euro, according to a Feb. 2 blog post from the company. The company is licensed by the Finnish Financial Supervisory Authority (Fin-FSA) and claims that the new ”EUROe” coin is “the first and only EU-regulated crypto stablecoin.” Membrane Finance is excited to announce the launch of EUROe on Ethereum! Read more at https://t.co/nV8dYKkBmK, and read the thread below to see how you can get started with $EUROe from today! — EUROe (@EUROemoney) February 2, 2023 U.S.-based Circle Inc. released its own euro-backed stablecoin in June, but its Euro …