Fintech firm Ripple is garnering more support from the crypto and finance industry in its ongoing battle with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). On Nov. 4, Ripple chief executive Brad Garlinghouse proudly tweeted that the number of companies, developers, exchanges, associations, and investors officially supporting the firm has reached 12. The pile of amicus briefs being filed is mounting up according to Ripple Labs general counsel Stuart Alderoty. An amicus brief is a legal document filed in appeals cases to aid the court by providing extra relevant information or arguments. These briefs are filed by amicus curiae, …

Third-party data breaches have exploded. The problem? Companies, including cryptocurrency exchanges, don’t know how to protect against them. When exchanges sign new vendors, most just innately expect that their vendors employ the same level of scrutiny as they do. Others don’t consider it at all. In today’s age, it isn’t just a good practice to test for vulnerabilities down the supply chain — it is absolutely necessary. Many exchanges are backed by international financiers and those new to financial technologies. Many are even new to technology altogether, instead backed by venture capitalists looking to get their feet wet in a …

Major cryptocurrency derivatives exchange Deribit has halted withdrawals after suffering a $28 million hot wallet hack. Deribit exchange got its hot wallet compromised before midnight UTC on Nov. 1, the firm reported on Twitter. The exchange emphasized that client funds are safe as losses are covered by Deribit’s reserves, stating: “Client assets, Fireblocks or any of the cold storage addresses are not affected. It's company procedure to keep 99% of our user funds in cold storage to limit the impact of these type of events.” As part of the ongoing security checks, Deribit had to halt withdrawals, including custodians Copper …

In the wee hours of Oct. 18, several parts of Europe, America and Asia were left without any internet due to several undersea internet cables being “cut,” causing a chain reaction of connectivity problems across the globe. France, Italy and Spain, in particular, were faced with significant outages, with many experts claiming that vandals were to be blamed for the same. According to Jay Chaudhary, CEO of Zscaler — an American cloud security company — there is no doubt that nefarious third-party agents were to be blamed for the cut cables that resulted in packet data losses as well as …

United States-based crypto advocacy group Blockchain Association has come out in support of Ripple Labs amid its ongoing legal battle with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), claiming the case could be very important for the future of the crypto industry. In an Oct. 28 post, the advocacy group announced it will "stand" with the American crypto economy by filing an amicus brief, also known as "friend of the court" in the SEC enforcement action against Ripple. Nearly two years ago, the SEC announced they were suing Ripple (XRP), former CEO Christian Larsen, and current CEO Brad Garlinghouse in Dec. …

San Francisco-based fintech firm Ripple has inched closer to victory in its ongoing battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). On Oct. 21, Ripple General Counsel Stuart Alderoty confirmed on Twitter that they finally have the elusive documents after "18 months and 6 court orders," though noted they remain confidential at the SEC’s insistence. “It was well worth the fight to get them,” he exclaimed, adding: “I’ve always felt good about our legal arguments, and I feel even better now. I always felt bad about the SEC’s tactics, and I feel even worse about them now.” The fought-over …

Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) has written a set of suggested standards for the crypto industry “while waiting for full federal regulatory regimes,” which were posted on the FTX Policy blog Oct. 19. The post covers many of the questions facing regulators and operators, with specific reference to the United States at points. In particular, SBF outlined a plan for treating assets in the U.S. as regards their status as securities or commodities. FTX will implement his plan, SBF wrote. In the United States, SBF wrote, the FTX legal team will analyze assets using the Howey Test, case law and guidance to …

Celestia Foundation announced on Oct. 18 that it had raised $55 million in a funding round led by Bain Capital Crypto, Polychain Capital, Placeholder, Galaxy, Delphi Digital, Blockchain Capital, NFX, Protocol Labs, Figment, Maven 11, Spartan Group, FTX Ventures, Jump Crypto, and angel investors; Balaji Srinivasan, Eric Wall, and Jutta Steiner. Celestia is building a modular blockchain architecture with the hope of solving challenges inherent when deploying and scaling blockchains. The company suggested that it intends to build infrastructure that will make it easy for anyone with the technical know-how to deploy their own blockchain at minimal expense. The company …

Reducing the amount of hacking by improving cybersecurity should be considered a top priority for the crypto industry, said Kim Grauer, director of research of blockchain intelligence firm Chainalysis. As pointed out by the firm, this year could outpace 2021 in terms of crypto stolen through hacks. The vast majority of these exploits have been targeting the field of decentralized finance. “This can't go on in the industry because people are going to lose faith in investing in DeFi platforms”, Grauer said in an interview with Cointelegraph. Unlike centralized exchanges, which have improved their resiliency to crypto hacks, decentralized protocols …

The Texas State Securities Board (SSB) and the Texas Department of Banking (DOB) filed a supplemental declaration Oct. 14 in the Voyager Digital case in which it stated that the SSB is investigating FTX Trading, FTX US and their principals, including co-founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, for allegedly offering unregistered securities in the United States. FTX US won the auction for the remaining Voyager Digital assets on Sept. 26. The supplemental declaration from the Texas regulators is attached to an objection to the sale of Voyager Digital assets to FTX filed by the Texas Attorney General’s office also on Oct. …

BNB Chain, the native blockchain of Binance Coin (BNB) and the Binance crypto exchange, has been subject to security-related developments over the last month. On Thursday, Oct. 6 the network experienced a multi-million dollar cross-chain exploit. The incident caused BNB Chain to temporarily suspend all withdrawal and deposit activity on the network. Initially, the announcement of the network outage cited “irregular activity” with an update stating it was “under maintenance.” As rumors were confirmed the CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao tweeted out an apology for any inconvenience to the BNB Chain community. However the suspension was brief, as the BNB …

XRP XRP has made considerable gains over the past month as traders continue to shower confidence on Ripple's legal win against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). For instance, XRP price has gained 25% thirty days after Ripple and the SEC filed for an immediate ruling on whether or not XRP sales violated U.S. securities laws. In comparison, Bitcoin BTC and Ether ETH are down 4% and 11% over the same period, respectively. Now, a flurry of indicators, ranging from on-chain to technical, hints XRP can continue its uptrend going into 2023. XRP price "bull pennant" Bull pennants are …