Amid the liquidity crisis that fell over crypto exchange FTX and trading firm Alameda Research, some of the largest crypto companies face calls for transparency to let users know if there are risks. However, executives assured the community that they do not have exposure to either of the troubled firms. In response to concerns brought up by the crypto community, Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino clarified in a tweet that the stablecoin issuer has no exposure to either of the distressed firms. According to the Tether executive, Alameda has previously redeemed a lot of Tether (USDT). Despite this, Ardoino highlighted that …

Stablecoin issuers Circle and Paxos have each received approvals for their respective licenses from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the city-state's central bank. Circle received in-principle approval for a Major Payments Institution License allowing it to issue cryptocurrencies and facilitate domestic and cross-border payments while Paxos received its license to offer digital payment token services. Circle and Paxos both announced their approvals on Nov. 2, which came a week after the MAS issued two consultation papers on proposals for regulating digital payment token service providers and stablecoin issuers under Singapore’s Payment Services Act (PSA). The PSA was passed by …

Cryptocurrencies broke the $1 trillion market capitalization resistance on Oct. 26, which had been holding strong for the previous 41 days. Despite Bitcoin’s (BTC) modest 5.5% weekly gains, the aggregate value of 20,000 listed tokens increased by 8.5% between Oct. 24 and 31. The cryptocurrency market was positively impacted by a 6.3% weekly rally in the Russell 2000 mid-capitalization stock market index. Some encouraging news accompanied the positive tailwinds from traditional markets. For instance, 55,000 BTC was withdrawn from Binance on Oct. 26, a record high. Typically, analysts consider the reduced number of coins deposited on exchanges a bullish indicator, …

Four projects have received some $7 million worth of tokens from the hacker behind the $14.5 million Team Finance exploit on Oct. 27. Over the weekend, the attacker confirmed in a series of messages that they would keep 10% of the stolen fund as a bounty and return the other tokens to the affected projects. The exploiter — a self-described “whitehat” — drained assets from Team Finance through the Uniswap v2-to-v3 migration. As reported by Cointelegraph, liquidity from Uniswap v2 assets on Team Finance were transferred to an attacker-controlled v3 pair with skewed pricing, explained the blockchain security firm PeckShield. …

The ride-sharing industry is poised for another paradigm shift with Web3 protocols, allowing new companies and drivers to bid for rides using a matching algorithm, according to the Decentralized Engineering Cooperation (DEC) — the company behind the Solana-based protocol TRIP that enables mobility-based applications. According to DEC, on the TRIP ecosystem, companies and riders can collaborate and compete in a shared marketplace. The protocol also rewards the most active participants with stake in its governance for both drivers and customers. The first company to operate on TRIP is Teleport, a decentralized ride-sharing application set to be launched in December and …

Major cryptocurrency firm BitPay is expanding the scope of supported blockchain networks, preparing to debut payments in ERC-20 tokens on the Polygon network. BitPay and Polygon jointly announced on Oct. 26 the integration of Polygon on the BitPay app, allowing customers to spend Polygon-bridged ERC-20 tokens. The BitPay app is specifically preparing to support payments in tokens like Polygon-based USD Coin (USDC) later this week. USDC developer Circle originally launched the USDC stablecoin on the Ethereum blockchain, bridging it over to Polygon via the Polygon Bridge in June 2022. Polygon USDC is not the only Polygon-bridged token that is coming …

FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) said the rise of Binance stablecoin BUSD could spark the “Second Great Stablecoin War,” given how fast its market cap has surged over recent months. Bankman-Fried's recent comments come a month after Binance pushed ahead with plans to auto-convert a host of stablecoins supported on its exchange into BUSD on Sept. 6, — which has seen BUSD's share of the total stablecoin market rise since. BUSD’s share of the total stablecoin market has risen from 10.01% on Sept. 7 to 15.48% on Oct. 22, according to crypto data aggregator Coin Metrics. Meanwhile, BUSD’s market cap …

United States-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase says the adoption of USD Coin (USDC) has been “more conservative” outside of the U.S., which it believes is a result of international currency conversion fees. In an Oct. 20 statement, the exchange said there is currently three times more USDC bought with U.S. dollars as compared to other currencies. “Currently, 3x more USDC is bought with USD versus non-USD currencies. In part this is because, outside of the US, users usually have to pay fees in the process of converting their local currency into USDC, and this is a barrier to broader international adoption.” …

MakerDAO, the governing body of the Maker Protocol, has taken the first step of its plan to reallocate $500 million of its stablecoin Dai (DAI) collateral reserves into short-term United States Treasuries and corporate bonds. The decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) voted on Oct. 6 to approve a pilot transaction of $1 million following an executive vote from Maker (MKR) token holders, with the rest of the funds soon to be reallocated following confirmation from the community. A majority, 80% of the $500 million, will be invested in short-term U.S. Treasuries, with $160 million allocated to the 0-1y US Treasury iShares …

Central bank digital currencies (CBDC) can work well with decentralized finance (DeFi), and they have a lot of potential to boost DeFi adoption, according to a Swiss central bank official. Among many various types of digital currencies, it is CBDC that could provide more stability and lower risks to the development of DeFi, according to Thomas Moser, a governing board member at the Swiss National Bank (SNB). In order to grow, DeFi needs stable money, which is why stablecoins were invented, and stablecoins clearly helped DeFi to become more popular, Moser told Cointelegraph. Despite being polar opposites, centralization and decentralization …

Despite Russia pushing the idea of using cryptocurrencies for cross-border payments, it still remains unclear what digital asset exactly the government plans to adopt for such transactions. Russian authorities are quite unlikely to approve the use of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) for cross-border transactions, according to local lawyers and fintech executives. Bank of Russia needs to control cross-border transactions It’s “highly questionable” that Russia would allow usage of Bitcoin or any other similar cryptocurrency for cross-border payments because such assets are “hard to control,” according to Elena Klyuchareva, the senior associate at the local law firm KKMP. Klyuchareva emphasized that …

USD Coin (USDC) issuers Circle have announced that it will soon roll out its stablecoin across five additional networks including Polkadot, Optimism, NEAR, Arbitrum and Cosmos. The firm first dropped the news at the Converge22 event on Sept. 28, and noted that support for most of these blockchains will be rolled out by the end of 2023, while USDC on Cosmos will go live at the start of 2023. In a Sept. 28 statement, Circle’s vice president of Product Joao Reginatto emphasized that the expansion of USDC will provide “greater liquidity and interoperability within the crypto economy,” especially for the …