Today's news tips:
The fifth PANews PARTY AWARD annual selection officially opens for voting
Binance will delist AKRO, BLZ, and WRX on December 25
An investor lost $102,000 in 12 minutes due to Binance Alpha’s blunder
Big Time Studios announces $150 million Open Loot fund
sBTC is now available on the Stacks mainnet, offering a 5% annualized reward
Renzo announces that the third quarter of claiming has now begun, allocating 4% of the total supply
Regulatory News
Irish Data Protection Commission fines Meta €251 million
According to the announcement of the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), Meta Platforms Ireland Limited (MPIL) has made a final decision and imposed a fine of 251 million euros for the data breach reported in 2018. The data breach affected about 29 million Facebook accounts worldwide, of which about 3 million were from the EU/EEA. The leaked data included name, email, phone, location, workplace, birthday, religious belief, gender, etc. According to the DPC's investigation, Meta violated the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the following aspects: • Failed to fully fulfill the obligation to report data breaches (Article 33, paragraph 3, Article 33, paragraph 5), and was fined 11 million euros; • Failed to ensure the principle of data protection in the design of data processing systems (Article 25, paragraph 1, Article 25, paragraph 2), and was fined 240 million euros. Graham Doyle, deputy commissioner of the DPC, said that this enforcement highlights that failure to implement data protection requirements in the design and development cycle can lead to serious risks and damages, especially the leakage of user privacy data may pose a serious threat to fundamental rights and freedoms. The full decision and related information will be released later.
According to CleanSpark's announcement, the company has completed the issuance of $650 million zero-interest convertible bonds (due in 2030), with net proceeds of approximately $633.6 million. This convertible bond is for qualified institutional investors, and the issuance includes $100 million in bonds with the initial underwriters fully exercising the right to purchase additional shares. In this issuance, CleanSpark signed a capped repurchase agreement with multiple parties, setting the upper limit of the conversion price at $24.66 per share (a 100% premium over the closing price of $12.33 on December 12) to reduce potential equity dilution. In addition, CleanSpark spent $145 million to repurchase 11.76 million shares of common stock to further optimize the shareholder equity structure. The proceeds will be used to repay Coinbase's credit line, capital expenditures, potential acquisitions, and general corporate purposes. The company's CEO Zach Bradford said that this financing will not only ensure CleanSpark's expansion to a computing power target of 50 EH/s, but will also support its strategic initiatives in expanding its mining business and asset acquisitions, while enhancing the company's financial flexibility and shareholder value.
Australian regulator sues Binance Australia Derivatives for failing to protect consumer rights
According to the announcement of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), ASIC has sued the cryptocurrency company Binance Australia Derivatives, accusing it of failing to properly protect consumer rights between July 2022 and April 2023. ASIC said that Binance misclassified 505 Australian retail investors (83% of its total customers) as wholesale customers, resulting in these retail investors failing to obtain the consumer protection they deserve, including key rights such as product disclosure statements and target market identification. ASIC Vice Chairman Sarah Court said that Binance's compliance system was seriously inadequate, exposing retail investors to high-risk cryptocurrency derivatives, many of whom suffered significant financial losses. In 2023, ASIC supervised Binance to pay approximately $13.1 million in compensation to affected customers. ASIC said it would seek penalties, declarations and adverse public publicity orders, and continue to protect consumers and maintain market integrity through various regulatory and law enforcement tools.
Cryptocurrency company executive sentenced to 4 years in prison for embezzling $4.46 million
According to an announcement from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Connecticut, 31-year-old DYLAN MEISSNER was sentenced to 48 months in prison, plus two years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $4.6334 million in compensation for embezzling more than $4.46 million from his former employer. MEISSNER, formerly the Vice President of Finance at a cryptocurrency research company, used his position to illegally transfer funds from the company's crypto wallets and bank accounts to make up for significant losses in his personal investments and cover up his actions through false accounts. The case was investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney David E. Novick. MEISSNER will begin serving his sentence on February 21, 2025.
According to CoinDesk, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that it has shut down a North Korean cryptocurrency money laundering network that converted cryptocurrency into cash for North Korea's use through a UAE-based front company, Green Alpine Trading, LLC. The United States has added the company and two Chinese citizens who have been involved in the network since 2022 to the sanctions list. The Treasury Department pointed out that North Korea has been raising funds through crypto crimes to support its nuclear weapons program, and the UAE has cooperated with the United States in the operation, but did not disclose the current status of the two sanctioned Chinese citizens.
Ohio lawmakers propose setting up a Bitcoin reserve fund in state finances
Ohio Congressman Derek Merrin filed the Ohio Bitcoin Reserve Act, which proposes to establish a Bitcoin reserve fund in the state treasury and authorize the state treasurer to invest in Bitcoin flexibly, but without mandatory requirements. Merrin pointed out that the U.S. dollar is rapidly depreciating, and Bitcoin can be used as a tool to protect tax funds and enhance state finances. This legislation provides a framework for state governments to use Bitcoin technology to address economic challenges and promote innovation. Similar bills have been proposed in Texas and Pennsylvania, with the goal of establishing state-level Bitcoin reserves.
According to the official account of Wu Enxiang's lawyer team, the public security organs in a certain place in China, based on the case of "climbing the wall to speculate in cryptocurrencies", determined that the act of using VPN to climb the wall to trade Bitcoin was illegal. In the case, the party Zhang used VPN to access an overseas trading platform and engaged in virtual currency trading to make a profit of 90,000 yuan. According to the "Interim Provisions on the Management of International Networking of Computer Information Networks" and the "Public Security Administration Punishment Law", the public security organs confiscated his illegal income of 90,000 yuan and imposed a fine of 15,000 yuan, and also confiscated the tools used in the crime, including mobile phones and computers.
The controversial point of the case is whether the behavior of circumventing the firewall can be directly linked to the subsequent gains from cryptocurrency speculation, and whether the gains from cryptocurrency speculation can be considered illegal gains. The legal community believes that the illegality of circumventing the firewall mainly lies in the use of illegal channels, while cryptocurrency speculation itself is not illegal, and it is unreasonable to consider the subsequent gains as illegal gains just because of circumventing the firewall.
Project News
Binance will delist AKRO, BLZ, and WRX on December 25
Binance announced that it will delist and stop all spot trading pairs related to AKRO, BLZ, and WRX at 03:00 (UTC) on December 25, 2024, including AKRO/USDT, BLZ/BTC, BLZ/USDT, and WRX/USDT.
Renzo Governance tweeted that the third quarter $REZ claim is now open, and this allocation accounts for 4% of the total supply, totaling 400 million $REZ, and the claim period is from December 17, 2024 to March 17, 2025. There are 81,684 eligible wallets, requiring at least 1,000 S3 ezPoints, of which 37,125 users holding 1,000 to 2,000 ezPoints receive a minimum reward equivalent to 2,000 ezPoints. The full unlocking part involves 81,236 wallets, and the linear unlocking part involves 357 wallets, the latter of which will unlock 33.33% per month within 3 months. Users can claim through the Renzo official website.
sBTC is now available on the Stacks mainnet, offering a 5% annualized reward
According to Stacks official news, sBTC has been launched on the Stacks mainnet, marking an important step towards a decentralized on-chain Bitcoin economy. sBTC achieves trustlessness, security and transparency through 1:1 Bitcoin anchoring, institutional signature network and Bitcoin computing power guarantee, and supports the Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem. In the initial stage, only deposits are supported, with a liquidity cap of 1,000 BTC and an annualized reward of up to 5%. In the first quarter of 2025, the withdrawal function will be enabled, the liquidity cap will be increased, and the permissionless signature network will be promoted to further promote the programmability of Bitcoin and DeFi applications.
Big Time Studios announces $150 million Open Loot fund
According to VentureBeat, Big Time Studios announced the establishment of a $150 million Open Loot Fund to promote game development on the Web3 game platform Open Loot. The fund will provide financial support, marketing and development guidance to game studios to help develop high-quality crypto games. The Open Loot platform has 1.5 million registered players, supports developers to mint and distribute digital assets through SDK, and rewards players and developers through $OL tokens. The platform has currently achieved nearly $500 million in trading volume.
Viewpoint
DeFiance Capital founder: 2025 may usher in DeFi revival
Arthur Cheong, founder of DeFiance Capital, wrote that 2025 could be the year of DeFi’s renaissance, with key factors including a crypto-friendly U.S. government, the growth of core DeFi primitives, and the development of chain abstraction protocols.
He Yi, co-founder of Binance, just said in a speech on Space that most Meme coins will eventually return to zero, and only a few projects can survive for a long time, but it is difficult to define which projects can survive. Binance has listed a watch list covering VC-backed projects, infrastructure projects, DeFi projects and Meme coins, but some of them cannot be launched due to token model problems or inflated data. In order to improve transparency, Binance puts some of the observed projects into the Alpha area of the Web3 wallet for users to trade and screen high-quality projects with long-term potential. He Yi mentioned that the expansion of Binance's user scale has led to a rapid increase in the market value of newly launched currencies in the short term, but it may then slowly decline. Although Binance tried to suppress the price of the currency to a reasonable range before going online, this strategy has not been widely recognized. She also compared the crypto industry with traditional IPOs, pointing out that many projects lack a real user base, and on-chain data is often inflated by airdrops and other means, resulting in projects with business models being underestimated. She emphasized that only projects that are beneficial to society can achieve long-term profitability and return the results to users.
Mikko Ohtamaa, co-founder of Trading Strategy, criticized Polygon’s use of user-bridged USDC deposits in funding markets such as Morpho, arguing that this move carries multiple risks:
Destroying the illusion of self-custody: Although the Polygon bridge is controlled by a multi-signature wallet, this operation breaks users’ trust in self-custody.
Attracting regulatory attention: Fund flows involving billions of dollars are likely to attract significant attention from regulators and the media.
No user choice: Currently, users cannot choose whether to participate in the mechanism, which lacks transparency.
Double counting problem: Bridged USDC is used for lending services on Polygon and at the same time in Morpho on the mainnet.
He suggested that Polygon explore more transparent ways, such as launching an independent bridge service, allowing users to choose to exchange USDC for "Polygon yield-based USDC." In addition, he mentioned that Circle has launched a non-bridge version of USDC on Polygon, but it has not been widely adopted because it was launched late and is incompatible with the bridge version of USDC.
Matrixport: Bitcoin will surge 150% in 2024, and a bull market is expected in 2025
Matrixport data shows that as Bitcoin ETFs successfully attracted new investors, Bitcoin performed strongly in 2024, with an annual increase of 150%, ending the year with extraordinary performance. From a risk management perspective, Bitcoin showed a significant upward trend throughout the year, with a 44% increase in February, the best performance of the year, and a decline of only 15% in April, with only 5 months of negative returns recorded throughout the year.
It is worth noting that Bitcoin's volatility is mainly biased to the upside, in line with investor expectations, laying the foundation for a strong start in 2025. As a result, many investors look back at the beginning of 2024 and lament that they failed to increase their investment efforts.
Important data
An investor lost $102,000 in 12 minutes due to Binance Alpha’s blunder
According to @ai_9684xtpa, due to the Binance Alpha blunder, an investor lost $102,000 in just 12 minutes, with $195,000 in and $93,000 out. The incident was as follows: After the false information was released, the investor sold 1.76 million $ARC (about $170,000) and bought 1.42 million $ELIZA at a cost of $0.1376; then realized that the target token should be lowercase $eliza, and sold all $ELIZA for $eliza at $0.09567, losing $59,600; after the news was falsified, the price of lowercase $eliza also fell, and finally sold again at $0.01157, losing $43,000. Overall, the investor lost up to 52.5% in this incident.
Affected by the delisting of Binance, BLZ and WRX fell by more than 20% in a short period of time, and AKRO fell by more than 10%. Among them: BLZ is currently trading at $0.104, down 25.3% in 24 hours; WRX is currently trading at $0.1917, down 23.06% in 24 hours; AKRO is currently trading at $0.0036, down 14% in 24 hours; According to previous news, Binance will delist AKRO, BLZ, and WRX on December 25.
Blur unlocks 34.41 million BLUR and transfers them to Coinbase Prime this month
According to Ember's monitoring, Blur transferred 34.41 million BLUR (about $11.06 million) unlocked this month to Coinbase Prime 20 minutes ago. Since entering the unlocking cycle on June 15, 2023, Blur has unlocked 31.6% of the total (949 million BLUR) and flowed into Coinbase Prime. Calculated at the price at the time of transfer, the total value reached $323.1 million.
MtGox-related wallet addresses transferred out 1,130 BTC 3 hours ago, worth about $118.45 million
According to iChainfo monitoring, the wallet address related to MtGox (1HtH…9wHH) transferred 1,130 BTC worth approximately US$118.45 million to two addresses three hours ago.
