Today’s news tips:
New York Department of Financial Services: Taking over Signature Bank has nothing to do with its encryption business
OpenAI launches GPT-4: it can parse text and images at the same time, supporting Microsoft’s new Bing
Circle: Working to restore USDC’s liquidity operations, including finding new 24/7 banking partners
Cosmos Hub: The V9 Lambda upgrade has been completed, and the Replicated Security function has been enabled
Changpeng Zhao: Binance moves zero-fee BTC transactions from BUSD to TUSD
Filecoin virtual machine FVM has been launched on the main network, and Filecoin now supports smart contracts
Offshore RMB Stablecoin Project CNHC completes US$10 million A+ round of financing, led by KuCoin Ventures
Data: USDC net redemption exceeds $4.5 billion since last Friday
regulatory news
New York Department of Financial Services: Taking over Signature Bank has nothing to do with its encryption business
According to The Block, a spokesman for the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) said Sunday’s decision to take over Signature Bank had nothing to do with the bank’s cryptocurrency business. Previously, former U.S. Rep. Barney Frank criticized the regulator’s decision, claiming that they “want to send a message that cryptocurrencies are harmful.” A spokesperson for NYDFS said in a statement that the decision to take over the bank and turn it over to the FDIC was based on the bank’s current condition and its ability to conduct business in a safe and healthy manner. The spokesperson said they were working with Signature Bank executives to assess its financial situation, ability to fulfill withdrawal requests and whether it can continue to operate normally. The bank failed to provide “reliable and consistent data, creating a serious crisis of confidence in the bank’s leadership”. NYDFS said that Signature is a bank with a more substantial business, and that Crypto assets are only a small part of the bank’s overall business.
Earlier news, members of the board of directors of Signature: the bank is insolvent, shut down or due to the regulator’s anti-encryption stance; later today, it was reported that Signature Bank faced criminal investigations before closing down, including its partnership with encryption companies; Bank lost $17.8 billion in deposits on Friday, or about 20 percent; U.S. regulators began soliciting interest from potential buyers of Signature Bank.
U.S. Attorneys Renew Effort to Block Voyager Sale to Binance at Hearing
U.S. officials are trying to block the sale of key parts of bankrupt Voyager Digital Ltd. to Binance.US, while the government appeals a judge’s approval of the deal, Bloomberg reported. Assistant U.S. Attorney Larry Fogleman said in court on Tuesday that the administration opposes any restrictions on its ability to punish either party involved in the proposal and a related bankruptcy exit plan approved by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Michael E. Wiles last week. Fogleman told the judge that other aspects of the deal would likely move forward, but would not include legal protections as part of Voyager’s Chapter 11 plans.
Wiles agreed to a hearing on Wednesday to decide whether to block the plan’s waiver clause. These clauses are common in corporate bankruptcy cases and protect people from personal liability for implementing court-approved plans. According to its bankruptcy plan, Voyager has the option of selling it to Binance.US or liquidating its assets and distributing the funds to creditors. A judge will allow the company to take either approach after four days of contentious bankruptcy hearings.
It was previously reported that a judge approved Binance.US’ acquisition of Voyager Digital’s assets, but the transaction still needs to clear regulatory hurdles; the U.S. Department of Justice appealed the New York judge’s decision to approve Voyager’s sale to Binance.US.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury is about to release a risk assessment report on the use of DeFi in criminal activities
According to CoinDesk, Elizabeth Rosenberg, a senior official of the U.S. Treasury Department, said that the U.S. Treasury Department is about to release a risk assessment report to analyze the use of DeFi in criminal activities. Rosenberg said at a banking event in Sydney, Australia, on Monday that criminals are always looking for effective ways to hide criminal activity and launder ill-gotten gains, a threat to DeFi services or other elements of the virtual asset ecosystem. An assessment is “actively underway” by her team and the results will be released soon. She also said that the potential harm of virtual assets used in criminal activities has already been demonstrated in incidents such as the North Korean ransomware attack due to the “phenomenal” growth of virtual assets.
NFT
Metaverse
OpenAI launches ChatGPT-4: it can parse text and images at the same time, and supports Microsoft’s new Bing
According to Wall Street News reports, on Tuesday, March 14th, Eastern Time, OpenAI announced the launch of a large multi-modal model GPT-4, saying that it can receive image and text input and output text, “more creative and collaborative than ever before.” GPT-4 can parse both text and images, so it can interpret more complex input, OpenAI said.
OpenAI said it has worked with several companies to incorporate GPT-4 into their products, including Duolingo, Stripe, and Khan Academy. The GPT-4 model will also be provided to subscribers of the paid version of ChatGPT Plus in the form of an API. Developers can sign up to build apps with it. Microsoft has since said that the new Bing search engine will run on the GPT-4 system.
Related reading: OpenAI launches GPT-4, a quick look at new features in one minute
Project dynamics
Crypto Custody Bank Anchorage Digital Lays Off 20% of Staff
According to Bloomberg, Anchorage Digital, an crypto custody bank, said on Tuesday that it will lay off 75 people, accounting for about 20% of its total workforce. The company said the uncertain crypto regulatory environment in the U.S. was a factor in its decision to lay off staff. Additionally, broad macroeconomic challenges and crypto market volatility have prompted layoffs. Anchorage is the first federally chartered crypto bank in the United States. It will complete financing of US$350 million in 2021, led by private equity firm KKR & Co., with a valuation of more than US$3 billion. Last month, the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) said Anchorage had failed to implement key money laundering controls, that its compliance program was understaffed and that it lacked an internal process to verify customer identities.
Project dynamics
Goldman Sachs has applied for a new patent that integrates blockchain technology with its settlement mechanism
Goldman Sachs recently filed a patent with the US patent office proposing to integrate blockchain technology with its settlement mechanism, Cryptoslate reported. The patent document, filed on March 14 under patent number US 11,605,143 2B, outlines the technical and computing needs of the bank to use blockchain technology. The patent focuses on the technical aspects of smart contracts, which can be applied to various financial instruments such as fractional reserve banking, insurance, bonds, securitized products and margin loans.
The move by Goldman Sachs is part of its blockchain push, with Mathew McDermott, global head of the Crypto assets team, expressing strong support for blockchain applications in a recent interview. The bank’s private tokenization platform, GS DAP, was also used by Hong Kong to sell $102 million worth of Crypto green bonds, successfully reducing settlement time from five days to one.
Meanwhile, some analysts have claimed that a patent “arms race” is brewing in the blockchain space, with Goldman Sachs determined to keep ahead by expanding its Crypto asset team with new hires and blockchain offerings.
Circle: Working to restore USDC’s liquidity operations, including finding new 24/7 banking partners
Circle, the USDC stablecoin issuer, said in a blog post: “Since the collapse of Signature Bank and Silvergate Bank, our team has been working around the clock to restore USDC’s liquidity operations, including introducing new transaction banking partners. We local time Processing of minting and redemption requests began on the morning of Monday March 13th, when the US banking system reopened, and the backlog of requests is currently being processed. We have more work to do here, including adding a 24/7/365 capable New transaction bank partner, on March 13 local time, Circle redeemed USD 2.9 billion USDC and minted USD 7 billion USDC.”
The article also stated: “As part of an ongoing effort to strengthen our USDC reserves, we now hold the cash portion of our reserves at BNY Mellon, in addition to limited funds held at transaction banking partners, to support USDC minting and redemption .The bulk of the reserves are invested in the Circle Reserve Fund, managed by BlackRock and custodianed by BNYM, and composed primarily of short-term U.S. Treasury bills.”
The Optimism technology decentralization roadmap is released, and the Baseline decentralization is planned to be completed by the end of this year
According to official news, OP Labs released the Optimism technology decentralization roadmap, which includes two parts: Baseline decentralization and Cannon Fault Proofs. OP Labs said: “Baseline decentralization is our top priority and something we hope to help achieve by the end of this year. Looking ahead, we expect completing the ‘precursor’ to failure proof decentralization will be a focus in 2024.”
Among them, Baseline decentralization will realize the decentralized upgrade of the Optimism network and governance system by reaching a permissionless output proposal and bridge decentralization. At the same time, the team will continue to iterate on the technology of Fault Proofs, which includes three steps: 1. Implement a fault proof program that performs L2 state transitions, so that the output can be programmed and verified on L1; this is a precursor to the activation of fault proofs . 2. Cannon Proof-of-Failure Virtual Machine, which will make it possible to execute proof-of-failure programs on L1; this is another precursor to proof-of-failure activation. 3. Once the two precursors are ready, the Dispute Game (integration) can follow; this step will enable Cannon to remove the glitch output on L1; through this step, Optimism will be provably wrong.
Once progress is made on Baseline decentralization and Cannon, other important steps can be considered, including: 1. Deploying an additional proof system to the Optimism mainnet; 2. Phasing out the prover network; 3. Removing upgrade keys; 4. Decentralized Sequencer.
Lido expects to upgrade the mainnet to V2 in mid-May
Lido tweeted that Lido V2 will be launched on the Goerli test network next week. After about 4 weeks of testing, it is expected to launch the Ethereum mainnet in mid-May. Withdrawals of stETH will not start on the mainnet until all audits on the chaincode are complete (expected end of April), which is currently expected to start around mid-May.
Previously, the Lido community passed the V2 upgrade proposal with 100% support. According to the Lido team, the V2 smart contract underwent a total of 7 audits at a cost of $1.2 million. 2 of them have been completed and 5 are in progress.
As of last Friday, all critical issues identified in the audit had been fixed. The updated contract has been deployed to the Ethereum Zhejiang testnet for testing.
Stargate DAO’s proposal to stop reissuing STG tokens has been voted on
The Snapshot page shows that Stargate DAO’s proposal to stop reissuing STG tokens was voted through with a support rate of 98.52%. According to the proposal, Stargate should continue to use the original STG tokens in the agreement, while the tokens purchased by Alameda should remain in the vesting contract, where they currently remain at the request of the liquidator.
Earlier on March 13, the Stargate Foundation advised DAO not to reissue STG tokens, otherwise the FTX liquidator may seek compensation.
Changpeng Zhao: Binance moves zero-fee BTC transactions from BUSD to TUSD
In response to the announcement that “Binance will restore some BTC fees and BUSD pending order fees”, Changpeng Zhao said on Twitter: “In view of recent events, we will transfer 0-fee BTC transactions from BUSD to TUSD.”
In addition, in response to the short-term surge of TRU (TrueFi) after the announcement of TUSD, Changpeng Zhao said that TRU should have nothing to do with TUSD. According to data from Coingecko, the price of TRU surged nearly 30% shortly after the announcement, and has now fallen sharply.
Earlier today, Binance announced that starting from 8:00 on March 22, 2023, users can continue to enjoy zero pending and taker fees only when trading BTC on the BTC/TUSD spot trading pair. BUSD zero pending order (Maker) fee activity will no longer include BNB/BUSD, BTC/BUSD and ETH/BUSD spot and leverage trading pairs.
Cosmos Hub: The V9 Lambda upgrade has been completed, and the Replicated Security function has been enabled
Cosmos Hub announced on Twitter that the V9 Lambda upgrade has been successfully completed and the Replicated Security feature has been enabled on Cosmos Hub.
Earlier today, it was reported that Cosmos reached the block height of 14470501 to activate the V9 Lambda upgrade around 16:01 today. This upgrade is aimed at activating the Replicated Security function, which supports replicating the security of the Cosmos Hub to the consumer chain and monitoring compliance with the rules. The consumer chain can benefit from the security of the Cosmos Hub without having to maintain its own verification and ATOM stakers will benefit from a certain percentage of tokens or fees generated by the consumer chain as a pledge reward.
The Ethereum Goerli testnet has completed the Shapella upgrade
Beaconcha data shows that the transaction at epoch 162304 of the Ethereum Goerli test network has been confirmed, and it has reached epoch 162323. Due to low network participation when triggered, the upgrade was finalized after 15 epochs.
According to the report on March 2, after the Goerli testnet upgrade, the mainnet upgrade will be carried out in the next 3 to 4 weeks.
Filecoin virtual machine FVM has been launched on the main network, and Filecoin now supports smart contracts
The Filecoin community announced that the Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM) was successfully launched at 23:14 Beijing time on March 14. The Filecoin blockchain now supports smart contracts and user programmability through FVM. Through FVM, developers can deploy smart contracts and plan how data is stored, governed, and monetized in the open market.
The release of FVM is the last link in the main plan of Filecoin. Juan Benet, founder of Protocol Labs, said, “FVM is a major step forward for blockchain and Web3, enabling developers to create new types of applications and empowering the huge potential of smart contracts to large-scale data.”
Crypto exchange Bitstamp has laid off 30% of its staff, laying off about 200 employees
According to DLNews, the cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp recently reduced its headcount by 30%, from about 650 in September last year to 450 in February. But Bitstamp CEO Jean-Baptiste said in an interview: “This is not a round of layoffs, many consultants who work on licenses, strategy, compliance and security have completed their projects, all of them completed their projects at the end of last year. Task.”
financing news
Offshore RMB Stablecoin Project CNHC completes US$10 million A+ round of financing, led by KuCoin Ventures
CNHC Group, the issuer of the CNHC stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the offshore yuan, has raised $10 million in funding, The Block reported. KuCoin Ventures led the round, with other investors including Circle and IDG Capital. With the new funding, CNHC aims to expand the adoption of its stablecoin, especially in the Asia-Pacific region. To that end, the company is moving its headquarters from the Cayman Islands to Hong Kong. CNHC also plans to grow its team of approximately 60 people by hiring across functions, including operations, compliance and business development.
important data
Pie Shield: Voyager transferred $27.7 million worth of cryptocurrency to Coinbase in the past 12 hours
According to Paidun’s early warning monitoring, in the past 12 hours, the address marked “Voyager” has transferred 27.7 million US dollars worth of cryptocurrency to Coinbase, including 17,000 ETH (about 19 million US dollars), 12 million VGX ( About 4 million US dollars), 270 billion SHIB (about 3 million US dollars).
It is reported that since February 14, Voyager has sold crypto assets through Coinbase almost every day. It was previously reported that a judge approved Binance.US’ acquisition of Voyager Digital’s assets, but the transaction still needs to clear regulatory hurdles; the U.S. Department of Justice appealed the New York judge’s decision to approve Voyager’s sale to Binance.US.
Data: USDC net redemption exceeds $4.5 billion since last Friday
Whale Alert data shows that at 04:12 this morning, 723,507,072 USDCs were destroyed at the USDC Treasury. According to the crypto data company Arkham, this set the record for the largest single destruction of USDC ever recorded.
Additionally, since last Friday, USDC has had $6.2 billion in redemptions and $1.66 billion in minting, or just over $4.5 billion in net redemptions, The Block reported.
Steven Zhang, director of research at The Block Research, said that although Circle opened the redemption and guaranteed that the redemption will be reserved, USDC holders still seem nervous about the current environment. Given that Circle holds cash reserves in many other banks, if these banks experience A bank run like we saw with Silicon Valley Bank, which could cause USDC to unpeg again.
Data: Huang Licheng’s address sold 132 MAYC last night
According to data from the OKLink multi-chain browser, the address of Taiwanese singer Huang Licheng (machibigbrother.eth) marked as “Jeffrey Huang” began to sell MAYC in large quantities at 20:36:23 last night. 132 pieces were sold, and 42 pieces of MAYC are still held under this address.
Ark Invest increased its holdings of over 180,000 Block shares (approximately US$13.7 million) through three funds on Tuesday
Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest added 186,284 shares of Block stock on Tuesday through three funds, The Block reported. Acquisition costs are estimated at approximately $13.7 million.
Ark added 159,654 Block shares to its Ark Innovation ETF, 25,783 shares to its Ark Next Generation Internet ETF and 847 shares to its Ark Fintech Innovation ETF, according to its latest trading filings. Block closed up 6% yesterday at $73.63. Based on the closing price, the purchase amount is approximately US$13.7 million.
It was reported yesterday that Ark Invest increased its holdings of more than 90,000 Block shares (approximately US$6.4 million) through three funds on Monday.