Asia Express – Cointelegraph Magazine

Our weekly roundup of news from East Asia curates the industry’s most important developments.

Huawei moves to trademark its NFTs

According to a report by Sina News on January 28, Chinese telecom giant Huawei has recently applied for eight trademarks related to the Huawei series of “YunYunBao” nonfungible tokens (NFT). The brands include digital collectibles in scientific instruments, furniture, education, jewelry, advertising and telecom. Last April, Huawei unveiled its YunYunBao NFTs, with characters inspired by the cloud service of the same name. Huawei NFTs are minted on its proprietary Huawei Petal Chain, which the telecom giant says has over 1,000 nodes and can handle over 50,000 transactions per second.

Toyota sponsors blockchain hackathon

In a Medium post on February 1, Sota Watanabe, the founder of Japanese blockchain Astar Network, announced that Astar had received a sponsorship from Japanese automaker Toyota for its latest Web3 hackathon. Astar is currently a parachain built on the Polkadot blockchain.

According to Watanabe, over $100,000 in prizes will be awarded to projects that develop “intra-company DAO [Decentralized Autonomous Organization] support tools for this hackathon that Toyota employees can actually use in the future.” The hackathon runs from February 14th to March 25th.

“Needless to say, Toyota is the largest company in Japan and one of the world’s leading international companies,” Watanabe wrote. “We are very excited to host the Web3 Hackathon at Astar with Toyota. During the event, we aim to develop the first PoC DAO tool for Toyota employees. If a good tool is produced, Toyota employees will interact daily with products on the Astar Network.”

North Korea is destroying crypto

On February 2, forensic blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis revealed that North Korean hackers stole an estimated $1.65 billion of the $3.8 billion in funds raised from decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols in 2022. For context, North Korean-related entities stole just 299, $5 million in 2020 and $428.8 million in 2021. The firm also warned that despite the US Treasury Department imposing sanctions on cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash on August 8, North Korean hackers have increasingly turned to other digital asset mixers, such as Sinbad , to launder stolen funds. Chainalysis said:

“North Korea-affiliated hackers tend to send a lot of what they steal to other DeFi protocols, not because those protocols are effective for money laundering — they’re actually pretty bad for money laundering given their increased transparency compared to centralized services — but rather, because DeFi hacks often result in cybercriminals acquiring large amounts of illiquid tokens that are not listed on centralized exchanges. The hackers therefore have to turn to other DeFi protocols, usually DEXs, to exchange for more liquid assets.”

January 29, decentralized finance analyst Zachxbt claimed he had tracked another 17,278 Ether (ETH) – worth around $27.18 million – laundered by North Korean hackers in the wake of the $100 million Harmony Bridge hack last June. According to Zachxbt, the funds were then moved to 14 wallet addresses across four exchanges. On January 24, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed that North Korea’s Lazarus Group was the mastermind behind the attack.

No Binance metaverse yet

In an ask-me-anything session on Jan. 14, Changpeng Zhao, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, said the firm “is more open to just investing in other virtual reality or metaverse games,” as the firm does not is a game builder and does not have a game development team.

“No one really knows what metaverse means. Everyone has a different take on it,” the crypto chief said, according to a transcript published on Jan. 27.

Instead, Zhao says Binance will focus its “next big product” on releasing more Proof of Reserve and Proof of Payment to increase transparency. The exchange has set a target that 1 billion users will pass the Know Your Customer verification for the new year.

Huobi denies allegations of data sharing

Digital asset founder Justin Sun has responded claims that his exchange Huobi provided client information to Chinese tax authorities. The TRON founder tweeted that Huobi “does not share any customer information with tax authorities unless it follows international legal aid procedure.”

Earlier, Sun praised the introduction of a new 20% Chinese cryptocurrency income tax as “a clear indication that the Chinese government views cryptocurrencies as a legitimate form of wealth and wants to ensure proper taxation.”

Although based in the Seychelles, Huobi has a significant number of employees working in mainland China, who reportedly rebelled against the firm’s strict new labor policies earlier this month.

The Huobi founder’s new ventures

After selling his entire stake in Huobi to Sun’s About Capital last October, Chinese businessman Lin Li has dedicated his time to managing Hong Kong blockchain investment company New Huo Technology. On January 30th, New Huo launched a technical support service, called “Sinohope Staking”, which will first serve the Cosmos community before expanding to Ethereum, EOS and ChainLink.

According to developers, Sinohope Staking will offer “multi-node deployment, real-time monitoring of the node operation process, 7*24-hour online support, 3-layer wallet structure and multiple signature technologies” for users interested in staking their assets on public blockchains. New Huo says it will help clients set up their staking nodes and monitor their operations “without handling or holding any clients’ assets,” and claims clients will keep “100%” of their staked cryptocurrencies during the process.

Bitzlato is said to have defied sanctions

The co-founder of Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange Bitzlato says the platform will reopen after being shut down by US authorities last month.

In a January 31 YouTube interview, Russian national Anton Shurenko said the exchange would open later at an unspecified time and claimed that up to 50% of the funds in seized hot wallets would be available for withdrawal at that time. In addition, the supposed founder claimed he had no idea why his company was spun off.

On January 18, Bitzlato was shut down after an investigation by law enforcement officials, including the US Department of Justice, revealed that the exchange imposed lax Know Your Customer rules and allegedly laundered over $700 million worth of illicit funds via crypto-fiat transactions. Shurenko’s co-founder, Anatoly Legkodymov, was arrested in Miami around the same day. Following revelations that Binance was one of the top counterparties to Bitzlato, the exchange froze a number of accounts related to the entity.

According to recent reports, Spanish police have arrested three executives from the firm, namely the CEO, a sales manager and marketing director.

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Zhiyuan Sun

Zhiyuan sun is a journalist at Cointelegraph with a focus on technology-related news. He has several years of experience writing for major financial media such as The Motley Fool, Nasdaq.com and Seeking Alpha.