Nasdaq’s Crypto Move, $160M DeFi Hack, Hong Kong CBDC + More News

Get your daily, bite-sized summary of cryptoassets and blockchain-related news – examine the stories that fly under the radar of today’s crypto news.
__________

Exchange news

• Nasdaq Inc., the second-largest exchange, is hiring a new group in charge of digital assets, Bloomberg reported. This new group will initially offer custody services for bitcoin and ether to institutional investors, they quoted Tal Cohen, the company’s executive vice president and head of North American markets, as saying. Nasdaq hired Ira Auerbach, who ran prime broker services on crypto exchanges The twinsto lead the new Nasdaq Digital Assets unit.
• Trading company Alameda Research will repay around $200 million in loans to the bankrupt crypto lender Voyager Digital. According to a lawsuit, Alameda will repay 6,553 in bitcoin (BTC) and 51,204 in ether (ETH) in principal and loan fees, as well as smaller amounts in seven other tokens. The loans must be repaid by 30 September.
• Indian Crypto Exchange WazirX has announced the delisting of major stablecoins tether (USDT), Pax Dollar (USDP) and True USD (TUSD). Instead, the company will convert users’ existing balances of these stablecoins into Binance USD (BUSD) at a 1:1 ratio.
• Binance Canada have chosen Solidus Labs as a transaction monitoring and marketplace monitoring partner in Canada. The exchange will exploit HELLOSolidus’ crypto-native market integrity hub, to optimize several key risk monitoring and compliance services, the announcement said.

Security news

• British crypto market maker Wintermute got a hack worth about 160 million dollars, according to Evgeny Gaevoy, the company’s founder and CEO. Per Etherscan, over 70 different tokens have been transferred to the “Wintermute exploiter”, including stablecoins tether (USDT) and USDC. “Cefi and OTC operations are not affected. We are solvent with twice the amount in equity left,” Gaevoy claimed, adding: “Out of 90 assets that have been hacked, only two have been for nominal over $1 million (and none more than $2.5 million), so it shouldn’t be a big sale of any kind.”
• The official Twitter account of India-based crypto exchange CoinDCX has been hacked and used to post fake XRP promotions along with phishing links. The official support handle of CoinDCX warned users not to click on any links or messages coming from the compromised account, saying they are working to restore it and are investigating the incident.

CBDC news

• Hong Kong will begin testing a digital currency called e-HKD from the fourth quarter, paving the way for a virtual currency implementation and eventual rollout to be used by the public in the future to shop, eat out and make money transfers, South China Morning writes Mail. The trial scheme will be followed by legislative changes and digital infrastructure to support e-HKD.
• The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) will expand e-CNY samples to Guangdong, Hebei Jiangsu and Sichuan provinces, the South China Morning Post reported, citing Fan Yifei, the bank’s deputy governor. The number of users, merchants and transactions is “steadily rising”, the official is quoted as saying.

Regulatory news

• USA Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) has claimed that Ethereum (ETH) transactions are taking place in the United States because Ethereum nodes are “clustered more tightly” in it than in any other country. The argument was made in a September 19 lawsuit against YouTuber Ian Balina, saying in full that: “The US-based investors in Balina’s pool irrevocably committed to the transaction when they from the US sent their ETH contributions to Balina’s pool. At that point, their ETH contribution was validated by a network of nodes on the Ethereum blockchain, which is clustered more closely in the United States than in any other country. As a result, these transactions took place in the United States.”
• Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO and founder of crypto exchange FTX, warned that “a scammer has impersonated FTX in the UK via phone,” telling users that “FTX will never call you on the phone.” This comes after the UK’s financial regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said it suspected FTX was operating without proper authorisation.

Legal news

• The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has ordered crypto firm Sparkster and its CEO Sajjad Daya to pay a settlement of more than $35 million to “aggrieved investors.” The SEC issued a cease-and-desist order on Monday against the two, alleging they raised $30 million from 4,000 investors during an “unregistered offering of cryptoassets” in 2018.

Investment news

• Fraud detection platform Sardine has closed a $51.5 million Series B round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), while other investors include ING Ventures, ConsenSys, Cross River Digital, VisaEric Schmidt and Google VenturesTechCrunch reported.
• US based software company Micro strategy added an additional BTC 301 worth about $6 million to its balance at an average price of $19,851 per BTC, a filing revealed. Per founder and former CEO Michael Saylor, As of September 19, MicroStrategy has approximately 130,000 BTC purchased for $3.98 billion at an average price of $30,639 per coin.
• Domain and digital identity platform Unstoppable domains has announced an integration with crypto prices and portfolio tracking CoinStats, which enables people to manage and track their entire crypto portfolio, by simply connecting their non-fungible token (NFT) domain to CoinStats. Through this integration, users’ NFT domains will give them one-click access to a dashboard for tracking and managing their portfolios, without having to manually link wallets, it said in an announcement.
• GRNGrida renewable energy-focused Layer 1 blockchain, announced that it has secured a $50 million investment from the venture capital firm GEM Digital. The new funding will be invested in further connecting with top crypto exchanges, adding new global professional partnerships and building out the blockchain technology and infrastructure, GRNGrid said.

Payment news

• Cloud-based payment company Gr4vy announced a strategic partnership with crypto payment processor BitPay to enable its merchants to accept crypto payments through BitPay’s checkout offer. As part of Gr4vy’s no-code payment orchestration platform (POP), merchants can now implement and offer BitPay’s crypto payment options as they expand into new global markets, they said.
• Web3 payment platform Fuse have announced that they are collaborating with ChromePay to launch a decentralized identity service that will enable millions of African users to participate in the Web3 economy, the announcement said. The integration will enable ChromePay users to access both traditional and blockchain-based payments on their mobile devices, and ChromePay will also create a decentralized marketplace with a fiat onramp.

Web3 news

• BNB chain has announced successful migration of Gametes, a play-to-earn game Web3 Dapp. Using BNB Chain’s large gaming ecosystem, Gameta is able to bring popular Web3 gaming Dapps not only to existing Web3 players, but also to mainstream mobile users who are still new to blockchain gaming, the press release shared said with Cryptonews.com. Furthermore, Gameta can now collaborate and build relationships within the BNB Chain ecosystem, and expand its user base and services with other projects.
• NFT marketplace Open sea announced that it has upgraded the process for embossing NFTs with a new “immersive” droplet experience. Creators will be able to launch their collections with dedicated drop pages and greater discoverability, and collectors will be able to mark directly from an OpenSea page.

Blockchain News

• Archaeaan enterprise class Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) delivers, has partnered with Google Cloud to accelerate the growth of distributed ledger applications on Hedera, the enterprise-class public ledger for the decentralized economy. Arkhia will enable application developers to build both backend and client-side applications to leverage and grow the burgeoning Hedera ecosystem, said the press release shared with Cryptonews.com.
• Decentralized public infrastructure layer IDNTTY today announced the launch of its public testnet. It encourages public validators to engage in stress testing and optimizing the blockchain network, which will mark a significant next step in the roadmap to the platform’s mainnet launch. IDNTTY brings to market a dedicated solution and set of services that allows developers to create applications and integrate digital identity into existing services while users maintain full control over their private data, it said in an announcement.