Binance, the cryptocurrency exchange, is laying off over 1,000 employees as it faces regulatory scrutiny and investigations in the US and other countries. The layoffs could result in Binance losing more than a third of its staff. Former employees have reported that customer-service workers were heavily affected by the cuts. The company has confirmed the layoffs but has not disclosed the exact number. Binance has been targeted by US regulators and is facing a continuing investigation by the Justice Department. The exchange recently decided to eliminate its physical presence in the US and is relocating or laying off about 150 people there.

An on-chain analytics resource, Lookonchain, has reported unusual activity from a mysterious whale in the Pepe token market. The whale deposited 3.94 trillion PEPE tokens, worth $7 million, to a Binance-associated wallet in a single transaction and booked a profit of approximately $650,000 as the price of PEPE surged by 17% in the past 24 hours.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has written a letter to the exchange's users, reflecting on the challenges faced during past crypto winters and highlighting key trends shaping the industry as the company celebrates its sixth anniversary. Zhao acknowledged the decline in the market following record user registration in January 2018, but noted that the bear market taught the importance of "prudent financial management."

Binance has appointed Eleanor Hughes as its new general counsel to lead the legal affairs of the cryptocurrency exchange with a team of 85 lawyers. Hughes, who previously served as head of legal for APAC and MENA at Binance, has helped the company secure virtual asset service provider licenses in several jurisdictions.

According to Lookonchain monitoring, the giant whale address starting with "0x882E" withdrew 7,000 ETH (approximately US$13.2 million) from Binance 2 hours ago. Since June 8, the whale has withdrawn 57,100 ETH (about $108 million) from Binance and pledged 36,640 ETH (about $69 million).

Following the SEC's lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase, banks are becoming more cautious about doing business with cryptocurrency companies. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong conducted a Twitter poll asking if Bank of America had closed accounts that transact with the exchange, in response to claims that personal bank accounts were closed after using them for Bitcoin transactions with Coinbase.

Off The Chain Capital, a hedge fund managing $140 million, is expected to recover its Mt. Gox bankruptcy claims in September, which will make up 25% of its flagship fund's portfolio.

The Binance-operated BNB Beacon Chain mainnet will introduce a new feature in its upcoming hard fork that allows the blockchain to halt the production of new blocks under certain conditions. The hard fork will also implement the Binance Evolution Proposal BEP-255, which aims to mitigate damage from potential cross-chain bridge exploits.

Binance will open trading for the ARB/ETH, BCH/TRY, XVG/TRY and XVG/TUSD trading pairs at 2023-07-14 08:00 (UTC).TRY is a fiat currency and does not represent any other digital currencies.