Cryptocurrency-backing investment bank B.Riley and Nomura Securities involved in U.S. SEC investigation
According to insiders, the US authorities are investigating the transactions between investment bank B. Riley Financial Inc. and a major client involved in securities fraud, as well as the use of this client's assets to help the investment bank obtain a loan from Nomura Holdings Inc. The spokesperson for the US Securities and Exchange Commission declined to comment, and the investigation is still in its early stages. The agency's review does not necessarily mean that anyone has engaged in any improper behavior, nor does it necessarily mean that legal action will be taken, and Nomura Securities is not the focus of the investigation. A spokesperson for B. Riley stated in an email statement that they have not received any information from the SEC regarding this matter, and they will fully cooperate if the SEC conducts an investigation.
Game Theory and Consumer Crypto
One question that I often get when discussing consumer app ideas leveraging crypto is “does this really have to be in web3”? This often leads to an exposition on how building a web2 counterpart would be substantially difficult or simply not work. The intention of this post is to provide a comprehensive analysis on game theory and its applications in web3. Game theory is a more generalized approach and covers governance, token models, decentralization et al. I believe this new framework can be leveraged to build powerful applications. The right incentives can propel the society in a good direction.
Illegal cryptocurrency trading volume will account for only 0.34% of all cryptocurrency trading volume in 2023
According to a report by Chainalysis, the vast majority of cryptocurrency transactions (about 99.6%) are used for legitimate purposes. In 2023, illegal cryptocurrency transactions accounted for only 0.34% of all cryptocurrency transactions, lower than 0.42% in 2022 and significantly lower than 1.3% in 2019. The report only focuses on funds stolen by cryptocurrency hackers and those identified as illegal addresses. Despite the decrease, it is worth emphasizing that compared to illegal activities in the broader financial industry, cryptocurrency-related crimes are still small.
Cointime January 20 News Express
1.The implied volatility of Bitcoin options this week exceeded 97%, which has tripled from the low of about 30% in October last year.
Archway’s first quadratic funding ended successfully
According to official sources, in the recently completed Archway community's second quadratic funding round, the quadratic funding pool reached 300k ARCH, with 248 community members casting 23,352 votes and contributing 23,117.6 ARCH. Projects supported by the community include NodeOps, Gelotto, Astrovault, SudoStake, Aeroscraper, Nomos, PeerSwap, Abstract SDK, Liquid Finance, Archway.fun, Pina Colada, and MC² Finance. This second quadratic funding round is the first large-scale native quadratic funding round in the Cosmos ecosystem, completed through the infrastructure provided by DoraHacks.io. Archway's successful second quadratic funding round provides a good foundation for larger-scale quadratic funding rounds for application chain ecosystems.
U.S. Department of Justice: The CEO of investment company “SAM” was sentenced to two years in prison for participating in a “merit-picking scheme” for cryptocurrency futures contracts.
According to the announcement issued by the US Department of Justice, Peter Kambolin, CEO of investment company Systematic Alpha Management LLC (SAM), has been sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to forfeit $1.6 million for implementing a "preferential plan" involving algorithmic trading strategies for cryptocurrency futures contracts in marketing. It is reported that Systematic Alpha Management LLC was established in 2007, and as of 2011, its assets under management exceeded $720 million. From January 2019 to November 2021, Kambolin, who was then a commodity trading advisor and commodity pool operator, participated in a "preferential plan" and fraudulently allocated profits and losses from futures trading for his own benefit.
SatoshiVM transferred 1,217,818 SAVM to 248 influencer addresses
SatoshiVM transferred 1,217,818 SAVM (worth $10.5 million, accounting for 11.5% of the total supply) to 248 influential addresses, including Thor Hartvigsen, as monitored by Lookonchain. Currently, these 248 addresses still hold 483,493 SAVM (worth $4.16 million), while 734,325 SAVM (worth $6.32 million) have been transferred or sold.
U.S. Senators Propose Bill to “Combate Illegal Use of Crypto-Assets” through Public-Private Partnership
US Senators Bill Hagerty and Cynthia Lummis introduced the "Partnership to Prevent Illicit Financing Act of 2024" on Wednesday. According to the text of the bill, it aims to "establish an information sharing pilot program to combat the illicit use of cryptocurrency." The legislation seeks to combat illicit finance by strengthening communication between federal law enforcement agencies and private companies. The announcement provides some details on the pilot program to prevent illicit finance through partnerships in 2024, which will be led by the Attorney General and composed of 20 voluntary currency service companies and cryptocurrency companies. Senator Lummis believes that every industry has bad actors, including cryptocurrency, but do not misunderstand, cryptocurrency itself is not the problem.
Everstake launches official app on Safe platform
Validator and staking platform Everstake has launched its official application on the digital asset management platform Safe, allowing users to participate in staking with as little as 0.1 ETH through its application.
Stratis launches token exchange process, and the on-chain token exchange time is extended to March 21
On January 20th, blockchain technology company Stratis announced that it will launch an exchange portal where users can verify their participation in token exchanges and check the amount of tokens they will receive after the exchange. At the same time, Stratis has started the token exchange process, and the on-chain token exchange time has been extended to 02:00 on March 21st Beijing time, with the STRAX snapshot time also being March 21st at 02:00 Beijing time. The off-chain token exchange time is from March 28th to December 29th at 17:00 Beijing time. The StratisEVM is currently planned to be launched on March 21st, 2024, and tokens will be distributed on the first day of StatisEVM's release. Stratis will distribute airdrops to all users who have previously performed the exchange to compensate for any potential loss of staking rewards.
