Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.
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Regulation news
- The United States House Committee on Energy and Commerce announced a hearing on the crypto industry’s energy consumption, which will take place on Thursday, January 20, 2022. The focus of this hearing will be on proof-of-work (PoW) blockchains and how such cryptoassets could migrate to cleaner alternatives. (Learn more: A Closer Look at the Environmental Impact of Bitcoin Mining)
Investments news
- Trading platform Robinhood doesn’t plan on spending significant amounts of corporate cash on cryptoassets anytime soon, Chief Financial Officer Jason Warnick told the Wall Street Journal. He explained that they haven’t seen any “compelling reasons strategically” for their business “to put any meaningful amount” of their corporate cash into cryptoassets.
- El Salvador’s bitcoin trades are adding risk to a sovereign credit outlook that was already weak and reflecting a growing chance of default, credit rating agency Moody’s said, per Bloomberg.
- Binance Labs, the venture capital and innovation incubation arm of major crypto exchange Binance, invested in Nine Chronicles, an open sourced, decentralized role-playing game. Nine Chronicles plans to expand its team and product suite, and it will also work with the Binance ecosystem.
- The holding company behind DeCurret, the Japan-based company offering trading and exchanges of digital assets, plans to sell its crypto business to investment platform Amber Group, Nikkei reported. Though the details of the acquisition are unclear, the news outlet reported that the sale price would be in the millions of dollars.
- Crypto data and software provider Lukka raised USD 110m in a Series E funding round that was backed by Marshall Wace, S&P Global, Soros Fund Management, and more, at a valuation of USD 1.3bn after the raise. The funds will be used for “its aggressive growth and global expansion strategy,” the team said.
Security news
- Security firm PeckShield put out a list of 55 potential scam projects, called “rug-potentials”, on Binance Smart Chain (BSC). These projects involve malicious functions that let administrators mint unlimited tokens, blacklist accounts, and block holders from selling their tokens, the firm said.
- A service called Fees.wtf, purportedly showing people how much they’ve spent on Ethereum (ETH) blockchain transactions, released its WTF token — and in the subsequent bot trading, ETH 58 (around USD 180,000) was drained from the Wrapped ETH (wETH) and WTF liquidity pool. Additionally, a number of other users are reporting that they have lost money.
Adoption news
- The Northwest Arkansas Council, which includes the cities of Fayetteville, Rogers, Bentonville, and Springdale, is offering a sum of USD 10,000 worth of bitcoin (BTC) and a street or mountain bike to attract remote tech professionals to move to the region, per local media outlet KNWA. If the prospective professional prefers, however, they can opt for cash and an annual membership to an art or cultural institution.
- The San Diego State University (SDSU) announced that it is welcoming digital currency donations in BTC and ETH. David Fuhriman, Chief Financial Officer of The Campanile Foundation, said 1% of the total crypto holdings would be withdrawn quarterly to fund campus activities that aim to discover how the university could interact with crypto.
Legal news
- Ethereum-focused blockchain company ConsenSys filed lawsuit against the former head of its venture capital arm, Kavita Gupta, for resume fraud, alleging that Gupta induced the company to hire her “by claiming to have stellar qualifications” that turned out to be fraudulent. The suit claims credentials from Harvard Business School, MIT and The World Bank were fabricated.