James' Crypto Weekly - October 4, 2021
š°Ā News
Sparkpool, currently the second largest Ethereum mining pool, said it will now suspend the mining pool services for all of its existing China-based as well as international customers by the end of this month. Link
Alibaba will prohibit sales of cryptocurrency miners and suspend categories for blockchain miners and accessories from its website on Oct. 8. Link
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell testified before the House Committee on Financial Services saying he has "no intention" of banning cryptocurrencies. Link
The Biden administration is considering ways to impose bank-like regulation on the cryptocurrency companies that issue stablecoins. Regulators worry that stablecoins could be vulnerable to the equivalent of a bank run if large numbers of investors suddenly rush to redeem them, forcing sponsors to sell the assets at fire-sale prices and potentially putting stress on capital markets. Link (WSJ $)
Singaporeās principal financial regulator, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), has officially approved Independent Reserve and DBS to offer cryptocurrency services in the country. Link
Binance announced it will no longer offer fiat deposit, spot trading of crypto, purchase crypto through fiat channels, and the Liquid Swap application to Singapore users. Singaporeās financial services regulatorāthe Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS)āsaid Binanceās Singapore-registered entity, Binance Asia Services, was not yet licensed in the jurisdiction. Link
Coinbase will soon allow United States businesses to deposit employeesā paychecks directly into accounts at the cryptocurrency exchange. Link
Malicious actors reportedly took advantage of Coinbaseās SMS account recovery process to gain access to 6000 users' funds between March and May. Link
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has order Kraken to pay a $1.25 million civil monetary penalty for "illegally offering margined retail commodity transactions in transactions in digital assets, including Bitcoin, and failing to register as a futures commission merchant." The CFTC order asserts that "from approximately June 2020 to July 2021, Kraken offered margined retail commodity transactions in digital assets to U.S. customers who were not eligible contract particpants." Link
The Iranian government will allow licensed cryptocurrency miners to resume operations today following a three-month ban imposed by former President Hassan Rouhani on May 26, 2021. Link
On Sep. 28, 2021, Judge Katherine Polk Failla of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a 127-page opinion and order dismissing half of the class action plaintiffsā claims against Tether and Bitfinex, including all of their RICO claims. Bitfinex and Tether will continue with litigation for the remaining plaintiffsā claims. Link
1inch has begun geofencing U.S. IP addresses. The move aims to pave the way for launching 1inch pro, which is specifically designed for the US market and for global institutional investors in accordance with all the regulatory requirements. Link
Compound incident
A bug was introduced in the Compound comptroller implementation, which allowed for excess COMP claims following Compound Proposal 62. Robert Leshner, Compound Founder, has noted that the maximum COMP that can be distributed via this bug is 280,000 COMP tokens. Additionally, any changes to the protocol will require a 7-day process "to make their way into production," in the meantime, Compound Labs and community members are evaluating solutions to patch the excess COMP distribution. Link
Robert Leshner, founder and CEO of decentralized finance (DeFi) staking protocol Compound, today tweeted asking that users who erroneously received large amounts of COMP tokens due to a bug return it to the Compound Timelock, or it would be "reported as income to the IRS, and most of you are doxxed." Link
An address has called drip() on Compound's Reservoir on Oct. 3, 2021, at 11:13 AM UTC, triggering 202,472.5 COMP (~$68M) to be sent to the Compound Comptroller. Banteg, Yearn Core Contributor, stated via Twitter that "it seems about 1/4 of that COMP could be drained." Compound CEO Robert Leshner said that the total amount of COMP at risk is now approximately 490,000, or $160 million, "of which 136k is still in the Comptroller, and 117k has been returned to the community so far." Link
šĀ Market Data
Ethereum developers shared v1.1.0 of the Altair upgrade entitled "The Great Machine". It is the mainnet release of Altair specs, including the epoch chosen for the planned mainnet upgrade on Oct. 27, 2021. The release also adds a terminal block hash override and a number of Merge tests. Link
Acala has opened its Crowdloan waitlist for the upcoming Polkadot parachain auctions. Join the waitlist to get up to 10% in bonus ACA, participants will need to lock up their DOT contributions for 2 years as the duration of the parachain lease term. Link
The future of Polkadot video from Messari Mainnet 2021. Link
Kusama council passes motion #362 to open an eleventh parachain auction immediately afrer the tenth auction ends on Oct. 6,2021. Link
Visa is developing a cross-chain interoperability architecture for CBDC, which is called Universal Payment Channel (UPC). Link
ERC4337 - new account abstraction implementation. Link
šļø Dates of Note
UpcomingĀ dates of noteĀ (new/changes inĀ bold):
October 13 -14 - Sub0 online ā the substrate developer conference
November 1 - 4 - NFT.NYC
TBA -Ā Devcon (DEVCON has been postponed to 2022)
Kusamaās second batch of parachain slot auctions:
Kilt protocol won the 6th parachain slot on Kusama. Link
Calamari Network won the 7th parachain slot on Kusama. Link
Basilisk Finance won 8th parachain slot on Kusama. Link
Altair Network won 9th parachain slot on Kusama on Sep. 29, 2021. Link
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Permalink for this weekās issue: https://jamescryptoweekly.substack.com/p/october-4-2021
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