Bad & Good News For Binance, Unstoppable Chat + More News

Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.

Exchanges news

• Binance has been told to cease offering crypto derivatives trading in Brazil. Per an official release, the nation’s Securities and Exchange Commission, warned Binance to stop offering derivatives-related products with immediate effect. The CVM says that derivatives products are classed as securities, meaning providers offering products to Brazil-based individuals must first register with the regulator – something Binance has so far failed to do.
• Also, Binance has completed an acquisition of multi-asset digital wallet Swipe. This they said will enable users to convert and spend crypto directly, while merchants will still accept fiat. Binance also listed the coin Swipe (SXP) and opened trading for SXP/BTC, SXP/BNB and SXP/BUSD trading pairs.

Blockchain news

• Unstoppable Domains, a company building blockchain domain names, said it launched a peer-to-peer chat protocol out of Mozilla’s ‘Fix the Internet’ incubator called Dchat. “Messaging can now be offered by crypto wallets and dapps just by installing a plugin,” the company said, adding that they also launched the first app using the Dchat protocol, called Unstoppable Chat. MyEtherWallet and imToken have already committed to supporting chat and will be going live in the coming weeks, the company said.
• Andong, a city in South Korea, has won a permit to operate a free trade zone for industrial hemp, and will use a blockchain-powered management platform as part of its operations. Per Newspim, the central government has relaxed the terms of a 70-year-old narcotics law to allow for the industrial production of cannabis in certain areas, although strict rules remain in place over the fledgling industry.
• The official Telegram Open Network (TON) development group has announced that they are discontinuing the support of the test network of the TON Blockchain, with the remaining validators planed for a shutdown by August 1 the latest.

M&A news

• Wintermute, an algorithmic liquidity provider for digital assets, today announced the close of a USD 2.8m Series A round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, a major venture capital firm. Wintermute aims to accelerate its expansion into new liquidity products, such as derivatives, over-the counter market making, and decentralized finance.

Regulation news

• The Financial Services Agency (FSA), Japan’s top financial and crypto industry regulator and the architect of the nation’s crypto policy, has appointed a new commissioner. Per Coin Post, the new commissioner is Ryozo Himino, who was last year appointed as the chair of the Financial Stability Board (FSB). Himino has also served as the secretary-general of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, a global banking regulator.
• The multi-government watchdog, Financial Action Task Force (FATF), said that, under the new president Marcus Pleyer, it would continue to build on and strengthen the anti-money laundering (AML) and counterterrorism financing (CTF) work through digital transformation. Per the objectives, the FATF has been monitoring the opportunities and risk of the digitization of economies, stating that it wants to ensure that AML and CTF guidelines can be more efficiently implemented in the private sector.
• The Gibraltar Financial Services Commission has issued a new distributed ledger technology license to the Belarus-based crypto platform, Currency.com. Per the press release, the license allows the company to use distributed ledger technology for storing or transmitting value belonging to others in connection with the provision of dealer and custody services.

Crypto adoption news

• Japanese insurance firm Daido Life has completed a small-scale “digital currency” pilot and is set to launch a second pilot for use in its internal operations. Per Nikkei, the company is working on the project in conjunction with the DeCurret crypto exchange and is hoping to commercialize its offering by 2023.

CBDC news

• An article from Shenzhen Huashu Network’s Cardada Digital Currency Research unit has pointed out that five recent Alipay blockchain patents could pertain to the central bank’s digital yuan project. The five patents all relate to central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and Alipay (part of the Alibaba business empire) is widely thought to be working with the Chinese central bank on its digital fiat plans. The article’s author stated that the patents “seemed to suggest” that Alipay was indeed working with digital yuan-related operations.