Binance Reportedly to Go (Back) Big in Japan, Kraken Rejects SEC, China Gets Metaverse Engineering Department + 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.
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Exchange news

• Binance will seek a license to operate in Japan, four years after leaving the country, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The move comes as Japan looks to adopt more web3-friendly policies and shows a generally friendlier approach to crypto.
• Binance will burn all trading fees collected on its LUNC/BUSD and LUNC/USDT spot and margin pairs. CEO Changpeng Zhao announced the news, adding that the fees will be converted to LUNC and then sent to the burn address, while the burn is paid at the exchange’s expense, not the users’.
• Dave Ripley, who will take the place of current CEO Jesse Powell, says that Kraken will not register with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as a market intermediary or delist tokens the regulatory agency has deemed to be securities, Reuters reported.

Metaverse news

• China’s Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology has decided to rename its 25-year-old Information Engineering Department within the School of Artificial Intelligence to the ‘Metaverse Engineering Department’, per a local media report. Pan Zhigeng, dean of the School of Artificial Intelligence said it plans to train masters, doctoral students, and postdoctoral fellows focused on the metaverse with the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in the future, per HK01.
• Nedbank, a major financial services group in Africa, has partnered with Africarare, a metaverse, and secured a 12×12 village in Ubuntuland on which to establish its presence as the first African financial services organization to enter the metaverse, said an announcement. The Nedbank village will contain numerous experiences including virtual gaming and a sports lounge, they said.

CBDC news

• The Reserve Bank of Australia is working to identify business models and uses for a central bank digital currency (CBDC), eAUD, and is likely to conduct a pilot early next year, The Sidney Morning Herald reported. The findings will be published at the conclusion of the project, around mid-2023.

Crime news

• The Hengyang County Public Security Bureau in China has published nine cases recently, including the “9.15” money laundering gang, which is accused of using crypto for laundering up to 5.6 billion, according to crypto reporter Colin Wu, citing Weixin. The gang has reportedly been engaged in over 300 incidents of tele-trafficking. 93 suspects have been arrested.

Regulation news

• TOKO, a virtual asset creation and management solution, delivered in collaboration with global law firm DLA Piper, has been granted a provisional virtual assets license by the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority [VARA], as it undertakes the in-depth process of applying for a license, in order to provide a wide range of virtual asset services to enterprise and institutional clients, said a press release. TOKO is also opening an office in Dubai.

Investment news

• Japanese banking giant Nomura has invested in London-based blockchain payments firm Fnality. The financial services firm will also join Fnality’s international consortium of global banks, they said.
• WWVentures, a boutique crypto VC fund focused on providing social capital support, announced today the closing of a $15M raise backed by some of the top gamers, athletes, and content creators, including, MrBeast, Fresh, Lazarbeam, Lachlan, Tobias Harris from the Philadelphia 76ers, Michael Bisping, former UFC Champion, Trent Alexander Arnold from Liverpool F.C, and more. The $15M will be used to invest in projects that are helping build the future of the web3 and blockchain industry specifically in infrastructure and tooling, metaverse, gaming, and DeFi, said an announcement.

DeFi news

• Digital Asset Research (DAR), an institutional-grade provider of price data, research, and insights for digital assets, announced that it is using Chainlink to bring data to smart contract applications. Through Chainlink, DAR provides ‘clean’ price data for 1,000 digital assets that is aggregated from a variety of high-quality decentralized and centralized exchanges, filtered for outliers, exchange reliability, and more, said an announcement.

Sports news

• Football social app Football Fan launched its FanCoin for private sale ahead of the FIFA Football World Cup 2022 in Qatar. Priced at £0.01 apiece, FanCoin is available for the Football Fan app community and stakeholders to purchase in the private sale ending on October 31.

Legal news

• A US court on Friday refused Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s request for a “blanket” waiver of the attorney-client privilege Twitter has cited in refusing to hand over documents in litigation over Musk’s attempt to get out of his $44 billion offer to buy the company, Law360 reported.