eBay’s Crypto Teaser, UK Seeks More Power to Seize Crypto + 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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Adoption news

• E-commerce platform eBay may decide to start taking crypto payments, TheStreet reported, citing CEO Jamie Iannone. The firm could make an announcement on March 10 during its day dedicated to investors, it added.
• stc Bahrain, a telecommunications company based in Bahrain and owned by the Saudi Telecom Company, said it will launch a Chainlink (LINK) node, providing smart contracts with access to real-world data and secure off-chain computations.

Regulation news

• The UK government is proposing a set of reforms that would give it greater power to seize cryptoassets in order to tackle money laundering, the Financial Times reported. The reforms will be set out under a new economic crime bill aimed at addressing the use of digital currencies to hide the origin of potentially nefarious funding, it added.

Legal news

• The US Department of Justice (DoJ) charged Satish Kumbhani, the founder of now-defunct exchange BitConnect, for allegedly misleading investors globally and defrauding them of USD 2.4bn in the process. He is charged for orchestrating what they called a Ponzi scheme, among a number of other allegations, and faces a maximum total penalty of 70 years in prison.
• The Israeli Defense Ministry said that it has seized digital wallets containing cryptoassets it claims are intended to fund the terrorist group Hamas. Israel’s Defense Minister Benny Gantz signed a seizure order for “about” 30 wallets containing dozens of thousands of shekels linked to 12 digital accounts, according to a press release by the National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing of Israel (NBCTF).

Metaverse news

• The South Korean Ministry of Science and ICT pledged KRW 223.7bn (USD 186.9m) to the development of their new metaverse ecosystem. Per the announcement, the funds will be allocated to the development of a virtual world platform called the Expanded Virtual World, and will also be used to expand on core technology, education, and reorganizing the legal system surrounding the technology.

NFTs news

• Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten is launching its own NFT marketplace which will offer users digital collectibles of sports and entertainment. It also aims to offer minting services for intellectual property (IP) holders to create digital assets of their IP.
• An indie feature film called Calladita is starting its crowdfunding campaign on March 2 and offering NFTs as rewards and unique perks for NFT owners who contribute to the raise. The film tells the story of Ana, a young, Colombian domestic worker in a wealthy family’s Spanish holiday home.

Blockchain news

• A number of programmers and executives that worked on Facebook’s now-sold stablecoin project Diem announced a new venture that they claim will be the “safest and most scalable Layer 1 blockchain” called Aptos. The blockchain is aimed at solving problems of reliability, safety, and usability, they added.

Investments news

• Trading platform Mizar said it has raised USD 3m in a seed funding round led by Nexo (NEXO). The funds raised in this round will be used to further the goal of making smart trading tools accessible to everyone to automate their trading, they added.

Career news

• Katherine Wu, who served as Coinbase’s senior deal lead of ventures, announced she had left the crypto exchange to join early-stage crypto investment firm Archetype. Her work history includes roles at pre-seed fund Notation Capital and crypto research and data platform Messari.