Today in Crypto: BNB Chain Unveils 3rd Blockchain in BNB Ecosystem, Tether ‘Never Borrowed from Celsius’, Ripple Sold $226M Worth of XRP in Q4

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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Blockchain news

• BNB Chain unveiled the whitepaper for a new blockchain-based Web3 infrastructure, with a press release saying that its core team and a few community developer teams, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), NodeReal, and Blockdaemon have started working on BNB Greenfield already and aim to release a testnet in a few months. The whitepaper outlines the design of BNB Greenfield, a decentralized storage system with smart contract integrations for Web3 applications, which utilizes BNB as its native token and will become the 3rd blockchain in the BNB ecosystem, it said, after BNB Beacon Chain which focuses on BNB governance and security, and BNB Smart Chain for smart contract computing.
• Mars Hub, a lending protocol on the collapsed Terra blockchain, has deployed its mainnet on Cosmos, according to a blog post. “The network is expandable with the establishment of Red Bank Outposts on other chains, starting on Osmosis – Cosmos’ leading [decentralized exchange] DEX with more than $180 million in total value locked (TVL),” it said.

Investment news

• Paolo Ardoino, the chief technology officer at Tether and Bitfinex crypto exchange, said on Twitter that Tether has “never borrowed from Celsius.” The tweet came in response to the Celsius bankruptcy examiner report, which allegedly mistakenly suggested that the USDT issuer was among Celsius Network’s borrowers. “The doc mixes “from” and “to”. Either is a typo or a mis-characterization,” Ardoino said.
• US-based startup Ripple sold $226 million worth of XRP tokens in Q4, net of purchases, compared to $310.68 million in the previous quarter, according to the quarterly markets report. The company also reported transactions of over 106.4 million on XRP Ledger, compared to 103 million in Q3, and the creation of 228,143 new user wallets, compared to 125,225 in Q3.
• Finance platform Intain Inc. has launched IntainMARKETS, a marketplace for tokenized asset-backed securities built as an Avalanche Subnet. Per the announcement, IntainMARKETS automates and integrates functions of key stakeholders in structured finance, including the issuer, verification agent, underwriter, rating agency, servicer, trustee, and investor. Intain’s first platform, IntainADMIN, now facilitates the administration of more than $5.5B in assets across more than 25 deals, it added.
• Cronos Labs, a blockchain startup accelerator that focuses on decentralized finance (DeFi), blockchain games, and the development of the Cronos ecosystem, announced the opening of applications for the second cohort of the flagship $100M-backed Cronos Accelerator Program, set to commence on April 24. Selected projects will go through a 12-week acceleration program and receive upfront seed funding of $30,000, with a chance to secure up to $300,000 in further seed funding from Cronos Labs, among other benefits, it said.

DeFi news

• Provider of cryptography services Threshold Network announced the launch of tBTC, a decentralized, permissionless, and scalable Bitcoin-to-Ethereum bridge. The launch will allow users to wrap their BTC in exchange for tBTC tokens that can be deployed in the Ethereum ecosystem, said the press release. tBTC’s optimistic minting model is now live in partnership with Curve DAO, Yearn.Finance, Synthetix, Connext, Alchemix, Euler, and Aave as minters, with support from Catalog, BadgerDAO, StakeDAO, Entropy, and certain community members as guardians.
• Twitter alternative Damus went live on the Apple App Store yesterday, per an announcement by the team. Based on the decentralized networking protocol Nostr, it promises a censorship-resistant social network with end-to-end private messaging controlled by users.

Energy news

• IOTA announced the success of its EnergieKnip projects in the Netherlands, which uses decentralized ledger technology (DLT) to help citizens save energy and live more sustainably by allowing them to share their energy consumption data anonymously with local authorities. Also, an app offers local reward tokens to incentivize residents to reduce their carbon footprint. Per the announcement, “in the first EnergieKnip project, 50,000 wallets were created for as many households (a total of about 106,000 citizens). This ultimately resulted in 300,000 euros distributed to 9,000 active wallets – and all this in a decentralized and anonymous way.”

Mining news

• Luxor Technologies, a full-stack Bitcoin (BTC) mining software and services company, launched a request-for-quote (RFQ) platform for buying and selling Bitcoin mining hardware. An RFQ marketplace allows users to create orders (requests) for specific items. Per the announcement, Luxor’s RFQ will be double-sided, meaning both buyers and sellers can create requests for mining hardware. They can place requests and negotiate prices directly, “improving price discovery and increasing liquidity in the secondary ASIC market,” it added.