Tuesday March 1, 2022
◾ The SEC will not offer amnesty to cryptocurrency companies that self-report violations of securities laws. (Reuters)
◾ The US Treasury department has added ‘digital currencies’ to a list of assets to be blocked under its Russian government imposed sanctions. (Treasury.gov)
◾ The Bank of Russia says its alternative to the SWIFT payment network is ready for operation. (Beincrypto)
Government & NGO Actions
◾ The central bank of Botswana announced the discontinuation of checks “for deposit and/or encashment” effective Jan. 1, 2024. (Newsghana)
◾ Israel’s Defense Minister has signed a seizure order for cryptocurrencies intended assist Hamas. (NBCTF)
◾ The SEC is reporting that BitConnect’s SEC indicted founder Satish Kumbhani has vanished from his native India. (Bloomberg)
Public Company Releases
◾ Bitnile (NILE) mined 25.9 bitcoin in February bringing its total BTC mined to date to over 100 BTC. (Businesswire)
◾ AMC Theaters (AMC) will begin to accept Doge coin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB) on its website through an agreement with BitPay. (Twitter)
◾ eBay (EBAY) may announce a decision to add cryptocurrencies as a payment option at next week’s investor day. (Thestreet)
◾ DMG Blockchain (DMGI) expects to complete their audit for the financial year ending September 30, 2021 by the middle of March. (Globenewswire)
Protocols, Applications & Business News
◾ Crypto donations supporting Ukraine have reached $37 million. (Cointelegraph)
◾ FTX has announced the Future Fund, a philanthropic effort to deploy up to $1 billion to support projects working to “improve humanity’s long-term prospects.” (FTX)
◾ Cambridge University has launched a public-private, evidence-based research initiative to shed light on the rapid digitization of assets and value transfer systems. (CCAF)
◾ Crypto friendly, cross-border payments platforms Wise (WPLCF) and Remitly have suspended their Russian money transfer services following the announcement of global sanctions. (Reuters)
◾ Visa (V) has partnered with crypto-facilitating, start-up payments firm Tribal to expand its small business offering in Latin America. (Reuters)
◾ Hackers claiming to have stolen 1TB of information from NVIDIA (NVDA) is offering to sell a driver that unlocks NVDA’s GPU mining limitations. (PCmag)
◾ Heather Morgan, the wife charged with trying to launder $4.5 billion stolen in the 2016 Bitfinex hack is speaking with prosecutors about accepting a plea deal. (CNBC)
Metaverse Briefings & Activations
◾ Virtual reality hardware maker HTC has unveiled “Viverse,” its vision of the metaverse. (Venturebeat)
Exchange, Custody and Product Updates
◾ Binance has decided to block the accounts of any Russian clients targeted by sanctions. (Reuters)
◾ Coinbase (COIN) has declined a request from Ukrainian officials to institute a blanket ban on all transactions involving Russian addresses citing “a unilateral and total ban would punish ordinary Russian citizens.” (Decrypt)
◾ Kraken CEO Jesse Powell said his exchange “cannot freeze the accounts of our Russian clients without a legal requirement to do so,” but added that “Russians should be aware that such a requirement could be imminent.” (Twitter)
◾ Coinbase (COIN) has announced a new volume tiered fee structure increasing the taker fee on trades below $10,000 to 60 bps and lowering the maker fee to 40 bps. (Coinbase)