FinTech news in Binance category

In an admission of breaking laws, Binance chief strategy officer Patrick Hillmann that the company’s executives were unfamiliar with laws and rules written surrounding bribery, corruption and money laundering.

The world’s largest crypto trading platform has acquired 100% of Sakura Exchange BitCoin for an undisclosed amount, a registered crypto exchange in Japan, the company said Wednesday. Binance gets regulatory nod in France, paving the way for Europe push Japan’s gaming blockchain builder Oasys raises $20M in private token sale Aside from France and Japan, Binance has also obtained regulatory approvals or authorizations in Italy, Spain, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, New Zealand, Kazakhstan, Poland, Lithuania, and Cyprus. Buying an exchange regulated by the Japan Financial Services Agency has certainly smoothed Binance’s legal path into the country.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) is often associated with trusting blockchain technology to execute services through smart contracts, while centralized finance (CeFi) usually refers to more traditional business models and involves having people manage funds and manually execute services. As the crypto market digests the past few days of chaos, venture capitalists see the moment as a warning, but also an opportunity for the growth of decentralization and maturation of the larger blockchain space. When there are massive crashes and burns, it speaks to what we’ve been seeing over the past decade: It the Wild West out there, Samantha Lewis, principal at Mercury, said to journalist.

Binance announced the acquisition of WazirX in late 2019 in a blog post. The clarification follows India’s Enforcement Directorate freezing WazirX’s assets worth over $8 million, citing suspected violation of foreign exchange rule.

Besides the founders, Cheri Beth Bowen, Ronald R. Deering, Samuel D. Ellis, Mark F. Hamlin, Carlos L. Martinez, Alisha R. Shepperd and Sarah L. Theissen were all also charged with violating federal securities laws in connection with Forsage, according to the SEC complaint.

Today, 70% of trading volume on Binance.US, the American offshoot of the global exchange, comes from institutional customers, its CEO Brian Shroder told us in an interview.

Shroder, who was promoted from president to CEO at Binance.US last October, has been focused on gearing up to take the company public since he took the top role. Jasmine Lee is coming on board at the company after serving as CFO and chief operating officer (COO) in a dual role at fintech app Acorns for nearly three years.

Binance said in a press release that Lame will apply this TikTok format to videos about web3, trying to simplify complex concepts for his followers.

The safety and risk of crypto-based financial products are in question this week as Celsius Network, a major crypto lender that lets users make deposits to earn interest and take out loans in crypto, paused withdrawals this week, sending the price of its token tumbling.

While Binance.US says it’s not a subsidiary or affiliate of Binance itself, the company launched as a legal independent entity in 2019 and is tied to Binance through its founder, Changpeng Zhao, as well as through its licensing agreements with Binance that cover its core technology and naming rights.

Zhang said she has noticed a growing interest of funds coming into the crypto space or new funds launching to invest in crypto after they saw the potentials of blockchain technology and crypto ecosystem.

US Securities and Exchange Commission chair Gary Gensler made his concerns clear in an interview with Bloomberg on Tuesday, calling out crypto exchanges for offering multiple services that are often in conflict with one another, such as custody, market-making, and trading. Gensler specifically took aim at the top three largest stablecoins — Binance USD, USD Coin and Tether — saying that it is not a coincidence that they are all closely tied to crypto exchanges.

KuCoin, which has amassed over 18 million users in 200 countries and regions and is one of the largest exchanges by daily SPOT trading volume, plans to invest the fresh funds in broadening its portfolio of crypto wallets, GameFi, DeFi, and NFT platforms and DAOs, Lyu said. KuCoin valuation has surged to $10 billion in its first financing round.

Binance, the world largest crypto exchange by volume, has gained regulatory approval to provide digital asset services in France, the first European country where it has acquired such permission, the company said in a blog post on Thursday. Binance has been busy trying to show European regulators its commitment to practice compliance and promote the region’s blockchain ecosystem. Many Chinese-founded crypto firms have moved their core management to Singapore, which is quickly emerging as a regional hub for blockchain startups. Originally founded in China, Binance has largely pulled out of the country following Beijing’s sweeping crypto ban.

The exchange, one of the largest in India and which also helps power the orderbook of rival Andreessen Horowitz-backed CoinSwitch Kuber (valued at $1.9 billion), is also exploring building a ventures arm, as is popular among other global exchanges such as Coinbase, FTX and Binance2, Gupta said, but it’s not something CoinDCX is planning to launch anytime soon, he suggested.

Binance.US raised over $200 million in its first external funding round, putting its pre-money valuation at $4.5 billion as it builds out a roadmap for an initial public offering (IPO), its CEO Brian Shroder. Binance.US is one of the largest digital asset exchanges by trading volume in the U.S. with a 24-hour trading volume of $306 million, according to data on CoinMarketCap. The exchange provides licensed services to 45 states with plans to operate in all 50 states and all U.S. territories, Shroder said.

Vietnamese gaming studio Sky Mavis announced that it has raised $150 million in funding led by crypto exchange Binance to help reimburse users who lost funds during a ~$625 million hack of its play-to-earn game Axie Infinity, which was the largest crypto heist to date.

Taro will support developers transferring assets on the Bitcoin Lightning Network by executing hundreds of thousands of transactions per second, a much greater volume than what the Bitcoin network could otherwise support, Stark said. Taro is the latest of multiple products Lightning Labs has built specifically for the Lightning Network, which is a layer-two solution that makes the Bitcoin blockchain more efficient.

Since that 2015 tweet, compensation for open source developers has remained a hot-button issue, and popular developer platform GitHub launched a feature in 2019 that allows users to send tips to their favorite open source coders.

Crypto.com, a popular cryptocurrency exchange, has extended its venture arm fund size to $500 million as it looks to more aggressively back early-stage startups to help the nascent ecosystem grow, following similar moves by rivals Binance, Coinbase and FTX.