Market Watch Bitcoin | $15,488 | 7 day: +15% | Ethereum | $442 | 7 day: +15.2% | All crypto | $444b | 7 day: +12.7% | Bitcoin dominance | 64.6% | 7 day: +1.2% | Prices as of 2:45 p.m. EST | |
OKEx denies that it uses single-signature cryptocurrency wallets. Nevertheless, it's been weeks since OKEx "temporarily paused" withdrawals on Oct. 16, 2020. As of today, OKEx still has frozen billions of dollars worth of its customers' assets. - Decrypt suggests that the news report from Jinse Caijing regarding OKEx founder Xu Mingxing going "out of touch" as Chinese authorities took him away for questioning, may have been fake news.
- According to a news report dated Oct. 19, OKEx CEO Jay Hao posted to a Chinese social media network, Sina Weibo, that "personal issues" with the private key holder resulted in the temporary halt of withdrawals.
- Jinse Caijing is a media outlet that focuses on blockchain-related news.
- In 2018, Tencent banned several crypto-related news outlets (including Jinse Caijing) from its widely-used messenger application, WeChat.
- A Chinese resident deleted his tweet thread regarding the withdrawal halted on OKEx when Mingxing was unavailable, saying it was untrue and apologized for causing FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt).
- Jinse Caijing has removed the original story from its website.
- An OKEx spokesperson pointed out that an old incident report published in August mentions that the crypto exchange does not use a single-signature wallet, as many have suggested.
- OKEx claims to hold 95% of customers' assets in an offline, multi-signature (multi-sig) wallet.
- According to the wallet security section of the OKEx website, for generating private keys, two OKEx personnel (one from the Beijing office and the other from a city on West Coast, U.S.) handle the exchange's "Advanced Encryption Password."
- The section outlines a confusing, step-by-step procedure to enable withdrawals and generate private keys.
Decrypt | |
Brock Pierce Block.one (EOS) and its co-founders Dan Larimer and Brock Pierce continue to fight a proposed class action securities lawsuit. Crypto Assets Opportunity Fund LLC filed the class action against the company, and Larimer and Pierce, in September. - In a Nov. 3 brief submitted by defendants, Block.one (EOS) asked U.S. District Judge Kaplan to dismiss the proposed class action accusing them of violating federal securities laws during EOS' digital asset offering throughout 2017 and 2018.
- "Flaws" identified by the defendants' legal counsel in the class action include a failure to geolocate the token purchases, and a lack of specificity regarding the location of the alleged "secondary market" where token offerings occurred.
- The suit also names Block.one's Brendan Blumer and Ian Grigg, allegedly living in Hong Kong, as individual defendants.
- EOS is known as the longest-running ICO, which raised over $1b. (Block.one's ICO, however, was actually outlasted by the "never-ending ICO" of XRP.)
SEC: - The SEC settled charges with Block.one on Sept. 30, 2019, and ordered a civil monetary penalty of $24m for holding an unregistered ICO of its token EOS between June 2017 and June 2018.
- That SEC settlement allows other private "damages" actions against Block.one.
- Importantly, a penalty fine paid to the SEC is not equivalent to disgorgement of ill-gotten gains or restitution to harmed investors. Disgorgement and private lawsuits can often amount to far larger total penalties, even by orders of magnitude.
- According to the SEC investigation, Block.one planned and pursued its EOS token offering without registering with the SEC, or applying for an exemption, and violated U.S. federal securities laws.
- Find our prior coverage of EOS lawsuits here at Inside Cryptocurrency.
Law360 | |
Shuttered Cryptocurrency Exchange, QuadrigaCX QuadrigaCX has $30m left to repay $171m claims by creditors. - Ernst & Young (EY), trustee of shuttered Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX, states that they hold around $30m in funds to repay a $171m claim made by QuadrigaCX's creditors.
- The trustee recorded its seventh report with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on Nov. 5.
- EY received 17,053 completed claim forms from the creditors. The total number of claims filed were 42,957. The filed claims were for both crypto and fiat currencies.
- The exchange collapsed in 2018 when Gerald Cotten, founder, and CEO of QuadrigaCX, allegedly died unexpectedly. Cotten was the sole holder of the exchange's private keys. His death was disputed.
- The exchange suffered more losses due to its deal with a fiat-banking platform, Crypto Capital. Crypto Capital is at the heart of a $1.4t Bitfinex-Tether lawsuit, the largest in cryptocurrency history.
- Cotten used to gamble with customer funds. He used to open accounts under aliases and instantly credited crypto balances into his own accounts, which he later used to trade personally.
CoinTelegraph | |
China's former central bank governor confirms that the government will use its CBDC to stop "global dollarization." - Terminology: Chinese fiat has three interchangeable names: renminbi (RMB), Chinese yen (CNY), and yuan (¥). The People's Bank of China (PBoC) issues China's central bank digital currency (CBDC), called "digital yuan," or its preferred name, Digital Currency/Electronic Payment (abbreviated DC/EP or DCEP).
- Governor of the PBoC from 2012-2018, Zhuo Xiaochuan, confirmed that DC/EP aims to stop U.S. hegemony and increase non-USD global trade.
- During a video conference on Nov. 3 at the Eurasia Forum event hosted by the Hungarian central bank, Zhou supported a draft law to legalize DC/EP and eliminate competition.
- Zhou commented on the G7's report regarding CBDCs, saying that China's central bank differs from G7 principles, aiming to reduce dependence on USD-denominated trade, boost retail payments, and increase settlements in its own CBDC.
- Influential state-owned banks and telecom operators (acting as online payment providers) in China, such as Ant Group and Tencent, will become large custodians of DC/EP.
Asia Times | |
The White House is concerned about the SEC's cryptocurrency delays. - The White House has voiced concerns regarding whether the SEC is doing enough to counter China's ongoing efforts with its DCEP.
- China claims to have already processed over $162m worth of DCEP transactions.
- PBoC aims to legalize a self-issued digital currency to complement cash circulating in its domestic market.
- A sovereign digital yuan would help China attract cross-border trade and achieve part of its current five-year plan called Made in China 2025.
- Clayton's agency, responsible for regulating digital currencies within the U.S., has yet to make significant decisions to counter Chinese attempts to achieve international CBDC provenance.
- Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) wrote a letter to the Director of National Intelligence and National Security Adviser complaining that the country lacks regulatory clarity regarding cryptocurrencies, which could jeopardize national and economic security. Cotton mentioned that the risks of Chinese technological innovation continue to grow.
- Last month, China reportedly completed a pilot test in Shenzhen, where 47,500 participating residents received approximately $1.5m worth of CBDC in total.
- Furthermore, Chinese lawmakers are consulting over a draft bill that seeks to create a legal foundation for DCEP and bans the development of competitive, yuan-based stablecoins.
PBS | |
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- The mysterious $1b movement of bitcoin on election day is now a solved caper.
- Payment platform Square facilitated bitcoin transactions worth $1.63b via its Cash app during Q3 2020, per Square's earnings statement dated Nov. 5.
- DeFi aggregator and cryptocurrency exchange 1inch released updated Version 2 of its platform 1inch.exchange, according to a blog dated Nov. 5.
- Multinational law service provider DLA Piper collaborated with Aldersgate DLS and launched TOKO, a proof-of-concept tokenization platform.
- Ethereum 2.0 continues to progress.
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| | Written and curated by wide-eyed bitcoin watcher since $1, Aaron Wise. Streaming headline junkie, Associated Press fanboy, eye-strained news terminal watcher, 2017 founder of Cryptocurrency Newsfeed. Temporarily based in Florida while awaiting the construction of cryptopia. | | Editor | Written and curated by Eduardo Garcia in New York. Eduardo is writing an illustrated book about climate change that will be published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Bylines in The New York Times, The Guardian, Slate, Scientific American, and others. In one of his previous lives, Eduardo worked as a Reuters correspondent in Latin America for nearly a decade. | |