Here comes Friday, December 15th. As the week elapses, we can focus on the industry highlights over the past few days.
KuCoin to pay $22M to settle NY state lawsuit
Bitcoin exchange KuCoin has reached an agreement with the The Office of the New York State Attorney General (“OAG”) to resolve claims under which it will repay over $22 million.
Back in March, OAG head Letitia James charged the platform with violating securities laws by offering digital assets in an unlicensed manner.
According to the statement, one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges operated illegally without registering as a broker-dealer and ‘unlawfully represented itself as an “exchange”.’
“I want to update all of you about our latest compliance action. KuCoin has reached a settlement with the New York Attorney General (NYAG), solidifying our commitment to compliant operations,” CEO Johnny Lyu said.
KuCoin agreed to refund a total of $16,766,642 to state customers as well as pay the watchdog agency $5.3 mln. The exchange will shut down its New York business activities, while also shuttering users’ accounts.
The platform is expected to comply with the court-approved decision within roughly 4 months.
Let us remind you that in 2022, the regulators of Canada and the Netherlands had warned about KuCoin’s unregistered activities.
Crypto asset inflows seen continued for 11th week in a row
Between Dec. 2 and Dec. 8, digital asset flows into crypto investment products hit the $42.8m mark, as reported by CoinShares. During previous reporting period this indicator amounted to $176.3m. Earnings remained in triple digits during each of the previous six weeks.
Experts pointed out the intensifying interest in products that allow going short, which can be explained by the rapid growth of digital asset prices. For example, short-bitcoin inflows saw $8.6 million.
Investors poured $19.8 million into standard BTC funds. Considering the remarkable turn-around since the beginning of the year, this value surpassed $1.7 billion.
Inflows into Ethereum-based ETP tokens are still on track for a sixth straight week, topping out at $9.7 million, as opposed to $30.8 million in the previous reporting period.
Investors also piled $3.1m, $2m and $0.8m into SOL-, AVAX- and XRP-based instruments, respectively.
China to launch blockchain-based citizen identity verification
RealDID, a new digital identity authentication service by Blockchain Service Network (BSN) to provide “anonymous online identity” based on the well-known technology, has been unveiled in China. The initiative is spearheaded by the country’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS), jointly with the State Information Center of China and tech firms such as China Mobile Communications Group, Beijing Zhongdun Anxin Technology Development, and BSN Development Alliance.
As per the officials, RealDID will enable users to register and log into websites anonymously using decentralized identifiers (DIDs) and private keys. Such an approach ensures that the ties between financial info and personal details are invisible.
The press release highlights that the launch of BSN’s real-name-based DID service empowers users to gain control over the use of their own digital ID and other personal information. So RealDID becomes the world’s first national-level decentralized identity verification system, integrating both the BSN and China Mobile Communications Group.
The blockchain platform provides a wide spectrum of features including real name verification, data encryption, login privacy protection, customized business-DIDs and identity certificate services.
Moreover, BSN emphasizes that users are free to choose what private information to disclose across different business platforms, providing only necessary and minimized information, thus greatly improving privacy practices and data security.
Ether to outperform Bitcoin in 2024, JPMorgan says
Ethereum is all but likely to take the lead in 2024, overtaking BTC and other coins, thanks to upcoming updates in blockchain scalability, according to the JPMorgan recent report, which CoinDesk also cites.
Experts claim that Ethereum is to regain its footing and proclaim itself as the new king of the hill, primarily due to the implementation of EIP-4844, aka Proto-danksharding.
This very solution involves enabling a more efficient form of sharding without fragmenting the network into small pieces. The update will also introduce a brand new transaction type using BLOBs dubbed ‘blob-carrying transactions’ – temporary data packets attached to blocks. They contain more data than regular blocks, but are not stored permanently and are EVM-incompatible.
JPMorgan officials indicated that the upgrade will be of special benefit to Layer-2 networks such as Arbitrum and Optimism, since it will provide additional storage space, thus improving protocol performance and reducing transaction fees.
Analysts noted that much-anticipated bullish trends for the alpha cryptocurrency throughout 2024, including the possible approval of an asset-based spot-ETF and halving, have already been factored into its current price.