Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you significant developments over the last week. This past week, Celsius’s financial troubles mounted further as a new coin report showed the company had a balance gap of $2.85 billion, more than double what it had
Regulation
The Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law this month by President Joe Biden, empowers the IRS with nearly $80 billion in new funds. The world’s most powerful tax collection agency is using the money to go on a hiring spree to fuel much tougher enforcement efforts. It is widely assumed that the audits will be
After recovering the HUSD stablecoin’s dollar peg, crypto exchange Huobi explained what had caused the short-term liquidity problem and assured users that it had been resolved. On Thursday, HUSD started to fall from its dollar value, trading at $0.92 at the start of the day and falling as low as $0.82 a few hours later.
Hiring in the crypto world can be difficult. Web3 companies are often disorganized and lack HR departments. Developers sometimes want to remain anonymous — even to their potential employers. Some employees don’t exist at all, while others are secretly juggling three other remote gigs. Then there are those who pretend to be employees but are
The pressure on crypto is growing swiftly in the Philippines. After a recent series of controversial moves from the state regulators and local think tanks, the country’s central bank published a warning to the citizens, discouraging them from engaging in any operations with unregistered or foreign crypto exchanges. The announcement itself doesn’t sound menacing but
Ripple’s XRP token is set to be used to facilitate fast and cost-effective cross-border transactions in Brazil, after the launch of RippleNet’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) with forex company Travelex. Digital payment network Ripple announced on Aug. 18 that foreign exchange company Travelex will utilize RippleNet’s ODL to facilitate cross-border payments between enterprises by utilizing Ripple’s
The United States Trustee handling Celsius’ bankruptcy proceedings has called for an independent examiner to be brought in to “untangle” the embattled network’s financial affairs and business operations. In a motion filed on Aug. 18 to the United States Bankruptcy Court by William K. Harrington, the US Trustee has asked for an examiner to look
Ksenia Malik, the wife of Tornado Cash creator Alexey Pertsev Wife has lashed out at Dutch authorities for treating her husband like a “dangerous criminal” following his arrest last week. The Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) arrested Pertsev on Aug. 12 over an alleged use of the Ethereum-based privacy tool to launder money
Four members of the United States House of Representatives from the Energy and Commerce Committee have demanded answers from four major crypto mining firms in regards to the potential effects of their energy consumption on the environment. In letters dated Wednesday to Core Scientific, Marathon Digital Holdings, Riot Blockchain, and Stronghold Digital Mining, U.S. lawmakers
Major Chinese cryptocurrency miner manufacturer Canaan appears to have no issues with the local ban on crypto, as the company’s overall performance has continued to grow in 2022. Canaan officially announced its financial results for the second quarter of 2022 on Thursday, reporting a 117% increase in gross profit from the same period of 2021. According
The Prudential Authority of the Reserve Bank of South Africa sent out guidelines in effort to prevent illicit activities to its subsidiaries, which included encouragement not to cut off all ties with cryptocurrency. It suggested that such an act could cause greater risk in the long run. The official notice was signed by the Prudential
While some think the Tornado Cash ban may negatively impact other projects focusing on privacy, others believe that these projects will keep pushing forward and keeping their commitments to anti-censorship and decentralization. In an interview with Cointelegraph, Ahmed Ghappour, the general counsel at the privacy-focused project Nym Technologies, shared insights on the importance of privacy
Australian asset manager Monochrome Asset Management has landed the country’s first Australian financial services license (AFSL) for a spot crypto exchange-traded fund (ETF). Speaking to Cointelegraph, Jeff Yew, CEO of Monochrome Asset Management, said the AFSL approval is significant, as until this point, approved crypto ETFs in Australia only operate under general financial asset authorization
Canada-based crypto exchanges Bitbuy and Newton are enforcing a 30,000 Canadian dollars annual “buy limit” for “restricted coins” for their users based in Ontario in order to “protect consumers” amid tightened regulations. Newton, a Toronto-based crypto exchange announced the new changes come after working on getting registered with the Ontario Securities Commission and the securities regulatory authorities
The European Central Bank (ECB) says the introduction of digital cash in the form of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) appears to be the “only solution” that will guarantee a “smooth continuation” of the current monetary system. The comments were made as part of an ECB Working Paper Series, which was published in August, discussing monetary
A South Korean town near Seoul has been successfully operating a pilot program that allows police to seize crypto from the exchange accounts of individuals with delinquent traffic fines. Gunpo, a city of about 275,000 in the northwestern Gyeonggi province was selected by the national government to execute the pilot program in 2022 which an
The United States Federal Reserve Board issued a letter Tuesday to its supervisory officers, staff and the banks they supervise regarding activities with crypto assets. The letter covers the preliminary steps a bank must go through before engaging in activities with crypto and instructs banks to notify the board before proceeding with those activities. The
The European Central Bank, or ECB, laid the foundation for the criteria it would be considering when harmonizing the licensing requirements for crypto in Europe. In a Wednesday statement, the ECB’s banking supervision division said it would be taking steps to regulate digital assets given “national frameworks governing crypto-assets diverge quite extensively” and seemingly differing
Pat Toomey, ranking member of the United States Senate Banking Committee, has sent a letter to Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) director and acting chairman Martin Gruenberg informing him of allegations made by a whistleblower concerning FDIC activities. The senator suspects the FDIC “may be improperly taking action to deter banks from doing business with
The United States’ move to sanction the open-source code that makes up the Tornado Cash privacy protocol may be shocking, but it’s not surprising. America has been tightening its grip over the global financial system for decades, ostensibly to cut down on bad behavior, but also to project power abroad. Economic sanctions, like the ones