Daily Crypto News | August 25th, 2022

Welcome to Barmy’s Daily Crypto News – August 25th, 2022

1. Stablecoin Issuer Tether Won’t Freeze Tornado Cash Addresses

The stablecoin issuer Tether Holdings Limited said on Wednesday that the business will not “freeze Tornado Cash addresses” while the cryptocurrency community is still discussing the U.S. government’s prohibition on the ethereum mixing platform Tornado Cash. According to a recent blog post by Tether on the matter, the business is awaiting guidance from law enforcement.

Tether Holdings Limited states that as of right moment, it is not freezing USDT assets stored within the Tornado Cash mixer, 16 days following OFAC’s suspension. According to Tether, the business constantly collaborates with law enforcement agencies and has daily touch with “key law enforcement officers.”

OFAC has not yet stated that a stablecoin issuer should anticipate to freeze secondary market addresses that are listed on its SDN List or that are run by individuals or organizations that have been sanctioned by the agency. Despite our frequent communication with U.S. law enforcement, whose demands always include thorough facts, no U.S. law enforcement agency or regulator has made such a request.

2. Before the Merge, Coinbase introduces wrapped staked ETH assets.

In a statement on Wednesday, Coinbase stated that it would offer Coinbase Wrapped Staked ETH (cbETH) as an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum network, enabling users to use their staked ETH while receiving incentives on the exchange. Users can withdraw their tokens to Coinbase, stake them, and then convert their ETH2 into cbETH, according to the company’s website, with the new wrapped staked token balance being displayed on their accounts. On August 25, “if liquidity conditions are met,” the tokens are anticipated to be available for trading.

The white paper states that because cbETH is “more widely compatible with dApps in DeFi today due to the fact that they are ERC-20 compliant,” it will essentially serve as a compound token, or cToken.

The network will be launched on the Beacon Chain with the Bellatrix upgrade beginning on September 6, according to a statement released on Wednesday by the Ethereum Foundation. The Merge to proof-of-stake is anticipated to happen before September 20. In order to manage the move, Coinbase stated on August 16 that it would “temporarily suspend” deposits and withdrawals of ETH and ERC-20 tokens.

3. After 86M votes in favor, the Uniswap Foundation is established.

Two former Uniswap Lab executives’ $74 million idea for a new Uniswap Foundation has recently become a reality after receiving more than 99% of the votes from UNI token holders.

The foundation received more than 86 million votes, or 99% of the total, in support of the idea, with only 770 votes against it, according to the Uniswap website. The votes come despite the first idea receiving a mixed reception from the public when it was initially made public on August 5.

Voters have to possess the UNI token in order to cast their ballots on the Uniswap app. A minimum of 40 million votes have to be cast in support of the UF in order for the vote to pass.

The UF intends to give $60 million of the $74 million to the Uniswap Grant Program (UGP) and use the remaining $14 million to pay for operating expenses.

4. NFTs valued more than $100M have been stolen since 2021.

A research from cryptocurrency risk management company Elliptic claims that nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, were stolen by criminals starting in 2021 for more than $100 million.

According to the research, since 2017, people have used NFT platforms to launder more than $8 million in illicit cash, while more than $328 million has been transferred using cryptocurrency mixers like Tornado Cash, which was sanctioned by the US Office of Foreign Asset Control in August. According to reports, the contentious mixer handled $137.6 million in cryptocurrency via NFT platforms and served as “the laundering tool of choice” for the majority of schemes.

Given that many scams go unreported or are discovered after the fact, it is unknown how closely the aforementioned estimates represented the actual worth of the cryptocurrency and NFTs utilized in them.

Scammers still utilize a variety of techniques, including phishing assaults, market exploits, and others, to steal NFTs from cryptocurrency users.

5. The merge: Developers find bugs

Although the upcoming ETH Merge is one of the most eagerly awaited events in the cryptocurrency ecosystem right now, there have been some issues with it. However, Ethereum programmers are quick to fix any problems that occur.

The developer noted in a later update that the issue is likely to have an impact on users of the version, corrupting their databases and causing data loss. He further explained that the data loss problem arises during shutdown, which is why their tests were unsuccessful in finding the defect.

Despite the problems, after a day the developers were able to offer a remedy. To fix the bug, Go Ethereum released a hotfix. The team recommended people who upgraded to go back and try again to ensure that everything was operating as it should. As they tweeted:

In addition to having an impact on the economy, the impending ETH Merge forces miners to make a decision. Some claim that a proof-of-work (PoW) Ethereum hard fork could be the answer for miners. However, a few mining pools have indicated that they are switching to staking.

Stay with us for more daily crypto news. Comment your thoughts of these news on our social channels below:

BarmyXpress | Twitter | Telegram Channel | Group Chat | Youtube | Tiktok