Blockchain Bites: China’s Tether Crackdown, CME’s Bustling Bitcoin Markets, Kin’s “ Active Development ”

Chinese officials are cracking down on cable exchanges. The CME bitcoin futures exchange is heating up, signaling institutional interest. And Kik’s token kin will continue development after a $ 5 million SEC deal.

Ripple, across the pond
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse provided more information on the company’s possible move away from the US, saying the legal status of the XRP cryptocurrency is paramount. Speaking to CNBC on Friday, Garlinghouse said his blockchain payment infrastructure company could potentially move to London, where the nation’s regulator has “made it clear” that XRP is not a stock and is being used as a currency. Ripple is currently engaged in a legal dispute in the United States with investors claiming that XRP is an illegally issued security. The Securities and Exchange Commission was not clear on the matter. Switzerland, Singapore, Japan and the United Arab Emirates are also on the table for potential locations.

Tether repression
Chinese authorities, including the nation’s central bank, have arrested 77 suspects and shut down three gambling sites that are said to have “whitened” illicit funds using stablecoin tether (USDT). Announced on WeChat, the PBoC’s Huizhou office said the suspects laundered 120 million yuan ($ 17.95 million) obtained through illegal online gambling activities, partly via USDT. In July, several over-the-counter (OTC) cryptocurrency traders were arrested for assisting state investigations involving illegal business activities. It is “illegal to open casinos and participate in online gambling,” the PBoC said. “Don’t be curious and lucky. Any “disguise” cannot escape high pressure supervision. “

Institutional interest
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) has become the second largest bitcoin futures platform by number of open contracts, signaling institutional interest. As of Thursday, bitcoin futures contracts worth $ 790 million were open on the CME, according to data source Skew, exceeding 15% of total global open interest. “The rise in CME is primarily driven by institutional participation, as most participants in that segment are prohibited from trading unregulated derivatives listed on retail platforms such as BitMEX and Binance,” said Matthew Dibb, co- founder of Stack Funds. This happens when rival options exchange BitMEX is targeting DeFi-focused future quotes, including yearn.finance (YFI).

Stunning purchase
Grayscale Investments added $ 300 million worth of cryptocurrencies to its balance sheet in a single day, CEO Barry Silbert tweeted late Thursday evening. The additional sum brings the total held under management to 7.3 billion dollars. “The move comes at a time when the hype surrounding PayPal’s foray into cryptocurrency markets has attracted further attention from large investors including Paul Tudor Jones II,” reports CoinDesk’s Sebastian Sinclair, and follows the best. The digital asset manager’s quarterly results to date announced last week. (Grayscale is the sister company of CoinDesk, both owned by Digital Currency Group, of which Silbert is one of the founders.)

To relax?
Kik’s $ 5 million Securities and Exchange Commission deal won’t kill relatives, the nonprofit behind the token announced. The “cloud of uncertainty has dissipated,” the Kin Foundation said in a blog post. With Kik’s remaining treasury and Kin reserves, the project leaders intend to continue the “active development” of the open source Kin SDK, the new code portfolio and a move to the Solana blockchain. The foundation also said the SEC does not consider Kin to be a guarantee and the judge did not find the token in violation of securities laws. Therefore, Kin “should be free to trade on the stock exchange”.

Most influential 2020: cast your vote
2020 was not a good year for most parameters. There’s no getting around it in a year-end retrospective.

Each year, CoinDesk recognizes the “most influential” people working to expand the cryptocurrency and reach of the blockchain. It’s a list of the 10 oversized people who have gone farthest and done the most.

In this unusual year, we need your help in determining who should be named most influential. Check out the list of top contenders e cast your vote by October 31st.

What is immaterial?
In the buzz around PayPal’s announcement to extend crypto and transaction services to a third of a billion users, the fintech giant’s negative role in bringing bitcoin to national attention may have been sidestepped.

Last night, Bitcoin AND Jameson Race, tweeted, “9 years ago PayPal paved the way to prove Bitcoin’s value to the world when they closed the WikiLeaks account.”

In what was then called “the most potentially significant attack on WikiLeaks,” PayPal, then a major means of transferring money online, froze the German foundation’s account. This action was a wake-up call to some about the dangers of web censorship.

Satoshi Nakamoto, while creating Bitcoin, had thought about financial freedom and the power that banks and payment processors have to revoke it, based on their contingent, ever-changing and unevenly applied “terms of service”.

Of course, some of Nakamoto’s last words to early Bitcoin supporters were to resist using bitcoin to fund Wikileaks. He thought the network was too young and fragile to support the government and public control that would come from supporting an organization blocked by banks.

It is with a certain irony that PayPal has re-entered the picture. As reported, the company’s crypto services will be fully guarded, fully KYC, and will fall within its terms of use.

So why enter? CoinDesk’s Danny Nelson reported yesterday that Morgan Stanley analysts believe the cryptocurrency community is likely to benefit most from PayPal’s services.

The move “should expand acceptance of online cryptocurrencies, which to date has stuck at 1% of the top 500 Internet retailers,” Morgan Stanley analysts wrote. While the services “probably [be] irrelevant to earnings. “

With rumors that PayPal is also exploring purchases from cryptocurrency companies including bitcoin keeper BitGo, the question of what’s good for crypto becomes more pressing.