DZ Bank, Germany’s second-largest bank in terms of asset size, will fully integrate digital currencies into its asset management services in collaboration with the digital asset firm Metaco. According to the announcement sent to Cointelegraph, DZ Bank selected Metaco's custody platform Harmonize to offer digital currencies to its institutional clients. Nils Christopeit, an executive at DZ Bank, said that the Metaco Harmonize platform suits their requirements in terms of security and scalability. “With the offering, we can build by using this technology, we trust to create a durable and fast-growing business cooperation as well as an attractive solution for our …

Kim Kardashian, Floyd Mayweather and other celebrities are looking to convince a judge to dismiss another revised attempt to hold them liable for allegedly promoting EthereumMax (EMAX) without proper disclosure. The celebrities asked a California federal judge to dismiss a second amended complaint from EthereumMax investors filed in December. According to the defendants, the renewed allegations pushes the “same basic theory” forward that the court had already previously dismissed. Looks like Floyd is rockin with the $eMax waveeee #EMAX #Ethereummax #Ethereum pic.twitter.com/TB9wNLwCcb — Breezy Gambinø (@BreezyGambino1) June 4, 2021 The investors' class action lawsuit runs on the premise that the …

Blockchain Association’s chief legal officer says “it would be absurd” for a United States court to rule that digital assets on private blockchains are securities, following a federal judge's decision to allow a lawsuit against Dapper Labs's NBA Top Shots NFTs to play out. U.S. attorney Jake Chervinsky made the comment after federal judge Victor Marreo denied a motion to dismiss a 2021 lawsuit that accused Dapper Labs of selling nonfungible tokens (NFTs) as unregistered securities. Chervinsky was among a host of lawyers on Twitter to reiterate that the judge’s denial of the motion does not mean a ruling has …

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has again been accused of overstepping its authority and unfairly labeling crypto assets as securities, this time in its insider trading case against ex-Coinbase employees. In an amicus brief filing on Feb. 22, the U.S.-based Chamber of Digital Commerce argued the case should be dismissed as it represented an expansion of the SEC’s “regulation by enforcement” campaign and seeks to characterize secondary market transactions as securities transactions. We have serious concerns about the SEC’s attempt to label these tokens as securities in the context of an enforcement action against third parties who …

The community of decentralized finance stablecoin protocol Frax Finance has voted to fully collateralize its native stablecoin Frax (FRAX), marking an end to the algorithmic backing of the protocol. The FIP-188 governance proposal initially posted on Feb. 15 reached a quorum following a 98% vote in favor, according to a snapshot on Feb. 23 — which would change the collateralization model of FRAX. “The time has come for Frax to gradually remove the algorithmic backing of the protocol,” last week’s proposal read. Near unanimous vote to move $frax to 100% CR over time. Seems like @fraxfinance serious about making it …

Cryptocurrency exchange CoinEx has been sued by the New York Attorney General, Letitia James, alleging the firm falsely represented itself as an exchange due to failing to register as a securities and commodities broker-dealer in the state. A 38-page petition filed by James in the New York Supreme Court on Feb. 22 alleged CoinEx “engaged in repeated and persistent fraudulent practices” and violated the state’s Martin Act — considered one of the most strict anti-fraud and securities regulation laws in the United States. She also asserted CoinEx listed various tokens that qualified as “both commodities and securities” naming Amp (AMP), …

The founders behind the alleged $340 million “global Ponzi” scheme Forsage have been indicted by a federal grand jury in the District of Oregon. The four Russian founders — Vladimir Okhotnikov, Olena Oblamska, Mikhail Sergeev, and Sergey Maslakov — have been formally accused of having key roles in the scheme which raised approximately $340 million from victim-investors, according to a Feb. 22 Department of Justice (DOJ) statement. “Today’s indictment is the result of a rigorous investigation that spent months piecing together the systematic theft of hundreds of millions of dollars,” said U.S. Attorney Natalie Wight for the District of Oregon, …

The Ethereum ecosystem has seen only 226 validators slashed since the launch of the Beacon Chain on Dec. 1, 2022 — amounting to just 0.04% of 524,060 validators, according to an Ethereum core developer. Slashing is a process where a validator breaches the proof-of-stake consensus rules, which often results in the removal of that validator from the network and slashing a portion of the staked Ether (ETH) that the validator provided as collateral. Such slim odds of being slashed were highlighted by Ethereum core developer “Superphiz” in a Feb. 23 Twitter post, which suggests that people shouldn’t be concerned about …

Cryptocurrency exchange Gate.io is gearing up to launch a presence in Hong Kong following the local government's planned $6.4 million (50 million Hong Kong dollar) cash injection into Web3 as per the city’s 2023-24 budget. Gate Group said on Feb. 22 that it will apply for a crypto license in Hong Kong allowing it to launch “Gate HK.” The firm's local company, Hippo Financial Services, gained a license in August 2022 to provide virtual asset custodial services. It comes as Hong Kong financial secretary, Paul Chan, announced the Web3-related funding and the creation of a crypto task force in a …

Google's cloud computing arm has added another string to its Web3 bow, with a new partnership to see it becoming a network validator, or "corporate baker" to the Tezos blockchain. On Feb. 22, Tezos Foundation, a Swiss non-profit foundation supporting the Tezos blockchain announced it has teamed up with Google Cloud which will allow customers of the cloud computing business to deploy Tezos nodes and build Web3 applications on the blockchain. Tezos is a blockchain-based smart contract platform used to power decentralized applications, similar to Ethereum, Cardano and among others. Corporates that have used Tezos include gaming giant Ubisoft and …

Layer-2 scaling solution Polygon (MATIC) has not processed a block in over an hour and a half, leading some to believe that the blockchain network could be suffering from an outage. According to data from Polygonscan, the blockchain's last block and transaction was processed at around 8:35 pm UTC on Feb. 22. The network has previously suffered network outages, with the last occurring on Mar. 21-22, 2022 due to maintenance required on one of the network's three layers. The Polygon team is yet to comment on the outage. This is a developing story, and further information will be added as …

On Feb. 13, a federal judge put the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission cases against former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried on hold. You’ll be forgiven if you missed this story — headlines and social media were dominated by the breaking news that the SEC was suing crypto firm Paxos for minting Binance’s stablecoin, Binance USD (BUSD). But we’re not here to debate whether stablecoins are securities. The Howey test has been discussed to death, and while it’s true that few people expect to profit from a token pegged to a fiat currency, the issue is …