General manager of the Bank for International Settlements Agustín Carstens spoke at the Singapore FinTech Festival on Feb. 22 and described the digital financial infrastructure he believes would best suit central bankers’ needs. He called that infrastructure a “unified ledger.” Carstens compared the theoretical unified ledger with a smartphone, saying they both work seamlessly with a variety of components. Unlike a smartphone, a unified ledger would have open architecture, however, and would show programmability and composability, that it, it would run and bundle smart contracts. There are over 2 million apps available to smartphone users, Carstens noted. He said: “A …

The Web3 Domain Alliance, a member-led coalition that aims to provide a standardized framework for Web3 naming services, has announced 51 new members, including Blockchain.com, Rarible, Wyre, Bitdegree, WazirX, and Klever. These firms will help promote the development of the Web3 naming industry and the functioning of Web3 domain registries, according to the company We’re excited to announce that 52 new members are joining the Web3 Domain Alliance including @blockchain, @rarible, @sendwyre, @bitdegree_org, @WazirXIndia, and @klever_io, along with dozens of other naming systems, projects and companies! #W3DA Why this is great news [1/4] pic.twitter.com/rzSlYKYpEh — unstoppable.nft (@unstoppableweb) February 22, 2023 …

California Representative Maxine Waters, ranking member of the United States House Financial Services Committee, has called for coordination and cooperation between government agencies and lawmakers to address crypto regulation. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Representative Waters suggested that recent enforcement actions on the crypto space from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) may have been to present the image of “doing something substantive and meaningful” following the collapse of major exchanges including FTX. According to Waters, the market crash and related bankruptcies of major firms gave U.S. lawmakers an opportunity of “getting accountability” in the …

Blockchain technology is often a valuable tool in solving various business challenges due to its ability to create secure, trusted, and transparent data sources and has gained traction across industries as businesses seek efficiency and cost reductions. Daniela Barbosa, the Executive Director at the open-source blockchain development firm the Hyperledger Foundation, spoke to Cointelegraph about how blockchain for enterprise is transforming global markets and industries. Barbosa noted blockchain technology has already demonstrated its value in various enterprise use cases, such as provenance tracking, logistics, and cross-border payments. By providing efficiency and cost-saving solutions while saving time and labor, enterprise blockchain …

The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) published a notice on Feb. 22 describing new commitments it expects from crypto asset trading platforms (CTPs) seeking registration in Canada. The CTPs will enter into a new version of preregistration undertakings (PRUs), which are legally binding documents. Registered CTPs will be contacted by their principal regulators about compliance with the new expectations. The new commitments represent investor protections in light of the spate of CTP insolvencies that occurred in 2022, the CSA wrote. The new commitments touch on issues that include segregation of assets, leverage, determination of capital, transparency and others. The notice devoted …

In this week’s newsletter, read about how eBay’s nonfungible token (NFT) platform launched a new creator smart contract. Learn how OpenSea plans to win back its users from its competitor, Blur, and check out why Yuga Labs was accused of intellectual property (IP) theft over the wolf skull logo. In other news, find out how NFTs will act as “high-end properties” during the market booms, and don’t forget this week’s Nifty News, featuring an NFT artist receiving $150,000 for a meme on Ordinals. eBay NFT platform KnownOrigin launches creator smart contract EBay’s NFT marketplace KnownOrigin announced the launch of creator …

NBA Top Shot Moments nonfungible tokens (NFTs) may be considered a security, as it meets the requirements under the United States security laws, according to court filings on Feb 22. The decision comes as federal judge Victor Marreo denied a motion from Dapper Labs CEO Roham Gharegozlou to dismiss a class action lawsuit claiming its NBA Top Shot NFTs are securities. Upon denying the motion, the court authorized the case to proceed. Dapper Labs now has 21 days to respond to the court's decision. For the verdict, the judge reviewed the Howey Test, which determines whether the NFTs qualified as …

According to a press release on Feb. 22, Tencent Cloud, the cloud computing branch of Chinese internet giant Tencent, announced that it had concluded multiple agreements with blockchain firms to support the active development of the Web 3.0 ecosystem. Firstly, Tencent Cloud signed a memorandum of cooperation with decentralized blockchain infrastructure provider Ankr to jointly develop a series of blockchain API services for remote procedure call nodes. The new service will be deployed on Tencent Cloud's infrastructure and will provide connections to mainstream blockchains building on Web 3.0 games and applications. Secondly, Tencent Cloud said that it reached strategic cooperation …

The United States equities markets saw their worst performance of 2023 as concerned investors dumped stocks on Feb. 21, fearing continued rate hikes by the U.S. Federal Reserve. Although the cryptocurrency markets also gave back some of the gains, the fall was comparatively muted. UTXO Management senior analyst Dylan LeClair said that Bitcoin’s (BTC) correlation to the S&P 500 index has fallen to the lowest since late 2021. After the sharp recovery from the lows, Glassnode data showed that only 21% of the coins sent by Long-Term Holders to exchanges at the start of this week moved at a loss. …

Crypto exchange Coinbase experienced a cybersecurity attack targeting its employees on Feb. 5. The attack came through SMS scams and involved impersonations of IT staff, according to a recent report from the company's engineering team. No customers' funds or information were impacted, the firm said. As per the report, on a late Sunday several Coinbase employees received SMS messages requiring them to urgently log in via the link provided to access an important message. Acting in a good faith, one employee followed the exploiter' instructions: "While the majority ignore this unprompted message - one employee, believing that it’s an important …

The United States Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, said it had started an investigation of crypto lending firm Voyager Digital parallel to the company’s bankruptcy proceedings. In a Feb. 22 filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, the FTC said it was investigating Voyager and its employees “for their deceptive and unfair marketing of cryptocurrency to the public”. The announcement followed Bankruptcy Judge Michael Wiles initially approving of a plan in which Voyager debtors would sell the firm’s assets to Binance.US for more than $1 billion. According to the FTC filing — an objection to …

Bitcoin’s Lightning Network (LN) capacity recently surpassed an all-time high of 5,000 BTC. The Lightning Network is a neutral protocol built on top of Bitcoin and currently it does not have a “native” token attached to it like many decentralized finance platforms. Although the Lightning Network’s total liquidity is less than 0.5% of the ETH in DeFi contracts, the uptrend in Bitcoin’s LN capacity versus a downtrend in the amount of ETH locked in smart contracts is encouraging for LN development. While the liquidity on the LN has been rising consistently, the number of channels on the peer-to-peer network dropped …