Headlines
SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has received multiple death threats
Bloomberg reporters recently revealed through the Freedom of Information Act that Gary Gensler, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), has received multiple threatening emails and voice messages from the United States and internationally since 2022. These threats contain violent rhetoric, one of which claims to shoot and chop him up, and another threatening email with the subject Go to hell came from Australia.
However, these threats are not explicitly linked to Gensler’s cryptocurrency regulatory policies.
SBF formally appealed and requested a new judge to re-examine the case
SBF has formally appealed its fraud conviction. In a 102-page appeal filed Friday afternoon, SBFs lawyers asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to overturn the conviction and assign a new judge to conduct a retrial because the judge who heard his case was unfairly biased against SBF.
Last November, a New York jury convicted SBF of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy related to the collapse of its cryptocurrency trading platform in November 2022. In March of this year, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan of the Southern District of New York (SDNY) sentenced SBF to 25 years in prison for the crimes, and he has currently served six months of his sentence.
Montenegros Supreme Court is expected to issue a verdict on Do Kwon this month
The Supreme Court of Montenegro is expected to rule on whether the Do Kwon extradition verdict was illegal by the end of this month, according to the acting president of the Supreme Court of Montenegro. Vesna Vučković said that the Supreme Court will decide on the legality protection request filed by the Supreme State Prosecutor. The prosecutor believes that the final verdicts of the High Court and the Court of Appeal on the extradition of cryptocurrency founder Do Kwon contain multiple illegalities.
Industry News
Franklin Templeton: U.S. presidential election could complicate prospects for big rate cuts
“If there is still inflation in the housing sector, a 50 basis point rate cut could actually accelerate or amplify that,” said Wylie Tollette, chief investment officer at Franklin Templeton Investment Solutions, who expects the Fed to cut rates by 25 basis points next week, adding that the election could also complicate the prospect of a big rate cut. Trump previously said a Fed rate cut would help Harris, the current vice president, “even though they know they shouldn’t do that.”
“The path of the Fed is that they want to do what’s right for the economy, and I don’t think they want to be seen as favoring the incumbent candidate by cutting rates more aggressively,” said Wylie Tollette.
Elon Musks social media platform X may be exempt from EU Digital Markets Act
Elon Musks social media platform X is set to be spared a landmark EU law aimed at reining in tech giants after regulators determined it does not have enough of an impact on the blocs markets. The European Commission is nearing the end of its investigation into the platform and is preparing to conclude it does not fall under the EUs Digital Markets Directive (DMA), according to people familiar with the matter. X will sidestep many of the DMAs rules because its service is not yet robust enough for commercial users and does not meet certain revenue thresholds. The Commission is likely to publish its findings in October, they added. The DMA lays out a series of requirements for companies including Google Search, Apples Safari, Amazon and Meta. The move is aimed at preventing tech giants from breaking competition law, with fines of up to 10% of a companys global revenue and up to 20% for repeated violations.
Goldman Sachs: Still expects the Fed to cut interest rates by 25 basis points next week
Goldman Sachs said it still expects the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates by 25 basis points next week and at each of its remaining meetings this year (November and December).
Ripple Chief Legal Officer: SEC has been self-contradictory in characterizing crypto assets
In response to Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal’s post on the X platform revealing that the SEC had previously made misleading statements about the characterization of tokens, Binance stated in footnote 6 of the revised complaint that “the SEC regrets any confusion it may have caused,” referring to the SEC’s previous mistaken statement that the tokens themselves were securities.
Ripples Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty responded that the SECs move actually admitted two points: first, crypto-asset securities is a fictitious term; second, to prove that crypto assets are investment contracts, the SEC needs a series of contracts, expectations and understandings of evidence. At the same time, he said that the SEC has actually fallen into a dilemma of self-contradiction.
Project News
Ethereum Foundation researcher Danny Ryan announces his resignation
Ethereum Foundation researcher Danny Ryan has announced his resignation, ending his seven years of contributions to the Ethereum ecosystem.
Ryan stated on GitHub that he was leaving for personal reasons and wanted to make room for new opportunities, and emphasized that this decision did not reflect problems in Ethereum or the crypto industry.
Ryan has played an important role in key upgrades of Ethereum. He served as the lead coordinator of Ethereums The Merge upgrade and oversaw the launch of the beacon chain in 2021. Ryan has also actively participated in the progress updates of Ethereum Improvement Proposals.
Yesterday, Alex Gluchowski, CEO of ZKsync developer Matter Labs, announced the launch of the ZKsync governance system. Alex said that the governance system is not multi-signature, “All planned upgrades are initiated directly on the chain by the community of more than 370,000 ZK token holders, rather than by a foundation or a small group of trusted actors.”
Solana co-founder Toly raised questions under the article, saying that although ZKsync claims not to be a multi-signature system, it is actually still based on the honest majority assumption, which means that it is essentially similar to a multi-signature system.
Toly further stated that, unlike Solana, ZKsync’s governance system has potential centralization risks. In Solana, even if there are enough validators to reach consensus, a single full node of Circle (the issuer of USDC) is able to reject invalid state transitions, thereby protecting the system from malicious behavior. ZKsync’s “Professional Security Committee” may face legal risks because if enough committee members are ordered by a U.S. bankruptcy judge, they may be forced to place all cross-chain assets under the control of a bankruptcy trust.
Avenir Capital, the family office of Huobi founder Li Lin, established a crypto quantitative fund Avenir Crypto, with an initial fund size of US$500 million (including US$200 million in stablecoins, 3,000 BTC and 50,000 ETH).
Digital asset management company ParaFi Capital will tokenize $1.2 billion fund on Avalanche chain
Digital asset management company ParaFi Capital announced that it will tokenize part of its $1.2 billion portfolio on the Avalanche blockchain through the Securitize platform and trade it through the securitization platform. This is the companys first attempt at fund tokenization, offering a portion of the equity of its latest venture capital fund.
It is reported that ParaFi has invested in Securitize and Avalanche. In August this year, the company completed a $120 million financing, with investors including Theta Capital Management and Accolade Partners.
HMSTR Token Economics: Total supply 100 billion, 75% for player rewards, 3% for Binance Launchpool
Binance announced the token economics of TON ecosystem game Hamster Kombat: As of September 12, 2024, the total supply of HMSTR will be 100,000,000,000, and the circulating supply at the time of launch will be 64,375,000,000 (~ 64.38% of the total token supply).
Of the total supply, 60% of the tokens will be used for player rewards in the first season, 15% of the tokens will be used for player rewards in the second season, 3% of the tokens will be allocated to Binance Launchpool, 4% of the tokens will be used for liquidity, 8% of the tokens will be allocated to the team, 4% of the tokens will be used for marketing, and 6% of the tokens will be used for cooperation and funding.
Yesterday, it was reported that Binance Launchpool and Super Earn Coin launched the HMSTR project.
LayerZero announced on X that Beyond now supports connecting Bitcoin L1 to over 80 chains through LayerZero. From now on, users can transfer assets from Bitcoin L1 to chains such as Solana, Base, and Arbitrum through LayerZeros OFT standard.
Security Risks
SlowMist CISO: Anime task reward website is suspected to have SSRF vulnerability
SlowMist Chief Information Security Officer 23 pds said on the X platform that the component version of the Anime task reward website was too low and seemed to have an SSRF vulnerability, and asked the official to upgrade it.
Binance: Crypto Users Should Be Aware of “Clipper” Malware
Binance published a blog post on crypto security, pointing out that a global malware problem has been discovered, which has seriously affected cryptocurrency transactions by changing the withdrawal address during the transaction. This malware is often called Clipper malware and intercepts data stored in the clipboard, mainly targeting cryptocurrency wallet addresses.
The Binance security team is actively addressing this issue through a number of measures:
- Blacklisting of suspicious addresses: The attacker addresses have been blacklisted to prevent further fraudulent transactions. This move has successfully blocked multiple withdrawal attempts by potential victims.
- User Notification: Affected users have been informed about the malware and are advised to check their devices for any suspicious software or plugins.
- Incident Reporting: Affected users are asked to share details about their incident to help us identify and analyze the malware and plugins involved.
- Continuous Monitoring: The Binance team continuously monitors new threats and updates security protocols accordingly.
