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EU Investment Firms Should Clearly State Crypto Is Unregulated, Watchdog Says

Companies that market crypto alongside traditional securities might mislead consumers about access to fair advice and compensation, the European Securities and Markets Authority worries.

Investment firms in the European Union that offer crypto alongside more traditional products could be misleading their consumers into a false sense of security, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) said in a Thursday statement.

The EU agency said it’s worried that firms may use a seal of regulatory approval they have to offer traditional finance (TradFi) stocks or funds to make customers believe they’ll have access to sound financial advice or compensation schemes in the event of crypto mishaps.

EU rules known as the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) ensure investment intermediaries promote only appropriate financial products to clients – but don’t always apply to more exotic investment opportunities like gold, real estate or non-transferable loans.

The EU’s Markets in Crypto Assets regulation (MiCA) is set to bring MiFID-style rules to the sector, but the regime will only take effect in around 18 months. In the meantime, ESMA, a Paris-based agency that groups and coordinates national regulators, is worried some companies are encouraging and exploiting the ambiguity.

“ESMA recommends that investment firms take all necessary measures to ensure that clients are fully aware of the regulatory status of the product/service they are receiving and clearly disclose to clients when regulatory protections do not apply,” ESMA said, adding that regulatory approval shouldn’t be used as a promotional tool.

ESMA has previously warned people crypto can be risky, while an October paper highlighted novel threats such as hacks and consensus manipulation. The agency is also set to consult shortly on detailed secondary laws that will put MiCA into effect.

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Crypto Exchange Coinone’s Former Exec Acknowledges Bribery Charges in South Korea: Report

A lawyer for the accused reportedly said he admits “the facts of the prosecution,” during a May 25 trial hearing.

A former executive of South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Coinone, who was accused of taking bribes in return for listing certain coins, has acknowledged the charges, local news agency Yonhap reported on Thursday.

“Mr Jeon,” Coinone’s former director of listing, was accused of receiving nearly 2 billion won ($1.51 million) in return for listing virtual assets such as “Furiever Coin,” which was listed exclusively on the exchange, and has since been linked to a kidnapping and murder investigation in the Gangnam district in Seoul. Jeon’s broker, known as “Mr Ko,” is accused of facilitating the listings.

At a trial hearing on May 25, a lawyer for the two reportedly said: “I admit the facts of the prosecution.”

“Basically, we are acknowledging the facts of the prosecution, but since we have not been able to view all the evidence, we will present a final opinion after review,” the lawyer added.

Coinone’s listing team leader and another broker have also been accused, but their lawyers said they have yet to finish reviewing evidence and will respond to the charges at the next trial hearing on June 15.

Coinone didn’t immediately respond to a CoinDesk request for comment.

Coinmint Sues California Chipmaker for $23M, Alleging ‘Elaborate Deception’

The mining firm, which has been embroiled in several legal battles, describes an elaborate fraud scheme for a $150 million contract.

New York crypto miner Coinmint alleged two semiconductor companies set up an “elaborate deception” to lure the miner into a $150 million purchase agreement, in a lawsuit seeking over $23 million in damages.

Coinmint alleged that bitcoin technology firm Katena Computing and semiconductor designer company DX Corr set up a scheme to convince it to buy up to $150 million of bitcoin mining machines that Katena couldn’t and didn’t plan to deliver on, according to a lawsuit filed with a court in California’s Santa Clara County Superior Court on Jan. 26.

Under the scheme, Katena “improperly influenced, bribed or incentivized co-conspirators,” including one unnamed person within the mining firm, for a $150 million purchase of bitcoin mining machines, Coinmint alleged.

The lawsuit alleges fraud, breach of contract and fiduciary duty, as well as aiding and abetting against DX Corr and its executives as well as former Coinmint employees. Coinmint is asking for “actual, compensatory and consequential damages, including but not limited to the $23 million,” that it deposited for the sale, as well as punitive and exemplary damages.

“Katena is in binding arbitration concerning Coinmint’s breach of contract and is seeking damages caused by Coinmint’s failure to pay. Katena is eager to talk openly and factually about this dispute but will honor the arbitration process and its confidentiality requirements. When we can talk more openly, we will,” said a spokesperson for Katena.

DX Corr filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit earlier this month, saying Coinmint didn’t sufficiently bring any claims to support its allegations against the semiconductor firm.

Coinmint is no stranger to litigation. Its two cofounders fought over the firm’s ownership. Coinmint filed a complaint with the New York Public Service Commission against the utility of Plattsburgh, where it operates, to avoid paying a deposit related to its electricity use. It was also involved in a tax fraud case in Puerto Rico, where it is headquartered, that was settled under a confidentiality agreement, said a source close to the matter.

Coinmint denied the existence of the alleged tax fraud case and declined to comment on this story.

Court records show the municipality of San Juan sued Coinmint in March 2022, and a judge known for their tax expertise was assigned to the case. The court did not respond to CoinDesk’s request for the complaint at the time of publication.

DX Corr did not respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment.

Back in 2021, an unnamed Coinmint employee initiated conversations over the purchase of equipment. “Katena engaged in an elaborate deception” to get Coinmint’s founder and CEO Ashton Soniat on board with [claims] that it ‘truly possessed a revolutionary chip design that would disrupt the Bitcoin mining world,’” the lawsuit said.

The unnamed individual was the Coinmint chief financial officer at the time. According to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and a LinkedIn, a person named Michael Maloney was Coinmint’s CFO at the time. Maloney declined CoinDesk’s request for comment through LinkedIn.

Katena was dangling an offer for the position of CFO and equity as part of the plot to Maloney, said the lawsuit.

The then-CFO asked Katena to recommend a semiconductor expert to perform due diligence on the machines. But Katena suggested Robert Bleck as an independent observer, even though he was in fact in collusion with DX Corr executive and Katena minority shareholder Sagar Reddy, Coinmint alleged. Bleck was Reddy’s “b***h,” the lawsuit read.

Bleck misrepresented Katena’s semiconductor design and production capabilities to the Coinmint CFO, who then tried to convince CEO Soniat.

Soniat signed a sales contract in May 2021 which “obliged Coinmint to pay Katena $150 million for miners without security or customary protection” according to Katena.

Katena also used the contract to try to get funding from investors, including investment bank JP Morgan, said the lawsuit.

When the CFO left Coinmint, two other individuals took the role of convincing Soniat to continue sending deposit payments. The two were also planning a hostile takeover of Coinmint and eventually parted ways with the miner.

Coinmint ultimately sent deposit payments of $23.4 million to Katena with no contractual protections and allegedly received nothing.

First Mover Americas: Digital Currency Group is Closing Down TradeBlock

The latest price moves in crypto markets in context for May 26, 2023.

This article originally appeared in First Mover, CoinDesk’s daily newsletter putting the latest moves in crypto markets in context. Subscribe to get it in your inbox every day.

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Digital Currency Group (DCG), the parent company of CoinDesk is closing down its trade execution and prime brokerage services unit, TradeBlock, citing crypto winter and regulatory uncertainties. The shutdown of the unit, which provides trading services to institutional investors, will be effective as of May 31, a DCG spokesperson told CoinDesk. TradeBlock was acquired in 2020 by CoinDesk, and was later spun out as its own standalone business. CoinDesk kept the index data operating from the deal, which was rebranded as CoinDesk Indices, and “has proven to be a successful acquisition,” the spokesperson said. The story was first reported by Bloomberg.

The number of ether (ETH) on exchanges has hit a low not seen since July 2016 as staking saps up available tokens. Data from Glassnode shows that as of Thursday, 14.85% of all ether was held in wallets owned by centralized exchanges. That’s the smallest proportion since ether was in its infancy during the summer of 2016. In contrast, during the bull market of 2021, the exchange balance was around 25%. Low exchange balances are typically thought to be a bullish sign as it means the supply of ether available for purchase is limited.

U.S. Bitcoin Corp. (USBTC) is set to become one of the largest miners in America following a deal to buy mining assets from bankrupt lender Celsius. The company is part of the Farenheit consortium that won a bankruptcy auction for the Celsius assets, which include a lending portfolio, cryptocurrencies and 121,800 mining machines. Once it brings all the mining rigs online, its fleet will total at least 270,000 mining rigs and computing power of 12.2.exahash/second (EH/s), the firm told CoinDesk, putting U.S. Bitcoin Corp. alongside other U.S. mining giants likes Riot Platforms (RIOT), Core Scientific (CORZ) and Marathon Digital Holdings (MARA).

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Stablecoins Are the ‘Glue’ Between the Real Economy and Blockchain: Binance Japan General Manager

Binance Japan may be still “a long way off” its business and activities being properly understood and in gaining regulatory acceptance, said the exchange’s Tsuyoshi Chino.

The general manager of Binance Japan described stablecoins as the “glue” between the real economy and the blockchain in an interview with CoinDesk Japan.

Tsuyoshi Chino, speaking ahead of Binance’s re-entry into Japan via its acquisition of regulated crypto exchange Sakura Exchange BitCoin, described how volatility of crypto prices may lead to profit opportunities but will not help stimulate broader demand for cryptoassets.

“We believe that stablecoins will serve as the glue between the real economy, the blockchain economy, and the Binance ecosystem,” Chino said. “When you do something stably, price fluctuations become noise.”

Stablecoins are pegged to the value of traditional assets, usually fiat currencies such as the U.S. dollar, and therefore are designed to be free of the price swings that often afflict cryptocurrencies like bitcoin (BTC).

Rival crypto exchanges Coinbase (COIN) and Kraken have both withdrawn from the Japanese market in the last six months, citing “market conditions” as the reason.

Chino said crypto winter may be hampering the traditional model of a crypto exchange business, given how lower valuations and trading volume will diminish revenue from fees. He said that Binance’s vision for “economic freedom” through crypto and blockchain technology supersedes the exchange business model and the present market conditions.

“The ecosystem has many facets,” he said. “For example, we will provide various services from a different angle to finance, and we will also provide various IP (intellectual property) contents in the form of Web3.”

Binance’s move back into Japan next month will come two years after the exchange received warning from the country’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) that it was operating there without permission.

Chino described how one of the keys to gain regulatory acceptance in Japan is ensuring understanding of how its products work in order to gain trust, something he admits may be a challenge.

“We are confident about our product and technology, but we are still a long way off in terms of whether the company Binance and its activities are properly understood,” he said.

Avalanche’s AVAX Token Remains Flat Ahead of its $130 Million Token Unlock

More than 9.3 million tokens will be unlocked Sunday, representing 1.2% of AXAX’s total supply.

Millions of AVAX tokens – the native crypto of the Avalanche blockchain – will be unlocked on Sunday and distributed to key players in that ecosystem, adding a major 1.2% increase in total supply.

The 9.3 million tokens entering circulation on May 27 were worth roughly $130 million at press time. They’re set to go to the Avalanche Foundation, strategic partners and Ava Labs, as well as an airdrop, said Patrick Sutton, Avalanche’s communications chief.

“Tokens from unlocks aren’t automatically put to use. It just means the Foundation can now use them, but it is at their discretion when and how to use them,” added Sutton.

AVAX is the gas to Avalanche’s smart contracts ecosystem and also used to secure the blockchain via staking. It has remained stable in the past 24 hours, standing at $14.20, CoinDesk data shows.

“Token unlocks freak people out in general, but the upcoming Avalanche unlock has been mapped out for a while now and most sophisticated actors have adjusted for it,” said Lindsey Winder, CEO of token infrastructure firm Hedgey Finance.

Data from crypto analytics firm Token Insights shows 358.55 million AVAX remains locked, though Sutton says the figure of remaining locked tokens is 96.06 million, about a quarter of Token Insights’ figure.

Gulf Binance Clinches Thai Regulatory Approval

The joint venture between Gulf Innova and Binance aims to begin offering crypto services in the country later this year.

Gulf Binance, a joint venture between crypto exchange Binance and Gulf Energy’s innovation arm Gulf Innova, has received a digital asset operator license in Thailand, according to a Friday press release.

The rubber-stamp from Thailand’s Ministry of Finance will allow the firm to advance plans to open a regulated crypto exchange and broker in the southeast Asian country. The platform will likely launch by year’s end, according to a press statement.

“By harnessing Binance’s expertise together with Gulf’s established local presence and network, Gulf Binance aims to showcase the full potential of blockchain technology to meet the needs of Thai users, Binance Head of Asia, Europe, and MENA Richard Teng said in a statement. Gulf Energy is one of Thailand’s largest private power producers.

Thailand has signaled it is warming up to positioning itself as an emerging Asian crypto hub. In January, the country’s regulators introduced a set of rules for crypto custody services, and later announced a $1 billion tax break for firms issuing digital tokens for investment. A 2022 ban on crypto lending and staking services and restrictions on digital asset-related advertising, however, indicates the nation is taking a careful approach to supervising the emerging market.

Stablecoin Issuer Lybra Finance Nears $100M in TVL

Lybra Finance was launched last month and uses liquid staking derivatives to offer a decentralized interesting-bearing stablecoin.

Lybra Finance, a protocol built on liquid staking derivatives that aims to provide a decentralized interest-bearing stablecoin, has seen its total value locked (TVL) skyrocket nearly 400% in the past two weeks, nearing $100 million as of Friday.

Launched one month ago, Lybra’s surge in TVL coincides with Lido upgrading to its second version on May 15, which enabled Lido users to unstake their stETH and receive ETH. According to Lybra documents, the protocol “leverages Lido Finance-issued ETH proof-of-stake and stETH as its primary components, with plans to support additional LSD assets in the future.”

LBR, the native token of the Lybra Protocol, which gives holders governance powers and access to the protocol’s revenue, has jumped 33.8% in the past 24 hours and 173% in the past seven days, standing at $2.23, CoinGecko data shows.

Decentralized exchanges hold 9.61% of the total LBR supply, a steady decline from 23% two weeks ago, according to blockchain data firm Nansen. Nansen also reports that smart money wallets hold 4.74% of the total LBR supply today, an increase from 0.82% on May 16, indicating that savvy crypto investors are accumulating the token.

Nansen considers a wallet to be “smart money” if it has profited at least $100,000 by providing liquidity or made multiple profitable trades on decentralized exchanges.

Binance, Other Crypto Players Shun Multichain as Bridging Rumors Swirl

With facts hard to come by, a coterie of crypto players are taking action.

Key players in the crypto ecosystem are shoring up their defenses amid growing concerns over the state of Multichain, a major venue for moving assets between different blockchains.

Four days after apparent technical issues started throttling some users’ ability to withdraw tokens from the protocol, wild rumors over Multichain’s safety and the fate of its team are filling the void created by the platform’s silence. A single tweet blaming some cross-chain breaks on “force majeure” has only added fuel to the widespread speculation that something is amiss.

The light-on-facts landscape is pushing a growing number of entities to mitigate risk now – regardless of Multichain’s true state. Their responses are highlighting how crypto bridges create the potential for a world of hurt that goes well beyond the flashiest and well-trodden risk to bridges (getting hacked by North Korea).

The situation is compounded by Multichain’s prominence among bridges. It is the third-largest bridging protocol by transfer volume and total value locked, according to data from Messari and DeFiLlama.

Like most bridges, Multichain uses a mint-and-lock mechanism to move assets between the 92 blockchains it interacts with. For example, if a holder of USDC stablecoin bridges the asset from Ethereum to Fantom via Multichain, the token gets locked up in a smart contract on Ethereum and then issued anew on Fantom – in this case, as a “wrapped” token called anyUSDC.

Multichain’s anyUSDC and other wrapped USDC tokens like it dominate 50% of Fantom’s stablecoin market, according to DeFiLlama. This is in spite of all USDC on Fantom being “bridged” assets instead of “native” that Circle issues directly onto the chain. Thus, all the USDC tokens on Fantom are reliant on bridges to retain their value.

This setup works as long as the bridge does. At the height of Multichain’s troubles this week, it didn’t, and wrapped USDC tokens on Fantom lost their dollar peg. Some arbitrage traders told CoinDesk they bought wrapped USDC tokens at a 30% discount during the fracas over Multichain, which is responsible for 80% of the stablecoins on Fantom.

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, seemingly pointed to the risks of non-native assets Friday with a tweet imploring traders to “remember to check you trust the issuer behind stablecoins you hold.”

The Fantom ecosystem’s high reliance on Multichain hasn’t spooked market participants into a mass exodus quite yet. Overall numbers like total value locked remain rather steady despite some outflows to other chains, according to data from terminal-builder Parsec.

“The multichain bridge is fully operational and safe with Fantom. Whatever is happening internally with multichain has no impact on the bridged assets on Fantom,” Michael Kong, CEO of the Fantom Foundation, told CoinDesk.

Squid Router – a bridging protocol built on Axelar that unlike Multichain uses swaps instead of wrapped tokens to move value across chains – also reported a surge in activity during the Multichain madless. Bridge transactions on Axelar itself increased sixfold during the spike, people familiar with the matter said.

But Multichain’s method of wrapping assets to bridge them has spooked players beyond the stablecoin markets. On Thursday, Binance said it would temporarily suspend deposits in 10 Multichain-bridged tokens “while we await clarity from the Multichain team.”

Bridging aggregation service Li.Fi also took preventative measures yesterday and shuttered access to Multichain.

Amid all this Multichain’s namesake asset MULTI has suffered. It was trading at $3.8 at press time, a 54% drop from where it was before the crisis of confidence began.

Bitcoin Moves Little on the Week Despite Debt Deal, Inflation Concerns

Bitcoin trades flat to move one step closer to logging its first losing month of 2023. Ether rises slightly but also seems headed for a negative May.

Bitcoin and ether took slightly divergent paths during the last full week of May. While ether rose 1.5%, bitcoin moved little to recently trade at about $26,700, a little below where it stood last Friday.

Ether’s year-to-date performance gap to bitcoin has narrowed to single digits with ETH gaining 52% YTD versus BTC’s 60% increase. Since May, the ETH/BTC ratio has increased 6.7%. Still both assets are in line to have their first losing month of 2023.

BTC and ETH’s seven-day performance ranked them sixth and 14th among cryptocurrencies with a market cap of $1 billion or more.

The weekly leaders were Render Token (RNDR) and Tron (TRX), up 21.9% and 7.6% respectively, while LDO and ALGO lagged, declining 8.5% and 9.3%

Investors have been focusing on President Joe Biden and U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s debt ceiling negotiations. While it’s widely expected that a deal will be reached ahead of the June 1 deadline, the two sides had yet to reach an agreement going into the Memorial Day weekend.

Markets were also weighing Friday’s Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) report showing U.S. prices rising more than expected in April. Core PCE, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, rose 0.4%, versus expectations of a 0.3% increase.

The unexpected increase reduces the likelihood that the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) will pause interest rate hikes during its June 14 meeting.

According to the CME Fedwatch tool, the probability that interest rates would remain at the current target rate of 5%-5.25% declined from 83% to 38% this week. The probability of a 25 basis point increase rose from 17% to 62%.

Drawdowns across multiple sectors

All six sectors in the CoinDesk Market Index fell this week, with the Smart Contract Platform sector declining the least (0.2%). The Culture and Entertainment sector had the roughest week, falling 4%.

Of the 156 individual assets across the base of CMI sectors, only 20 finished the week in positive territory. Another standout, albeit one with a market cap of less than $1 billion, was decentralized computation token ARPA, up 88%. ARPA is trading 167.2% higher on the month, and over 200% higher over the last 12 months.