Prizmabet

Former Government Employees, Compliance Officers Rally for Detained Binance Executive

Tigran Gambaryan has been detained in Nigeria since February.

A group of former government employees and compliance officials, now working in the crypto industry, rallied in front of the United Nations on Wednesday to show support for Tigran Gambaryan, Binance’s head of financial crime compliance who’s been detained in Nigeria since February.

Gambaryan is being held as a representative of the company he works for, with prosecutors trying him on money laundering charges brought against Binance. He is being held in the Kuje Prison, which is notorious for holding terrorists and other criminals, where his health has deteriorated heavily; in a recent video, he was struggling to walk with a crutch. A spokesperson for his family said he has also suffered multiple infections, as well as a herniated disc in his back.

Despite this, the U.S. government only publicly acknowledged his detention earlier this month, though Secretary of State Antony Blinken has discussed Gambaryan with Nigerian officials in May, the New York Times reported.

Amanda Wick, a former federal prosecutor and government investigator who organized the protest, noted that Gambaryan used to work for the U.S. government.

Prior to his role at Binance, Gambaryan was an investigator with the IRS’s Criminal Investigation wing.

“America has fought harder for people who committed crimes [in the countries they were detained in] than for someone who fought for his country,” Wick said.

Nigeria prosecuting someone to get the attention of their employer is “truly unjust,” said Chris Tyrrell, the chief risk and compliance officer at Ondo Finance.

Gary Weinstein, the founder of Infinity Advisory LLC and former state assistant attorney general, said all of the attendees present were in favor of consumer protections and “high-integrity” markets, including Gambaryan. He noted that Gambaryan had been invited by the Nigerian government when he visited in February and was given a “false assurance of safe passage.”

“One cannot do their job if one is in fear of getting snatched by a nation-state,” he said.

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Protocol Village: Theta Labs Launches ‘EdgeCloud for Mobile,’ Implements AI Video Detection

The latest in blockchain tech upgrades, funding announcements and deals. For the period of Sept. 26-Oct. 2.

Theta Labs Launches ‘EdgeCloud for Mobile,’ Allowing Android Users to Contribute Spare GPU Power

Theta Labs, the developer behind the entertainment-focused blockchain project Theta Network, has launched EdgeCloud for Mobile, allowing Android users to contribute spare GPU power to the Theta EdgeCloud network and earn TFUEL tokens. According to the team: “Available on Google Play, the app lets users provide resources during idle times, supporting AI research in media, healthcare and finance. Using a Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN), Theta EdgeCloud cuts GPU-intensive task costs by over 50% compared to traditional cloud providers, offering scalable, decentralized AI model training and inference services.” The blog post reads: “For the first time ever, the Theta team has implemented a video object detection AI model (VOD_AI) that runs on consumer grade Android mobile devices, delivering true computation at the edge and enabling unparalleled scalability and reach. VOD_AI is a computer vision technique that uses AI to analyze video frames to identify objects by scanning video frames, looking for potential objects and drawing bounding boxes around them. This process is similar to how the human visual cortex works.” (THETA)

Protocol Village is a regular feature of The Protocol, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Wednesday. Project teams can submit updates here. For previous versions of Protocol Village, please go here.

PayPal Enables U.S. Business Accounts to Buy, Hold and Sell Crypto

The service won’t be available to New York state in the beginning.

Payments giant PayPal (PYPL) will enable its business clients to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrency directly from their accounts in the U.S., potentially opening up a larger market for the firm.

After letting its retail users do the same via PayPal and Venmo accounts, the company said that it also saw demand from business owners to buy, hold and sell crypto. “Business owners have increasingly expressed a desire for the same cryptocurrency capabilities available to consumers,” said Jose Fernandez da Ponte, SVP of blockchain, cryptocurrency, and digital currencies at PayPal in a statement on Wednesday.

The payments company will also let U.S. merchants to externally transfer cryptocurrency on-chain to third-party eligible wallets, according to the statement.

PayPal has been active since 2020 to let its users buy hold and sell crypto currencies directly from their accounts. Last year, it unveiled its U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoin, PayPal USD (PYUSD), which reached a $1 billion market cap this summer.

Utah Judge Rules SEC’s Case Against Alleged Crypto Mining Scam Green United Can Proceed to Trial

And no, she didn’t rule that crypto mining devices were securities.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) lawsuit against Green United can proceed to trial, a Utah judge ruled Monday.

Last March, the SEC accused the Utah-based operation of scamming investors out of $18 million by selling them phony crypto mining equipment via a multi-level marketing scheme in which the company’s affiliates received a portion of the proceeds from each of the $3,000 “Green Boxes” they sold.

According to the SEC’s complaint, investors were told that the so-called Green Boxes were specialized crypto miners that mined GREEN tokens on the Green Blockchain – which they allegedly claimed supported a “public global decentralized power grid” – and could generate 40% to 50% monthly returns. Investors never physically received their equipment, and were told that the machines would be remotely hosted at a Green United-controlled data center.

In reality, the Green Blockchain didn’t exist, but the Green Boxes did – sort of.

Green United’s founder, Will Thurston (who, along with promoter Kristoffer Krohn, is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit), allegedly used the money investors gave him for the phony Green Boxes and used it to buy S9 Antminers – commercially-available bitcoin mining machines – which he then used to mine bitcoin for himself. According to the SEC, investors didn’t see any of the actual bitcoin (BTC) their purchases mined, but instead received periodic distributions of worthless GREEN tokens created by Thurston on the Ethereum blockchain.

Though Green United’s lawyers attempted to have the case dismissed, U.S. District Court Judge Ann Marie McIff Allen ruled that the SEC has “sufficiently alleged a security in the form of Green Boxes” to allow the case to proceed to trial, as well as its allegations of fraud.

The ruling caused something of a stir in online crypto circles, with at least one large X account claiming (in a since-deleted post) that the “SEC says crypto mining devices are securities.”

“This is wrong. Remain calm,” responded Neeraj Agrawal, director of communications at crypto lobbying group Coin Center. “This has no bearing on managed crypto mining. It’s garden variety ‘cloud mining’ scamming.”

The judge’s Monday ruling makes no mention of the real S9 Antminers – or bitcoin – Green United was allegedly buying with investor funds.

NYDFS ‘More Eager Than Anyone’ for Federal Legislation, Chief Says

NYDFS Superintendent Adrienne Harris said any federal legislation should still keep a role for state regulators.

NEW YORK — New York Department of Financial Services Superintendent Adrienne Harris said federal legislation addressing cryptocurrencies would be welcome, but maintained that states should keep their existing roles overseeing digital assets.

States have been able to move more quickly while conventional wisdom that allowing states to regulate digital assets may create a “race to the bottom” in terms of regulatory oversight hasn’t been borne out, Harris said at the Digital Asset Compliance and Market Integrity Summit in midtown Manhattan Wednesday.

“We are maybe more eager than anyone to have a federal partner and to see federal legislation and regulation,” Harris said. “I think it’s really important that legislation gets passed, regulations get written, but it is still important that there is a role for the states.”

Harris said she was “optimistic” that the House and Senate might move legislation soon, saying NYDFS has spoken to both parties in both houses of the legislature over the past few years.

BitLicense evolution

New York’s BitLicense, which is nearly a decade old, has evolved over the years but the regulator’s view of it has stayed the same, Harris said.

“I think our approach hasn’t evolved that much. The approach was always about, how do you sort of square these competing objectives of fostering innovation, but protecting consumers and markets,” she said. “And so that means you really have to stay abreast of developments in industry, but also be the cop on the beat and strike that balance.”

NYDFS has one of the world’s largest crypto units, Harris said, with 60 full-time staffers dedicated to the crypto sector.

Harris said the general public’s views on the BitLicense have similarly become more accepting since its introduction, a change she called “gratifying.” Even federal lawmakers have pointed to the BitLicense as an example.

“[That’s] not to say that it’s perfect, right? There are some really valid critiques, both in terms of the rule and the way it has been operationalized,” she said. “But it’s been so gratifying to see California, Illinois, Nebraska, and then the EU and Singapore; everybody sort of takes pieces.”

Singapore Court Grants WazirX Four-Month Conditional Moratorium: Source

WazirX, which lost $234 million in a hack, had filed an application with the Singapore High Court for a six-month moratorium.

A Singapore court has granted Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX a four-month moratorium based on certain conditions on Thursday, an industry source told CoinDesk.

The conditions imposed on WazirX include revealing the addresses of its Wallets through a court affidavit, responding to users’ queries, revealing its book of accounts within six weeks, and ensuring that any future voting on the way ahead is conducted on an independent platform. CoinDesk reached out to WazirX to comment on the matter.

WazirX, which lost $234 million in a hack, some 45% of customers’ funds, had filed an application with the Singapore High Court for a six-month moratorium.

The hacker behind that July hack has nearly finished laundering the stolen funds, using Tornado Cash to obscure the transactions.

Earlier, the crypto exchange’s legal advisers said WazirX customers are unlikely to be made whole in crypto terms.

The Judge in the case heard the matter on Wednesday, and on Thursday, she delivered a verdict.

During the proceedings on Wednesday, she asked the legal representatives of WazirX to “think about” releasing the details of any assets the exchange had other than the tokens it held.

The Judge said the exchange acted on “good faith” by stepping up and seeking a moratorium, according to the industry source.

Harris Says Her White House Will ‘Invest in America’s Future’ Which Includes ‘Digital Assets’

The Democratic nominee promises she’ll be a tech-friendly president in remarks to donors.

Vice President and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris made her first remarks on crypto before donors in New York City, according to a report from Bloomberg.

“To build that opportunity economy, I will bring together labor, small business, founders and innovators, and major companies. We will partner together to invest in America’s competitiveness, to invest in America’s future,” Bloomberg quoted Harris as saying. “We will encourage innovative technologies like AI and digital assets while protecting consumers and investors. We will create a safe business environment with consistent and transparent rules of the road.”

Uniswap Labs CEO Hayden Adams appeared to endorse Harris following her remarks.

“Yes, Biden has been bad for crypto, and actions will speak louder than words, but progress is progress; it needs to start somewhere and should be encouraged,” he wrote on X. “She is signaling her admin will approach it differently / be more pro-innovation.”

In April, Uniswap received a Wells Notice, a memo that the Securities and Exchange Commission is considering enforcement action.

Harris’ remarks come after Republican nominee Donald Trump purchased burgers with bitcoin (BTC) at a crypto-themed bar called PubKey in New York.

Trump and his family are also promoting a Decentralized Finance (DeFi) project called World Liberty Financial on the campaign trail. Trump recently appeared on Rug Radio, a crypto media platform, to promote the project and discuss crypto policy.

Recently, Anthony Scaramucci, founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital, who also had a brief tenure as White House communications director under then-President Donald Trump, said during Token 2049 in Singapore that he is working with the Harris campaign to develop crypto policy.

In July, Scaramucci said on CoinDeskTV that the Democrats made a “horrific mistake” on crypto crackdowns, and largely mishandled crypto policy.

Currently, Polymarket is giving Harris a 52-47% lead with over $980 million bet on the election.

Ether Outperforms Bitcoin as Token 2049 Concludes, Overall Crypto Market Stays Flat

The CoinDesk 20 is beginning the week flat.

Ether (ETH) pushed past bitcoin (BTC) in daily gains as Token 2049, and Solana’s Breakpoint, two of the largest conferences in crypto, wrapped up in Singapore, but both of these tokens are relatively flat as the market stays stagnant.

ETH is up 2.6%, trading above $2,600, according to CoinDesk Indices data, while BTC is trading above $63,700, up 1.2%. The CoinDesk 20 (CD20), a measure of the performance of the largest digital assets, is flat, up less than 1%.

Data from CoinGlass shows that in the last 12 hours, slightly more short positions than longs have been liquidated, with $64.23 million in short positions and $54.42 million in longs being liquidated.

Trading is likely light in the aftermath of last week’s 50 basis points (bps) interest rate cut. BTC is up 9.5% in the last week while ETH is up over 16%. Polymarket bettors are confident that another rate cut is coming but are split as to the extent: 47% say it will be 50 bps, while 47% say it will be 25 bps.

Solana’s (SOL), which was the focus of the Breakpoint conference that took place immediately after Token 2049, is flat, trading above $145. During Breakpoint, many attendees were impressed with the announcements coming from the protocol, such as Jump Crypto’s validator going live.

Pendle, a portfolio company of Arthur Hayes’ fund Maelstrom, is down over 6.5%. Traders are likely spooked that Maelstrom has reduced its position in the project after Hayes spent a considerable amount of time promoting it on stage in Singapore.

For his part, Hayes said that they reduced their position in Pendle to get liquidity to fund “a special situation.”

“Those who monitor our wallets will get a glimpse as to what that is in the very near future,” he wrote on X.

Pendle is up over 24% on-week according to CoinGecko data.

Meanwhile, MOTHER, a memecoin promoted by music star Iggy Azalea is up 4.5% after she announced that the project was building a companion casino called Motherland.

MOTHER is one of the few celebrity memecoins that has managed to maintain its value. The token, however, mostly trades on decentralized exchanges (DEX) and is not available on any well-known centralized platforms. An addition of an online casino is sure to complicate the listing process on major centralized exchanges because of regulatory complexities.

Canada Moves Away From Retail CBDC, Shifts Focus to Broader Payments

Canada’s central bank has said it is shifting its focus to broader payments system research and policy development.

Canada is shifting its focus away from a retail central bank digital currency after years of research, its central bank announced last week.

“With this work completed, and with other payments issues gaining prominence, the Bank is scaling down its work on a retail central bank digital currency and shifting its focus to broader payments system research and policy development,” a document vaguely titled “Digital Canadian Dollar” said.

CBC News, Canada’s public broadcaster, reported that “The Bank of Canada confirmed” it has “shifted its focus away from the idea of introducing a digital Canadian dollar.” The story also said the Bank “is shelving” the idea of a Canadian dollar.

It isn’t clear whether the bank’s official statement saying it was “scaling down” its retail CBDC work and “shifting its focus to broader payments” research means it has shelved the retail CBDC idea completely.

Particularly because the Bank also said it would “continue to monitor global retail CBDC developments and publish some related research,” there would “be further opportunities for Canadians to provide input on a potential digital dollar,” and that all the research done so far would be “invaluable if, at some point in the future, Canadians … decide they want or need a digital Canadian dollar.”

Canada’s latest position comes as the debate over CBDC’s became a presidential election issue in the U.S. despite the Federal Reserve’s Chair, Jerome Powell, saying it was nowhere near recommending – or let alone adopting – a CBDC in any form” and that “people don’t need to worry about it.”

But the Bank of Canada’s update does come less than three months after a staff discussion paper which said that cash is “likely to decline” in relevance going forward then a “properly designed CBDC would help fill the gap” and maintain the relevance of a retail public money in the economy.”

At the end of 2023, the Bank received almost 90,000 responses to a public consultation paper, with most reflecting privacy concerns.

BlackRock Bitcoin ETF Options to Set Stage for GameStop-Like ‘Gamma Squeeze’ Rally, Bitwise Predicts

Last week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) approved the list of of physically settled options tied to BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF, the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT).

One of the exciting developments from last week was the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) nod for approval and listing of physically settled options tied to BlackRock’s spot bitcoin (BTC) ETF, the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT).

There is consensus that the IBIT options, which still needs to be greenlighted by the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), will further help draw institutions to the crypto market. The crypto community, however, seems split on how it would affect the bitcoin market volatility.

Per Bitwise Asset Management, gamma squeeze, a rapid price rally catalyzed by options market dynamics, could become a feature of the bitcoin market following the debut of IBIT options.

Gamma squeeze

To understand the gamma squeeze, readers must know how options work. Options are derivatives that allow the buyer the right to buy or sell the underlying asset at a predetermined price on or before a specific date. A call option gives the right to buy and represents a bullish bet on the market, while a put option represents a bearish bet.

Options gamma is a metric that gauges how an option’s delta, or the sensitivity of an option’s price to movements in the underlying asset, changes for every $1 move in the underlying asset’s price.

When investors buy a lot of call options, anticipating a price rally, market makers, who are mandated to maintain a net market-neutral exposure, end up on the other side of the trade, holding large amounts of short call positions, often called short gamma exposure. As such, they purchase the underlying asset as the market rallies because they are obligated to deliver the underlying asset to the call option buyer.

The hedging activity puts upward pressure on the spot price, causing a sharp rally, like the one in shares of American video game retailer GameStop (GME) in 2021.

Per Jeff Park, head of alpha strategies and portfolio manager at Bitwise Asset Management, IBIT options, offering regulated leverage on a supply-constrained BTC, will draw solid institutional demand for calls, setting the stage for a gamma squeeze.

“Bitcoin options have negative vanna: as spot goes up, so does volatility, meaning delta increases even faster. When dealers [market makers] who are short gamma hedge this (gamma squeeze), bitcoin’s case becomes explosively recursive. More upside leads to even more upside as dealers are forced to keep buying at higher prices. A negative vanna gamma squeeze acts like a refueling rocket,” Park said on X.

Park explained that IBIT options will eliminate the “jump-to-default (JTD) risk” that has kept institutions at bay, allowing bitcoin synthetic notional exposure to grow exponentially. JTD refers to the risk of an issue or counterpart defaulting suddenly before the market can adjust for the increased risk.

He expects a strong investor bias for longer-duration out-of-the-money (higher strike) calls once the options go live.

“With bitcoin options, investors can now make duration-based portfolio allocation bets, especially for long-term horizons. There’s a good chance that owning long-dated OTM calls as premium spend will give investors more bang for their buck than a fully-collateralized position that could drop by 80% over the same period,” Park said.

During an interview with CoinDesk, Bitwise Asset Management’s head of research Europe, André Dragosch, voiced a similar opinion, saying, “The consequence of this would be a price spike similar to what we have seen with GME, which is akin to a “short squeeze” in futures.”

Dragosch added that the upside volatility from the so-called gamma squeeze could be more pronounced due to the fact that bitcoin’s supply is capped at 21 million BTC.

The other side of the story

Per Greg Magadini, director of derivatives at Amberdata, the gamma squeeze could be seen if a perfect bullish storm, characterized by Republican candidate Donald Trump’s victory in the upcoming U.S. elections and Fed rate cuts, grips markets. However, over the long-run, increased institutional participation via the ETF and ETF options is likely to dampen volatility.

“Institutional flows, in particular, are counter-cyclical. Portfolio managers tend to trim exposure through quarterly rebalancing, selling appreciating assets when bitcoin rallies too much,” Magadini said in the weekly newsletter shared with CoinDesk.

Bitcoin’s realized or historical volatility has been trending lower since the Chicago Mercantile Exchange listed bitcoin futures in December 2017, opening doors for traditional institutions to take exposure to the cryptocurrency.

Besides, institutional flows via IBIT options could temper Bitcoin’s upside-implied or expected volatility, according to Magadini.

“Another well-known effect of these flows is their impact on implied volatility. Institutions buy protective puts and sell covered calls, which dampens upside implied volatility,” Magadini noted.

Implied volatility, or investors’ expectations for the degree of price turbulence over a specific period, is influenced by demand for options. Upside implied volatility picks up when investors buy calls and vice versa.

Sophisticated investors use the covered call strategy to generate additional income on top of their ETF holdings, as observed in the gold market. The strategy involves selling a higher strike ETF call option and pocketing the premium (option’s price) while holding a long position in the ETF. The short leg puts downward pressure on the implied volatility.

Crypto traders have been setting up covered calls through Deribit’s bitcoin options, leading to lower implied volatility over the past few years.

“As institutional ownership grows, their behavior has a greater impact. This means that, ultimately, institutional adoption leads to lower volatility in Bitcoin. This is merely a continuation of the clear structural decline in Bitcoin’s volatility,” Magadini summed up.