Weekly News 02/02/2022: Crypto tax reporting platform CoinTracker raises $100 million

Banks and Institutions

India to tax crypto income at 30%, a CBDC launch in 2023

India has provided clarity on crypto taxation for the fiscal year 2022-23, with a 30% rate taxation on digital asset. The transfer of assets typically means their sale, exchange, and relinquishment. But this tax may discourage investors from investing in crypto and delay the mass adoption of crypto in India. On the other side, a central bank digital currency (CBDC) may be launched.

SEC rejects Fidelity’s proposed spot Bitcoin ETF

Another spot bitcoin ETF proposal — this time from investment giant Fidelity — has been sidelined by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC handed down its disapproval and raised concerns about fraud, manipulation and investor protection. Last week, the SEC shot down a proposed spot ETF focused on bitcoin from First Trust and Skybridge Capital on identical grounds. A decision on an ETF submission from Stone Ridge and NYDIG is expected by mid-March.

Ecosystem

Crypto tax reporting platform CoinTracker raises $100 million

CoinTracker, a crypto startup that helps users report and file taxes, has raised $100 million in a Series A funding round. The firm has entered the unicorn club with the round and is now valued at $1.3 billion. Venture capital firm Accel led the round, with Coinbase Ventures, Kraken Ventures, Intuit Ventures, General Catalyst, Initialized Capital, Y Combinator Continuity, and Seven Seven Six Ventures also participating.

Russian region struggles to keep up with Bitcoin mining energy demands

A local energy distributor is working to recover about $800,000 from illicit cryptocurrency miners in the Irkutsk region. Local people have been installing crypto mining farms at home and at their dachas en masse, triggering increased energy consumption and frequent power grid outages.

Cryptobank Silvergate Capital Corporation is acquiring Diem

Diem has long faced regulatory concerns, with several senators calling a shutdown of the coin last year. As a result, Silvergate will acquire the Diem Payment network’s intellectual property and other assets for $200 million. Investment bankers had been brought in to evaluate how best to sell its IP and try to find employment for its engineers.

Binance builds up $1 billion insurance fund to cover potential hacks

Binance has amassed around $1 billion for an insurance fund, created as a buffer against the impact of a potential hack. Binance published the wallet addresses in a move founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) said he hopes will foster transparency and build trust in the exchange. The moves come amid a slew of high profile hacks targeting exchanges, with a worth over $40 million attack in 2019.

The Sandbox token gains 40% after several partnerships

SAND’s 40% rally follows a two-month-long correction that wiped out nearly 70% of the token’s market valuation. Snoop Dogg tweeted a teaser of what appeared to be his upcoming nonfungible token (NFT) collection, dubbed "the Snoop Avatars." The rapper further hinted that his avatars would come as a part of the Sandbox metaverse. Sandbox also announced that it would create a music theme park and concert venue within its metaverse with the help of Warner Music.

Crypto industry seems willing to adopt FATF travel rule

A new report claims that about 70% of respondents are either practicing the travel rule or planning to complete their compliance in Q1/Q2 2022. The FATF’s Recommendation 16 on wire transfers, also known as the Travel Rule, states that virtual asset service providers (VASPs), financial institutions and other regulated entities in member countries must give originator and beneficiary details to counterparts in transactions of $1,000 or more. The survey polled 56 businesses from all over the world, of which 30% in Europe.

Terra’s luna crypto coin slides 10% after DeFi project Wonderland collapses

The LUNA token fell by almost 10% on Monday, after decentralized finance platform Wonderland, a fork of Olympus DAO, had a reputational issue. The CFO of Wonderland, Michael Patryn, was involved in money scams, fraud, and burglary, and was one of the cofounders of the failed Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX, which went down as one of the biggest crypto scandals in history in 2019. The platform Wonderland was shut down following these revelations. The effect was felt on LUNA, as well as on Magic Internet Money (MIM), which relies on this ecosystem for maintaining its value.

Technology

Tezos transactions and smart contract activity surge on NFT demand

The Tezos network has seen impressive growth over the past 12 months in smart contract addresses and general adoption, primarily driven by nonfungible tokens (NFT), to more than 50,000 transactions per day from less than 10,000 per day in January 2021. The number of addresses containing more than at least 1 Tezos (XTZ) has recently surpassed 300,000, having increased 150% since the same time last year.

Ethereum-BSC bridge of Qubit Finance hacked for $80 million

X-Bridge, the cross-chain bridge of DeFi protocol Qubit Finance, has been exploited. The error in the code allowed the attacker to withdraw tokens on Binance Smart Chain when none was deposited on Ethereum.The attacker used $185 million as collateral to steal $80 million from its lending pools. This is the largest exploit of 2022 to date.

Users flock to Curve amid lack of stablecoin liquidity

urve appears to be doing better than ever. According to its developers, the platform saw a record trading daily volume of $3.6 billion, with total deposits surpassing $16.7 billion. During bear markets, investors typically flee from holding volatile cryptocurrencies and instead pile into stable assets that generate fixed income. However, the capital flight has also resulted in issues, such as stablecoin liquidity disappearing from exchanges, causing their spread to widen to excruciating levels.

Figures

• Microstrategy buys 660 additional bitcoins for $25 million
• Monthly NFT trading volume reaches all-time high of $6 billion in January
• 1B$ worth of ETH burned in one month thanks to NFTs
• Bitcoin mining network accounts for 0.08% of world’s CO2 production