Banks and Institutions
According to a Tuesday Bloomberg report, a group of European Union member nations led by Germany plan to include crypto firms under the purview of the Anti-Money Laundering-focused group — purportedly the European Commission’s Anti-Money Laundering Authority. plan to include crypto firms under the purview of the Anti-Money Laundering-focused group — purportedly the European Commission’s Anti-Money Laundering Authority
Chinese courts can now issue jail sentences if people raise funds via crypto from the public. Jail terms will vary from below three years to over ten years, depending on the amount raised. China’s crypto crackdown has benefited the US, allowing it to leapfrog China as the largest market for bitcoin mining. The US now accounts for more than 35% of the Bitcoin hash rate.
The February 23 draft legislation focuses on overall data protection and privacy within the European Union. Notably, article 30 as currently written would mandate that applications using smart contracts include a kill switch. A section requires:
"nsure that a mechanism exists to terminate the continued execution of transactions: the smart contract shall include internal functions which can reset or instruct the contract to stop or interrupt the operation to avoid future (accidental) executions."
The government body canceled a vote on the Markets in Crypto Assets, or MiCA, framework scheduled to take place on Monday. Berger said parliament needed to clarify “the question of proof-of-work”. The push for clarification may have been prompted by reports that a leaked draft of the MiCA proposed banning the use of cryptocurrencies in the EU over their use of energy. Many lawmakers and regulators in the EU have been calling for a ban on proof-of-work mining as the crypto space grows and the impacts of climate change become more visible.
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) announced plans to launch micro bitcoin and ether options, opening the crypto derivatives market to smaller investors. These micro BTC and ETH options will have a contract size equivalent to a tenth of their respective underlying tokens and will launch on March 28. At present, CME offers full-size options trading for bitcoin with a contract size of 5 BTC.
Ecosystem
The Rakuten NFT marketplace will offer users digital collectibles of sports and entertainment — such as music and anime. Rakuten will offer minting services for intellectual property (IP) holders to create digital assets of their IP. Rakuten’s first NFT drop will occur on February 25 and will include digital assets from an anime called Ultraman.
Technology
NFTs have increased their lead over stablecoins and ERC-20 tokens in transfers on the Ethereum network since last July. Daily NFT transfers are now averaging an all-time high of over 300,000, a 600% increase since July. Transfers of altcoins have fallen 39% from 42,000 to about 30,000 per day. Stablecoin transfers are down from about 24,000 in July to 18,000 as of Feb. 23, a 25% decrease.
Figures
