Ripple Allegedly Eyes Celsius' Assets, New Crypto Rule from SEC, Dangerous Metaverse, and More News

Jamie Larson

• 4 min read
Ripple Allegedly Eyes Celsius' Assets, New Crypto Rule from SEC, Dangerous Metaverse, and More News

Financial News

  • As the blockchain payments business seeks to expand, Ripple Labs is considering buying at least some of the assets of bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network, according to a representative for Ripple, as reported by Reuters. It further stated that the representative would not confirm whether Ripple was considering buying Celsius entirely.
  • To launch and develop its DeFi wallet and investing platform Ultimate, German fintech company Unstoppable Finance announced a EUR 12.5 million (USD 12.8 million) Series A funding round, which was headed by Lightspeed Venture Partners.
  • Injective, a platform for decentralized smart contracts, announced a USD 40 million financing round headed by Jump Crypto. Alan Howard's cryptocurrency company BH Digital has also participated in the round. With the additional funds, the team will be able to expand the native INJ token's utility, give existing Injective-based dapps access to liquidity, and assist brand-new dapps through investments.
  • a diffuse community A16z Crypto and Initialized Capital, among other investors, launched a seed investment round for CreatorDAO that resulted in the raising of USD 20 million. Emerging creators can submit an application to CreatorDAO, and those chosen will receive the funding, mentoring, and technology required to produce better content and expand their following, according to the statement.
  • A firm called RISC Zero, which creates products using zero-knowledge cryptography, has announced a USD 12 million Seed Round, which is being led by Bain Capital Crypto. Prior to the introduction of their blockchain, they claimed a developer-focused sample of their new network will be released in Q3 2022.
  • An encrypted backup key is given to staking companies in order to secure staked assets from any type of outage or disaster situation, according to a press release shared with Cryptonews.com by the digital asset security technology business Coincover.

Regulation Updates

  • According to Reuters and The Wall Street Journal, the US Securities and Exchange Commission will vote to recommend a rule that aims to improve the quality of disclosures—including crypto exposure—that it gets from significant private and hedge funds.


Metaverse News

  • According to a blog post authored by staff at the Bank of England, the prominence of cryptoassets in the open-metaverse means that if an open and decentralized metaverse expands, existing risks from cryptoassets may scale to have effects on systemic financial stability. "If a sizable open-metaverse materialized, households may hold a greater portion of their wealth in cryptoassets to make metaverse-based payments or for investment purposes, and corporates may increasingly accept payments in cryptoassets for goods and services, as well as sell digital assets (e.g. clothing NFTs) in the metaverse," they added.
  • The Sandbox, a virtual gaming environment and a division of blockchain game developer Animoca Brands, recently announced a partnership with American media star Paris Hilton and media content firm and platform 11:11 Media to bring Hilton's universe to The Sandbox. According to the release provided to Cryptonews.com, the collaboration will allow Paris Hilton's followers and the general public to interact with her in a novel way.

Adoption News

  • According to El Pais, who cited Mercado Libre's fintech sector director Osvaldo Gimenez, the largest e-commerce company in Latin America intends to broaden its bitcoin, ethereum, and stablecoin trading feature and wallet introduced in Brazil last December.
  • A complaint filed with the US District Court in Delaware and made by shareholder Donald Kocher on behalf of crypto exchange Coinbase, alleges that the company’s leadership made “false and misleading statements” in the firm’s public filings ahead of its direct listing in April 2021. The CEO of Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, is among nine former and current officers who have been charged with breaching federal securities laws, misusing their positions of authority, harming the company financially, and engaging in "gross mismanagement."
  • According to the Financial Post, which cited "sources with knowledge of the probes," several jurisdictions are looking into the multi-billion dollar collapse of cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network, and Canadian officials are collaborating with their American counterparts. Among the regulators involved is Quebec’s Autorité des marchés financiers, whose investigation is partly being driven by the fact that the province’s largest pension manager, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, invested USD 150m in Celsius last October, per the report.

Ethereum news

  • Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, announced that it intends to “fully and solely support the Ethereum proof-of-stake (PoS) chain post-merge.”
    Tether, the company behind the USDT stablecoin, said it believes that in order to avoid any disruption to the Ethereum community, the transition to PoS must not be weaponized to cause confusion and harm within the ecosystem – adding that it will support PoS Ethereum only.

DeFi news

  • The developers behind Blur Finance, a yield aggregator based on BNB Chain and Polygon (MATIC), seem to have abandoned the project and deleted its social media channels. More than USD 600,000 worth of tokens have disappeared, said security firm PeckShield.

Mining news

  • CleanSpark said it recognized a USD 29.3m net loss for the three months ended June 30. It increased 76% compared to the same prior year period. Revenues for the quarter grew to USD 31m, an increase of 22m, or 243%, from USD 9m for the same prior year period. Per CFO Gary A. Vecchiarelli, “our decision to divest energy assets will allow us to focus our time, people, and resources on our core business.”
  • Kryptovault AS is forced by soaring power prices to move north from southern Norway, moving mining operations north of the Arctic Circle, Bloomberg reported, citing Chief Executive Officer Kjetil Hove Pettersen. He reportedly said that power costs in the south are almost 160 times more than in the north.