Citadel is moving in the direction of cryptocurrencies, to create a marketplace for trading these digital assets in the coming months. This and more news in this handy daily roundup so you're always up to date with the latest events happening within the crypto world.
Cryptocurrencies and stablecoins
📍US market maker Citadel Securities is to launch a trading platform for cryptocurrencies. Virtu Financial, Sequoia Capital and Paradigm are part of Citadel Securities' new initiative to create a market ecosystem focused on cryptocurrencies.
According to Reuters reported that market maker Citadel Securities will launch a new platform that will allow brokers to offer cryptocurrency and digital asset trading to their clients, sources familiar with the matter said.
Such a platform could be available later this year or early 2023, to increase and facilitate retail brokers' access to cryptocurrencies.
Earlier in May, Ken Griffin, the billionaire founder of Citadel and once a crypto skeptic, had indicated that his company might very well get involved in this digital world. At the time, he revealed his plans to create a marketplace for cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin and Blockchain Adoption
📍Cryptocurrencies are becoming increasingly popular in the Asian market, Accenture revealed. Strategy consulting and technology services firm Accenture says demand for cryptocurrencies is growing among Asian investors, who are asking their managers to find new growth opportunities in emerging markets.
Accenture has published a report on the provision of advisory services, indicating that this has become increasingly demanding for wealth management firms, which must seek new ways to meet the growing needs and demands of their clients.
📍PayPal supports sending cryptocurrencies between external wallets. The e-payment company has enabled the function of transferring cryptocurrencies to external crypto wallets. This means that users of the platform, who trade crypto assets on it, can now send or receive cryptocurrency transactions to or from third-party wallets, including cryptocurrency exchange addresses and hardware wallets.
The feature has been enabled for US citizens, Paypal's senior vice president of blockchain, cryptocurrencies and digital currencies, Jose Fernandez da Ponte, said in a statement. releaseDa Ponte also reported that the company has been authorized by the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) to operate with cryptocurrencies.
PayPal is the first cryptocurrency service provider to convert a conditional Bitlicense into a full Bitlicense, da Ponte said in the statement.
Innovation, Development and Technology
📍Optimism acknowledges its mistakes and promises to fix the flaws for the next OP airdrop. In a publication Looking back, the developers of the Optmism scaling solution were grateful for the crypto community’s strong interest in their OP governance token. In the post, they also acknowledged the bugs that occurred during the first OP airdrop; which degraded Optimism’s scalability and caused investors frustration with stuck or failed transactions.
The developers say they will apply the lessons learned from this airdrop to ensure the success of future OP token launches. They also decided to share the retrospective of this first launch with the crypto community, so that it can serve as a guide for other projects planning their own tokens.
Cybersecurity
📍Elrond, the network for scaling the Internet, is hacked. Three wallets managed to implement a Smart contract malicious program that allowed them to receive over 1.600 billion EGLD tokens, valued at around $109,2 million, for free.
Blockchain analyst Foudres.ETH explained the attack by pointing out that the wallets involved were able to withdraw the funds in EGLD by implementing the smart contract and then calling a withdrawal function, with which they gained access to the funds for free. The stolen tokens were sent to the decentralized exchange Maiar Dex, where a significant portion of these tokens could be exchanged for stablecoins as USDC.
The researcher notes that the price of EGLD on the DEX lost almost 95% of its value, falling below $5 on Maiar Dex, before the developers stopped the protocol.
This has not affected the price of EGLD on other exchanges. In fact, cryptocurrency price monitoring platforms such as CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko do not reflect this drop in value. The lowest price seen on EGLD this week was $65,8 per unit.
Rules and Regulations
📍In Japan, a law amendment is being considered that could authorize the seizure of cryptocurrencies related to organized crime cases. A local outlet has reported that Japan’s Justice Ministry and Legislative Council are considering an amendment that seeks to strengthen the law punishing organized crime, and that could give regulators the power to seize crypto assets related to these illicit activities.
Main image from Financial Times
Continue reading: Senator Cynthia Lummis’ ‘crypto bill’ leaked: Is SEC clearing the way?
