Charles Morgan New Twitter Rival Jack Dorsey Backed | Binance Abandons $1 Billion Voyager Deal

From: Forbes Crypto Confidential - Saturday Apr 29, 2023 06:00 pm

COINBASE GOES TO COURT TO END SEC’S SILENT TREATMENT

Coinbase asked a federal court on Monday to force the Securities and Exchange Commission to respond to a July petition by the largest U.S. crypto exchange that urged the agency to define when it considers a digital asset to be a security and to create a regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies. The move is likely to win the company support in crypto circles, but it has an uphill battle against the federal regulator, which has been cracking down on the digital-assets industry this year.

On Thursday, Coinbase also offered a lengthy response to the SEC’s March notice that an enforcement action was likely in the works, telling the agency that it would “do substantial unnecessary harm to the public” and raise “significant programmatic risks” to the Commission itself from “a well-resourced adversary that will necessarily be motivated to exhaust all avenues.”

BINANCE.US CALLS OFF DEAL FOR VOYAGER ASSETS

The crypto giant’s U.S. unit withdrew its offer to purchase digital assets frozen as part of the Voyager Digital Holdings bankruptcy, citing a “hostile and uncertain regulatory climate in the United States.”

Voyager, a brokerage that failed in July, had a previous deal to sell its assets to FTX US, an arm of the Bahamas-based digital-assets empire that filed for bankruptcy in November. FTX had offered to reimburse much of the frozen assets in exchange for the chance to sign investors on as new customers. The similar Binance plan involved a $20 million payment to the Voyager bankruptcy estate for the transfer of about $1 billion frozen funds. Voyager said Tuesday that the company will seek to directly compensate investors using a “toggle option” in the company’s bankruptcy plan.

Source: Forbes Digital Assets. Prices as of 4:00 p.m. on April 28, 2023.

DORSEY- BACKED DECENTRALIZED TWITTER RIVAL PREPARES TO HIT THE MARKET

Twitter picked Jay Graber to create a spinoff called Bluesky that lets users control their online identities, and it is about to launch. CEO Elon Musk won’t play along with the plan hatched under predecessor Jack Dorsey, but the new boss has sparked a user exodus that offers Bluesky an opening.

If successful, Bluesky and its underlying technology could reduce misinformation on centralized platforms by giving lots of different social networks the ability to compete over all sorts of things—including moderation standards and techniques. It could also minimize social media’s role as a recommender of controversial content by giving users control over the algorithms that decide what they see. Read more.

GOOGLE LAUNCHES ACCELERATOR FOR BLOCKCHAIN COMPANIES

The company announced on Tuesday that it would expand its Google Cloud Startup Program to blockchain firms, offering up to $6 million in partnering grants and several hundred thousand more in Google Cloud credits that can be used to access computer processing power. The collaborators offering up to $1 million in token rewards per company include the teams behind blockchains Aptos, Celo, Near, Solana and Hedera Hashgraph.

ELSEWHERE

Bankrupt Crypto Lender Genesis, Creditors To Enter Mediation [Bloomberg]

Deloitte Could Be Jumping Into Crypto Headfirst With Hundreds Of Job Listings [Blockworks]

PayPal To Enable On-Chain Transfers From Venmo Accounts, Including to On-Chain Wallets [CoinDesk]

Steven Elrich
Nina Bambysheva
Reporter
Forbes Money & Markets

Steven Elrich
Steven Ehrlich
Editor
Forbes CryptoAsset & Blockchain Advisor

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Charles Morgan New Twitter Rival Jack Dorsey Backed | Binance Abandons $1 Billion Voyager Deal