RMB Stablecoin Team Allegedly Arrested
On May 31, local news outlet PANewsLab reported that the developers of the Chinese offshore RMB and the issuer of the Hong Kong dollar stablecoin, CNHC, had allegedly lost contact or been detained by law enforcement officials. One photo shows what appears to be an empty office building in CNHC's Shanghai division with the following message posted:
“The assets of the building have been seized by the police; vandalism is prohibited.
In March, CNHC raised $10 million in its Series A, led by KuCoin Ventures, Circle, and IDG Capital. The team said at the time that it planned to use the funds for "expansion into the Asia Pacific region" and was in the process of moving its headquarters from the Cayman Islands to Hong Kong.
The reported move appears to be part of a broader campaign against cryptocurrencies by the Chinese authorities. On May 24, Asia Express reported that Singaporean inter-blockchain communications protocol Multichain tokens had been sunk 30% about a delayed back-end update and rumors of the arrest by the Chinese police of its main developers.
Although Multichain says it is still operational, it stated on June 1 that it is still “unable to contact CEO Zhaojun and obtain server access necessary for maintenance” and, as a result, the protocol will need to suspend a number of affected crossovers. -chain of services.
In the last two days, the Multichain protocol has experienced multiple issues due to unforeseeable circumstances. The team has done their best to keep the protocol up and running, but we are currently unable to contact CEO Zhaojun and gain the necessary server access to...
— Multichain (Formerly Anyswap) (@MultichainOrg) May 31, 2023
Hong Kong Opens Retail Crypto Licensing
Although censorship and bans on the continent, the adoption of cryptocurrency exchange regulation in Hong Kong took place as scheduled. On May 31, the Hong Kong Virtual Asset Consortium was formed to approve the top 30 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization for listing and conduct quarterly reviews of registered digital asset exchanges to ensure compliance with licensing regulations that came into effect. Effective June 1.
On another front, according to a research report published by multi-chain wallet provider BitKeep, notable crypto projects like Avalanche, Conflux, EOS, and Fantom have joined Hong Kong's Web3Hub ecosystem fund unveiled in April. With a budget of $10 million, the fund will incentivize Web3 projects to establish subsidiaries or headquarters in China's special administrative region (SAR). The fund is headed by Paul Chan Mo-Po, Financial Secretary of the Hong Kong SAR.
Despite the growing traction, BitKeep researchers reminded that Hong Kong regulations remain strict for the time being:
The new regulations clearly limit the types of tokens that can be traded and the types of services that exchanges can provide. Cryptocurrencies must comply with strict Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) regulations, which emphasize that only non-securities tokens can be traded, have a history of at least 12 months, and that the token has been included in two indices. of cryptocurrencies.
Additionally, exchanges are prohibited from providing wealth management products, as well as providing lending and deposit services, along with derivative transactions such as crypto perpetual contracts. “However, the regulator recognizes the importance of derivatives trading in the crypto market and will undertake further investigation and consideration,” the researchers noted.
WeChat allows BTC price quotes
As of June 1, WeChat, China's largest social media app with over 1 billion users, has indexed Bitcoin price quotes in its search queries. The move is significant, considering that China has banned virtually all cryptocurrency-related activities such as exchanges, cryptocurrency mining, and accelerating fiat cryptocurrencies since 2021.
However, if history is a guide, the WeChat Bitcoin search query probably won't last long. The billion-user platforms of China Central Television and the Chinese TikTok variant, Douyin, have previously allowed something similar, only for authorities to remove them just days after launch.
All Nippon Airways Launches NFT Market
On May 30, All Nippon Airways (ANA), Japan's largest airline with more than $12.2 billion in revenue in the last fiscal year, thrown out its aviation-themed NFT marketplace dubbed "ANA GranWhale" The developers wrote:
“NFTs have been used primarily in fields such as art and music as a technology to express ownership of digital assets. This time, ANA Group will apply NFT to the aviation industry."
As an inaugural step, ANA GranWhale will introduce aerial photographer Luke Ozawa's first digital photo in his NFT career with a starting price of 100,000 yen. The second installment, starting June 7, will feature a 3-D model NFT conversion of the first specially painted Boeing 787 aircraft released by ANA. Development of the NFT marketplace began last August as part of ANA's vision to build a Web3 virtual travel platform.
"With a view to marketing NFTs as special products from various parts of Japan, we aim to enhance the value of customer experience, including at home and abroad, through the 'GranWhale NFT Market'."
Fed inspires Astar Network to revamp tokenomics
On May 28, Sota Watanabe, the founder of the Japanese blockchain network Astar (ASTR), voiced his desire to revamp the protocol's tokenomics, saying that even the US government was targeting an inflation rate of 2%, compared to levels of around 8.4% today. Taking further inspiration from the Federal Reserve, Watanabe proposed to reflect the decisions of the Fed meetings every quarter or every six months and update the inflation rate of blockchain tokens on a variety of factors, writing:
"Decentralizing one of the Fed's roles can be challenging, but also an interesting test."
The crypto executive said he wanted to fix the full supply of ASTR and make the inflation rate smaller and smaller, like in Bitcoin, or automatically decide the inflation rate based on network usage, like in Ethereum, or use a combination of both models.
A multi-chain decentralized application proposition, Astar recently launched the second iteration of its smart contracts supporting both Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) WebAssembly Virtual Machine (WASM VM) on its mainnet to develop new cross-chain applications.
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bitFlyer and the travel rule
According to a recent advertisementJapanese cryptocurrency exchange bitFlyer will comply with the new Travel Rule of the country's Financial Services Agency from June 1. The Travel Rule states that a crypto asset exchange that sends crypto assets at the request of a user must provide specific sender and recipient information to the exchange receiving the transfer.
In addition, further restrictions are placed on cryptocurrency transfers to any of 21 countries, such as Japan, Switzerland, Canada, Bahamas, Hong Kong, and the US, using TRUST (Universal Travel Rule Solution) technology led by Coinbase.
bitFlyer customers wishing to transfer cryptocurrency to any of the 21 TRUST countries can only send Bitcoin or Ethereum and select ERC-20 tokens. Such requirements do not apply to transfers to addresses identified with any of the remaining non-TRUST countries. As said by bitFlyer:
“The purpose of the travel rule is to prevent terrorists and other criminals from using digital funds transfer systems, as well as to track unauthorized use.”
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