Binance Bitcoin balance drops by 3.4K BTC within 24 hours of CFTC lawsuit; Sam Bankman-Fried accused of bribing Chinese officials; Ethereum developers have confirmed April 12 for the Shapella upgrade.
The CFTC sued Binance and its CEO, Changpeng Zhao, for violations of legislation. While the famous CEO denied the company and its allegations, he also initiated damage control measures for Binance.
However, Changpeng Zhao, who was quick to make a statement after the lawsuits filed, claimed that Binance did not run a business for profit under any circumstances and did not make any attempts to manipulate the market.
Still, affected by the negative events in the crypto ecosystem for a long time, investors could not keep their confidence in the face of the statements made and in the 24 hours following the announcement of the lawsuit, over 3,400 Bitcoins were withdrawn from Binance.
In the event of a possible shutdown, investors took action to redeem their assets from Binance. It can be said that this situation is beneficial for other exchanges, because while Binance experienced a decrease in the total Bitcoin balance, there was an increase in the balances of other exchanges.
The BTC balance of the Binance exchange lost 3,900 Bitcoins in the past week. The exchange has lost 3,400 of this amount in the last 24 hours alone.
Binance’s rival exchanges Coinbase, Bitfinex and Gemini all saw increases in their BTC reserves in the 24-hour timeframe.
It is also worth noting that, in general, Bitcoin balances have decreased since March 20 on all cryptocurrency exchanges. In the last week, about 27,000 BTC have flown from exchanges.
Sam Bankman-Fried accused of bribing Chinese officials
The legal process against Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the co-founder of FTX, which went bankrupt in the past months, continues. On Tuesday, March 28, there was a new development on the subject.
A new indictment has been filed against Sam Bankman-Fried. Justice Department prosecutors accused the SBF of bribing top Chinese officials $40 million. According to prosecutors; Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder of FTX, bribed at least one Chinese government official worth tens of millions of dollars.
The government alleges that accounts belonging to Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund Alameda Research were targeted by Chinese police in or around November 2021. The indictment also alleges that Bankman-Fried and others directed and caused the “transfer of at least $40 million in cryptocurrencies” “with the aim of influencing and encouraging one or more Chinese government officials” so that some of these accounts were not frozen.
The charges show new evidence has been obtained by the federal government about Bankman-Fried’s international dealings, and comes a day after US regulators accused crypto exchange Binance of alleged facilitating terrorist financing and violating US derivatives laws.
Ethereum developers have confirmed April 12 for the Shapella upgrade!
Ethereum core developers have confirmed the previously set April 12 deadline for the Shapella upgrade. Although the April 12 date was previously pointed out, today, with the approval of the core developers, the date of the upgrade has become official.
Shapella will be activated on April 12
According to the statement made by the Ethereum Foundation, the Shappella upgrade will occur at 194,048 network epochs. An epoch in Ethereum is a name given to a packet of 32 blocks on the network.
The Shappela upgrade was a combination of Capella and Shanghai. In fact, these two upgrades will occur at the same time. The Capella upgrade will be performed for the execution layer, while the Shanghai upgrade will be performed for the inward consensus layer.
The most important point of the Shappella upgrade is that it allows staked Ether to be withdrawn again. As it will be remembered, this feature was disabled when the Ethereum network switched from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. With the Shapella upgrade, network users will have a chance to withdraw their staked assets.
The vulnerabilities bounty program for the Shapella upgrade will continue until April 5. The Ethereum Foundation will reward users who find a bug on the network. The foundation recently doubled the prize and announced that it will give $500,000 to users who find bugs.