SEC postpones decision on six companies’ spot Bitcoin ETF applications; Binance says goodbye to BUSD; 16 million dollar worth of cryptocurrency hacks in August
SEC Delays Decision on 6 Firms’ Bitcoin ETF Filings!
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that it postponed its decision on three companies’ spot Bitcoin ETF offerings.
The regulator continued not to approve spot Bitcoin ETFs, postponing the applications of WisdomTree, Invesco and Valkyrie.
Recently, Grayscale Investments, affiliated with DCG, won the spot Bitcoin ETF lawsuit against the SEC, and the court ruled that the regulator should reconsider its decision.
45 days deadline
The SEC will have an extra 45 days to evaluate the proposed rule changes. There is also a chance that the regulator will postpone its decision again after 45 days.
Grayscale’s winning the lawsuit against the SEC led to a perception that the SEC could soon approve a spot Bitcoin ETF proposal. The court ruled that the SEC should reconsider Grayscale’s application.
ETF applications from companies such as BlackRock, ARK Invest, Bitwise Asset Management, VanEck and Fidelity are also on the SEC’s desk.
The regulator recently decided to postpone the applications made by Fidelity and VanEck.
The SEC also announced that BlackRock has postponed its spot Bitcoin ETF application.
Binance says goodbye to BUSD!
Binance is ending support for its stablecoin BUSD. The exchange warned investors to start converting their Binance USD stablecoin holdings into other existing assets, including a newly listed stablecoin.
Binance announced the end of BUSD services as of today. However, it was stated that BUSD supports will gradually start to disappear until February 2024.
In its official statement, Binance invited users to exchange or convert their BUSD assets to First Digital USD (FDUSD), a stablecoin launched by Hong Kong-based trust company First Digital Group in June and first listed on Binance at the end of July.
However, he reported that Binance has already added BUSD to FDUSD transactions. However, the other day, he stated that he also delisied 8 BUSD parities. So much so that the exchange had previously encouraged the use of stablecoins with zero-fee trading pairs for FDUSD with Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).
Binance’s decision to halt support for BUSD came after the US Securities and Exchange Commission claimed that BUSD was an unregistered security in a notice sent to Paxos on 13 February.
On the same day, the New York Department of Financial Services also ordered Paxos to stop issuing BUSD.
16 million dollar worth of cryptocurrency hacks in August
In August, a total of $ 15.8 million in cryptocurrency was lost due to hacking attacks.
According to the report of blockchain security company Immunefi dated 31 August, $ 23.4 million in cryptocurrency was lost due to hacking and fraud. This is a big drop compared to $320.5 million in July. All exploits this month consisted of attacks on DeFi protocols. Therefore, no central organisation was affected.
Five of the 21 reported incidents occurred on Ethereum, while four occurred on BNB Chain. Coinbase’s highly anticipated Base network saw four vulnerabilities in a short period of time.
Among the biggest losses is the $ 7.2 million Ether obtained from the Exactly protocol!
However, on 25 August, a $ 6.5 million exit fraud allegedly took place on Magnate Finance, the crypto protocol on Base. ZachXBT, a well-known DeFi detective, suggested that Magnate Finance’s distributor address was linked to the fraud. Since then, all assets have been removed from the protocol’s smart contracts, and the website and social media handles have also gone offline
According to Immunefi, users have lost $1.25 billion worth of cryptocurrency since the beginning of the year due to hacker and fraudulent activity. DeFi protocol Euler Finance lost $195 million in a flash loan attack in March. Less than a month later, the Euler attacker returned more than 90 per cent of the funds on the threat of legal action.
