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Zi Wang

Zi Wang

Zi is a tech and media reporter based in London, with a focus NFTs and enterprise applications of blockchain and crypto. Disclosure: No significant crypto holdings.

Stories by Zi Wang

  • Genesis Trading is a crypto prime broker. Image: Shutterstock.

    Genesis Sought $1B Bailout From Investors Before Halting Withdrawals: Report

    Crypto lender Genesis tried to raise a $1 billion loan from investors to avoid a “liquidity crunch” driven by the fallout from crypto exchange FTX’s collapse, according to a Wall Street Journal report. According to a Genesis document seen by the WSJ, Genesis needed the credit by 10 am EST this past Monday, but didn’t get it. On Wednesday morning, Genesis then announced it would suspend withdrawals from its lending arm, blaming FTX’s collapse for “abnormal withdrawal requests which have exceeded...

    NewsBusiness
    2 min read
    Zi Wang
  • Image: Shutterstock

    Crypto Exchange Gemini Expands to 5 More European Countries

    Crypto exchange Gemini today announced it had expanded its offerings to five more European countries, bringing its presence on the continent to 12 nations even as crypto prices suffer from a prolonged slump. Crypto traders in Croatia, Cyprus, Hungary, Romania, and Slovenia can access the over 100 cryptocurrencies available on the Winklevoss twins-founded platform, including dozens of DeFi tokens. The platform will accept euros and pounds. Financial institutions, fintech startups, and other corpo...

    NewsBusiness
    2 min read
    Zi Wang
  • EU. Image: Shutterstock.

    February Vote for MiCA Crypto Bill Is ‘Tentative’: European Union

    Europe’s landmark Markets in Crypto Assets regulation (MiCA) won’t be implemented until next February at the earliest, as EU lawmakers pushed back voting on the regulation due to the text’s length and complexity, an EU spokesperson told Decrypt. Lawmakers had previously set a tentative date of December. The delay will likely hold back regulation that would have introduced greater protection for retail crypto investors and certainty for the industry. The text for the bill was approved in June, wi...

    NewsBusiness
    2 min read
    Zi Wang
  • Image: Shutterstock

    Kraken Launches 70 Ethereum, Solana NFT Collections on New ‘Gasless’ Marketplace

    Kraken, the world’s sixth-largest cryptocurrency exchange, is launching its new NFT marketplace today, even as sales for digital collectibles continue to drop.  The exchange is hoping to entice current and would-be NFT collectors with its promise of gas-less transactions on Kraken—a sweet incentive likely aimed at cost-conscious buyers amid record worldwide inflation, which, coupled with crypto’s penchant for volatility, has left the industry in tatters.  But Kraken is not daunted, with a compan...

    NewsNFTs
    2 min read
    Zi Wang
  • Image: Shutterstock

    Polygon, Arweave Jump Double Digits as Meta’s Instagram Announces New NFT Tools

    It's been a big day for Arweave and Polygon. News that Instagram will leverage the Polygon blockchain to let users mint and sell NFTs has sent blockchain’s MATIC soaring by 14.3% since yesterday, per CoinGecko.  This is the social media platform’s latest Web3 integration amid intense competition with TikTok and Alphabet’s YouTube. Decentralized data storage protocol Arweave’s AR token is also up a whopping 59.2% since yesterday, per CoinGecko, after Instagram announced it would use Arweave for...

    NewsMarkets
    2 min read
    Zi Wang
  • Bitdeer is a cloud mining service backed by Jihan Wu. Image: Shutterstock.

    Third Time’s a Charm? Bitcoin Miner Bitdeer Delays $4B SPAC Deal Again

    Blue Safari Group, the SPAC firm taking crypto miner Bitdeer public at a $4 billion valuation, has just filed for another extension—the third in less than six months, and this time for up to a year in length. The firm was supposed to merge with Bitdeer by the end of December but said in the filing that it had “determined that there may not be sufficient time before December 14, 2022 (the Current Termination Date) to hold an Extraordinary General Meeting to obtain the requisite shareholder approv...

    NewsBusiness
    2 min read
    Zi Wang
  • Mastercard is one of the largest payments firms. Image: Shutterstock.

    Mastercard Taps Paxos to Launch Crypto Trading for Banks

    Mastercard plans to announce a program on Monday called Crypto Source that will make it easier for banks and other financial institutions to offer cryptocurrency trading. The program will act as a “bridge” between crypto trading platform Paxos and banks, the company said. Mastercard will also take care of regulatory compliance and security, two sticking points for banks wanting to get involved in offering crypto trading services. Specifically, Paxos will take care of custody and trading services...

    NewsBusiness
    2 min read
    Zi Wang
  • Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong at TechCrunch Disrupt 2018. Image: Wikimedia

    Coinbase CEO to Sell 2% of COIN Stock to Fund Life Extension, Scientific Research

    Brian Armstrong, CEO of the world’s second-largest crypto exchange Coinbase, announced on Twitter that he will sell off about 2% of his Coinbase holdings to fund scientific research, sending the stock price tumbling amid an executive exodus in the crypto industry. Armstrong tweeted on Friday, “I’m passionate about accelerating science and tech to help solve some of the biggest challenges in the world. To further this, I’m planning to sell about 2% of my Coinbase holdings over the next year to fu...

    NewsBusiness
    3 min read
    Zi Wang
  • Binance is the industry's largest crypto exchange. Image: Shutterstock.

    Binance Launches $500 Million Lending Pool for Bitcoin Miners

    Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has unveiled a $500 million lending pool for Bitcoin miners, as a combination of energy costs, low Bitcoin prices, and higher-than-ever mining difficulty strains the sector. The company said its Binance Pool project was designed to provide “secure debt financing services to both public and private blue-chip Bitcoin (BTC) mining and digital asset infrastructure companies globally.” Borrowers will have access to loans on an 18- to 24-month term...

    NewsBusiness
    3 min read
    Zi Wang
  • BTC and ETH. Image: Shutterstock

    Bitcoin, Ethereum Erase Losses Following Hot Inflation Report

    Bitcoin and Ethereum have recovered all losses from yesterday, following their plunging in response to the release of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index (CPI), which was up 8.2% from last year’s numbers. The leading cryptocurrency is trading at around $19,649 by press time, or up as much as 3.4% since yesterday’s low of $18,347.67, per CoinGecko. However, today’s upwards move still sees Bitcoin sit at close to year-lows, down 71.5% from its November 2021 high of $69,044. E...

    NewsMarkets
    2 min read
    Zi Wang
  • Polygon is itself a scaling solution for Ethereum. Image: Shutterstock.

    Uniswap, Aave Pile Into Polygon's Speedy Rollup Testnet for Ethereum

    Polygon announced today the release of its zkEVM public testnet, which will let developers test the deployment of privacy-enhancing zk-rollups in their decentralized applications (dApps). Zk-rollups are a much-hyped layer-2 scaling solution that promises to dramatically enhance the Ethereum blockchain’s performance by “rolling up” collections of transactions, which are then presented to the blockchain as a single block. This cuts costs and speeds up transactions, as the blockchain only needs to...

    NewsTechnology
    2 min read
    Zi Wang
  • For all its promise, the crypto industry is full of embarrassing muck-ups. Image: Shutterstock.

    New Tool Shows Just How Much Users Lost in Celsius Bankruptcy

    “Holy moly,” wrote one user. A new tool now lets anyone see just how much money some users have lost after the troubled crypto lender filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July.  It’s easy to check whether someone has made it onto the questionable “leaderboard” of biggest losers from the Celsius debacle, by simply typing their name into the convenient search bar. Oof. I expect plenty of revelations to come as folks sift through the Celsius court documents.https://t.co/JarFzXuKOl — Jameson Lopp (@l...

    NewsBusiness
    2 min read
    Zi Wang
  • A stash of BNB coins. Image: Shutterstock.

    BNB Chain Resumes Activity After 2 Million Token Exploit

    Have they tried turning it off and on again?  Binance’s BNB Chain is back up and running this morning after reports indicated a hacker made off with an estimated 2 million BNB tokens by exploiting a vulnerability in the network. “BNB Smart Chain (BSC) is running ok from 20+ mins ago. The validators are confirming their status, and the community infrastructure are upgrading as well,” tweeted the official BNB Chain account. At the time of the exploit, this sum came out to roughly $586 million, whi...

    NewsBusiness
    3 min read
    Zi Wang
  • SushiSwap is a forked version of Uniswap. Image: Shutterstock

    SUSHI Jumps 14% After Asset Manager GoldenTree Reveals $5.3M Stake in SushiSwap

    Global asset management firm GoldenTree revealed a $5.3 million token stake in decentralized exchange (DEX) SushiSwap, with the SUSHI token soaring 13% as bullish investors piled in. GoldenTree has around $50 billion in assets under management and said it had been “following SushiSwap for a while.” The asset managers recently launched their crypto-focused GoldenChain Asset Management division and said they were “psyched to be more active in all things Sushi.” GoldenTree said it plans to focus on...

    NewsCoins
    2 min read
    Zi Wang
  • Image: Shutterstock

    Investors Flee Gold and Bitcoin, Pushing Correlation to New 12-Month High

    Bitcoin’s correlation with gold has just hit its highest level in the last 12 months this week, as investors have been lured by a strong dollar amid rising interest rates. While Bitcoin has long been hailed as a “digital gold” and a hedge against inflation, like the yellow metal, it appears that investors disagree. Over the past few months, as inflation soared, both Bitcoin and gold have seen big drops in value, leading to a year-high correlation of +0.4, according to Kaiko Research. A correlat...

    NewsMarkets
    3 min read
    Zi Wang
  • Investments continue to roll into crypto startups. Image: Shutterstock

    Bored Apes' Otherside Builder Improbable Eyes Fresh Funding at $3BValuation: Report

    Gaming technology startup Improbable is set to raise a new funding round of $100 million as it sets its sights on creating metaverse worlds for buzzy Web3 firms like Bored Ape Yacht Club-creator Yuga Labs. The hyped, Softbank-backed company is finally close to achieving “operating profitability,” its CEO Herman Narula said, after struggling to market its technology built to deliver huge virtual worlds where thousands of players could interact at the same time.  “We are now a financially sustaina...

    NewsBusiness
    3 min read
    Zi Wang
  • A shadowy hacker at work. Image: Shutterstock

    Transit Swap DeFi Hacker Returns $16M in Stolen Ethereum, Binance Coin

    A hacker this morning returned 70% of the $23 million that was stolen from the decentralized exchange (DEX) Transit Swap on Saturday.  The cross-chain DEX yesterday revealed that the hacker took advantage of a bug in its code, which the company identified in a self-review.  "After a self-review by the Transit Finance team, it was confirmed that the incident was caused by a hacker attack due to a bug in the code. We are deeply sorry," tweeted Transit Swap. Transit Finance is the name of the large...

    NewsDeFi
    2 min read
    Zi Wang
  • Telefónica is Spain's largest telecom firm. Image: Shutterstock.

    Telefónica Invests in Crypto Exchange, Launches Payments Pilot

    Spain’s largest telecom company Telefónica has led a key investment round in the country's largest crypto exchange Bit2Me. Local reports indicate that the investment was for $29 million. Bit2Me declined disclosing the details of the deal.  "At Bit2Me we are always aiming to bring cryptocurrencies closer to everyone, and through the Telefónica integration we have the opportunity to reach many more people," a Bit2Me representative told Decrypt via email. "I think it’s quite a natural union, taking...

    NewsBusiness
    2 min read
    Zi Wang
  • Image: Shutterstock

    CFTC Chair Says Crypto Regulations Could Double Bitcoin Price

    Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) chairman Rostin Behnam said on Thursday that Bitcoin might “double in price” if it traded in a CFTC-regulated market. The chairman added that the crypto industry had “a massive opportunity for institutional inflows that will only occur if there’s a regulatory structure.” The comments come as the crypto industry faces intensifying scrutiny globally, from Brazil to Australia to Tether’s well-documented legal woes stateside.  However, some governments, l...

    NewsBusiness
    2 min read
    Zi Wang
  • NFTs. Image: Shutterstock

    Coinbase Cloud, Chainlink Launch Price Oracles for NFT Floor Pricing

    Coinbase will introduce NFT floor pricing feeds via its Cloud service, allowing developers to access real-time NFT prices to create new DeFi applications like NFT lending markets and NFT indexes. The feature was developed with Chainlink Labs, the development team behind the Chainlink oracle solution, and leverages Coinbase Cloud’s NFT pricing algorithm to scan every NFT transaction in a collection across major marketplaces, estimating the current floor price and updating it as new transactions a...

    NewsTechnology
    2 min read
    Zi Wang
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