ICODROPS WEEKLY NEWS DIGEST

Last week's Hot Altcoin events

⚡️J.P. Morgan and Visa are teaming up to streamline cross-border payments using their private blockchain networks, Liink and B2B Connect.

⚡️Google selects Coinbase to take cloud payments with cryptocurrencies and will use its custody tool.

⚡️Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong plans to sell 2% of his Coinbase holdings over the next year to fund the scientific research.

⚡️Binance has completed the 21st quarterly BNB token burn of 2,065,152.42 BNB worth $547.2 million.

⚡️Tether has reduced its commercial paper holdings to zero, replacing those holdings with U.S. Treasury bills.

⚡️Blockchain address is now available in Google Search.

⚡️Coinbase gets regulatory approval in Singapore.

⚡️Blockchain.com gets Singapore licence.

⚡️Crypto.com will set up its European regional headquarters in Paris. The firm will invest 150 million euros ($145.7 million) in France to support the establishment of its market operations.

⚡️According to FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX v2 will go live on November 21st.

⚡️Offchain Labs, the parent company of the Ethereum scaling solution Arbitrum, has acquired Prysmatic Labs.

⚡️Huobi Global’s majority shareholder Leon Li has agreed to sell his entire stake in the crypto exchange to Hong Kong-based investment firm About Capital, reportedly spearheaded by Tron founder Justin Sun. Meanwhile, Justin Sun has announced that he has become a member of the Global Advisory Board of Huobi Global.

⚡️Blockchain network Tron has entered into an agreement with the government of Dominica to issue a national fan token Dominica Coin (DMC) to promote the Caribbean island's heritage and tourism.

⚡️Token holders of DeFi project Yam Finance are debating whether to dissolve the project’s treasury and distribute the funds among token holders in an attempt to salvage what’s left of the project.

⚡️Washington, D.C.-based policy nonprofit Coin Center is suing the Treasury Department over its sanctioning of Tornado Cash, the open source software that can be used to anonymize transactions on the Ethereum blockchain.

⚡️Yuga Labs, creators of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, is facing a probe by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission into whether sales of some of its offerings violate federal law. The regulator is looking into whether certain assets could be treated more like stocks and therefore should follow the same rules, according to the report. It is also looking at the distribution of APEcoin, the token linked to the collection.

⚡️Binance Pool is launching a $500 million lending project to support crypto miners and digital infrastructure providers.

⚡️Crypto-native asset management firm BlockTower is launching a dedicated venture arm as well as a new $150 million fund backed by BPI France and Mass Mutual.

⚡️Stellar Development Foundation launches $100M fund to support native smart contract adoption.

⚡️Portugal has long exempted individuals from paying capital gains tax on crypto earnings, but Finance Minister Fernando Medina says it’s time to pay up. Medina is calling for a 28% capital gains tax on earnings made from cryptoassets held less than one year.

⚡️The largest hacker who stole more than $23 million from decentralized exchange (DEX) Transit Swap will take a bounty worth almost $690,000 as part of a deal to return user funds. Known as “white hat #1,” the hacker will return 10,000 Binance Coin (BNB), about $2.75 million in two tranches.

⚡️Solana DeFi platform Mango Markets was just drained for over $100M.

⚡️TempleDAO suffered an exploit on one of its staking vaults for 1,830 ETH, roughly $2.3 million. The hacker has moved stolen funds via crypto mixer Tornado Cash

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🚀ICOs/IEOs news

📈Elrond has introduced AashSwap, a new startup on the Maiar Launchpad. AashSwap is the first Elrond-based DeFi protocol to leverage a stableswap model.

Elrond has announced that KYC and staking snapshots of the AshSwap public sale are live.

▫️KYC submissions will be enabled until October 21st, 11:00 UTC

▫️Staking snapshots will span until the 21st of October

▫️Buy ASH lottery tickets on October 24

▫️Lottery results on October 25

💰Uniswap Labs has raised $165 million in Series B funding, led by Polychain Capital and with participation from a16z crypto, Paradigm, SV Angel, and Variant.

💰nxyz, the web3 platform that enables data infrastructure for blockchains, announced a $40M Series A led by Paradigm. Investors: Coinbase Ventures, Greylock Partners, Sequoia Capital. Web3 angels: Balaji Srinivasan, Jaynti (JD) Kanani, Jing Wang, Packy McCormick, Surojit Chatterjee, Ryan Selkis, and others. The funds will be used to expand nxyz’s team, build support across emerging use cases, and expand across different chains.

💰Pillow, a Singapore-based crypto investment startup, has raised a $18.1 million Series A. The funding round was co-led by Accel and Quona Capital with participation from Jump Capital and Elevation Capital.

💰Crypto hardware technology startup Fabric Systems has raised $13 million in seed equity funding. Participating in the round were Metaplanet - the investment vehicle of Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn – Blockchain.com and 8090 Partners.

💰Decentralized finance platform Zerion has raised $12.3 million in a Series B. The round is led by Wintermute Ventures and other backers — including Mosaic, Coinbase Ventures, Alchemy and Placeholder.

📌Clearpool has announced that CPOOL staking is now live.

📌Polygon launches testnet for Layer 2 network Hermez. DeFi protocols Aave and Uniswap will be launching on its testnet.

📌Avalanche is officially live on OpenSea.

📌BUSD is now available for deposits and withdrawals on the Polygon network.

📌Bounce has introduced Bounce V3.

📌UniLend v2 will be launching on Ethereum Testnet on 27th October.

📈Huobi Global has listed XEN (XEN) and XEN Crypto (BXEN).

📈Following Huobi, Gate has listed XEN.

📈Coinbase and Coinbase Pro have listed Illuvium (ILV) and Hedera (HBAR).

📈Binance will delist and cease trading on all trading pairs for the following tokens at 2022-10-24 09:00 UTC: District0x (DNT), New Bitshares (NBS), Bitcoin Gold (BTG), and Token Club (TCT).

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