Bitstamp made an announcement that Julian Sawyer has been joined as Chief Executive Officer of the company, as it’s co-founder and former CEO Nejc Kodrič moves into a new advisory role on the company’s Board of Directors.

Julian Sawyer, who currently serves as the managing director of the UK and Europe. At major global crypto exchange Gemini, however becomes the second Bitstamp’s CEO in history. The replacement is reportedly a response to the dynamic growth of the exchange over the past nine years.

In addition, Sawyer has over 20 years of banking and fintech experience. In May 2015, Sawyer co-founded Starling Bank, where he served as CEO until 2019. The exec also served as a consultant and advisor to other banks and founded Bluerock Consulting.

Moreover, Bitstamp is ranked the eighth biggest crypto exchange by daily trading volume, which is around $332 million, according to data from CoinGecko. The exchange provides trading services for over seven major cryptocurrencies.

Bitstamp has reached many milestones in just the past 12 months under Kodrič’s strategic guidance. The company introduced a new matching engine from Nasdaq Technologies, adding a level of speed and reliability. That puts the company on-par with the world’s greatest exchanges. 

Kodrič said,

Based on the direction of the company, Julian’s expertise in the complexities of global banking. Makes him the right choice to lead Bitstamp into its next phase. He understands the possibilities that cryptocurrency holds for our world and how to integrate it with existing financial structures.

Furthermore, Bitstamp was the first exchange to go live on BCB Group’s BLINC network. And the launch partner for Silvergate’s SEN Bitcoin leverage product. 

OKEx, a leading Asian cryptocurrency exchange has caused selling panic in the crypto market. However, suddenly after suspending its service to cooperate with an investigation.

Chinese news agency Caixin reported that one of the founders of OKEx, Mingxing Xu (also called Star Xu), has been questioned by the police. Moreover, the executive was investigated “at least a week ago” and also was absent from work sometimes.

Many top cryptocurrencies are sold out. On the news with the price of bitcoin on OKEx decreasing 3% in 30 minutes. Furthermore, touching $11,182 Friday morning, prior starting to rebound to $11,326 at last check.

In an accompanying notice on its website, the exchange displayed that one of its private key holders was “currently cooperating with a public security bureau in investigations where required.” The concerned private key holder had been out of contact with the exchange.

According to Red Li, the founder of China’s digital currency news release 8btc, OKEx had first announced it would terminate withdrawals by 15 PM but later changed it to 11 AM.

In March 2020, OKEx suffered a system failure. It caused its perpetual swap order book to lag for a short duration. The exchange assured to reasonably compensate any users who had failed transactions due to the failure.

Bithumb, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in South Korea, was reportedly raided for the third time, by Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency’s Intelligent Crime Investigation Unit.

Police reportedly seized a number of shares in Bithumb Holdings. Despite this, the holdings belongs to Bithumb Korea Director Kim Byung-Geon. In contrast, the seizure action granted by the Seoul Central District Court on September 14.

Hence, the investigation was after it allegedly sold its native BXA tokens for over 30 billion won ($25 million). Although, the sale is based on a former takeover deal with the Bithumb Korea Group. 

As per the Blockchain Transparency Institute (BTI) report, Bithumb was ranked fourth in the world. Furthermore, second in Korea based on the daily trade volume. According to Coingecko, the exchange supports 108 cryptocurrencies and 109 trading pairs. Despite, with a 24-hour trading volume of $235 million, at the time of writing.

At the beginning of September, the trading volume of Bithumb was over 600 million. Currently, the trading volume reduced to 250 million.

The exchange’s initial raid happened on September 2, and the second raid on September 7. Samjong KPMG, beginning of this month completed a letter of intent (LOI). By the way, explaining that it planned to sell its own stake in Bithumb Holdings.

Likewise, last month South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Coinbit was seized by police. For allegedly making false transactions to obtain 100 billion won ($84m). 

Fisco representatives filed a complaint on Binance in the Northern California District Court for the stolen funds from Zaif seeking the return of over $9 million.

In the 2018 hack, Fisco, the Japanese exchange has lost nearly $60 million worth of crypto. This includes some units of Bitcoin (5966), Bitcoin Cash, and Mona coin is Japan’s first native cryptocurrency.

However, the hackers sent 1,451 bitcoin to an address that belongs to Binance. Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. The total bitcoin worth was $9.4 million at that time. Zaif is the name of exchange during the hack.

Fisco explains that Binance uses Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS is to host the exchange’s servers. It has the ability to select whichever AWS data center for its operations. Since most of the infrastructure is in California the jurisdiction was in Northern California District Court.

The laundering happened due to Binance’s allegedly lax know-your-customer (KYC), and anti-money laundering (AML) protocols. These do not measure up to the industry standards. 

Fisco said,

“Binance failed to implement security measures that were standard throughout the industry.”

Either intentionally or negligently Binance did not stop the transfers. Even though it had the chance to do it. Fisco demands Binance to pay for its loss of the laundered funds. Zaif, and its customers suffered financial losses as a result of Binance’s lack of action.

Similarly, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) found that Binance has weaker regulation. This has been singled out by them for often moving to avoid stronger regulatory oversight.

Binance has involved in a series of recent class-action lawsuits. One among them was the class-action lawsuit against the exchange was filed in the Southern District of New York. Recently, Binance has also delisted the exchange’s own native token BNB.

Bitcoins inflows are high on exchanges, with the motive of selling it but the users are not booking orders despite the BTC price drop. 

According to Chainalysis data, there was a 26.36 BTC change in Bitcoin held on exchanges which is positive and above the 180-day average. This indicates that there is an increase in Bitcoin held on exchanges. Bitcoin inflows exceed above 110% in crypto exchanges.

Change in Bitcoin on exchanges (Source: Chainalysis)   

Bitcoin the first and top cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization. At the start of September, Bitcoin experienced a price drop from nearly $12,000 to $10,000. As per CoinGecko, BTC is changing hands at $10,654,  at the time of writing.

BTC/USD Price Chart (Source: Trading view)

Meanwhile, the overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $350.9 billion. Bitcoin’s dominance index presently at 56.4%. When the BTC price goes up, there will be more inflows than outflows on the crypto exchanges. Users are waiting for a price rise to a particular level to execute their sell orders and get on profits.

Moreover, Bitcoin interests are increasing worldwide, Nigerian shows more interest in the asset than in any other country in the world. The country had a transactional value of $34.4 million in the Q2 of 2020 alone. 

With many developments happening across various blockchain industries, the crypto community may expect more surprises in the space. It is also clear that BTC is on track to reach various milestones. 

Crypto exchange Binance Uganda announced that it will delist its native token Binance Coin (BNB) for not meeting the trading standards. 

Binance Uganda, an East African crypto exchange that provides the most powerful fiat-to-crypto trading platform. Meanwhile, BNB is presently the 8th largest cryptocurrency with a total market capitalization of $3.4 billion, according to Coinmarketcap. 

As per the announcement, Binance Coin (BNB) doesn’t meet the high-level trading standard. This resulted in the delisting of BNB from its exchange. The said trading standard includes the trading volume and assets’ liquidity.

In the announcement, Binance said,

“Unfortunately, when this trading standard is not met, their performance is subject to review and may result in the delisting of the coin or token. Based on our most recent reviews, we have decided to delist and cease trading on all trading pairs for the following token at 10:00AM EAT 2020/09/17. Binance Coin (BNB)”

Binance Uganda will stop all BNB deposits on Sept. 10. They will continue with their withdrawal operations till Nov. 6. By September 17, The trading pair BNB/UGX will be officially removed.

Initially, the total supply of BNB was 200 million coins. Due to the continuous coin burn, the supply has been gradually decreasing. As per the recent report, BNB is considered to be undervalued, while Binance leads its way. 

Eterbase, a European premier digital asset exchange in Slovakia. It has reported that hackers have stolen around 1.6 million from the exchange hot wallet.

In addition, Eterbase is one of the top crypto exchanges providing top-class services to its users. In contrast, as per Coinmarketcap data, the current trading volume is around 2 million.

Unfortunately, there was a hack on the Eterbase exchange for the first time.

Hack Details:

Total Amount Stolen: 1.6 MILLION.

Cryptocurrency Stolen: BITCOIN, ETHEREUM, XRP, TEZOS, ALGORAND, and TRON.

Hot Wallet hack date: 07-08-2020 (Monday-Midnight).

Moreover, the Eterbase team has officially announced, and confirmed the hack on Telegram. Furthermore, the team has mentioned, “Due to ongoing investigation more details cannot be announced currently.”

Official Announcement Telegram Channel of Eterbase

Moreover, the exchange took immediate action after the hack. However, it suspends trading, and also EU trading till September 10.

At last instance, NewsCrypto team tried to reach the exchange to gather information. Regarding their steps in the future. However, the team did not get any response yet from Eterbase exchange.

Source: CoinDesk

Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency’s Intelligent Crime Investigation Unit raided Bithumb for the second time in connection to the BXA token fraud allegations against its Chairman.

Bithumb is the largest crypto asset exchange in South Korea. It has over 8 million registered users. One million mobile app users and the current overall volume has exceeded $1 trillion.

According to the local Seoul Shinman publication, the Seoul Police entered Bithumb’s headquarters and seized evidence relating to a $25 million fraud investigation linked to the sale of BXA token.

The investors in these tokens faced losses as the exchange did not list them on its platform for trading. In this raid authorities target the offices relating to Bithumb Holdings, the parent company of Bithumb Korea, which operates the crypto exchange platform.

Bithumb’s Chairman Lee Jung-hoon, accused of illicitly moving funds overseas. The first raid happened last week for the same case. 

Despite the investigations, South Korea’s largest exchange keeps holding its position on the market. It has also got global reach and impressive influence in the crypto space.

Bithumb has recently launched its smart token BTCS, along with ETHS, XRPS, LTCS, BCHS, BSVS, and COMPS.

As per tokenmarketcap data, the crypto exchange is still the ninth-largest crypto exchange worldwide. The reported daily trading volume accounts for about $250 million at the time of publishing, down around 16.58 % over the past 24 hours.

Leading digital financial services platform Bitrue has today announced upgrades to its existing services that will introduce the benefits of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) products to its existing Centralized Finance (CeFi) products. This will allow Bitrue to become the world’s first hybrid exchange, with further pushes into DeFi products planned for the future.

The first DeFi service will be a peer-to-peer matching engine connecting borrowers and lenders, with borrowers receiving interest on the coins they add to the liquidity pool. The service is expected to launch in Q1 2021.

Bitrue Financial Services will be supported through a new cryptocurrency token, Bitrue Finance Token (BFT), which will be distributed to Bitrue users starting this week and listed in mid-September.

In keeping with the spirit of DeFi, Bitrue will also be implementing upgrades to their existing ​loan service​, starting with a move to make publicly viewable the wallets that contain collateralized funds. The increased transparency will be a step towards giving users as much power over their finances as possible.

DeFi products have seen stratospheric growth in 2020 and represent a clear future for the digital asset industry. In this nascent stage activity has focused almost exclusively on Ethereum-based ERC20 tokens, which excludes 70% of digital assets, including major coins such as XRP. Bitrue’s new hybrid model will progressively facilitate cross-chain interaction of all major blockchains, thereby providing users with a one-stop shop for all of their coins.

“The inherent trustless nature of DeFi means that our users can always be 100% satisfied that they are getting fair deals. It fits perfectly with the very reason that we started Bitrue – to provide financial services that bring equitable opportunities to all people, instead of enriching the elite few at the top. At Bitrue we have users with a wide range of backgrounds and requirements – from ordinary users who are building up nest eggs to large institutions looking to control their risk. These people all have different requirements and expectations towards cryptocurrencies, and the new capabilities we can offer as a result of this hybrid model will be able to satisfy these wide-ranging needs.” said Curis Wang, CEO of Bitrue.

About Bitrue

Launched in July 2018, Bitrue is a diversified financial services platform with support for trading, loans, and investments. Bitrue aims to utilize blockchain technology to bring financial opportunities to everybody regardless of their location or financial position. They have offices worldwide and continue to develop new features at a rapid speed to fully service the new wave of the digital economy.

Source: Cointelegraph

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South Korea cryptocurrency exchange Coinbit seized by police for allegedly making false transactions to obtain 100 billion won ($84m).

As per the report from Seoul Shinmun, South Korea’s oldest newspaper, police accused Coinbit Owner Choi Mo and other managers for handling multiple accounts, controlling cryptocurrency prices, and raising transaction volume. 

Authorities disclosed that the exchange has divided into two functional accounts. The first account consists of major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP), and Tether (USDT). Here using ghost accounts the trading was done to inflate the trading volumes.

The second account contains only smaller crypto and altcoins, wherein crypto transactions with other exchanges were stopped, enabling Choi and his team to control the supply. With this strategy, they were able to directly analyze the market margin by trading large amounts of coins at certain times.

The report findings were withheld to the public until the police completed their investigation. As of press time, Coinbit declined by -2.16% (7d) in terms of trading volume. 

A wash trade is generally a form of market manipulation in which an investor simultaneously sells and buys the same asset to create misleading and artificial activity in the marketplace deemed illegal in most jurisdictions.

Coinbit only had 252,000 visitors within the last three months, being overtaken by Bithumb and Upbit. The number of affected customers by the incident were still unknown at this time. As South Korea continues to draft crypto laws, there is concern that more attacks like these could follow.

Likewise, the executives of UPbit, also one of South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, have made fraudulent transactions using a fake corporate account to make fake orders worth 254 trillion won ($226.2 billion) to inflate trading volume back in December 2018.