Bitcoin Price: US$43,762.69 (-0.70%)
Ethereum Price: US$ 2,232.70 (-2.64%)
Blockchain infrastructure company Blocknative has launched ethernow.xyz, a real-time explorer tool funded by a grant from the Ethereum Foundation. The tool provides insights into Ethereum’s mempool, aiming to reduce block-level manipulation and protect against front-running bots. Blocknative CEO Matt Cutler likened it to Etherscan for pre-chain data, and it could help improve transparency, offer transaction status feedback, suggest Maximal Extractible Value (MEV) protections, and assist stablecoin issuers in monitoring transactions. Meanwhile, a senior official in Montenegro plans to extradite Do Kwon to the U.S. to face charges related to the collapse of terraUSD and Luna, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. The Bank of England cautions that the growth of asset tokenisation could pose greater financial stability risks, citing potential issues from unbacked crypto and stablecoins, increased interconnectedness, and direct exposures for systemic institutions. The BOE stresses the need for ongoing monitoring and global cooperation among regulators.
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) is barred from returning to the UAE until sentencing, as a federal judge, Richard Jones, sided with the U.S. Department of Justice’s argument that CZ, who pleaded guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act, poses a flight risk due to his considerable wealth, absence of an extradition treaty with the UAE, and family residence in the UAE. CZ’s sentencing is scheduled for February 2024, and he faces potentially up to 18 months in prison. Meanwhile, as Bitcoin’s rally paused, ether (ETH) and Solana (SOL) surged to fresh 19-month highs. ETH hit $2,372, and SOL rose over 8% to $69. Bitcoin faced profit-taking after nearing $45,000, with traders expressing concerns of a potential “bull trap.” Additionally, Bitcoin miner Hive Digital Technologies reported that its acquisition of a fleet of Bitmain mining rigs has already paid off, thanks to the significant increase in Bitcoin’s price. Hive Digital acquired 3,750 Bitmain S19J rigs in December 2022, and since then, it has purchased a total of 29,000 ASICs, benefiting from attractive prices and improving its global fleet efficiency.
Binance’s Abu Dhabi unit has withdrawn its application with the Emirate’s financial regulator, the Financial Services Regulatory Authority, stating it’s unrelated to the firm’s $4.3 billion settlement with U.S. authorities in November. The application, which would have allowed Binance to manage a collective investment fund, was withdrawn by BV Investment Management. A Binance spokesperson clarified that the decision was part of a broader assessment of the exchange’s “global licensing needs” and affirmed that Binance Limited still has permission to conduct crypto custody-related financial services in the Abu Dhabi Global Market. Meanwhile, Harvard scientists, funded by DARPA, claim to have achieved a breakthrough in quantum computing, creating a processor that tackles noise issues, a significant hurdle in scaling quantum systems. The processor adds a post-processing error-detection phase, offering a potential pathway for scaling quantum computers beyond the Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum era. Additionally, Polygon co-founder Jordi Baylina anticipates the completion of “Polygon 2.0” in 2024, unifying the platform’s various Ethereum layer-2 scaling networks through zero-knowledge proofs (ZK-proofs) and providing continuous, unbounded block space. The evolution aims to connect different networks, share liquidity, and enhance composability.
Source:
https://cointelegraph.com
https://coindesk.com
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