Here’s a quick breakdown of the biggest news stories and developments in the cryptocurrency sector for October 18, 2022.
1. Binance and FTX announce that they will be listing Aptos
Major cryptocurrency exchanges Binance and FTX have both announced that they will be listing Aptos, a highly-anticipated blockchain project that has received $350 million in venture capital backing this year alone.
Both exchanges will begin offering APT trading at 01:00 UTC on October 19. On Binance, APT will be available in trading pairs against USDT, BUSD and BTC, while FTX will offer APT trading against USD and USDT.
Binance has plans to launch perpetual contracts for APT shortly after spot trading goes live, while FTX hasn’t announced any plans for APT perpetuals yet.
The Aptos project has seen some controversy because of its relatively late publication of APT’s tokenomics, and some users have also expressed concerns about the distribution of the APT supply.
2. Shardeum raises $18.2 million
Shardeum, a layer 1 blockchain project co-founded by WazirX CEO Nischal Shetty, has raised $18.2 million in a seed funding round. The round was backed by a host of investors, including Jane Street, Spartan Group, CoinGecko, Struck Crypto and others.
The Shardeum platform sports compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), and uses a technique called sharding to enhance its scalability. According to the project, Shardeum’s design also enables low hardware requirements for operating validator nodes.
The Shardeum team says the fresh capital will be used to grow marketing efforts, and expand the size of their development team.
3. German crypto-friendly neobank Nuri shuts down
Nuri, a Germany-based neobank that provided services for cryptocurrency investors, has announced that it will be shutting down operations after failing to secure investments necessary to continue the business. In a statement, Nuri CEO Kristina Walcker Mayer cited the “the tough economical & political environment” as one of the main reasons why Nuri was not able to raise capital or find a buyer for the business.
Nuri is yet another victim of the 2022 cryptocurrency market crash, which has led to multiple bankruptcies and widespread layoffs in the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry. Notably, Nuri was partnered with now-bankrupt crypto lender Celsius to allow customers to earn yield on their Bitcoin. After Celsius froze withdrawals from its platform in June, Nuri customers that were using the Bitcoin savings account product had their coins frozen as well.
Nuri, which was founded in 2015, was previously known as Bitwala. The company had received backing from venture capital firms such as Sony Financial Ventures, Coparian and Earlybird Venture Capital.
4. The FTX exchange and its billionaire CEO are being investigated by Texas regulator
The Texas State Securities Board is investigating the FTX cryptocurrency exchange and its CEO Sam Bankman-Fried to determine whether the exchange sold an investment product that runs afoul of state laws. The Washington Post writes that the probe is focused on whether FTX offered interest-bearing crypto deposit accounts, which the regulator argues qualify as securities, to residents of Texas without the necessary registration.
Joe Rotunda, the enforcement director of the Texas regulator, has also asked for FTX to be blocked from acquiring the assets of bankrupt crypto lender Voyager until the matter is resolved.
5. Ripple announces second wave of recipients for its $250M Creator Fund
Blockchain-powered fintech firm Ripple has unveiled the second wave of recipients for its $250 million Creator Fund. The fund was established in September last year and aims to support NFT projects that are building on the XRP Ledger platform.
The projects selected for the second wave include 9LEVEL9, Anifie, Capital Block, Cross-Metaverse Avatars, NFT Master, SYFR Projects and Thinking Crypto. The second wave of funding targets a diverse set of use cases for NFTs, spanning the gaming, music, media and metaverse sectors.
