Some Major news from yesterday​:rotating_light:
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OFAC imposes sanctions on Ekaterina Zhdanova for laundering over $100 million via Russian oligarchs and assisting ransomware affiliates.
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OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer announced job cuts as part of a restructuring effort to revamp the company’s culture, product, and technology. The move, affecting about half the workforce, is aimed at strengthening OpenSea’s position in the NFT market under “OpenSea 2.0”.
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Mango Markets exploiter— Avi Eisenberg’s trial has been postponed to April 8, 2024, following the judge’s agreement to delay the case just before the scheduled trial. He said he needs more time to prepare for trial. Federal prosecutors claim Eisenberg engaged in commodities manipulation and wire fraud by deploying a lucrative trading strategy against the Solana-based decentralized exchange Mango Markets in October 2022.
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In October, the U.S. added 150,000 jobs, slightly below economist forecasts of 180,000 and a decline from September’s 297,000. The unemployment rate also increased to 3.9% compared to the predicted 3.8%, alongside downward revisions to August and September job gains totaling 101,000.
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Blockchain startup Cubist launched CubeSigner, a “wallet-as-a-service” product designed to address the challenge of providing accessible yet secure account keys. This solution allows users to request signatures through revocable signing sessions, safeguarding key material in secure hardware to prevent accidental leaks or theft by attackers.
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Voyager Digital’s native token (VGX) rose 20% on Friday following news that a Voyager wallet sent 52 million tokens ($7.3 million) to a burn address. The wallet, known as “Voyager 1,” had remained inactive for 225 days before initiating the transfer, including a test transaction of 123.45 tokens.
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The US Attorney’s Office has initiated a civil forfeiture action to reclaim $54 million in crypto associated with an illegal drug operation in New Jersey, primarily consisting of Eth. The funds were linked to Christopher Castelluzzo, a convicted drug dealer serving a 20-year prison sentence.
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Aave’s stablecoin asset GHO has been facing difficulties maintaining its peg to the U.S. dollar, currently hovering around $0.966 per unit. It hit an all-time low of $0.917 five days ago. To address this, Aave’s Liquidity Committee is implementing a strategy involving static pools and liquidity management.
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FTX’s financial advisors, Alvarez & Marsal North America, have been providing customer transaction data to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) over the past months, as per recent court filings. The advisors received subpoena-related requests from various FBI offices to analyze data and transactions, as well as extract specific information. One of their tasks included investigating transactions and customer accounts linked to a new FBI Philadelphia subpoena request.
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HSBC introduced a platform enabling the tokenization of gold bullion, projecting a market reach of $525 billion. Mark Williamson, the bank’s global head of FX and commodities partnerships and propositions, highlighted the tradability of these gold tokens on HSBC’s platform, with the bank overseeing custody of the gold bars stored in its London vaults.
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Tory Green, COO of decentralized GPU cloud service provider io[.]net, pointed out that the discrepancy between GPU demand and supply is hindering AI progress. This gap arises from manufacturers’ inability to swiftly scale up production to meet the escalating demand.
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Bitcoin Magazine rebuts the Federal Reserve’s lawsuit over FedNow parody merchandise, citing First Amendment rights.
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Bitcoin mining revenue soared by $131.45 million in October compared to September, largely attributed to a notable increase in BTC prices. However, fee earnings experienced a slight decline, dropping by $5.44 million from the prior month. October marked the second-highest monthly revenue of the year from BTC block rewards.
#notmine
