Key takeaways: Nate Chastain, a former executive at leading NFT marketplace OpenSea, has been charged with wire fraud and money laundering Allegedly, Chastain used insider knowledge of which NFTs will be featured on the OpenSea frontpage for his personal financial gain Chastain left OpenSea in September 2021 after the “insider trading” scandal first came to…
According to Reuters citing reports by the Interfax news outlet, the Russian officials are “actively” discussing the idea of using cryptocurrencies in “transactions for international settlements.” The leading official in the country’s finance ministry policy department, Ivan Chebeskov, revealed that cryptocurrencies could be a viable option for the country to partly bypass Western sanctions.
The European Commission, the leading executive branch of the European Union (EU), is considering putting severe restrictions on large market cap stablecoins. According to CoinDesk, which first reported the news, the EU officials are in favor of regulating the sector with strict measures.
Thailand Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued a directive banning the use of digital assets to pay for services and goods as of April 1st.
On Monday, the EU Parliament will be voting on the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) bill, which features provisions aimed to limit the energy-intensive Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining in the Union. For context, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and a number of other digital assets fall under the PoW classification.
Binance, the world’s largest crypto trading platform in terms of trading volume, has announced that Mastercard and Visa cards will no longer be available to Russian customers. The decision comes days after Visa and Mastercard decided to drastically limit the capabilities of their payment networks as a result of economic sanctions levied against the Russian economy.
The bulls had the upper hand today, as the total cryptocurrency market cap increased by close to 6% and reached $1.89 trillion in the early hours of Wednesday. Bitcoin broke $42,000 on the heels of more than 8% 24-hour gains, while Ethereum and other major altcoins followed in the footsteps of the world’s oldest and largest crypto and generally posted high single-digit gains. In total, 93 out of the top 100 digital currencies traded in the green zone at press time.
Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange has placed more than 25,000 blockchain addresses linked to Russian individuals and businesses on its internal blacklist. In a Monday’s blog post, Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal wrote that the blacklisting doesn’t come as a direct result of Russia’s war with Ukraine, but rather as a result of multi-year efforts to curb illicit activity.
In light of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the US, and its allies enacted strict economic sanctions in hopes of shortening the conflict. Several Russian banks were cut off from the global SWIFT inter-bank system, while Visa, Mastercard, and many other businesses decided to limit their services or entirely withdraw from the Russian market.