Did Circle 🔫 BUSD?

In today's edition: 🎙️ A new podcast on crypto scams, 🤔 Aave's freeze proposal, BTC fees are 📈,🕵️‍♀️ a new development in the SBF case, and more!

February 14, 2023

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New Podcast Today!

Erin West, Deputy District Attorney of California’s Santa Clara County, has heard firsthand tales of scammers preying on victims for hundreds of thousands of dollars. She joins the show to explain the scamming technique known as “pig butchering,” how it estimated to have raked in tens of billions worldwide, and why it has led to suicide in some cases. West makes the case for why victims need empathy and how law enforcement is working with exchanges to claw back scammed funds.

Show highlights:

  • what exactly the “pig butchering” method entails — and why it’s called that

  • the devastating stories that have arisen from these crypto scams

  • fresh intel on where the fraudsters are located and whether the scammers may be connected to foreign governments 

  • how the victims are often turned away by U.S. law enforcement agencies

  • how Erin’s agency was able to return almost $1 million to victims late last year

  • how law enforcement agencies around the U.S. are lacking crypto education

  • what Erin recommends for victims of “pig butchering” scams

What’s Poppin’?

Paxos rival Circle alerted the NYDFS to Binance’s alleged mismanagement of BUSD token reserves.

The SEC and CFTC will have to wait until the DOJ’s criminal case against Sam Bankman-Fried concludes before they can pursue their own charges.

Aave’s community members are looking into freezing BUSD on V2 of the Ethereum market.

Over 80,500 Ordinals have been minted to the Bitcoin blockchain, leading to the first non-monetary rise in network activity in history.

On Unchained Premium

Brian Crain Foresaw the Crackdown on Crypto Staking

In this premium interview, Laura talks with the CEO and cofounder of Chorus One, Brian Crain. They discussed everything about staking in crypto, the upcoming Shanghai upgrade, and the regulatory landscape.

In Other News…✍️✍️✍️

  • Paxos stated that it "categorically disagrees" with the SEC's classification of Binance USD (BUSD) as a security.

  • President Biden plans to appoint Federal Reserve Vice Chairwoman Lael Brainard, who has been working toward a digital dollar, as his leading economic advisor.

  • According to Nansen, a blockchain intelligence firm, Binance saw a net outflow of $831 million in the last 24 hours as a result of investor apprehension regarding regulatory measures on the Binance USD stablecoin.

  • Magic Eden, the leading marketplace for Solana NFTs, announced the termination of 22 employees on Monday, attributing the decision to company restructuring amid the current difficult phase in the crypto industry.

  • Iris Energy, a Bitcoin mining firm, said that its hash rate is recovering to pre-FTX levels and its self-mining capacity is expected to increase from 2.0 exahashes per second to 5.5 exahashes per second over the next few months.

  • New EU draft rules mandate banks holding cryptocurrencies to assign highest risk rating and hold equal capital to crypto assets, with 1,250% risk weight until 2024.

The $$$ Corner…

  • Swiss digital asset infrastructure firm Taurus SA, specializing in servicing financial institutions in Europe, closed a $65 million Series B funding round.

  • Caldera, a Web3 infrastructure provider, secured $9 million in funding from two rounds led by Sequoia Capital and Dragonfly.

What Do You Meme

📈 Your Market Update 📉

  • BTC is up .4%, trading at $21,830

  • ETH is down .94%, trading at $1,513

  • BTC dominance: 40.39%

  • Crypto market cap: $1.04 trillion

*All data as of today, 5 am ET

Recommended Reads

  1. Bloomberg’s Matt Levine on the SEC crack down on crypto

  2. The Block: SEC action against Paxos paints regulatory target on stablecoins

  3. Thor Hartvigsen on layer 2 scaling solutions:

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