Binance listed $RPL in innovation zone on January 18th.The token saw 50% price hike with volume up 180% within 24 hours.

• Huobi delisted 33 tokens in one day. Read more.
• Binance will delist $BEAM on January 26. Read more.

It has been a quiet week on new projects. $MTG IEO has just been concluded on Gate.io.

$MTG is a token for incentivising on-chain transactions. It is created by a team that has chosen to remain anonymous.

TL: DR

• DCG has reportedly received offers for CoinDesk
• Genesis may have to file for bankruptcy this week
• There will be dividends payment until further notice

There’s still no end in sight for the troubles at Digital Currency Group (DCG). Yesterday, it was announced that the company was halting dividend payments until further notice.

"In response to the current market environment, DCG has been focused on strengthening our balance sheet by reducing operating expenses and preserving liquidity. As such, we have made the decision to suspend DCG's quarterly dividend distribution until further notice,".

Backstory: DCG is neck-deep in liquidity issues. According to a Financial Times report, DCG owes its creditors about $3B. DCG is the parent company of Genesis, CoinDesk, and GreyScale. The company is currently looking to raise funds by selling off some assets worth $500M in its venture portfolio. DCG’s troubles began as a direct result of the impact of FTX’s collapse on one of its subsidiaries, Genesis. 

Genesis currently owes $900M to customers of the crypto exchange Gemini, €280m to Dutch exchange Bitvavo and an undisclosed amount to customers of the crypto savings platform Donut.

The incident has led to an all-out spat between Gemini co-founder Cameron Winklevoss and DCG’s CEO Barry Silbert. Cameron has also called for Silbert’s resignation. 

Ray of sunshine: Tron's founder, Justin Sun is willing to offer up to $1M for the company’s assets. The group is willing to sell more assets to make ends meet and to find a way out of this mess. 

Still, on the matter

• The SEC slams Gemini and Genesis with charges of offering and selling unregistered securities. Read more.

TL: DR

• Yesterday, the US DoJ arrested the founder of Hong Kong-based crypto exchange Bitzlato
• The Exchange is being accused of illicit activities
• Binance is being accused of receiving BTC from Bitzlato raising concerns about possible ties to Russia

Yesterday, the market tumbled in response to an announcement from the US DoJ about incoming major crypto enforcement. The action was the arrest of Anatoly Legkodymov, Founder of Bitzlato Exchange. Ever heard of them? Neither have we.

Anatoly is being charged with allegedly processing over $700 in illicit funds.

The agency accused Bitzlato, a Hong Kong-based exchange of selling itself to “…criminals as a no-questions-asked cryptocurrency exchange, and reaped hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of deposits as a result,”.

Last year, the Exchange was discovered to be working with the now-disrupted Hydra network.

“The Bitzlato takedown is the coup fatal in destroying the joint network that operated with impunity across the dark web to facilitate money laundering,” Michael Fasanello, chief compliance officer of AnChain.AI said, in a tweet.

Many people in the Crypto industry have reacted to the news with surprise, adding that they have never heard of the exchange, and its on-chain history is extremely limited.

During the press conference, meme tokens were launched on Uniswap.

Meanwhile,

Binance is about to be caught up in the mess. The United States Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has named Binance as one of the top three receiving counterparties of Bitzlato. It stated that between May 2018 and September 2022, Binance, Hydra and Finiko received BTC from Bitzlato. 

Read more on this developing story here.

In other news,

• Four Brits were jailed for stealing £26 million worth of crypto. The offenders all bagged a total of 15 years in jail for illicitly obtaining and laundering Bitcoin from a loophole in an Australian exchange. Read more.
• The US Department of Justice in San Diego has ordered the victims of BitConnect, one of Crypto’s biggest scams, to be paid $17M as restitution for the $24B fraud. Read more.

TL: DR

• Coinbase is exiting Japan citing market conditions
• Customers have been advised to withdraw their assets before Feb. 16
• Coinbase shares are down 76% in the past year, but are up 43% in the last week alone, according to data from TradingView.

Right on the heels of its rival Kraken, Coinbase is bowing out of Japan and completely shutting down its operations in the country. This comes after the company already let go of 950 people in its most recent job cuts.

The company has advised all customers to withdraw their assets before February 16th. After the deadline, any user with assets left on the platform will have to liaise with Japan’s Legal Affairs Bureau.

Coinbase began its Japan operations in 2021 after partnering with Japanese Financial firm Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. Many crypto companies still continue to bear the brunt of the year-long bear market. 

In other news,

• Monex Group, a brokerage firm based in Japan, has expressed interest in bidding for FTX Japan, one of the  Exchange’s assets on sale. The CEO expressed that it could be a good thing for the firm with less competition in the local market. Read more.
• Binance and Huobi froze $100m linked to Harmony One hack, and 124 BTC was recovered. Read more.

TL: DR

• FTX failed to disclose that $90 million was missing from FTX US.
• It says a total of $415 million was hacked
• SBF insists the FTX US is solvent

Recent details presented by the FTX creditors committee have revealed that almost half of the $181 million in assets identified by FTX US were subject to unauthorized transfers.

One day after filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy, the company disclosed that about $323 million in assets had been drained from the global exchange. The company also failed to disclose that $90 million was missing from FTX US. 

According to the new CEO, John Ray III, it was a herculean task for the team to uncover this information. He has assured the creditors that he and the team will do everything possible to fix the mess at FTX. This comes right after the collapsed exchange discovered more than $5 billion in assets.

Meanwhile,

Former FTX CEO SBF, isn’t going down without the last word. He has called BS (not literally) on the recent report by the legal firm S&C. He insists in his latest substack article that FTX US is solvent again.

In other news,

• Former FTX US President Brett attacked SBF in a scathing 49-part Twitter thread where he accused Sam of hostility, gaslighting, and manipulation. Read more.
• Alameda's wallet under the liquidator’s control rakes in $11.5M in losses. In a Twitter thread, Arkham intelligence highlighted a series of transactions adding that some of those losses were preventable. Read more.
• A judge overseeing the FTX bankruptcy proceeding has cleared the exchange to sell off some of its assets to pay off creditors. Read more.

The SEC is currently receiving heat for accidentally revealing the personal information of over 650 crypto miners. This slip is a direct violation of the Privacy Act of 1974.

The SEC has been investigating Green - a blockchain firm working on creating a decentralized power grid. The leak came from a failure to ‘BCC’ the concerned people in an email sent by the regulatory body.

Last year, the crypto lender Celsius was in a similar slip for revealing its customers' transaction records in a court filing. The leak revealed sensitive data like customers’ names, wallet IDs, transaction amounts, token holdings, and more.

In other news,

• Metamask’s parent company Consensys is laying off 11% of Its staff. The founder, Joseph Lubrin, confirmed this, adding that the company will be focusing on the business’s core value drivers. Read more.