Earlier this week, the U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 75 basis points after the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting, bringing the Federal Funds Rate to 3.25%. Bitcoin reacted with a 6.5% swing to the downside that bottomed at $18,600, though it's since recovered to hit the 19,000 mark again

The U.K.’s central bank also took centre stage yesterday, raising its key interest rate by 50 basis points. This is part of an ongoing trend in which the likes of Canada, Switzerland, and the eurozone have recently taken similar actions - signaling a phase of aggressive monetary tightening policy.

Investors are now rightly concerned about the extent to which restrictive monetary policies could suppress economic output - a factor that could negatively impact the prices of cryptocurrencies.

The five-day Cardano Vasil hard fork process began yesterday - a process the Cardano Foundation says will improve network performance. Cardano co-founder Charles Hoskinson has described it as the hardest update the developers have done since the project launched in 2017.

Cardano developer Input Output said the Vasil hard fork will leverage Cardano's hard fork combinator technology to introduce new features without losing any data from the older version of the blockchain.

The Vasil hard fork and an upgrade to its Plutus scripting language are set to be completed on September 27. On completion, it’ll be possible to write Cardano smart contracts with less code. That makes lower transaction fees possible because more of them can fit into each block or batch of transactions on the network.

In other major headlines,

• Chain Inks Four-Year Deal With New England Patriots. Read More
• Opera to Integrate Elrond Protocol in Web3.0 Push. Read More
• Hyperlane Raises $18.5 Million in Seed Round. Read More
• Tornado Cash's Code Is Back on GitHub. Read More
• Microstrategy Buys 301 Bitcoin, Public Company Now Holds 130,000 BTC. Read More

‍

The new website will be the home for all our rich and insightful content, including past issues of our newsletters- Rebel Research, Rebel NFT News and Rebel Digest.

We can’t wait for you to dive into our Rebel Learn articles - a new series of educational articles around crypto, Web3, NFTs and so much more! This new segment is specially created and curated to be friendly to all levels from beginners to proficient and experienced learners.

We have poured our hearts and minds into creating this new platform for our community of Rebels and we hope that you find it as useful as we anticipate.

The United Kingdom has introduced a new bill that would make it easier for law enforcement agencies to freeze and seize crypto assets.

The bill, tagged the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency, is intended to strengthen the country’s image as a place for legitimate businesses to thrive while driving out dirty money.

The director general for the National Crime Agency, Graeme Biggar, said: “Domestic and international criminals have for years laundered the proceeds of their crime and corruption by abusing U.K. company structures and are increasingly using cryptocurrencies. These reforms – long awaited and much welcomed – will help us crack down on both.”

The first reading of the bill happened in the House of Commons on Thursday, with the second reading scheduled for Oct. 13.

In other news,

• Indonesia to Tighten Crypto Regulation With Stricter Rules for Exchanges. Read More
• Bahrain Approves Crypto Payments Via EazyPay After Partnering With Binance Pay. Read More
• Russia’s financial regulators agree on crypto use for international payments. Read More

FTX is in talks with investors to raise up to $1 billion in new funding that would keep the company’s valuation at roughly $32 billion, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. Negotiations about the fund are still ongoing, and according to reports, the terms are not yet final.

Some of the fresh capital, on top of the $400 million round from January, is intended to fuel more deal-making. This is in line with the company’s growing reputation as a market consolidator since the beginning of the crypto winter. In July, FTX signed a deal that gives it the option to buy lender BlockFi, and the company was in discussions to acquire South Korean Bithumb. FTX also offered to buy bankrupt crypto brokerage Voyager Digital in August but was turned down for what was called a “low ball bid.”

In other news,

• Kraken CEO Jesse Powell moving to Chairman role to focus on crypto industry advocacy. Read More
• Binance Exchange Inaugurates Global Advisory Board under Compliance Drive. Read More
• Coinbase Rejects Proprietary Trading and Crypto ‘Market Maker’ Allegations. Read More

Immunefi, a popular bug bounty system for smart contracts and decentralized finance (DeFi) projects, announced it had raised a $24 million Series A funding round led by Framework Ventures.

Immunefi is a platform offering bounty programs for ethical hackers, in which security researchers can review code, disclose vulnerabilities, and get rewarded for their efforts. According to the firm, it currently protects over $100 billion in user funds locked across multiple DeFi protocols and smart contracts, with as many as 301 projects hosting their bug bounty programs on Immunefi. These include some well-known names such as Chainlink, MakerDAO, Synthetix, SushiSwap, PancakeSwap, and more.

According to Immunefi CEO Mitchell Amador, the $24 million funding is part of a "consolidation effort" that will enable it to build out infrastructure to meet the growing demand for its services.

In other news,

• Lit Protocol raises $13 million, announces new cloud wallet app platform. Read More
• Vitalik Buterin Argues That Highly Decentralized DAOs Will Outperform Corporations. Read More
• DeFi Protocol Wintermute Suffers $160M of Hack. Read More
• Maple Finance Loans $300m to help Struggling Bitcoin Miners. Read More

‍