Remember Voyager? The crypto investment firm filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier in July due to a series of economic problems. Crypto exchange FTX has won the bid to buy out the crypto platform. This puts an end to a number of months of back-and-forth.
In other news, after a lot of controversial moves and statements, the Central Bank of Kenya has finally made its stance on bitcoin clear. In a parliament meeting, the CBK governor bared out the country’s stance on crypto.
On our weekly Terra drama follow-up. This week, a spokesman of Terraform Labs released a statement which says that the hunt for its CEO, Do Kwon is politically motivated.
Now, here is a bit of detail on these stories and many more from the crypto world this week.
Here we go:
Kenya’s CBK on crypto
Kenya’s central bank governor Patrick Njoroge has admitted to receiving external pressure from crypto proponents to convert the country’s reserves into Bitcoin.
According to Njoroge, the idea can be equated to ‘craziness,’ noting that converting the reserves into Bitcoin would be a risk considering the digital asset’s volatility, he said this during a meeting with members of parliament.
Related post: Kenya, Nigeria drop out of top 10 countries on 2022 global crypto adoption index
Interestingly, the governor pointed out that if the country went the Bitcoin way during his tenure, he was ready to go to prison for it.
“I do know you’re under a lot of pressure from some of these people that are pushing these things [cryptocurrencies] because for them it is good. I can assure you I have a lot of people that have been pushing me to put our reserves in Bitcoin. <…> I would have been out of my mind with that sort of craziness,”
Furthermore, Njoroge noted that the country could only opt to adopt cryptocurrencies if they solve a particular problem. He called for a review of the cryptocurrency sector to move away from what he termed as ‘hype’ around digital assets.
Recall that the Central Bank of Kenya has previously issued warnings to citizens regarding dealing with cryptocurrencies citing the risks involved. However, there are no existing comprehensive regulations to manage the sector.
Meta enables NFT for Facebook and IG users
Yesterday, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that both Facebook and Instagram platforms would allow users to connect their wallets and share NFTs on their social media pages.
According to Mark, the move will increase interactions on social media platforms and allow creatives to access more monetisation opportunities for NFT creators. According to the announcement, the updated features will be available to US-based users of both platforms.
Meta gradually rolled out its NFT features over the course of this summer. The company added early NFT support to Instagram in May and introduced support to Facebook in June. The company then began to allow NFT to be cross-posted between the two social media platforms in August. However, only select users have been able to use the NFT feature until yesterday.
FTX acquires Voyager
According to a press release on Monday, crypto exchange platform, FTX has acquired bankrupt crypto lender Voyager for $1.42 billion. The crypto exchange won in an auction to purchase Voyager’s assets against crypto investment firm Wave Financial.
Read also: Crypto companies dominate list of global top 10 influential fintech 2022
Recall that in July, Voyager filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after the $2 trillion crypto market crash rendered it unable to honour withdrawals from its user base.
FTX’s move to purchase Voyager’s assets shows promising movement toward compensating users of Voyager, who have mostly not secured the funds lost in the platform’s crash.
Do Kwon prosecution is political
Terraform Labs, the company behind the Terra blockchain, has said South Korea’s case against its co-founder Do Kwon has become political, alleging prosecutors expanded the definition of a security in response to public pressure.
“We believe that this case has become highly politicized and that the actions of the Korean prosecutors demonstrate unfairness and a failure to uphold basic rights guaranteed under Korean law,” – a Terraform Labs spokesman said to the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.
South Korean prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Kwon two weeks ago for violations of the country’s capital markets laws, but Terraform Labs laid out a defence arguing Terra, now known with its new token, Luna Classic
(LUNC), isn’t legally secure, meaning it isn’t covered by capital markets laws.
The spokesman alleged prosecutors of expanding the definition of security due to intense public pressure from the collapse of Terra and its connected algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD (UST), now known as TerraUSD Classic (USTC)
Terra claims that none of its coins can be classified as a security even though authorities in the country are trying to shift the definition of what security should be called. We are in for a long ride on the Terra drama.
Here is all from us this week, see you same time next week!
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