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Our weekly news roundup from East Asia curates the industry’s most important developments.
Huawei switches to its NFT trademark
According to a January 28 report by Sina News, Chinese telecom giant Huawei recently applied for eight trademarks related to Huawei’s “YunYunBao” series of nonfungible tokens (NFT). Trademarks include digital collections in the scientific instruments, furniture, education, jewelery, advertising and telecommunications sectors. Last April, Huawei launched its YunYunBao NFT, featuring characters inspired by its namesake cloud service. Huawei NFTs are printed on its Huawei Petal Chain, which the telecom giant says has more than 1,000 nodes and can handle more than 50,000 transactions per second.
Toyota sponsors a blockchain hackathon
In a February 1 Medium post, Sota Watanabe, founder of the Japanese blockchain network Astar, announced that Astar has accepted sponsorship from Japanese automaker Toyota for its latest Web3 hackathon. Astar is currently a parachain built on top of the Polkadot blockchain.
According to Watanabe, more than $100,000 in prizes will be distributed to projects that develop “intra-company DAOs [Decentralized Autonomous Organization] a support tool for this hackathon that Toyota employees may actually use in the future.” The Hackathon will take place from February 14th to March 25th.
“Needless to say, Toyota is the largest company in Japan and one of the world’s leading international companies,” wrote Watanabe. “We are very excited to be hosting the Web3 Hackathon at Astar with Toyota. During the event, we aimed to develop the first DAO PoC tool for Toyota employees. If good tools are produced, Toyota employees will interact daily with products on the Astar Network.”
North Korea destroys crypto
On February 2, blockchain forensic analytics firm Chainalysis revealed that North Korean hackers stole an estimated $1.65 billion of the $3.8 billion siphoned from decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols in 2022. For context, the North Korean-related entity only stole $299 .5 million in 2020 and $428.8 million in 2021. The company also warns that despite the United States Department of the Treasury imposing sanctions on cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash on August 8, North Korean hackers are increasingly turning to other digital asset mixers, such as Sinbad, to launder funds. stolen. . Chainalysis says:
“Hackers connected to North Korea tend to send a lot of what they steal to other DeFi protocols, not because these protocols are effective for money laundering — they are actually quite bad for money laundering given their increased transparency compared to centralized services — but because of DeFi Hacking. often resulting in cybercriminals acquiring large amounts of illiquid tokens that are not listed on centralized exchanges. Therefore, hackers have to switch to another DeFi protocol, usually DEX, to exchange more liquid assets.”
On January 29, decentralized financial analyst Zachxbt claimed he has tracked another 17,278 Ether (ETH) — worth an estimated $27.18 million — laundered by North Korean hackers following the $100 million Harmony Bridge hack last June. According to Zachxbt, the funds were then transferred to 14 wallet addresses spread across four exchanges. On January 24, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed that North Korea’s Lazarus Group was behind the attack.
There is no Binance metaverse for now
In an ask-me-anything session on Jan. 14, Changpeng Zhao, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, said that the company is “more open to just investing in virtual reality or other metaverse games,” because the company is not a game-builder and doesn’t have a team of creators. games.
“Nobody really knows what the metaverse means. Everyone has a different concept of it,” said the crypto executive, according to a transcript published on Jan. 27.
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Instead, Zhao said that Binance will focus its “next big product” on releasing multiple proofs of reserves and proofs of solvency to increase transparency. The exchange has set a goal of 1 billion users passing Know Your Customer verification for the new year.
Huobi denies the allegations of data sharing
Digital asset entrepreneur Justin Sun has responded accusation that its exchange, Huobi, provided client information to Chinese tax authorities. The TRON founder tweeted that Huobi “does not share any client information with tax authorities unless following international justice assistance procedures.”
Previously, Sun hailed China’s introduction of a new 20% cryptocurrency income tax as “a clear indication that the Chinese government views cryptocurrencies as a legitimate form of wealth and wants to ensure proper taxation.”
Although based in the Seychelles, Huobi has a large number of staff working in mainland China, which reportedly rebelled against the company’s new strict labor policies earlier this month.
Huobi founder’s new venture
After selling his entire stake in Huobi to Sun’s About Capital last October, Chinese entrepreneur Lin Li has dedicated time to managing Hong Kong blockchain investment firm New Huo Technology. On January 30, New Huo launched a staking technical support service, dubbed “Sinohope Staking,” which will first serve the Cosmos community before expanding to Ethereum, EOS, and ChainLink.
According to the developer, Sinohope Staking will provide “multi-node deployment, real-time monitoring of node operation processes, 7*24 hour online support, 3-layer wallet structure, and multiple signature technologies” for users interested in staking their assets on the blockchain. public. New Huo says it will help clients set up their stake nodes and monitor their operations “without handling or retaining any client assets,” and claims clients will retain “100%” of cryptocurrency staked during the process.
Bitzlato allegedly challenged despite sanctions
Co-founder of Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange Bitzlato said the platform would reopen after being shut down by United States authorities last month.
In a January 31 YouTube interview, Russian national Anton Shurenko said that the exchange would open later at an unspecified time and claimed up to 50% of funds stored in confiscated hot wallets would be available for withdrawal at that time. In addition, the founder admitted that he did not know why his company was chosen.
On January 18, Bitzlato was shut down after investigations by law enforcement officials, including the US Department of Justice, revealed that the exchange enforced lax Know Your Customer rules and allegedly laundered over $700 million worth of illicit funds through crypto-fiat transactions. Shurenko’s co-founder, Anatoly Legkodymov, was arrested in Miami around the same day. Following the disclosure that Binance was one of the top partners for Bitzlato, the exchange froze a number of accounts associated with the entity.
According to recent reports, Spanish police have detained three executives from the company, namely the CEO, a sales executive, and the marketing director.
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