US Government sanctions Russian Bitcoin miner BitRiver
The US Government has sanctioned a Russian Bitcoin miner. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control has added Moscow-based BitRiver to its Specially Designated Nationals list. Ten Russia-based subsidiaries of BitRiver AG (BitRiver’s Switzerland-based holding company) were also added to the list. It is the first time the US has sanctioned a crypto mining company.
Crypto prices today: Bitcoin up 0.4%, ETH down 0.5%
Bitcoin is currently trading at $41,582.4, a 0.44% increase over the previous day. Ethereum is down 0.5% over the last 24 hours to $3,083.31. Solana fell 1.4% to $106.32, while Cardano is trading lower by 0.5% at $0.94. XRP fell 2.5% to $0.747. The global crypto market cap stands at $1.92 trillion, a 0.32% decline over the previous day.
Cricket NFT platform Rario raises $120 million in funding
Cricket non-fungible tokens (NFTs) platform Rario has raised $120 million in funding led by Dream Capital. The startup also counts Animoca Brands, Presight Capital, and Kingsway Capital as its investors. Dream Capital is the corporate venture capital arm of Dream Sports. This marks the first bet by the Dream11 parent company in the Web3 space.
Germany’s Commerzbank applies for local crypto licence: Report
Germany’s Commerzbank (CBK) reportedly applied for a crypto licence earlier this year. The application is to get authorization to offer exchange services along with custody and protection of crypto-assets. This move would make CBK the first major bank in Germany to move towards crypto adoption.
Mudrex becomes world’s largest crypto index investing platform
Global crypto asset management platform Mudrex witnessed a massive 2,400% surge in its platform’s user base in the first quarter of 2022. It has become the world’s largest crypto index investing platform. Interestingly, Indian users contributed the most to this exponential growth, with more than 80% of the increase coming from the country.
Coinbase NFT Beta goes live with no transaction fees
Crypto exchange Coinbase has announced the launch of its Web3 NFT Marketplace, Coinbase NFT. The company has begun with the beta version first, where only a handful of features will be available for the users. Beta users can buy and sell a wide range of NFT collections at zero transaction fees (for a limited period).