US Senator Ted Cruz Now Accepts Bitcoin For Campaign Donations

US senator Ted Cruz has officially begun accepting Bitcoin for his senate campaign donations, according to his official website, with Bitcoin payments firm OpenNode facilitating the transactions. Payments to the campaign can either be made on-chain or via lightning network transactions.

Bitcoin Campaign Donations Accepted

Ted Cruz for Senate

Cruz has been a very vocal proponent of Bitcoin in the senate over the last few years, especially when it comes to the energy front, where he says the Bitcoin industry “is generating enormous benefits for Texas, for the country.” 

The senator seemingly wants to help lead a charge on educating and bringing more…

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Etherscan will no longer run Ava Labs’ block explorer

Ava Labs will sunset its Etherscan-run block explorer and replace it with a new product, dubbed Routescan, on Nov. 30.

Users will be required to back up the information they have included on the block explorer before the deactivation date, including addresses, private name tags and private transaction notes. 

According to the Etherscan website, the decision to discontinue block explorers is often the result of various factors, including the expiration or non-renewal of a service agreement or lack of team bandwidth.

Luigi D’Onorio, the head of DeFi and developer relations at Ava Labs, told Blockworks that Snowtrace as a domain will continue to live on, but the Etherscan deployment…

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HSBC adds fuel to tokenization fire with gold-focused offering

London-based financial giant HSBC is trying its hand at gold tokenization.  

The bank launched tokenized ownership of physical gold held in its London vault on Wednesday, noting its use of distributed ledger technology (DLT) to trade the assets.  

The approach “generates a permissioned digital representation of clients’ physical gold holdings,” the company said in a news release. One token on HSBC’s gold tokenization platform is equivalent to 0.001 troy ounce.

Tokenized physical gold can be traded between HSBC and institutional investors through the HSBC Evolve platform.

HSBC is not new to using the blockchain. The company teamed up with Wells Fargo in December 2021 to use a…

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Sam Bankman-Fried ‘lied to you’ on the stand, prosecutors tell jury: SBF trial

As Sam Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial comes to a close in Manhattan, prosecutors began making their final pleas to the jury Wednesday. 

In a two-and-a-half-hours-long (so far) closing argument, the prosecution called back a familiar narrative: Bankman-Fried knowingly and intentionally stole from customers and defrauded investors. 

“Where did the money go? What happened? Who was responsible?” Prosecutor Nicolas Roos said at the start of the government’s closing arguments. “You know the answers to those questions.”

Read more: He said, she said: Testimonies from SBF and Caroline Ellison aren’t matching up

Roos told the jury that the government already knows who is…

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LATEST: Cryptocurrency Exchange Platform Coinbase Offers Crypto Futures Trading for Eligible US Traders

Crypto trading platform Coinbase Financial Markets has introduced crypto futures trading for eligible US traders, following regulatory clearance as a futures commission merchant. Futures contracts allow traders to hedge risk, diversify portfolios, and speculate on market movements. US traders can access these contracts via the Coinbase Advanced trading platform, with contract sizes designed for retail investors. Coinbase aims to tap into the global crypto derivatives market, representing 75% of trading volume. This move is part of Coinbase’s strategy to diversify revenue streams amid legal challenges and declining spot trading volumes.

SafeMoon executive team charged with multiple fraud counts, arrests made

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced Nov. 1 that it was charging SafeMoon and three of its executives with fraud and unregistered securities sales in connection with its SafeMoon token. The Justice Department unsealed charges against the men at the same time. 

According to SEC allegations, SafeMoon creator Kyle Nagy, CEO John Karony and chief technology officer Thomas Smithwithdrew assets worth $200 million from the project and misappropriated investor funds. The Justice Department is charging the men with conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy.

Karony and Smith have been arrested, according…

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SafeMoon accused of securities fraud in SEC lawsuit

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit against SafeMoon and some of its top officials on Wednesday 

The SEC accused SafeMoon, creator Kyle Nagy, CEO John Karony and CTO Thomas Smith of “perpetrating a massive fraudulent scheme through the unregistered sale of the crypto asset security, SafeMoon.”

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, alleges that Nagy falsely assured investors that the token would be locked in the liquidity pool, however “large portions” of the pool were “never locked.”

“Critically, Nagy represented in marketing materials, his whitepaper, and website that these retained assets would be…

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Worldcoin claims 4 million app downloads and 1 million active users

Iris-scanning project Worldcoin has reached a new milestone, as its mobile World App has now been downloaded over 4 million times, according to a November 1 blog post from the project’s team. If this number is eventually confirmed by Coingecko, it could place World App in sixth place in Coingecko’s list of most downloaded software wallets.

The Worldcoin development team, called “Tools for Humanity,” also claimed that it now has over 1 million monthly users, double the number it had six months ago.

World App now has more than 1 million monthly active users, 4 million downloads and 22 million transactions. Not bad for six months pic.twitter.com/pagXxTfc8E

— Tools For Humanity… Read more on Cointelegraph

Taiwanese authorities seize $320M in country’s largest crypto laundering scheme

Taiwan authorities have arrested an individual suspected of laundering a record 10.4 billion Taiwanese dollars ($320 million) via digital assets. This marks the largest single case of crypto-related money laundering in the island nation’s history.

Identified only by the surname Qiu, the suspect was arrested in June upon his return from a trip to Southeast Asia, according to Taichung’s Criminal Investigation Bureau and local media.

The case emerged from an investigation initiated last year into a fake securities trading app. A probe led authorities to trace financial transactions, ultimately revealing Qiu’s alleged involvement in the scheme.

Law enforcement officials report that…

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Understanding The "Bitcoin L2 Trilemma"

As a venture capitalist, I maintain a “token agnostic” stance. Because we invest at the early stages of a new technology’s development, we invest in equity rather than tokens, only receiving tokens on a pro-rata basis. We firmly believe that for a token to be valid, it should serve a crucial role; in essence, removing the token should disrupt the core value proposition and underlying architecture. Merely having tokens for their sake, or avoiding them without reason, raises immediate red flags. In much of Web3, there’s an overflow of tokens made just to have a token. Projects which may have otherwise succeeded but fail due to their token’s…

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