MadLads creator Backpack has launched a crypto exchange now that it has secured a VASP license from Dubai.

Backpack Exchange will first be made available as a private beta for existing Backpack and MadLads community members sometime in November. The exchange, which will only offer spot trading for the time being, will publicly launch in the first quarter of 2024. 

Developers will be working to add derivatives and margin trading to the exchange after its launch, according to a press release. 

Backpack founder and CEO Armani Ferrante announced the news early Tuesday morning on X, formerly Twitter, saying that creating this exchange was “the hardest yet most important project” his…

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Bitcoin (BTC) worth over $7.2 billion is still controlled by the United States government — but its losses are mounting.

Data from on-chain analytics firm Glassnode shows that Washington’s seized bitcoins total 210,429 BTC as of Oct. 31.

195,000 BTC sold, $6.3 billion down

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are well known — perhaps accidentally — as being one of the world’s largest Bitcoin whales.

Through various legal proceedings, lawmakers have confiscated vast amounts of BTC over the years, and only a small percentage of its takings have been resold at auction.

Those who opted to buy the proceeds have profited considerably, and adding to the…

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Decentralized finance (DeFi protocols) are interpreted to be exempt from the scope of the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), according to consultancy BCAS. But only when it is “fully decentralized” — meaning no person or company controls the platform being used. 

The European Commission will be mandated under MiCA to develop a detailed report assessing the pros and cons of DeFi over the next year or so, Mark Foster, the EU policy lead at the Crypto Council for Innovation told Blockworks.

This will help determine what the next steps for DeFi will be in the EU. 

“If there are risks that have been identified, they can propose legislation at a later…

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Data availability blockchain Celestia is live on mainnet, making it the first modular data availability network to be publicly available. 

Celestia’s mainnet launch will consist of rollups that use the network as its data availability and consensus layer.

The team recently initiated its airdrop efforts, through which 6% of the tokens total circulating supply was set to be awarded to eligible participants.

Read More: Celestia opens airdrop for planned modular data availability network

Data availability refers to the capability network nodes have to download transaction information, store the information and ensure that participants can access the information to verify or dispute its…

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Sam Bankman-Fried subjected the jury to around five hours of roundabout answers and some seemingly convenient amnesia when he took the stand at his own criminal trial this week. 

One of the only things we know for certain is that somebody is lying. 

Over four weeks of trial, jury members heard from 18 government witnesses. The list includes three members of Bankman-Fried’s former inner circle: Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang and Nishad Singh, all of whom have pleaded guilty to multiple federal counts in the hopes of receiving lenient sentences. 

Now, from the witness stand himself, Bankman-Fried is attempting to reclaim the narrative. 

Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of FTX and…

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The Ethereum layer-2 ecosystem is likely to continue evolving with diverse technological approaches, according to co-founder Vitalik Buterin.

The co-founder of the smart contract blockchain unpacked the current landscape of Ethereum’s scaling ecosystem on his personal blog, with several layer-2 protocols differing in their approaches to bring greater scaling capacity, lower costs and increased security.

As Buterin highlighted, Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) rollups that have been pioneered by Arbitrum, Optimism, Scroll and more recently Kakarot and Taiko have drastically improved the respective security of their solutions.

Different types of layer 2shttps://t.co/ry4VTtWhJ1

— vitalik.eth… Read more on Cointelegraph

The German technology company Siemens has partnered with Microsoft and announced its new generative artificial intelligence (AI) -powered assistant the Siemens Industrial Copilot. 

On Oct. 31, the companies revealed the AI assistant to promote “human-machine collaboration” and enhance productivity. In the announcement, they have also revealed to be building additional AI assistants to cater to professionals in the manufacturing, healthcare, transportation and infrastructure industries.

The companies have stated that their goal is to bring the “benefits of generative AI to industries worldwide.” Within the manufacturing industry itself, the companies say they have planned Copilots…

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Bitcoin BTC/USD moved slightly lower, but the cryptocurrency prices remained above the $34,500 level on Tuesday.

Ethereum ETH/USD also edged lower, but traded above the key $1,800 mark this morning.

The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20-city home price index climbed 2.2% year-over-year in August versus a 0.2% increase in July. The FHFA house price index increased by 0.6% from the prior month in August versus a 0.8% rise in July.

Arweave AR/USD was the top gainer over the prior 24 hours, while Render RNDR/USD turned out to be the biggest loser.

At the time of writing, the global crypto market cap rose to $1.28 trillion, recording a 24-hour gain of 0.1%. BTC was trading lower by 0.3% at $34,509…

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