OTC’s Weekly Retrospect 22/04–28/04/2023

Each week we bring you a round-up of the most important Bitcoin and virtual asset-related stories making waves in the cryptosphere.­­­­

Major news stories this week;

1. Binance US Ends $1 Billion Deal to Buy Bankrupt Crypto Firm Voyager
2. Hong Kong Court Declares Crypto to be Property in New Ruling
3. Ethereum Shanghai Upgrade Brings Record Inflow of 572K ETH Staked in a Week
4. 700M Users Of Telegram Can Now Buy, Receive, Withdraw and Trade Bitcoin P2P
5. Circle Unveils New Method for Moving USDC Between Blockchains

Story Summaries;

1. Binance.US terminated an agreement to purchase the bankrupt crypto broker Voyager Digital Holdings Ltd., less than a week after federal regulators dropped their efforts to halt the deal in court. The decision came after months of wrangling and the intervention of multiple federal and state regulators over the deal. In a statement, Binance.US said “the hostile and uncertain regulatory climate in the United States has introduced an unpredictable operating environment impacting the entire American business community.”
2. In a landmark ruling, Hong Kong’s High Court declared crypto as property that can be held in trust. This marks the first time such a decision regarding asset class has been made in the city-state. The ruling, which was handed down in liquidation of a case involving the now-defunct crypto exchange Gatecoin, essentially puts crypto on par with other intangible assets such as stocks and bonds.
3. Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade brought a record-breaking weekly inflow of ether (ETH) deposits for staking last week, mainly driven by institutional staking service providers and investors reinvesting rewards after withdrawal, crypto analysts said. Investors deposited some 571,950 ETH tokens into staking contracts, worth more than $1 billion.
4. Telegram’s @wallet bot has integrated a custodial bitcoin wallet that lets its users buy, receive, send, withdraw, swap, and sell bitcoin on Telegram’s peer-to-peer marketplace. “One of the most significant new features for the platform is the updated exchange interface. With this new wallet exchange, you can now instantly swap BTC, USDT, and TON with one another at favorable rates.”
5. USDC issuer Circle Internet Financial on Wednesday released a new method to move the major stablecoin between blockchains that it says is faster, safer and cheaper than the “bridges” that are widely used in decentralized finance. Called the “Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol,” or CCTP, the technology will be used initially for USDC transfers between the Ethereum and Avalanche blockchains, with more chains coming in the second half of 2023.

And that’s all for this week’s news! Wishing you a great weekend ahead!