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Solana Aims to Raise $450 Million to Battle Supremacy With Ethereum

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Solana - Investors King

Solana, the FTX-backed, proof-of-stake coin is aiming to raise $450 million in a funding round that was set to close, but instead expanded in March, according to a report from Decrypt.

The outlet, citing anonymous sources, states the currency had targeted significantly less money in smaller funding round but found big capital interested in backing the project.

While there is still no confirmation on the amount of money raised by Solana, these funds would be used to entice developers to construct and bring their already existing projects to the network.

The project is part of a group of cryptocurrencies called “ethereum killers,” which seek to mimic the functionalities that this project has while improving on throughput and fees.

Solana claims to be technically superior to Ethereum, offering to process up to 50,000 transactions per second. The project has experienced a rise in popularity due to its very low transaction fees and the use of its token platform by the FTX exchange, who allows deposits and withdrawals from this network.

Last year, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried opted to build the company’s Serum decentralized exchange on top of the Solana blockchain instead of on the Ethereum network due to these advantages.

While Solana is one of the most impressive networks aiming to replace Ethereum, with several defi-based projects choosing it as their chain, it is by no means the only one. Avalanche, another similar project launched just last year, has also risen to the top of the ranks of these “ethereum killers,” claiming to be even better, allowing users to issue subnets, with higher throughput and faster finality.

Even Cardano, a platform founded by Ethereum founder Charles Hoskinson, is now introducing its smart platform capabilities and has generated significant interest in the cryptocurrency community. All of these chains are racing to achieve some kind of stable support before Ethereum manages to fix its scaling issues.

Luckily for them, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin announced that scaling through sharding is not likely to be implemented before late 2022.

At press time, Solana is trading at $43.53 with over $11 billion market capitalization. According to data from coinmarketcap, Solana has gained 18.38 percent in the last 24 hours and 34.28 percent in the past 7 days.

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U.S. Prosecutors Hit KuCoin and Founders with Money Laundering Charges

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Kucoin

KuCoin, a major crypto exchange, along with its founders Chun Gan and Ke Tang have been charged by U.S. federal prosecutors with violating anti-money laundering (AML) laws.

The charges allege that KuCoin operated as a money transmitting business in the U.S. without proper registration or implementation of AML measures.

Investors King gathered that the indictment disclosed that KuCoin’s actions facilitated the laundering of proceeds from various illicit activities, including sanctions violations and fraud schemes.

Despite its substantial user base, KuCoin purportedly failed to adopt adequate AML and know-your-customer (KYC) protocols until 2023, rendering it vulnerable to exploitation by criminals.

The prosecution’s move underscores the growing regulatory scrutiny faced by cryptocurrency platforms worldwide, as authorities strive to address the sector’s susceptibility to financial crime.

Also, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed a separate suit against KuCoin, alleging failure to register as a futures commission merchant and non-compliance with KYC regulations.

Darren McCormack, Special Agent in Charge at Homeland Security Investigations, described KuCoin as “an alleged multibillion-dollar criminal conspiracy,” emphasizing its pivotal role in the crypto market.

Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney Damien Williams condemned KuCoin’s purported attempts to conceal its U.S. user base and its use as a hub for money laundering.

As legal proceedings unfold, KuCoin’s native token (KCS) experienced a 5% decline, signaling investor concerns.

However, Bitcoin (BTC) remained volatile, hovering around $70,000 amidst market turbulence.

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Key Events in the Ethereum Ecosystem that Can Influence the Market

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Ethereum - Investors King

Following Bitcoin’s new all-time high, the crypto community has been buzzing with theories and predictions not only about the top cryptocurrency but about other coins as well.

Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency (by market cap) has also been a talking point and headline. 

Ethereum news over the past few days as been awash topics such as the potential effect of Bitcoin’s new ATH on Ethereum, the upcoming Dencun upgrade and long-term price predictions. We have rounded up the top stories in Ethereum news over the past few days for you. 

Dencun – Ethereum’s Solution to High Gas Fees?

The Dencun update is set to be Ethreum’s largest since The Merge in September 2022 and Shapella in April 2023. The upgrades respectively facilitated the move from a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus to proof-of-stake (PoS) and made withdrawals of staked Ether possible. It is expected to go live on March 13 at around 13:55 UTC. Here is what we know about the updrage so far. 

First of all “Dencun” is a merging of “Deneb” and “Cancun”, two network updates that collectively account for nine Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs). It will activate EIP-4844, also called proto-danksharding, which is expected to improve the Ethereum blockchain’s capacity to handle data from layer-2 (L2) networks. 

The upgrade will result in significantly cheaper fees for L2 rollups and it is expected that the majority of Ethereum’s onchain activity will migrate to L2s. This aligns with Ethereum’s target of being able to process millions of transactions per second. 

Analyst Max Wadington writes in a research report by Fidelity Digital Assets: “Ethereum’s improvement as a database unveils the opportunity for near-zero transaction fees for users of layer 2’s.”

Wadington adds that users of the base Ethereum network may not benefit as much from the software update as Layer 2 users.

“In the short term, users who wish to benefit from this fee change must sacrifice some decentralization and security by transacting on layer 2’s instead of Ethereum,” he said. 

The Dencun upgrade has been in the works for several years, with Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin hinting at it as far back as 2019. It was slated to take place late last year but could not proceed due to engineering concerns by developers.The update has so far been tested on three separate test networks and performed generally well.

Members of the Ethereum community are looking forward to the event and are joining livestreams counting down to the upgrade. 

“We are making sure all our client and bootnodes are fully updated, and ready for fork,” said Barnabas Busa, a DevOps engineer at the Ethereum Foundation. “Our monitoring infrastructure is scaled up to -ensure we don’t miss anything important. 

(Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko’s post on X:

Ethereum Price Predictions

As of March 13, Ethereum was currently trading at $4,040 up about 7% over a week. It is expected to rise higher with the increased anticipation for Ethereum ETFs and the Dencun upgrade. 

According to this Forbes report, Ethereum could rise to $4,500 by the end of the month. Another report puts the coin’s price at $5,000 by the end of the year. CoinDCX predicts that 2024 a strong end to the year price-wise could serve as a stepping stone for the asset’s upward movement. 

In addition, going by historical market data,  a Bitcoin bull run could spell price surges for Ethereum as well. In 2021 for example, when Bitcoin gained 66%, Ethereum performed far better, gaining almost 400%. With the ongoing interest in spot Bitcoin ETFs and the upcoming Bitcoin halving – both of which could translate into green candles for Bitcoin – Ethereum could continue rising. 

While experts agree that the asset is unlikely to surpass Bitcoin’s price long-term, it has the potential to rival the top cryptocurrency’s market capitalization largely owing to its uncapped supply. 

 

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Binance Executive Escapes Custody in Nigeria Amid Legal Battle

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Nadeem Anjarwalla

Nadeem Anjarwalla, a prominent executive of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, has managed to escape custody in Nigeria, where he was detained amidst allegations of tax evasion and other offenses.

Anjarwalla, 38, reportedly fled from a guest house in Abuja on Friday, 22 March, where he and his colleague were being held.

According to sources familiar with the matter, the escape occurred when guards on duty escorted him to a nearby mosque for prayers as part of the ongoing Ramadan fast.

Anjarwalla, who holds both British and Kenyan citizenship, is believed to have departed from Abuja using a Middle Eastern airliner, despite his British passport remaining in the custody of Nigerian authorities.

The exact manner in which he managed to board an international flight is still unclear, raising questions about security protocols and potential lapses in immigration procedures.

Authorities are now scrambling to ascertain Anjarwalla’s intended destination and initiate efforts to apprehend him and bring him back into custody.

It has been revealed that Anjarwalla fled using a Kenyan passport, although the circumstances under which he obtained it remain under investigation.

Sources close to the matter disclosed that Anjarwalla and his colleague were held in a “comfortable guest house” and were granted various privileges, including the use of telephones.

It is believed that Anjarwalla exploited these privileges to orchestrate his escape.

The escape comes amidst a legal battle between Binance executives and Nigerian authorities. Anjarwalla and Tigran Gambaryan, another executive, were detained upon their arrival in Nigeria on 26 February 2024, and a criminal charge was filed against them before a Magistrate Court in Abuja.

The court granted the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) an order to remand the duo for 14 days, later extended for an additional 14 days.

Furthermore, the Nigerian government has slapped multiple charges against Binance Holdings Limited, Anjarwalla, and Gambaryan, accusing them of tax evasion and failure to comply with regulatory requirements.

The detention and legal proceedings against Binance officials come in the wake of the exchange platform’s settlement of criminal money laundering charges in the United States, further complicating the ongoing saga surrounding the cryptocurrency giant.

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