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Binance To Launch $1B Fund To Develop BSC Ecosystem

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Binance Growth Fund-Investor-King

Binance, the world’s leading blockchain ecosystem and cryptocurrency platform, has launched a $1 billion Growth Fund for Binance Smart Chain, to accelerate the adoption of digital assets and blockchain technology.

In the span of the next few months multiple programs will be set up under its umbrella to empower the growth of cryptocurrencies worldwide. Designed to incubate rising blockchain-crypto projects the fund will also run advanced technological development programs.

“BSC’s growth has attracted 100M+ DeFi users with just an initial funding of $100 million,” said Changpeng Zhao (CZ), CEO at Binance. “With the new contribution of $1B, it can disrupt traditional finance and accelerate global mass adoption of digital assets to become the first-ever blockchain ecosystem with one billion users,” he added.

The $1 billion fund will be divided into 4 broader categories:-

Talent Development – Innovation

A total of $100M funds are reserved for Talent Development which includes mentoring developer communities, educating new crypto investors, providing academic scholarships to institutions, running bootcamps and supporting R&D around Cryptography, High-performance Consensus protocol, Cross-chain/Multi-chain infra, RegTech & Deep Analytics and more.

Liquidity Incentive Program – Trading

The Liquidity Incentive initiative will run sub-programs to encourage participation from traditional financial markets as well as crypto. It will provide flexibility and support for professional traders and institutions to provide more liquidity in DeFi protocols. For instance, more contribution in liquidity pools in Automated Market Makers, borrowing and lending in money markets, yield farming in vaults, higher arbitrage gains and more. This will be targeted in developing compliant relationships between investors and evolving emerging digital asset markets. A total of $100M funds are reserved under the Liquidity Incentive initiatives.

Builder Program – Technological startups

The Builder Program will be boosted with an additional $300 million. Of which, $100 million will be utilized to conduct regional and global hackathons, joint bug bounty programs, developer conferences and will support existing mainstream development programs. The remaining $200 million will be used to incubate 100 innovative dApps/infra buildings on top of BSC who will receive mentoring from top Venture Capitalists and infrastructural support from the BSC core community.

Investment/Incubation Program for Industrial development

To accelerate mainstream adoption and bring disruption to financial infrastructures a total of $500 million will be reserved. This fund will be utilized to grow decentralized computing, gaming, metaverse, virtual reality, artificial intelligence and blockchain-based financial services. With collaborations from industry-leading organizations, the investment fund will target scaling blockchain technology for real-life use cases and will bridge the gap between crypto-blockchain and the current technical-financial sectors.

“The thriving blockchain startup ecosystem has encouraged us to invest our time, efforts and resources in helping companies build from 0 to 1. With the $1 billion initiative, our focus will be widened to building cross-chain and multi-chain infrastructures integrated with different types of blockchains. We’re gearing up to bolster the adoption of crypto and blockchain to accelerate its growth globally.” said Gwendolyn Regina, Investment Director, BSC Accelerator Fund

With a concentrated focus on blockchain-rich regions such as Russia, India, South East Asia, Europe, US and South America; the BSC community will lead the growth of BSC regionally. The BSC core community will work closely with leading fintech companies, crypto advisors, blockchain researchers and influential people across the globe to spread the basic vision of financial inclusion and sovereignty.

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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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