The blockchain morning post | Iranian companies will be able to settle with cryptocurrencies; Tesla is suspected of supporting Dogecoin payment for purchases

Today's Highlights Tips

Iran will allow businesses to use cryptocurrencies for international settlement

The Associated Press will launch the NFT photography market created by Xooa on Jan. 31

Sports NFT platform Lympo lost about $18.7 million in damage from the attack

U.S. gaming giant Take-Two Interactive will buy Zynga for $12.7 billion

Signal founders leave or join MobileCoin, which is raising billions of dollars in Series C funding

Block is assembling a team dedicated to launching the "next generation" Bitcoin mining ASICs

NBA stars Iguodala and Thompson accept bitcoin to pay part of their salaries

Regulatory messages

The U.S. Government Accountability Office recommends tightening regulation of crypto ATMs

The Government Accountability Office (GAO), which provides audit and investigation services to the U.S. Congress, said in a new study that crypto kiosks (crypto ATMs) are partly responsible for the increasing use of crypto payments to promote illegal human and drug trafficking, as these machines are less regulated than crypto exchanges and transactions are harder to track.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommended that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) should work together to take a tougher approach to regulating crypto ATMs. The report examines the use of cryptocurrencies in global trafficking and how U.S. agencies including the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are responding to the rise in crypto crime. The U.S. Government Accountability Office also considered the challenges agencies face in fighting crypto crime, finding a widespread lack of information, particularly about crypto ATMs, which hampers law enforcement's ability to identify and deter criminals.

According to the Iranian Labor News Agency, the head of the Iranian Trade Promotion Organization said that the Central Bank of Iran and the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Trade have reached an agreement to connect the CBI crypto platform with the integrated trade system, allowing businesses to settle payments to foreign partners using cryptocurrencies. The mechanism by which the system operates is currently being finalized, with no further details.

Director general of the Taxation Authority of Thailand: A clear standard for crypto taxation will be determined this month

Thailand is rapidly moving forward with its crypto tax plan, and tax regulations for digital asset traders are expected soon to be introduced to further clarify crypto-related activities, Cointelegraph reported. According to Ekniti Nitithanprapas, director of the Thai Taxation Authority, the clear criteria for calculating the tax on crypto trading profits will be finalized in January 2022. Last week, Thailand's Ministry of Finance said that profits from cryptocurrency trading are now subject to a 15 percent capital gains tax.

According to a January 11 report in the Bangkok Post, Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has instructed the tax authorities to brainstorm on the issue and provide investors and the public with information clarification. At present, the Ministry of Finance of Thailand has held discussions with the Bank of Thailand, the Securities and Exchange Commission of Thailand and the Stock Exchange of Thailand on related issues.

NFT

The Associated Press (AP) announced Monday that it will launch a non-homogeneous token (NFT) marketplace built by blockchain technology provider Xooa, where collectors can purchase the news agency's award-winning contemporary and historical photojournalism. The Associated Press said NFTs will be minted on the Polygon blockchain, with the market and the first NFTs debuting on Monday, Jan. 31, and the initial collection will include photographs by current and former Associated Press photojournalists, as well as Associated Press images that won the Pulitzer Prize. Each NFT will contain a rich set of raw metadata that allows collectors to understand the time, date, location, equipment, and technical settings used to shoot. As a nonprofit news cooperative, NFT proceeds will be used to fund truthful, impartial Associated Press news.

Previously, in October, the Associated Press had partnered with Chainlink to provide the latter with real-world economic information.

Sports NFT platform Lympo suffered a hot wallet security breach, losing 165.2 million LMT tokens worth $18.7 million in hacking. Ten different project wallets were destroyed during the attack. The market shows that after hackers diverted and sold loot from the project's hot wallet, the LMT price plummeted by 92% to $0.0093.

The PHANTA BEAR #9999以148 ETH (approximately $460,000), the highest in the series

According to OpenSea data, PHANTA BEAR #9999以148 ETH sold for about $460,000, setting a record for the HIGHNTA BEAR NFT series. It is reported that the total market value of the Current PhantaBear series of NFTs is about $46 million. Phanta Bear NFT flooring price is 6.35ETH.

Project dynamics

NBA stars Iguodala and Thompson accept bitcoin to pay part of their salaries and distribute $1 million worth of bitcoin to fans

NBA stars Andre Iguodala and Klay Thompson said on Twitter that Bitcoin is the future and will accept Bitcoin to pay part of his salary. In order to popularize Bitcoin, the two sides will also issue $1 million worth of Bitcoin to fans.

Sequoia Capital is registered with the SEC as an investment advisory firm and will invest in crypto assets and listed stocks

According to the Wall Street Journal, SEC filings show that Sequoia Capital, one of the largest venture capital firms in the United States, has registered with the SEC as an investment advisory firm in order to expand the scope of deal types. Sequoia Capital's original investment strategy was to support early-stage Silicon Valley tech startups, and the change in regulatory status reflects the company's expanded investment strategy. In a filing filed with the SEC dated November 30, Sequoia Capital Operations LLC described the company's activities as follows: "The consultancy's reach has expanded as a result of the innovations that technology has brought across industries. ”

In this filing with the SEC, Sequoia Capital describes the company's current strategy to invest primarily in seed, early-stage and growth-stage companies in commercial and consumer technology, financial services and energy industries. Sequoia Capital also said it would conduct some unusual transactions by venture capital firms, such as buying listed stocks and crypto assets, and that the company could become the promoter of a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).

U.S. game developer and publisher Take-Two Interactive on Monday announced the acquisition of social game developer Zynga in the form of "cash + stock," with the overall deal valued at $12.7 billion, with cash and stock trading expected to close on June 30, pending approval from the two companies' respective shareholders and regulators.

Take-Two Interactive is the parent company of the game brand Rockstar Games and 2K Games, and owns franchises to popular games such as Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, NBA 2K and Borderlands, Zynga is known for casual games like FarmVille and Words With Friends. On Monday's conference call, Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick said the acquisition of Zynga would enable the combined company to navigate the new "Web3 opportunity."

Solana released the mainnet v1.8.12 version, which supports the native construction of Apple's M1 chip

Solana has officially launched the mainnet v1.8.12 version, and the main features of this version upgrade include:

1. Improve executor cache performance; 2. Improve the reliability of BigTable queries; 3. Support native build on Apple M1 chip devices; 4. Support offline signing of CLI voting account management subcommands; 5. Increase rbpf to v0.2.21, bpf-tools to v1.20; 6. Improve related stability, performance, and documentation.

The Digital Yuan App entered the top five of the Apple App Store free list

At present, in the Apple App Store free list ranking, "digital yuan (pilot version)" ranks fifth, surpassing Alipay and Taobao.

Polygon Zero launches Plonky2, which it calls the world's fastest ZK scaling technology

Polygon's official Tweet said that its "Plonky2" technology sets new milestones in speed and scalability, which could be a major breakthrough in Ethereum throughput. The Polygon team wrote in a blog post, "Plonky2 is a recursive SNARK that is 100 times faster than existing alternatives and is compatible with Ethereum itself. It combines the advantages of PLONK and FRI with fast proofs and trustless setups, and SNARKs with support for rescanization on Ethereum and low verification costs. The announcement comes after Polygon has made a series of acquisitions in recent months. Last December, the project announced the acquisition of blockchain scaling development team Mir Protocol for $400 million, after which the Mir team changed its name to Polygon Zero.

According to Techcrunch, Moxie Marlinspike, founder of the encrypted messaging app Signal, announced in his official blog that he will resign from Signal. There is speculation that Moxie Marlinspike or MobileCoin, a mobile privacy payments project that will join Signal' partnership.

MobileCoin was founded in 2017, and Moxie Marlinspike has been serving as a consultant for the project. Last August, MobileCoin announced a $66 million Series B funding round at a valuation of $1.066 billion, with Alameda Research and Coinbase Ventures participating, and announced that it had access to Signal and Mixin Messenger, two major communications software. But mobileCoin's growth has also raised questions about Signal and founder Marlinspike, who has tried to distance itself from MobileCoin, arguing that Signal's exploration of cryptocurrencies is risky and that integrating privacy coins could cause legal trouble for Signal.

In response, some speculate that the departure of Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike is similar to the departure of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey to focus on cryptocurrencies. In addition, mobileCoin is in the midst of a Series C funding round, according to sources close to the company, whose valuation could be as high as "billions of dollars."

Tesla is suspected of supporting Dogecoin payment for purchases

According to the code of Tesla's official website, Tesla Model 3 is suspected of supporting Dogecoin payment purchase, affected by this news, the price of Dogecoin is stretched in a short time.

Financing messages

NFT market aggregator Flip completes a $6.5 million seed round, led by Distributed Global and Chapel One

According to The Block, NFT market aggregator Flip completed a $6.5 million seed round, led by Distributed Global and Chapel One, with investors such as CMS Holdings, NFT artist PplPleasr (aka Emily Yang), Keyboard Monkey, DeeZe and Larry Cermak, vice president of research at The Block.

Flips2hi, co-founded by UpOnly podcast host Brian Krogsgard (aka Ledger Status), will be available to the public at the end of this month or early February. Flip will list NFT collectibles, reserve prices, trading volumes, and other data and information for each market. The platform will also allow users to view and track NFT portfolios in one place and will be able to bundle their multiple NFT wallets together to track individual portfolios.

Mining news

Jack Dorsey's Block (formerly Square) is looking to assemble a team to work on launching the "next generation" Bitcoin mining ASIC, a microchip custom-designed for a specific purpose.

In a tweet published in October 2021, Jack Dorsey explored the potential future of the Block Bitcoin mining system, listing five topics for further exploration: miner distribution, promoting clean and efficient energy use and improving mining efficiency, closely integrating the silicon design process with software and system design, vertical integration of supply chain production processes, overcoming the complexity of Bitcoin mining, and more.

Important data

Report: Weekly outflows of crypto investment products totaled $207 million

According to a report released monday by CoinShares, the total weekly outflow of crypto investment products reached a record $207 million in the 7 days ended Jan. 7, of which the investment fund focused on bitcoin had an outflow of $107 million in 7 days. Market sell-off pressures from mid-December led to a total four-week outflow from crypto funds of $465 million.

CoinShares noted that over the past four weeks, the fund's trading volume has accounted for up to 25% of the total bitcoin trading volume, which highlights more activity from investors than usual. Ethereum-focused fund products outflowed $39 million last week, bringing outflows of $180 million over the past four weeks.