By James Davis
Once again, the United States regulators haven’t offered much for the crypto community in X to discuss over the last seven days. They only made headlines on Thursday when the Securities and Exchange Commission approved VanEck’s Ethereum futures ETF. The news caused ETH to rally briefly.
In other news, blockchain security company PeckShield informed crypto enthusiasts on X that decentralized protocol Mixin Network had been hacked, losing over $200 million in the process. In an effort to have the stolen funds returned, Mixin Network offered the exploiter a $20 million BUG bounty.
As of this writing, the company has yet to update users whether the attacker accepted the offer. However, it has assured all affected customers that they will be compensated.
In related news, HTX advisor and TRON CEO Justin Sun disclosed on his X account that HTX, a Seychelles-based cryptocurrency exchange, got exploited. Sun reported that the bad actor had made away with over $7.8 million. HTX offered a $400,000 bounty to the hacker, along with a job. However, the crypto exchange has yet to receive a response from the attacker.
Crypto Influencer Bitboy Arrested
Last Tuesday, famous on-chain sleuth ZachXBT revealed the exact place where crypto influencer Ben Armstrong, popularly known as Bitboy, was. Before that, Armstrong had written on his X account that he was planning to go live from a “very special location.” According to a document shared by ZachXBT, it turns out that the special location was a jail. The document showed that Bitboy was arrested after he was found loitering at the house of his former business partner.
Meanwhile, Adam Cochran, a prominent crypto analyst, is convinced that HTX is insolvent. He says the $200 million in ETH that the exchange claims to have is not true based on DefiLlama statistics, which show only $113 million is available. He also notes that there is only $120 million in USDT available on HTX, not the $624 million that the crypto exchange claims.
On Wednesday, popular exchange-traded fund researcher James Seyffert broke the news that the Securities and Exchange Commission had yet again extended the due date of announcing its decision regarding Bitcoin ETF filings submitted in July. According to Seyffert’s post, the commission won’t make any decision on ARK Invest and 21Shares’ Bitcoin spot ETF applications until after November 11.
Financial Services Committee Grills SEC Chair Gary Gensler
On Thursday, the House Financial Services Committee shared a video of the Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler getting grilled by the committee members. DegenerateNews, an X account that shares crypto-related news, noticed something interesting from the grilling session. Gensler had confirmed that purchasing a Pokemon CARD didn’t constitute a security but stumbled when asked whether the purchase of a tokenized Pokemon CARD did.
One thing that excited crypto fans was a sticker on a chair placed behind Gensler, which read “Stand With Crypto.” According to Web3 enthusiast Eleanor Terrett, the message was from crypto-friendly committee members who wanted the Securities and Exchange Commission to develop sensible cryptocurrency policies.
Binance Exits the Russian Market
Later that day, Binance revealed it was leaving the Russian market after selling its regional entity to CommEX. The company said the reason for exiting from Russia was that the regulations in the country were no longer compatible with its compliance strategy.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao shared more details about the sale deal with CommEX on his X account. He said that they did not include a buyback clause in the sale agreement. For employees who were working for Binance’s Russian subsidiary, Zhao said CommEX will absorb a good number of them.
On Friday, John Stark, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s former lawyer, wrote a long thread explaining why he believes Sam Bankman-Fried, the ex-CEO of collapsed crypto exchange FTX, will be convicted. According to him, the Bankman-Fried partners’ move to testify against him will provide a lot of evidence, which will make it difficult for him to defend himself.