Following a US Department of Justice raid, a large amount of stolen crypto was discovered in a popcorn tin. According to the DOJ, this was the second biggest financial seizure in recorded history. Moreover, after the seizure, the United States government now holds over 214,000 BTC, making up more than 1% of the total capped BTC supply.

Over 50,676 BTC, valued at approximately $3.36 billion at the time of discovery, were discovered hidden on various devices discovered within the home of a hacker who had stolen them from Silk Road, a dark web marketplace.

James Zhong, 32, pled guilty last week to wire fraud in September 2012, after taking advantage of a flaw in the websites payment structure. Mr Zhong pleaded guilty to hacking the website on November 4th and has surrendered his Bitcoin and other assets to police while awaiting sentencing. The punishment for his crime is up to 20 years in prison.

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Binance has signed a non-binding letter of intent to acquire FTX, adding a surprising twist to the public feud between the worlds two biggest cryptocurrency exchanges, which contributed to a drop in the value of several tokens earlier today. Moreover, until the due diligence process is completed, the firms will not disclose the deals value.

Binance was the first investor to back FTX, but as the younger firms popularity grew, the relationship between the two firms began to deteriorate. Following the announcement, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried thanked Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao as well the general crypto community for their patience and understanding.

He further indicated that this is a user-focused development which will benefit the entire industry, and that Binance has done and will continue to do a fantastic job of expanding the global crypto ecosystem and fostering a more free economic environment for everyone.

Binance and FTX clashed recently after Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao tweeted that his exchange would gradually withdraw billions of dollars in FTX's native token, FTT, due to certain revelations that have come to light.

As speculation about the solvency of billionaire Sam Bankman-Frieds crypto exchange grew over the weekend, the FTX CEO tweeted early Monday morning that everything in FTX is satisfactory and that the assets are fine.

He also stated that FTX has sufficient liquidity to cover all client holdings and that the company does not invest client funds. He concluded by saying that FTX always has and will continue to process all withdrawals.

FTXs native exchange token FTT was loaded into a story last week revealing the balance sheet of FTX sister company Alameda Research. This sparked a public spat between Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison and Changpeng Zhao, who also owns a large number of FTT tokens.

Taking note of the findings in a recent report, Zhao stated that his exchange would start liquidating any remaining FTT on its books. Ellison responded on Twitter, saying Alameda was ready to buy any amount of FTT Binance wanted to unload for $22 each. Zhao appeared to reject Ellisons offer in a tweet Monday afternoon, saying Binance would stay in the free market.

JP Morgan has successfully completed its inaugural cross-border transaction using DeFi on a public blockchain. In doing so, the banking giant has begun paving the way for other banking and financial institutions to start using decentralized finance as a default infrastructure going forward.

Important details

On November 2nd, 2022, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) launched Project Guardian as part of a pilot program to explore potential DeFi applications in wholesale funding markets. To that end, the initiative was a vital step in investigating how traditional financial institutions, among various other use cases, can potentially utilize tokenized assets and DeFi protocols to successfully carry out financial transactions.

The pilot program was also attended by Singapores biggest bank (DBS Bank), SBI Digital Asset Holdings, and Oliver Wyman Forum. The transaction was carried out on the Ethereum Layer 2 network Polygon with the help of a modified version of the Aave protocols smart contract code. Furthermore, the MAS stated that a live cross-currency transaction incorporating tokenized Singaporean Dollar and Japanese Yen deposits, as well as a simulated exercise of purchasing and selling tokenized government bonds, was successfully carried out.

Additionally, Tyrone Lobban, JP Morgans Onyx business units Head of Blockchain Launch and Onyx Digital assets, stated that the tokenized Singapore dollar deposits became the first recorded instance of any bank issuing tokenized deposits.

What comes next?

According to MAS Chief Fintech Officer Sopnendu Mohanty, this is a huge step in the right direction, one that will significantly improve existing financial networks and help bridge the gap between them and DeFi. The CFO also said that the latest pilot has aided in the development of the countrys digital asset strategy as well.

Umar Farooq, CEO of Onyx by JP Morgan, a blockchain focused business unit within the asset management firm, claimed that JPMorgans on chain transaction on a public blockchain was nothing short of groundbreaking and will forever be known as a truly historic moment. The achievement comes as many top financial institutions have anticipated big things for blockchain oriented tokenization of real world assets.

Earlier in 2022, Boston Consulting Group predicted that the total value of tokenized illiquid assets would reach over $16 trillion by 2030. Popular DeFi lending protocol Aave also recently commented on the new pilot, calling it a monumental achievement for the industry because it indicates a gigantic step towards bringing traditional financial assets into DeFi.

Instagram has announced that a select group of digital creators will soon be able to mint and sell NFTs directly the social media platform instead of relying on various third parties.

The image based app recently launched its Digital Collectibles feature in 100 countries, thereby successfully enabling users to connect to their digital wallets and display NFTs that they created or purchased. The linked NFTs would therefore appear in users feed with a unique effect to indicate authenticity.

Moreover, the most recent update will enable creators to create their own digital collectibles and sell them on and off Instagram, providing them with a end-to-end toolkit which can be utilized for creating, displaying, and selling NFTs.

The new marketplace would also first be tested among a small group of creators in the United States, including Amber Vittoria, Dave Krugman, Jason Seife, Refik Anadol, and others, via the Polygon blockchain. Instagram will additionally support the Solana blockchain and the Phantom wallet along with video focused digital collectibles.

Meta stated that there will be no fees for displaying and sharing a digital collectible on Facebook or Instagram and that there will be no additional fees for selling digital collectibles either until at least 2024.

Furthermore, the company promised that neither creators nor collectors would have to pay gas fees for digital collectibles purchased on Instagram at launch. However, application store fees for Android and iOS may still be applicable.

The worlds biggest NFT marketplace, OpenSea, recently announced that it shall be testing a new system which freezes trading of NFTs involved in suspicious sales while it investigates the transaction to prevent theft, scams, and any other potential fraudulent behavior.

When the platforms new automated system detects a suspicious NFT sale, it will notify the seller, providing the user a week to confirm or dispute the transaction before the asset may officially be sold.

Moreover, as per OpenSea, fraudulent entities often attempt to flip stolen NFTs after draining the victims assets through malicious links claiming to offer free mints or airdrops. In fact, cryptocurrency analysis firm Elliptic revealed that more than $100 million in NFTs had been stolen between July 2021 and July 2022.

Scams and theft, according to Saurabh Sharma, OpenSeas Head of Search Products, are therefore among the most significant barriers to wider NFT adoption. Additionally, while OpenSea can prevent the resale of stolen NFTs, the company cannot guarantee that victims can successfully reclaim their lost assets unless the perpetrators cooperate.

In related news, OpenSea also recently unveiled the launch of an automated URL scanner to detect malicious links to further deter undesirable entities.

Immutable X, a Layer 2 Ethereum scaling protocol, is now officially powering GameStops NFT marketplace as the initiative has gone live. In March of this year, Immutable was valued at $2.5 billion.

The video game store industry is declining, but it is poised to become a major player in the NFT gaming sector, competing with crypto based gaming NFT platforms such as Fractal, among others.

Furthermore, the marketplace shall reportedly include assets for Immutable X games like Gods Unchained, Guild of Guardians, and Illuvium, as well as various other Web3 games. Also, by utilizing Immutable Xs Ethereum scaling, all transactions would not have any fees and will additionally provide carbon-neutral minting.

Other strategic Web3 moves by GameStop this year include a collaboration with the cryptocurrency exchange FTX US last month in order to provide users with access to FTXs digital asset marketplace.

Fantom is among the most rapidly growing Layer 1 blockchain platforms. Recently, it launched Watchdog, a continuous smart auditing system. Decentralized applications built on Fantom will therefore reportedly benefit from automatic audits by the Watchdog system, thanks to a collaboration with leading blockchain security firm Debaub.

The release of Watchdog will not only improve the security of dApps on Fantom, but it will additionally improve the overall quality as well as performance of apps native to Fantom.

Why does this matter?

Security flaws in smart contracts are becoming increasingly common. According to FBI research, approximately $1.3 billion in crypto was stolen in the first quarter of 2022, with 97% of the theft occurring within the DeFi ecosystem. While third party smart contract auditing firms are essential for projects to discover these vulnerabilities, a combination of factors, such as high costs and lengthy wait times, frequently discourage startups and emerging projects from conducting an audit.

With that in mind, Watchdog will provide a powerful automated tool which continuously monitors smart contracts to offer projects with an alternative auditing system that is reliable, affordable, and most importantly consistent.

With Watchdog, Fantom is hence striving to bring a new level of security and protection to the ecosystem, said Michael Kong, CEO of Fantom Foundation. He further indicated that developers need access to smart contract auditing tools that are affordable, efficient, and trustworthy. Watchdog does exactly that, he added, and it will thus set a new security standard going forward.

What comes next?

Using automated, continuous auditing systems like Watchdog to supplement costly third party audits allows projects to effortlessly analyze selected smart contracts. In addition, any issues with dApps analyzed on the Fantom Network are investigated by a human auditor.

Moreover, the Watchdog auditing system will reportedly provide various benefits such as round the clock analysis for more than 80 different types of exploits, periodic updates as well as improvements with new attack vectors which correspond to the gradual emergence of new research, versatile updates with the latest network data and smart contracts of selected projects, professional examination for warnings at a larger scale, addressing specific issues far more effectively, and immediately contacting the relevant project team as soon as a vulnerability has been discovered.

As the crypto and blockchain industry continues to grow, we can expect more security measures to be steadily deployed over many fields in DeFi such as smart contracts, NFTs, the metaverse, and blockchain itself.

To encourage local students, particularly those who live far away from school, the Japanese city of Toda has reportedly implemented a new metaverse based schooling service.

However, students must obtain permission from their respective school principals to attend metaverse schooling and will be supervised at all times.

The city chose this new schooling service that enables students to explore the campus and study in virtual classrooms primarily because of both the mainstream attention being given to the metaverse concept these days and the potential that it has for the education industry.

Furthermore, whereas various attempts to boost school attendance continue to be difficult in the country, Japanese officials are betting on metaverse based education to help students connect with those around them.

Todas education center director, Sugimori Masayuki, hopes to see metaverse students grow up and eventually become an integral part of Japans technologically advanced society. To that end, the city of Fukuoka recently announced a partnership with Astar Japan Labs as it strives to become Japans Web3 hub.

Google Cloud has announced the launch of its own node-hosting service for Web3 developers. The service, which is being called the Blockchain Node Engine, shall reportedly enable developers to depend on Google Cloud to deploy a new node, thereby making the entire process quicker, easier, and more secure.

Furthermore, not only will the Google Cloud Blockchain Node Engine be fully managed, but it would also successfully track the nodes for developers and deal with any potential issues which may arise.

According to James Tromans, who leads Google Cloud Platforms Web3 product, the Blockchain Node Engine will address two main challenges, namely the time it takes to launch a node, and the process of maintenance.

The Blockchain Node Engine therefore alleviates many known issues while also granting developers complete autonomy over where their nodes shall be deployed. The most popular blockchain, Ethereum, will thus be the first to be supported by the new initiative.
 

As part of an ongoing trend for social media platforms which also include both Instagram and Facebook, Twitter has announced that it is developing a new wallet prototype which will reportedly allow users to deposit and withdraw cryptocurrencies.

Last September, the social media giant introduced a feature that enabled users to tip content creators with Bitcoin (BTC). In mid-February, Ethereum users gained access to Twitter-native crypto tipping as well.

Earlier in 2022, the company also permitted users to display their NFTs as profile pictures. To that end, the new inclusion of crypto wallets could transform Twitter into a full-fledged Web3 platform, however it is still too early to make that claim.
 

Interpol has unveiled the first metaverse designed specifically for law enforcement communication. The aptly named Interpol Metaverse has reportedly already been developed, allowing police officers all over the world to communicate with each other and participate in immersive training courses in forensic investigation along with various other policing capabilities.

The Interpol Metaverse also allows visitors to take virtual tours of a replica of the Interpol General Secretariat headquarters in Lyon, France.

The new initiative is a key component of the global policing organization's efforts to adapt as crime moves online. Counterfeiting, data theft, ransomware, hacks, money laundering, financial fraud, phishing, and online harassment are all potential crimes in the metaverse which must be addressed.

Interpols Executive Director of Technology and Innovation, Madan Oberoi, stated that by identifying these risks early on, the team can work with stakeholders to design the appropriate governance frameworks and cut off future criminal markets before they form. Only by having these discussions, Madan continued, will Interpol be able to develop an effective response to these new types of criminal activities.