Crypto exchange OKX is ceasing services for users in India, it said in an email to customers Thursday, advising them to withdraw their funds by April-end.
The move follows Apple and Google pulling the eponymous app of OKX in the country after an Indian government agency said many crypto exchanges were operating illegally in the South Asian market.
Financial Intelligence Unit, the government agency, named Binance, Kraken, Huobi and Gate.io among apps operating “illegally” in India but hadn’t named OKX in its public statement.
OKX has advised customers in India to close all their active margin positions and withdraw all funds by April 30.
While India-based crypto exchanges continued to require rigorous know-your-customer verifications before onboarding new users, the same hasn’t been true of many global platforms.
How crypto exchange Backpack climbed its way to success after its major investor FTX died Backpack hit $27.5 billion in total trading volume during its beta phaseBackpack’s founders, who are building a crypto exchange and wallet, have experienced strong growth since launching in 2022.
There’s a bunch of lessons to learn from FTX, Ferrante said.
This is done in hopes that there’s no single point of failure and that the operations of the Backpack crypto exchange can be split up across multiple entities.
At the end of February, Backpack raised $17 million at a $120 million valuation in a Series A round led by Placeholder VC.
But product distribution is top of mind for the exchange as it hopes to get into every country around the world.
Bitcoin hits new high, Solana price jumps as memecoins mania rises and Worldcoin faces heat in SpainWelcome to TechCrunch Crypto, formerly known as Chain Reaction.
Hello and welcome back to the TechCrunch Crypto newsletter.
This week in web3Crunching numbersAs mentioned, this week the crypto space saw all-time highs for bitcoin, again.
Memecoins across the Ethereum, Solana and Avalanche blockchains have seen a huge rally as the crypto market continues to expand.
It’s important to remember that while some memecoins will retain price support for an extended period of time, some can plummet within days, or hours.
The cryptocurrency passed $160 on Wednesday, marking its highest price since January 2022.
So it’s not surprising that the growth and traction on its blockchain is also being transpired through to its token.
Since mid-December, a number of Shiba Inu dog-themed tokens on the Solana blockchain like Bonk and dogwifhat have taken off.
(Please note none of this is financial advice, but one of the reasons that could point to Solana’s price increase.)
Memecoins in general have seen a huge rally as the crypto market continues to thaw from its most recent winter.
Nigeria is actively seeking information from Binance regarding its top 100 users in the country and all transaction history spanning the past six months, according to a Financial Times report.
As a result, the detained executives may allegedly face charges related to currency manipulation, tax evasion, and illegal operations, per a Bloomberg report.
FT says Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency was granted permission to detain both Binance executives for 14 days, which concluded on Tuesday; there’s a proposed hearing to extend the court order scheduled for Wednesday.
Nigeria’s request for Binance’s top users in the country is a focal point in negotiations between the largest crypto platform and the top African crypto market.
Meanwhile, documents reviewed by FT reveal that Nigeria, through its national security adviser, has requested that Binance address any outstanding tax liabilities.
Bitcoin has increased 9.5% in the past seven days and is up 50% on the month, according to CoinMarketCap data.
There is, of course, no way of telling how high bitcoin can rise during the current bull frenzy.
The CoinMarketCap Crypto Fear & Greed Index is in “extreme greed” territory at 89.12 points, up from “neutral” at 59.3 points, in early February.
The index measures price and trading data of the biggest cryptocurrencies, with its user behavior data to measure crypto market sentiment from 0-100.
The last bitcoin halving was on May 11, 2020 and drove its price up about 600% from around $9,000 to $63,000 by the April 2021 mark.
Welcome to TechCrunch Crypto, formerly known as Chain Reaction.
Hello and welcome back to the TechCrunch Crypto newsletter.
We discussed spot bitcoin ETFs, regulation of digital assets and what the next era for crypto could look like.
This week in web3Crunching numbersAs mentioned, this week the crypto space saw all-time highs for bitcoin.
In a first for Chain Reaction, we also minted this podcast on Zora’s platform, which you can check out here.
What does crypto smell like?
To celebrate International Women’s Day, Binance launched a splashy campaign to urge women to get into crypto through the power of… fragrance.
But even as more women enter the industry, the crypto sphere has struggled shake the stench of a men’s locker room.
Boston Consulting Group found that only 7% of web3 founders are women, and among top crypto startups, 27% of employees are women.
But the messaging gets confused such that the idea of crypto perfume can come across as patronizing moreso than funny.
For instance, OpenSea has partnered with the music and arts festival conglomerate Coachella to release three NFT collections that offer both virtual and tangible real-life VIP experiences and merchandise.
The partnership will eventually produce three collections offering different perks and varying tiers of exclusivity (as well as cost).
There have been a lot of NFT collections announced since the term even gained adoption.
OpenSea alone has over 2 million collections and 80 million NFTs on its marketplace, according to its website.
But even with that much total volume, OpenSea isn’t the biggest NFT marketplace today.
Binance will discontinue its naira (NGN) services in response to heightened regulatory scrutiny in Nigeria, it said in a blog post today.
The cryptocurrency exchange will begin delisting any existing NGN spot trading pairs by Thursday, March 7.
Any remaining NGN balances in users’ spot and funding wallets will be converted to USDT on Friday, March 8, it noted.
This development follows recent regulatory actions by the Nigerian government, which imposed restrictions on both local and foreign cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance.
What followed was the reported detention of two Binance officials after they were invited to Nigeria to discuss the regulatory restrictions.
