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.
Co-founders Ozgun Erdogan and Umur Cubukcu previously built Citus Data, where they also met Daniel Farina, who previously was instrumental in building Heroku PostgreSQL.
Citus Data wouldn’t have been possible without,” Cubukcu said.
“Fifteen years ago, all those service [that are on the Ubicloud roadmap] did not have open-source data plane components.
These days, for the core services, all of those now have good open-source alternatives, barring maybe one or two,” he said.
The company currently has 10 employees, split between San Francisco, Amsterdam (where the Citus Data team built a small engineering team during the team’s Microsoft days) and Istanbul.
As remote work becomes increasingly prevalent, organizations globally are adapting, especially regarding onboarding procedures for new employees and navigating cross-border payment complexities.
RemotePass, one such business out of the UAE, has raised $5.5 million in Series A funding led by New York-based 212 VC.
CEO Kamal Reggad and Karim Nadi founded RemotePass in late 2020 to allow businesses to onboard, manage and pay their talent base in countries where they lack local legal presence.
Several companies are actively facilitating remote work and aiding employees in receiving payments from employers.
“Addressing today’s workforce challenges like talent mobility and remote work, RemotePass stands out as a key enabler.
Despite the EC ruling favoring Spotify and other streamers over Apple, the company was still cautious about how Apple would proceed.
So we’re looking forward to the next steps that will hopefully clearly and conclusively address Apple’s long-standing unfair practices,” Spotify wrote.
In 2019, Spotify first filed its antitrust complaint against the tech giant, which later led to the EU’s formal investigation of Apple’s App Store announced in 2020.
In April of the following year, the EU issued a statement of objections, accusing Apple of distorting competition in the market for streaming services.
And it noted that Spotify had a 56% share of the music streaming market in Europe, compared with Apple Music’s 11% share.
Facebook plans to shut down its news tab in the U.S. and AustraliaMeta is trying to distance itself from news media-related regulations and payment complexities as it is planning to remove the news tab on Facebook in the U.S. and Australia.
The social media company said that the number of people using Facebook News in Australia and the U.S. dropped by 80% in the last year.
“This is part of an ongoing effort to better align our investments to our products and services people value the most.
The fate of Facebook News’ shutdown is due to regulatory moves and Meta’s withdrawal from investing in new products.
Legislations passed in countries Australia and Canada resulted in authorities asking platforms to pay online publishers for their content.
But it’s a fragmented market with different streaming apps, channels and live sports leagues.
But even if you remove the big names, there are quite a few different ad-supported streaming services, such as FAST (free advertising-supported streaming television) services like Pluto, big OTT platforms like Fubo, and of course broadcasters themselves like Paramount, Warner Bros., CNN, etc.
We have Benjamin Antier on the board — he’s the founder of Publica, the biggest ad server for streaming apps.
Using Vibe’s ad platform is pretty straightforward.
After picking the streaming apps and channels where you want to show your ads, you can select a geographical area and an audience based on various interests.
Consolidation is afoot in the world of HR services, with larger players snapping up interesting, smaller startups en route to more robust unit economics and providing one-stop shops for customers looking to cut down on suppliers.
In the latest development, Deel — the $12 billion HR business out of Paris — is scooping up Zavvy, a Munich-based AI-based “people development” startup building tools for personalized career progression, training, and performance management.
Finally, Deel will also make its existing Deel HR tool, which was free for organizations of up to 200 users, now “free” for existing customers regardless of their size.
Originally Deel approached Zavvy with a partnership proposal before making an offer to buy it outright.
By Zavvy’s and Deel’s accounts, the former company has not found it hard to build its business in a tighter market.
It also includes a commitment to let customers change cloud providers, or services within the cloud, if they choose to.
It also details a focus on building cybersecurity around AI services; attention to building data centers and other infrastructure in an environmentally-sound way; and education investments.
Brad Smith, the president and vice chair of Microsoft, announced the framework today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
The announcement comes at the same time that Microsoft is coming under increasing regulatory scrutiny for its $13 billion investment in OpenAI, which currently gives it a 49% stake in the startup that is leading the charge for generative AI services globally.
In January, the European competition watchdog said that it was assessing whether the investment falls under antitrust rules.
Intuitive Machines has landed a spacecraft on the lunar surface, in a historic first for a private company.
“What we can confirm without a doubt is that our equipment is on the surface of the moon and we are transmitting,” mission director and Intuitive Machines CTO Tim Crain said.
Instead, the lander leveraged one of the onboard payloads, NASA’s laser and doppler lidar sensors, to guide the spacecraft to the lunar surface.
All in all, Intuitive Machines’ contract is worth a little less than $118 million.
Intuitive Machines’ victory comes shortly after another CLPS awardee, Astrobotic, failed to put its lander on the moon.
Spend enough time online, and you’ll collect a digital paper trail of accounts, logins, subscriptions, mailing lists, and passwords wrapped up in data breaches.
From its web-based dashboard, you can organize, monitor, and manage your online accounts, unsubscribe from mailing lists, cancel subscriptions, review privacy policies, and more.
The end result is something like a Mint for your entire online life, so to speak.
Instead, it works by connecting with your online accounts, like your Gmail, and soon other online services and cloud storage providers.
Some of the functionality Yorba offers may not be unique.
