Here are some of the major developments from the world of crypto over the past few days
Zodia, the institutional cryptocurrency custody platform, jointly controlled by the financial business Northern Trust, the Japanese SBI Holdings, and the British banking behemoth Standard Chartered, is extending its services to Hong Kong, according to a recent report by CNBC.
Zodia CEO Julian Sawyer said that Zodia Custody is commencing services in Hong Kong in response to the increasing demand for cryptocurrency from institutions. Demand for crypto in Hong Kong is mainly driven by institutional investors rather than retail customers.
Sawyer added that Zodia’s goals are in line with Hong Kong’s position on cryptocurrencies, since the city “sees digital assets as the future and also wants Hong Kong to be a hub.”
Zodia is expanding rapidly throughout Asia. In recent months, it has opened services in Australia,Singapore, Japan, and Hong Kong.
The Astrid Finance team has successfully persuaded an exploiter to give up 80 per cent of the $227,000 in cryptocurrency that the latter took during a hack on October 28, 2023.
According to Astrid, on October 29, 2023, a day after the hack, it was able to persuade the hacker to retain 20 per cent of the money as a bounty and restore the remaining amount using an on-chain message. The hacker chose to cooperate with more than a full day to spare after the Astrid team threatened to take legal action against him if the money wasn’t returned by October 31 at 8:00 am UTC time.
As a result, we regard this as peacefully resolved, Astrid stated in a statement on October 29, 2023. Astrid is a liquid staking mechanism built on the Ethereum platform.
Zach Burks, the CEO and founder of Mintable, has said that the UK government runs the risk of regulating non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in a way that is out of step with the true nature of the emerging technology.
In a conversation with Cointelegraph, Burks said that he thinks a recent study from a British parliamentary committee greatly overstates the part NFTs play in copyright violations and ignores the fact that they are more than merely erratic digital images.
According to Burks, NFTs are currently going through a transitional phase where they are abandoning the speculative boom of PFPs and instead focusing on the utilities of brands utilising NFTs for a wide variety of purposes.
“It’s not just a piece of artwork,” Burks said, adding that the UK government still hasn’t caught up on what NFTs are becoming.