The Central Bank of Nigeria has accused cryptocurrency exchange Binance of conducting unauthorized banking in the country. According to some local media reports, the head of the payment policy and regulation at CBN, Olubukola Akinwunmi, testified before a federal court in Abuja that all deposit and withdrawal transactions by Binance should never have occurred, as they are exclusive to banks and other licensed financial institutions.
Akinwunmi went further to claim that the website of Binance had clearly invited people of Nigeria to carry out naira transactions on the platform using some cash link and assured fee-free deposits and flat-fee withdrawals, clearly within the activities guided by CBN. Still worse was charging for facilitating the conversion of any Naira money into US dollars without due process or necessary approval from the Apex Bank.
Read More: Binance US 'Prepared' For SEC Legal Showdown
Additionally, it was said that Binance and its management colluded to hide the origin of $35.4 million that the Nigerian government had obtained through unlawful actions falling under its purview. Additional information provided to the court revealed that Binance traders typically operate behind pseudonyms, which is against the legislation that requires the disclosure of real identities in financial transactions.
The CBN directed that fintech companies should close and render reports of accounts involved in cryptocurrency. At the same time, the Nigerian Securities and Exchange Commission proposed the delisting of naira from peer-to-peer platforms to rid far-flung cases of market manipulation. This came as a new classification from the NSA declared cryptocurrency trading a national security issue.
Bitcoin Rebounds from Selloff, Traders Eyeing Buy Signals
The top cryptocurrency plunged to as low as $53,500 earlier today but has now rebounded some of those lost gains. At the time of writing, according to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, BTC price action has now cemented a range roughly 8% above those weekly lows.
Just after the closing on July 5, the BTC/USD lows were at their worst since late February. Bulls in Bitcoin have managed to regain some of the lost ground despite the "out of hours" weekend trading, with the $53,500 lows clearly appearing to be an anomaly.
According to Rekt Capital, a prominent trader and analyst, the recent price action was a "tremendous deviation to the downside in recent days." BTC/USD barely failed to close at a key level of $58,450, which Rekt Capital argued could have "fueled upside to $60,600."
Encouraging signs have also come out of the readings for Bitcoin's relative strength index, or RSI, on daytime frames, including a bullish divergence. Trader Scott Melker, known as the "Wolf of All Streets," indicated that a strong daily close would suggest the bottom of the current correction is indeed in. Although the market is very short-lived, technical indicators and the newest bounce-back gave traders some hope that the worst of the recent dip may be behind us.
Firedancer Validator Client Announces $1 Million Bug Bounty for Solana Developers
Solana developers will be offered opportunities to make big earnings of $1 million by discovering bugs in the new "Firedancer" independent validator client. In a bug bounty to be dished out with Jump Crypto and powered by the bug bounty platform Immunefi, this would mark Firedancer's first bug bounty. The event is due to take place there from July 10 to August 21, 2024; it has a $1 million rewards pool. Anyone bounty is allowed a maximum payout of $1 million in USDC.
Being an independent client validator, it is of great importance in the processing of transactions and construction of blocks within the $60 billion network belonging to Solana. The client is being developed in C and C++ to accommodate high trading volumes, and designed to fix issues with the QUIC protocol that struggled to keep up with transaction processing as activity surged for Solana's network.
Firedancer v.0.1 has been developed by the pseudonymous engineer Cantelope Peel, who is leading the development of this at blockchain infrastructure firm Jump Crypto. Peel said the team's currently testing early versions of the Solana consensus and fork choice algorithms with live voting and other features.
