Decentralised asset management OS Velvet Capital that is driving the decentralised finance (DeFi) adoption has joined the Cointelegraph Accelerator program.
DeFi was formerly a specialty for crypto frontrunners, while centralised finance (CeFi) was the exclusive owner of customer trust.
Following the demise of key centralised organisations in the crypto industry, such as FTX, Prime Trust, and Celsius, among others, the user base—ranging from traders to asset managers—recognised the value of self-custody, and began exploring for advanced services in the DeFi arena.
Now, Velvet Capital, which is backed by Binance Labs, has joined the Cointelegraph Accelerator program. It provides an infrastructure for fully on-chain digital asset management and eliminates and/or minimises the barriers to entry for emerging fund managers. This allows people of all expertise levels to create and manage on-chain funds and structured products with minimal effort.
According to Statista, DeFi usage increased from less than 1,000 users in 2017 to more than 6 million in January 2023, indicating a large inflow to the DeFi ecosystem.
JPEG’d Confirms Return Of 5,495 ETH From Curve Hacker
JPEG’d, a non-fungible token (NFT) and DeFi protocol, has announced that the Curve Finance hacker has returned 5,495 Ether, worth around $10 million at current pricing. The hacker had drained several pools on Curve Finance, stealing roughly $70 million, but has gradually started returning funds to various projects.
The hacker received 610.6 ETH ($1.1 million) in exchange for returning the money stolen on July 30, 2023.
JPEG’d is a DeFi lending protocol that allows users to borrow money in exchange for collateralised NFTs. The Curve breach cost the protocol $11.6 million in cryptocurrency.
SEC Has Violated Due Process’, Says Coinbase CLO On Motion To Dismiss Lawsuit
Lawyers for Coinbase have cited precedent from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) vs Ripple case, in their ongoing legal case involving the cryptocurrency exchange.
Coinbase, a US-based cryptocurrency exchange has filed a petition to dismiss a complaint initiated by the SEC in June 2023.
Lawyers for Coinbase filed a motion for judgment with the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on August 4, claiming the SEC had “violated due process, abused its discretion, and abandoned its own earlier interpretations of the securities laws” in asserting certain regulatory authority over the crypto exchange.
The legal team highlighted precedent from the SEC vs. Ripple case, in which a court determined that XRP did not meet the commission’s existing criteria for security. In that case, the judge had ruled that XRP largely did not qualify as a security by the commission’s standards.
Coinbase’s filing specifically disputed that transactions involving the 12 tokens at issue in the SEC case met the definition of “investment contracts” under the Howey test, and that the exchange was acting as an unregistered broker, and that the SEC’s challenges to its staking programme “failed as a matter of law”.
Coinbase has now also asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit, claiming that the SEC’s enforcement action was “punitive” and exceeded the commission’s authority as authorised by the Congress.
