Welcome to Around the Blockchain, Huobi Learn’s daily rundown of the crypto markets.
According to South Korea’s supreme court registry office, Do Kwon dissolved Terraform Labs Korea by shuttering its Busan HQ on 4 May and Seoul branch on 6 May — just days before LUNA and UST crashed. The decision was reportedly made at a 30 Apr general shareholders meeting, with Kwon acting as the liquidator; nine days later, UST lost its USD peg, and along with LUNA, saw drastic declines in value. Neither token has recovered, and the Luna Foundation guard has since sent its BTC reserves to Binance and Gemini.
After previously claiming to be backed solely by USD, Tether now says its stablecoin USDT is now partially backed by “non-US” government bonds. This is the first time it has disclosed its purchase of government debt from outside the US; at roughly $286 million, Tether’s non-US bonds makes up only a small portion of the $82 billion-plus in assets it claims to own. However, it is unclear which governments are issuing the funds and where they come from. Notably, investors have withdrawn over $7 billion from Tether in the past week alone.
FTX US is rolling out FTX Stocks, a zero-commission stock trading product that will allow retail investors to see their crypto and stock investments in one place. It will offer no-fee brokerage accounts, commission-free trading, and market and company data; currently, it is available only to a small number of US users. FTX Stocks will initially route orders to Nasdaq through its clearing firm, Embed, and FTX will not receive any payment for order flow. In addition to dollar deposits via wire transfer, ACH or credit card, customers can fund their accounts with fiat-backed stablecoins, and need not maintain a minimum balance.
According to a new survey on blockchain-related fitness technology by fitness website FitRated, 40% of its 1,001 American respondents would be willing to cancel their physical gym memberships for Metaverse equivalents, and 81% would exercise more if they were paid in crypto. Additionally, 63% called fitness motivation a “primary benefit” of blockchain tech. The primary reason for these responses was “gamification”, with 83% saying they liked how blockchain-based fitness apps gamified exercise. 72% would like to be paid in BTC, 35.5% in ETH, and 34.6% in DOGE.
Two US residents, Sam Ikkurty and Ravishankar Avadhanam, have been charged with running a crypto Ponzi scheme that allegedly defrauded hundreds of investors out of a collective $44 million. The two allegedly conspired to convince victims to invest in a “so-called income fund invested in digital assets” and operated an illegal commodity pool that they failed to register with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CTFC). A federal Illinois court has issued a restraining order to freeze the assets in question and the CFTC is seeking restitution, disgorgement and civil monetary penalties.
Show me the money
BTC has seen a slight reversal of its recent decline, rising 4.21% to $30,214.46 in the last 24 hours. Within the same period, ETH rose 5.08% to $2,031.67, while other major altcoins also saw increases: ADA was up 4.34%, SOL 6.12% and AVAX 8.24%. Similarly, meme tokens SHIB and DOGE saw a respective increase of 3.53% and 2.98% over the past 24 hours.
In an unexpected turn of events for Terra, LUNA rose 4.78% to $0.000141 in the past 24 hours. However, its stablecoin UST remained on a decline, falling 0.95% to $0.088065 in the same period.
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