Binance.US, the American division of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has partnered with the DeFi Alliance. 

The Chicago-based DeFi Alliance is a non-profit organisation dedicated to providing support and mentorship to DeFi startups, in the areas of trading, markets, and regulation. 

Since launching in April 2020, the alliance has attracted support from several major players in the DeFi space, including DRW/Cumberland CMT Digital, Aave, Compound Finance, Jump Capital, Volt Capital and others. 

In May, the DeFi Alliance selected a mix of decentralised exchanges, asset managers, and derivative platforms – 0x, Kyber Network, Opyn, Idex, Token Sets, Dydx, and Synthetix – as its first startups. 

Commenting on the news CEO of Binance.US, Catherine Coley, said:

“What drew innovators to the space over the past decade, and what draws newcomers now is the open access and global potential offered by decentralized financial systems. 

“By working with DeFi Alliance, Binance.US will help mature the DeFi space, build for broader inclusion, and support startups as they unlock the potential DeFi offers, the potential that so many of our users are passionate about.”

Binance.US is fully compliant and regulated in 40 US states, recently announced trading in Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, and has said it aims to provide services to residents of all 50 states by the beginning of 2021. It currently supports ten DeFi tokens including LINK, from Chainlink, MKR, from Maker, and stablecoin DAI.

In August, Binance.US also announced it had joined the Washington DC-based Blockchain Association. 

AYO.NEWS says:

Things are starting to get confusing in the world of DeFi organisations – earlier this week we reported that the Global DeFi Alliance had welcomed 10 new members, including Aave, which is also a member of the DeFi Alliance… It’s a good job they have different branding! 

‘AYO.NEWS says’ features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited or its affiliates or associates. 

All original content featured on this site is © Pentagon Digital Limited, 2020

A crypto enthusiast in Bakersfield, California, has hidden Bitcoin Cash (BCH) around the city in an effort to encourage adoption.

The ‘Bitcoin Man of Bakersfield’ (BMB), who describes himself as an “anonymous growth hacker and media manipulator,” hid 100 Bitcoin Cash (BCH) QR code stickers, worth $1,100 USD, in selected places around the city. 

BMB explained he was primarily aiming to spread awareness of cryptocurrencies in a fun way, and made the whole thing a bit of a treasure hunt, leaving cryptic clues at various locations. 

True to his “media manipulator” moniker, BMB resorted to photoshopping pictures of the QR stickers to fake social media success, and asked all those who found them to contact local news media. 

It seems the stunt did achieve some success, with at least one resident, a certain Indiana London, saying she’d found a sticker and it prompted her to download a crypto wallet for the first time – though she also said she initially thought the giveaway was a scam. 

Talking to his local ABC TV news channel, BMB explained he was encouraging the adoption of crypto in the city so that people could avoid the “scam of fractional reserve banking,” referencing the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented money printing efforts. 

Even high-profile BCH advocate, and tax exile, Roger Ver (who’s currently involved in another legal battle with self-proclaimed Bitcoin inventor Craig Wright, this time in Antigua and Barbuda) tweeted a news clip, and Bitcoin.com ran the story.

#BitcoinCash is spreading in ways #Bitcoin no longer can. https://t.co/NWlZsFCaap pic.twitter.com/kODQjFpLBl

— Roger Ver (@rogerkver) September 17, 2020

AYO.NEWS says:

With frustration at the current economic and financial system rapidly growing, exacerbated by the incompetent handling of the COVID-19 crisis, will we see more front line crypto warriors like the Bitcoin Man of Bakersfield? Something tells us the authorities won’t like it. 

‘AYO.NEWS says’ features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited or its affiliates or associates. 

All original content featured on this site is © Pentagon Digital Limited, 2020

Danish esports tournament organiser BLAST has entered a deal with blockchain company Hdac Technology. 

The partnership will see Hdac Technology branding featured throughout the BLAST Premier Country-Strike: Global Offensive circuit – including the Fall Series, Showdown, and Finals – in addition to content and giveaways. 

‘The Economy Play’, a broadcast integration featuring analysis of economy rounds, dissecting how teams choose to spend money on weapons, will also be sponsored by the blockchain company. 

Discussing the partnership Commercial Director for BLAST, Leo Matlock, said:

“BLAST and Hdac share a passion and focus on innovation and technology, which makes this partnership the perfect fit. In esports, our key audience are naturally more attuned to new technologies and pioneering industries – making them more open minded to the world of cryptocurrency and blockchain.

“We look forward to developing our partnership and are excited to see what can be achieved by bringing blockchain technology into the world of esports and Counter-Strike.”

While Senior Director for Hdac Technology, Hyun Jun Shin, added:

“We’re really excited to partner with BLAST and have a chance to collaborate on various unique pieces of content for the esports and gaming community, who are very tech savvy and open to investment in cryptocurrency. 

“As a proactive blockchain company who are invested in the esports industry including sponsoring the G2 Esports team, we are looking forward to engaging with the global audience.”

Hdac Technology is based in Zug, Switzerland (aka ‘Crypto Valley’), and the company also has a branch in Seoul, South Korea. Its platform, RIZON, combines blockchain with other core tech including IoT, Cloud, and Big Data, to provide a decentralised platform that meets a variety of needs. 

Specifically, RIZON optimises performance through its new ‘Friday Consensus’ system, providing fast general purpose WASM-based smart contracts, and human readable ID’s, SDK, and chain customisation. 

AYO.NEWS says:

Yep, we absolutely agree with Leo and Hyun, those involved in the esports scene tend to be very enthusiastic about the blockchain world too, so this seems like the perfect partnership, and we’re sure it will inspire other esports organisations to partner with blockchain and emerging tech companies. 

Staying with BLAST, last week the company announced its entry into Riot Games’ VALORANT, with a planned Ignition Series tournament for the title. 

‘AYO.NEWS says’ features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited or its affiliates or associates. 

All original content featured on this site is © Pentagon Digital Limited, 2020

Crypto-based sports betting platform Sportsbet.io has been named official betting partner of English Premier League club Arsenal FC. 

The three-year deal, which covers both the club’s mens and womens teams, starts with the 2020/21 campaign, and will see Sportsbet.io create exclusive digital content and experiences to reward its customers and Arsenal fans around the world. 

Sportsbet.io says it will also be collaborating with Arsenal to support the development of women’s football in its home country of Estonia, with the club sending pro coaches to train the country’s under-19 women’s team.

Discussing the partnership founder of Coingaming Group, Sportsbet.io’s parent company, Tim Heath, said:

“Signing a three-year deal with Arsenal, one of the most celebrated teams in the world, is a huge venture and something we are all very excited about. We’re confident that with Arsenal’s drive to innovate the sports industry, together with our own drive to innovate the gambling and crypto space, this is the perfect team for us.”

As previously reported, at the end of August, Sportsbet.io came to the rescue of another English Premier League club, Southampton FC, after it was forced to terminate its partnership with Chinese sports content, marketing and entertainment platform, LD Sports.

AYO.NEWS says:

It’s easy to forget that it was as recent as June 2019 when Sportsbet.io made history as the first ever crypto sports betting shirt sponsor of a Premier League side, when it inked a deal with Watford – now it seems having an official crypto betting or trading partner, or even a crypto sportsbook as main sponsor, as with Southampton, is mainstream. 

Staying with Coingaming Group, last week it was announced that former COO Maarja Pärt had been promoted to CEO. 

‘AYO.NEWS says’ features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited or its affiliates or associates. 

All original content featured on this site is © Pentagon Digital Limited, 2020

Ava Labs has said it will launch the fully-featured Avalanche mainnet on Monday 21 September 2020. 

Avalanche is described as a highly-scalable, open-source platform for launching decentralised finance (DeFi) applications and enterprise blockchain deployments in one, interoperable ecosystem.

Confirming transactions in under a second

Developers say it is the first smart contracts platform that confirms transactions in under one second, supports the entirety of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (VM) and development toolkit, and enables up to millions of independent validators to participate as ful, block-producing nodes. 

The Avalanche token (AVAX) is the native token of the Avalanche platform, and is used to secure the network through staking, pay operational fees, transfer value peer-to-peer, and create new networks on the platform. 

Discussing the upcoming mainnet launch Co-Founder and CEO of Ava Labs, Emin Gün Sire, aid:

“Monday will mark the beginning of a new era for cryptocurrencies, blockchains, and decentralized applications.

“Avalanche is the first major breakthrough in our space since Satoshi’s leap forward, and we intend to follow in their footsteps to have the same, defining impact as we stand on the cusp of a new decade.”

While Kevin Sekniqi of Ava Labs added:

“Avalanche moves at the rapid pace of crypto markets and will offer the first compelling alternative to existing networks that either rely on centralization to perform or haven’t shown they can scale to market demand without incurring massive fees. We’re excited to be launching with an outstanding community around us, and look forward to fueling DeFi’s next boom.”

Avalanche’s developers also claim the platform is capable a throughput orders of “magnitude greater than existing blockchain networks” – some 4,500+ transactions per second on low hardware. They also say it has much greater security standards than the typical 51% of most networks. 

Addressing gas fees, congestion, and security issues

According to DeFi Pulse, DeFi applications on Ethereum peaked at some $9.6B in total value locked at the beginning of September- more than doubling the market’s size in less than one month. Though this shows there is massive interest in decentralised tech, especially in finance, it also led to Ethereum gas fees peaking at an unsustainable $15 per transaction, and the network is suffering increasing congestion. 

Ava Labs says Avalanche can help solve these issues, allowing Ethereum-based apps to achieve high-performance, increased security, and better scalability, without much disruption or change to workflow. Avalanche’s Contract Chain (C-Chain) is an implementation of the Ethereum VM, meaning Solidity works ‘out of the box’ to make porting over applications easy. 

3 testnets, and $60M in funding

The Avalanche mainnet launch comes a mere 16 months after Ava Labs exited stealth mode. The team has completed and launched three test networks, and attracted contributions from a large pool of open-source developers, awarded significant grants for engineers to build infrastructure and apps through its accelerator, and integrated with projects like Chainlink, Polyient, and Quantstamp.  

In total Ava Labs has raised $60M to-date, including $42M in a 4.5 hour public sale this July, and a private sale led by Galaxy Digital, Bitmain, and Initialized Capital.

AYO.NEWS says:

There’s no doubt that Ethereum has some serious issues that need dealing with urgently regarding congestion and gas fees. But, that’s some pretty big talk from the Ava Labs team, so it’s going to be interesting to see how the launch of the Avalanche mainnet goes. Will it really be the dawning of a new era for cryptos, blockchains and decentralised applications? 

Away from Ethereum, as we reported at the end of August, New York-based Kadena has completed hybrid blockchain scaling to 480,000 transactions per second on 20 chains, while preserving the security of the Proof of Work consensus utilised by Bitcoin. 

‘AYO.NEWS says’ features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited or its affiliates or associates. 

All original content featured on this site is © Pentagon Digital Limited, 2020

South Korean crypto exchange Bithumb has been raided by police again, and its director’s shares have been seized. 

As we previously reported, on 2 September the company’s office in the Gangnam District of Seoul was raided by police, and now it appears there have been two follow up raids; one on 7 September, and one earlier today (16 September). 

According to reports in local media, during the latest raid police seized shares in Bithumb Holdings that belonged to Kim Byung-Geon, Director of Bithumb Korea. 

The investigation seems to be centered around possible fraud relating to Bithumb’s native BXA token – which was heavily promoted but never actually launched or listed, causing investors to lose an estimated $25m USD. 

Reports suggest the police action has already promoted Samjong KPMG, which is the supervisor of the sale of Bithumb, to declare it plans to sell its own stake in Bithumb Holdings.

AYO.NEWS says:

While it’s obviously inappropriate to comment on an ongoing investigation, it’s safe to say things are going from bad to worse for Bithumb! 

‘AYO.NEWS says’ features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited or its affiliates or associates. 

All original content featured on this site is © Pentagon Digital Limited, 2020