Syz the moment

Luxembourg-based Bitstamp is halting trade in the US for seven cryptos classified as securities by the SEC. From Aug. 29 onwards, the platform will discontinue trading for AXS, CHZ, MANA, MATIC, NEAR, SAND and SOL. In legal actions against Binance and Coinbase, the SEC asserted that these tokens, among others, met the standards of a security. Offering alleged securities on a crypto exchange brings about issues such as heightened regulatory oversight, potential legal liabilities, and regulatory complexities.

Bitstamp said in an announcement on Tuesday that new trades won’t be allowed with these assets from later this month, and any current trades will be halted.Users were prompted to complete any buy or sell transactions they wanted with the impacted assets before the deadline.

Source: Blockworks

OpenAI has released a new web crawling bot, GPTBot, to expand its dataset for training its next generation of AI systems—and the next iteration apparently has an official name. The company trademarked the term "GPT-5," hinting at an upcoming release, while giving web publishers a heads up on how to keep their content out of its massive corpus. The web crawler will collect publicly available data from websites, while avoiding paywalled, sensitive, and prohibited content, according to OpenAI. Similar to other search engines like Google, Bing, and Yandex, however, the system is opt out—by default, GPTBot will assume accessible information is fair game. In order to prevent the OpenAI web crawler from ingesting a website, its owner must add a "disallow" rule to a standard file on the server.

Source: Decrypt

PayPal is rolling out a new dollar-backed stablecoin. The stablecoin, issued by Paxos Trust Co, was detailed in a statement published Monday morning by the American payments giant. PayPal announced that customers who purchase PayPal USD will be able to transfer the stablecoin between “compatible external wallets” and PayPal. They will also be able to fund purchases with PayPal USD. The stablecoin will be available starting Monday, and PayPal customers will be able to purchase, send, convert and fund purchases in the “coming weeks.” The announcement marks the first time that a major US financial company has created a stablecoin. PayPal’s leadership confirmed the existence of the project in early 2022. PayPal began integrating crypto services in early 2021, allowing users to buy, sell and hold major digital assets like bitcoin and ether.

Source: Blockworks

Business intelligence company MicroStrategy—one of the largest institutional holders of Bitcoin in the U.S.—reported a $24.1 million impairment charge on its crypto holdings today but nonetheless returned to profitability this quarter. MicroStrategy said in its Q2 2023 earnings report that it bought even more Bitcoin in July. The largest publicly traded company with Bitcoin on its balance sheet now says it holds 152,800 coins—worth about $4.4 billion. In July, MicroStrategy acquired an additional 467 BTC for $14.4 million and now holds 152,800 BTC. MicroStrategy stock—MSTR on the Nasdaq—is up 197% since the first Bitcoin buy. The price of the biggest cryptocurrency by market cap has risen 156% since then, too, from $11,398 per coin to $29,238 today. Source: Bitcoin Magazine, Decrypt

The SEC reportedly asked Coinbase to temporarily halt trading in all crypto assets, excluding bitcoin, prior to initiating a legal suit alleging violation of securities laws.Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said that the SEC told the company it believes all assets, except for bitcoin, were considered securities, the Financial Times reported on Monday.

When Armstrong asserted that Coinbase held a different interpretation of the law, the SEC declined to elaborate on the reasoning behind its conclusion, according to the report. Instead, the regulatory body insisted that “you need to delist every asset other than bitcoin.” The SEC filed a lawsuit against Coinbase on June 6, claiming that the company was operating as an unregistered exchange. In the suit, the agency classified 13 cryptoassets as securities, including SOL, ADA, MATIC, FIL, SAND, AXS, CHZ, FLOW, ICP, NEAR, VGX, DASH and NEXO.

Source: blocworks

Grayscale Investments wants the US Securities and Exchange Commission to know that the latest wave of prospective spot bitcoin ETF issuers should not have an upper hand over the crypto-focused asset manager. Approving certain proposals before others would give the first funds an “unfairly discriminatory and prejudicial first-mover advantage,” a lawyer representing Grayscale wrote in a Thursday letter to the SEC. The company sued the US securities regulator last year after the SEC denied its attempt to convert the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) to an ETF.

Source: Blockworks

Binance has withdrawn from multiple European countries due to registration difficulties. The most recent country in question is Germany. Circumstances, both in the global market and regulatory landscape, led to the decision. “Binance confirms that it has proactively withdrawn its BaFin application,” a spokesperson told Blockworks. Last month, the country’s financial regulator BaFin declined to grant a license to Binance, adding to the regulatory challenges the company is facing in the region, per Finance Forward.

Jonas Jünger, the managing director of Binance in Germany, reportedly said his primary focus was to successfully establish a branch of the company in the country. He also mentioned that the regulatory prerequisites for accomplishing this goal were quite stringent.

Source: blockworks

Bitcoin ended its fourth week of narrow trading Sunday, sending volatility readings to levels not seen since the year began. The 30-day estimate for the world’s largest digital asset has fallen to just 0.74%, bitcoin’s lowest realized reading since Jan. 16 (71%), data from 99Bitcoins shows.

Bitcoin’s volatility details the measurement of how much its price shifts in a single day. The investment is riskier if the reading is significant, leading to harder-to-predict price swings. T3I’s BitVol Index, used to judge 30-day implied volatility for bitcoin options contracts, has also dipped to its lowest implied reading since its inception more than four years ago, data shows. CVI’s Crypto Volatility Index, designed to mimic similar functionality to that of the S&P 500’s VIX, has also dipped to its lowest recorded levels. The index takes into account both bitcoin and ether’s (ETH) implied volatility over a 30-day period.

Source: Blockworks