Blockchain Intel Tuesday #5

December 28, 2021 - It has been a relatively quiet week without significant excitement. Will it hold until after the New Year?

Kraken acquires noncustodial staking services startup Staked in its 5th acquisition of 2021. Staked raised $4.5M prior to its acquisition.
Library of Congress has updated a key report on the legal status of cryptocurrencies around the globe indicating 51 countries where cryptocurrencies are illegal (e.g., absolute ban) or implied to be illegal through preventing crypto exchanges, banks and financial institutions from engaging in them (e.g., implicit ban).
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has predictably rejected two more physically-backed Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) proposed by Valkyrie and Kryptoin.
Senator Cynthia Lummis plans to introduce a bill to create a new Crypto Regulator body, which would be jointly overseen by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Sushiswap CTO resigned amid of infightings and chaos. Is the project at risk? Probably not as a top Avalanche developer proposes to join the project.
Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter, was blocked from participating in Web3 discussion by March Andreessen, who is heavily invested in web3 startups — something that Dorsey is skeptical about.
NFT market has exceeded $270M and Kraken will soon allow for NFT holders to collateralize their NFTs for loans.
Binance obtained license to operate as crypto-asset provider in Bahrain and Canada.

Bent Finance was impacted by 'an inside' job that extracted $1.75M before the rewards were paused. PeckShield was credited with identifying the hack transaction.
Visor Finance, for the second time, suffered a loss of $8.2M when an attacker took advantage of certain contracts to mint unlimited rewards and pulled 8.8M VISR from the platform.
Cybersecurity firm ReasonLabs is warning eager fans of "Spider-Man: No Way Home" to beware of Monero cryptominers if they decide to torrent the film instead of heading to theaters for it.

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