UK’s FCA Targets Young Crypto Investors, DeFi Hacks + More News

Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.
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Investment news

• The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has created a GBP 11m (USD 15.3m) digital marketing campaign to warn its younger citizens about the risks associated with crypto investments, and that crypto investors “should be prepared to lose all their money, according to a speech by CEO Nikhil Rathi. He described “an explosion among younger people speculating on cryptocurrencies,” with a 2020 research showing nearly 2.5m UK citizens buying crypto. These are commonly young people and those from an ethnic minority. “This is a category of consumer that we are not used to engaging with – 18 to 30-year-olds more likely to be drawn in by social media,” the FCA said.
• The companies of the Binance Group are not authorized to provide investment services and activities in Italy, not even through the website binance.com whose sections called “derivatives” and “Stock Token,” Italy’s financial regulator, Consob, said today, adding that “savers are invited to adopt the utmost caution in making transactions on instruments related to crypto-assets.”
• Memory pool (mempool) data infrastructure company Blocknative said it has raised USD 12m in a new Series A funding round, led by investment firm Rho Capital, bringing their total raised to more than USD 19m. The funds will be used to expand their core data platform, as well as to grow the team, they added.
• Banking and payments app Revolut has raised USD 800m in a funding round led by investors SoftBank’s Vision Fund and Tiger Global Management, Sky News reported. This round raised the company’s valuation to more than USD 27bn.
• Investment firm J.C. Flowers has agreed to buy 30% of crypto and forex exchanges operator LMAX Group for USD 300m in cash, the latter announced. This would bring the valuation of LMAX to USD 1bn.
• C.R.E.A.M. Finance’s Iron Bank said it has facilitated “the first-ever” DAO-to-DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) loan as well as the first “high-end NFT-collateralized” lending transaction. The Iron Bank will provide a USD 3.5m line of credit to PleasrDAO using NFTs, valued at USD 8m, as collateral.
• The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has pushed its decision on WisdomTree’s bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) until this autumn. They have also asked for feedback from the general public and industry experts on the application and whether the ETF would be a safe product for investors.
• Football non-fungible token (NFT) trading startup Sorare is expected to raise up to USD 532m in funding at a valuation of at least USD 3.8bn, Business Insider reported.

Crime news

• The US government is planning to use crypto tracing as a counter to ransomware attacks that ask for payment in cryptocurrencies, Bloomberg reported. Deputy National Security Adviser Anne Neuberger said that the White House had created a ransomware task force and that the administration’s strategy involved efforts to disrupt ransomware operations, confront the use of cryptocurrencies in attacks and work with allies to encourage other nations not to harbor attackers.
• DeFi yield farming aggregator ApeRocket confirmed that it has suffered two flashloan attacks on its BSC platform and its Polygon network this week. The consequences of this double exploit amounted to USD 260,000 and USD 1m, they added.
• Meanwhile, digital collectibles infrastructure Bondly Finance (BONDLY) said it was compromised by an unknown part on July 14. “Our contracts were not compromised, but we are working to understand the vulnerability point and how it was exploited,” they said, adding that they will need “several days to complete our investigation.” No further details were provided. BONDLY is down by 90% in the past day, trading at USD 0.0065.
• The US Department of State’s Rewards for Justice program is offering a reward of up to USD 10m for information leading to the identification or location of any person who, while acting at the direction or under the control of a foreign government, participates in malicious cyber activities against US critical infrastructure, the Department said, adding that reward payments may include payments in cryptocurrency.
• Hong Kong authorities have arrested four men for a suspected money-laundering syndicate involving HKD 1.2bn (USD 155m) with cryptocurrency, Bloomberg reported, citing Hong Kong Customs. The men opened various local bank accounts and made transactions through a virtual currency exchange trading platform.

NFTs news

• Luxury brand Dolce & Gabbana has announced DG Genesi, their first NFT collection in partnership with luxury marketplace UNXD.

DeFi news

• Polygon (MATIC) said that its users will now have access to Fireblocks’s tools, such as an interface for transacting with large sums of cryptoassets between institutions, and others, while, “thanks to Fireblocks,” institutions will also have “a familiar interface” with the DeFi ecosystem on Polygon.

Blockchain news

• Justus Abonyo, candidate for commissioner of Kenya’s Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), has called for the adoption of blockchain voting, The Start reported. He said that this would reduce the cost of running an election up to 300%.

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(Updated at 17:39 UTC with a paragraph about Binance.)