Binance.US has announced the suspension of U.S. dollar deposits and has notified its customers of an incoming pause to fiat (USD) withdrawal channels as early as June 13, CoinTelegraph reports. 

On June 9, Binance.US announced that it was forced to take action amid “extremely aggressive and intimidating tactics” from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

The firm noted that, in an effort to protect its customers and platform, it is suspending USD deposits. Furthermore, Binance.US is “notifying customers that our banking partners are preparing to pause fiat (USD) withdrawal channels as early as June 13, 2023."

As a result of the SEC’s “ideological campaign against the American digital asset industry,” Binance.US and its banking partners have faced increasing challenges, it said. Those banking partners have signaled their intent to sever fiat on-ramps to the exchange.

USD deposits will be suspended as of June 9 and USD trading pairs will be delisted next week, the firm stated, however, it will continue to support USDT $1.00 (Tether) trading pairs. It stated that any USD left on the exchange may be converted into a stablecoin that can be withdrawn on-chain.

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed 13 charges against Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, and its founder, Changpeng Zhao, alleging both comingled billions of dollars worth of user funds and sent them to a European company controlled by Zhao, CNBC reports. 

The U.S. regulator alleged on Monday that Zhao and his exchange worked to subvert “their own controls” to allow high net worth U.S. investors and customers to continue trading on Binance’s unregulated international exchange.

One senior executive allegedly told a compliance officer that the company was operating as a ”[f---ing] unlicensed securities exchange in the USA bro.”

The complaint alleges Binance created Binance.US as a shield for the main company and Zhao, to “reveal, retard, and resolve” law enforcement targets and insulate Binance.

Binance issued a statement on its blog stating:

We are disappointed that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission chose to file a complaint today against Binance seeking, among other remedies, purported emergency relief.  From the start, we have actively cooperated with the SEC’s investigations and have worked hard to answer their questions and address their concerns.  Most recently, we have engaged in extensive good-faith discussions to reach a negotiated settlement to resolve their investigations.  But despite our efforts, with its complaint today the SEC abandoned that process and instead chose to act unilaterally and litigate.  We are disheartened by that choice. 

The CEO of Twitter and Tesla has been accused of insider trading and manipulating the price of Dogecoin in a proposed class action lawsuit, reports Mashable. 

Investors are claiming that Musk used his influence on Twitter, TV appearances, and paid online influencers to trade profitably at the expense of other investors

A Wednesday night filing in Manhattan federal court claims that Musk, for example, sold roughly $124 million worth of Dogecoin in April after he replaced Twitter's logo with Dogecoin's logo, which led to a 30 percent increase in Dogecoin's price. According to the filling, Musk went on a "deliberate course of carnival barking, market manipulation and insider trading" in order to defraud investors. In all, the complaint claims Musk had intentionally driven the price of Dogecoin up by over 36,000 percent over several years, and then let it crash.

On the evening of May 24, Salvatore Leggiero, developer of the forthcoming Bitcoin Tower, officially launched the project at an exclusive architecture-focused event by designer Simone Micheli, reports COINTELEGRAPH. 

During the event, Leggiero and Micheli presented their collaboration for the Bitcoin Tower, which will have a version in the metaverse and a physical building.

The developer said that because of this experience, he imagined a project that would match his expertise in real estate and his passion for crypto — and the idea for the Bitcoin Tower in Dubai was born.

Leggiero also told Cointelegraph that he wants the project to be an open project, mentioning the possibility of creating a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) for the project.

South Korean lawmakers on Thursday unanimously approved a new bill requiring public officials and candidates to disclose their crypto holdings from 2024, according to local news outlet Chosun-Ilbo.

High-ranking public officials above Grade 4, such as the members of the National Assembly, will be required to report their crypto holdings, regardless of amount, from Jan. 1, 2024.

The bill, spearheaded by conservative lawmaker Lee Man-hee, also imposes a limit on the investment amount for an official involved in the crypto sector.

​​The proposal follows the ongoing scandal surrounding former lawmaker Kim Nam-kuk of the opposing Democratic Party. He is under investigation by local prosecutors for campaign finance violations, tax portals and concealment of criminal proceeds surrounding his hidden crypto possessions and transactions. 

Speaking at the Bitcoin Conference recently, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. became the first presidential candidate to accept Bitcoin campaign donations, reports WatcherGuru.com. Moreover, Kennedy previously referred to the digital asset as more than a currency but as an “exercise in democracy.”

The candidate has emerged as a vocal defender of the digital asset industry. Subsequently, amid US regulation in the sector, that remains unclear. As Federal Reserve-issued CBDC is on the horizon, the industry is primed to be a vital aspect of the upcoming elections. 

In recent weeks, former lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has brought digital assets into the political arena. Specifically, he has remained outspoken against government-issued digital assets, and spoken in defense of one of the most important ones.

Finance ministers representing all 27 member countries of the union voted unanimously to enact the Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation just weeks after the European Parliament overwhelmingly approved a consensus version, Bank Info Security, reports. 

The proposal, known as MiCA, will go into effect progressively. Rules applying to stablecoins will go into effect in July 2024 and provisions for other crypto assets are set for January 2025.

The regulation requires crypto-asset issuers to draft detailed white papers and register with a national financial regulator, which could deny authorization for the asset. Registration in one European country will allow the crypto platform to operate across the entire bloc. Regulators will be able to suspend crypto-asset service providers from trading for up to 30 working days should they believe the platform has violated provisions of MiCA such as a requirement for internal controls to safeguard against market abuse.

MiCA also requires crypto trading platforms to hold minimum cash reserves, with the amount depending on the type of crypto asset. 

Crypto exchange Binance has announced that it would cease operations in Canada, citing the challenging regulatory environment, CoinDesk reports. 

“We had high hopes for the rest of the Canadian blockchain industry,” the company said in a Friday tweet. “Unfortunately, new guidance related to stablecoins and investor limits provided to crypto exchanges makes the Canada market no longer tenable for Binance at this time.”

In February, the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) revealed new guidance that prohibited crypto asset trading platforms within the country from allowing customers to buy or deposit stablecoins without the CSA’s prior approval. Obtaining approval would require the crypto trading platform to pass the CSA’s various due diligence checks.

In its Friday tweet, Binance added that it did not agree with the new regulations but still hopes to work with Canadian regulators to further develop a regulatory framework around cryptocurrencies.

Over the past year, Binance has received increased scrutiny from North American regulators, and appears to be ramping down operations in the region. Earlier this year, Binance said it was considering severing ties with its U.S. business partners.

According to data from the cryptocurrency transaction tracker service Whale Alert, a transaction from a dormant address was spotted on the DOGE blockchain during the past day, BITCOINIST reports. This old address had carried 1,556,994 DOGE ($123,155) before its activation.

Detailed information about this wallet from the blockchain explorer service Blockchair reveals that the very first transfer this address made was on 23 December 2023.

Dogecoin had only launched earlier that month (6 December 2023), so the holder of this address must have been one of the earliest adopters of the cryptocurrency.

The frog-themed memecoin Pepe (PEPE) surged over 85% in the last 24 hours to surpass a $1 billion market cap three weeks after its launch on April 14, 2023, reports CoinTelegraph. 

Ironically, the core value proposition of PEPE is that there isn’t one. The official website for the cryptocurrency features a disclaimer that describes investment in the token in the following manner:

“$PEPE is a meme coin with no intrinsic value or expectation of financial return. There is no formal team or roadmap. the coin is completely useless and for entertainment purposes only."

It’s worth noting that some of the top PEPE holders are centralized exchanges. However, according to data tracked by analyst “008.eth,”non-exchange PEPE whales have reduced positions recently, hinting at profit-taking that coincided with a price correction on May 3.

Crypto price tracking site CoinMarketCap is diving into the world of reality TV, releasing a competition show called "Killer Whales" that draws inspiration from the popular TV series Shark Tank, CoinDesk reports.  

In partnership with Web3 entertainment company Hello Labs, the new program will allow entrepreneurs to pitch their projects to the "Killer Whale" judges made up of entrepreneurs, influencers and founders of Web3 companies. Hello Labs was founded by Paul Caslin, producer of the MTV VMA Awards.

“Killer Whales is a fun and exciting opportunity to bring the entrepreneurial energy of the Web3 space to homes all over the world," said Jonathan Isaac, chief marketing officer at CoinMarketCap, in a press release.

Standard Chartered said in a paper released on Monday that the price of Bitcoin may increase to as much as $100,000 by the end of 2024, signaling the end of the “crypto winter.”, BITCOINIST reports. 

According to Geoff Kendrick, head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered, Bitcoin could benefit from recent turmoil in the banking sector, a stabilization of risk assets as the US Federal Reserve ends its interest rate-hiking cycle, and improved profitability of crypto mining.

While the cryptocurrency’s original goal of serving as a hedge against skyrocketing inflation last year was unsuccessful, it recently achieved success by serving as a wager against the traditional banking system.

A Satoshi-Era Bitcoin Whale has moved 400 BTC, worth around $11 Million after going 12 years without transactions, Watcher Guru reports. 

Monday’s movements showed the whale moved 360 BTC ($9.8 million) to one wallet, and another 40 BTC to a number of other locations. 600 BTC remains in the wallet. This has become a common occurence recently, with whales “waking up” and moving their holdings after years of inactivity. Last week, it was recorded that a whale moved over 279 BTC, or $7.6 million, to new wallets after a decade of inactivity.

CoinDesk reports that the Central Bank of Russia is working on a bill that will introduce an “experimental legal regime” for cryptocurrencies to be used exclusively in export-import deals, the head of the regulatory agency, Elvira Naiullina, said last Monday. 

The country’s government is also working on a bill that will create a national agency to license and supervise cryptocurrency platforms operating in Russia, wrote local newspaper Vedomosti on Tuesday, citing Sergei Altukhov, a member of Russian parliament’s economic policies committee. Altukhov added that a new tax code will be introduced for miners as a part of the regulation.

LCH, the clearinghouse arm of the London Stock Exchange Group, will offer clearing services for cash-settled bitcoin (BTC) index futures and options, reports CoinDesk. 

The separate service LCH DigitalAssetClear, part of the company's French arm, will finalize trades made on GFO-X, a U.K.-regulated digital asset exchange, LCH said.

“Bitcoin index futures and options are a rapidly growing asset class,” Frank Soussan, head of LCH DigitalAssetClear, said in a statement, citing “increasing interest among institutional market participants looking for access within a regulated environment they are familiar with.”