Asia Express – Cointelegraph Magazine – Crypto News Today

Our weekly East Asian news roundup features the most important developments in the industry.

Huawei switches to the trademark of its NFTs

According to a January 28 report Chinese telecom giant Huawei recently filed eight trademarks related to its non-fungible token (NFT) Huawei “YunYunBao” series, according to Sina News. The brands include digital collectibles in the scientific instruments, furniture, education, jewelry, advertising and telecommunications sectors. Last April, Huawei unveiled its YunYunBao NFTs, featuring characters inspired by its namesake cloud service. Huawei’s NFTs are created on its own Huawei Petal chain, which the telecom giant says has over 1,000 nodes and can handle over 50,000 transactions per second.

Toyota sponsors blockchain hackathon

In a medium post from February 1, Sota Watanabe, the founder of Japanese blockchain Astar Network, announcement that Astar received sponsorship from Japanese automaker Toyota for its latest Web3 hackathon. Astar is currently a parachain built on the Polkadot blockchain.

According to Watanabe, more than $100,000 in prizes will be distributed to projects that develop “intra-company DAO [Decentralized Autonomous Organization] supporting tools for this hackathon that Toyota employees could actually use in the future. The hackathon will run from February 14 to March 25.

“Needless to say, Toyota is the largest company in Japan and one of the leading international companies in the world,” Watanabe wrote. “We are very happy to host the Web3 Hackathon on Astar with Toyota. During the event, we aim to develop the first PoC DAO tool for Toyota employees. If a good tool is produced, Toyota employees will interact daily with the products on the Astar network.

North Korea devastates crypto

On February 2, blockchain forensic analysis company Chainalysis revealed that North Korean hackers stole an estimated $1.65 billion of the $3.8 billion embezzled from decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols in 2022. For context, North Korea-related entities did not stolen only $299.5 million in 2020 and $428.8 million in 2021. The firm also warned that despite the US Treasury Department imposing sanctions on cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash on August 8, North Korean hackers increasingly turned to other digital asset mixers, such as Sinbad, to launder stolen funds. Chainalysis said:

“Hackers linked to North Korea tend to send much of what they steal to other DeFi protocols, not because those protocols are good at money laundering – they actually are. bad enough for money laundering given their increased transparency compared to centralized services – but rather because DeFi hacks often result in cybercriminals acquiring large amounts of illiquid tokens that are not listed on centralized exchanges. Hackers must therefore turn to other DeFi protocols, usually DEXs, to trade for more liquid assets.

On January 29, decentralized financial analyst Zachxbt claims it had traced another 17,278 Ether (ETH) – worth around $27.18 million – laundered by North Korean hackers following the $100 million Harmony Bridge hack last June. According to Zachxbt, the funds were then transferred to 14 wallet addresses across four exchanges. On January 24, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed that the North Korean group Lazarus was the mastermind behind the attack.

No Binance metaverse yet

During an “ask me anything” session on January 14, Changpeng Zhao, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, said the company “is more open to just investing in other games virtual reality or metaverse”, because the company is not a game-builder and does not have a game creation team.

“No one really knows what metaverse means. Everyone has a different concept of it,” the crypto chief said, according to a transcript published is Jan 27.

Instead, Zhao says Binance will focus its “next big product” on publishing multiple proofs of reserves and proofs of solvency to increase its transparency. The exchange has set a goal of one billion users passing the Know Your Customer verification for the new year.

Huobi denies data sharing allegations

Digital asset entrepreneur Justin Sun responded to allegations that its Huobi exchange provided customer information to Chinese tax authorities. The TRON founder tweeted that Huobi “does not share any customer information with tax authorities unless it follows an international legal assistance procedure.”

Previously, Sun hailed China’s introduction of a new 20% cryptocurrency income tax as “a clear indication that the Chinese government views cryptocurrencies as a legitimate form of wealth and wants to ensure its proper taxation. “.

Although based in the Seychelles, Huobi has a significant number of employees working in mainland China, who reportedly rebelled against the company’s tough new labor policies earlier this month.

Huobi Founder’s New Ventures

After selling his entire stake in Huobi to Sun’s About Capital last October, Chinese businessman Lin Li has dedicated his time to running Hong Kong-based blockchain investment holding company New Huo Technology. On January 30, New Huo spear a staking technical support service, dubbed “Sinohope Staking”, which will first serve the Cosmos community before expanding to Ethereum, EOS and ChainLink.

According to the developers, Sinohope Staking will provide “multi-node deployment, real-time monitoring of node operation process, 7x24h online support, 3-layer wallet structure and multiple signature technologies” for users wishing to stake their assets on public blockchains. New Huo says it will help customers set up their staking nodes and monitor their operations “without managing or holding customer assets,” and claims customers will keep “100%” of their staked cryptocurrencies during the process.

Bitzlato allegedly challenged despite sanctions

Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange co-founder Bitzlato said the platform will reopen after being shut down by US authorities last month.

In a January 31 YouTube interview, Russian national Anton Shurenko said that the exchange would open later at an unspecified time and claimed that up to 50% of funds held in seized hot wallets would be available for withdrawal at that time. Moreover, the supposed founder claimed that he had no idea why his company had been singled out.

On January 18, Bitzlato was shut down after an investigation by law enforcement officials, including the US Department of Justice, found that the exchange imposed lax know-your-customer rules and allegedly laundered over $700 million in illicit funds through crypto-fiat transactions. Shurenko’s co-founder Anatoly Legkodymov was arrested in Miami around the same day. After revelations that Binance was one of Bitzlato’s main counterparties, the exchange froze a number of accounts linked to the entity.

According to recent reports, the Spanish police arrested three company executives, namely the CEO, a commercial director and the marketing director.

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Sun Zhiyuan

Zhiyuan sun is a reporter at Cointelegraph and focuses on technology-related news. He has several years of experience writing for major financial media such as The Motley Fool, Nasdaq.com and Seeking Alpha.