“Bring Back Tone Vays” — a news podcast with the ForkLog editors and friends about the main industry events of the week.
Episode topics: pre-trial investigations into Ukraine’s crypto market, the integration of a cryptocurrency wallet into Telegram, ongoing layoffs of Binance top executives, the birth and death of Web3 social networks, and the future of NFT.
Participants: Lena Jess, Alex K.
Special guest: Web3 entrepreneur Vladimir Menaskop.
Host: Aremefe.
Crypto Market in Ukraine
Ukrainian law enforcement began a pre-trial investigation into participants in the crypto market. According to experts from the Bureau of Economic Security, the state budget foregone about 3 billion hryvnias (~$81 million) in taxes from the activities of local cryptocurrency exchanges. There is yet no regulatory framework for taxing trading platforms, but in early June NSSMC presented a draft bill proposing an 18% rate.
The ‘Pension’ Case: a New Defendant
Kristina Lyakhoveno, a former subordinate of ex-investigator Marat Tambiev, has been taken into custody. She is charged with accepting a bribe, abuse of power, and falsification of evidence.
Earlier in investigator documents, a folder labelled “Pension” was found, in which a seed phrase to a wallet with 1,032.1 BTC (over $28 million) was stored. He is charged with taking a bribe from members of the hacking group Infraud Organization.
Layoffs at Binance.US
The U.S. arm of the crypto exchange Binance saw departures of the head of the legal department Krishna Juvvadi and the head of risk Sydney Majjali. In early September, the company saw departures of Gleb Kostarev, director for Eastern Europe, and Vladimir Smerkis, director for the CIS.
Integration of a Crypto Wallet in Telegram
TON Foundation announced the integration of the TON Space wallet into Telegram. In response, the TON token price rose by 15%. Project representatives plan to connect 30% of all users of the Telegram messenger to The Open Network by 2028.
In March, ForkLog wrote about the problem of concentration utility tokens in the hands of a small number of ecosystem participants: at the time of publication they held about 86% of the total supply.
Web3 Social Networks
After a clinical death of the Web3 social network Friend.Tech, Web3-based social network, activity is once again on the rise. Since August 28, the total value locked in the protocol jumped by 210% — from $6.4 million to $19.95 million.
This week, the social network Voice, supported by Block.one, launched in 2020, announced its closure due to “uncertainty in the cryptocurrency and NFT markets”.
NFTs Aren’t What They Seem
ForkLog’s regular contributor and Web3 entrepreneur Vladimir Menaskop published an article in which he lays out the main arguments of NFT skeptics and sketches scenarios for the possible development of the NFT market.
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