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Wechat to Prohibit Accounts From Providing Some NFT and Crypto Services

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Tencent’s #Wechat to ban accounts from providing transaction channels and guidance for #cryptocurrencies.

Tencent’s Wechat intends to impose penalties on public accounts facilitating secondary trading of NFTs, a press report has revealed. Accounts offering transaction channels and guidance for cryptocurrencies have also been targeted by the new rule.

Popular Chinese App to Impose Restrictions on NFT Trading

Wechat, the instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by the Chinese tech giant Tencent, is introducing a policy update that will prohibit the provision of certain services related to non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and cryptocurrencies on its platform.

Quoted by the South China Morning Post (SCMP), Tencent said it will “order accounts to rectify if they provide relevant services or content for secondary trading of digital collectibles, and limit some features or even ban the account.” The news comes after in April, Wechat acknowledged it had suspended some accounts linked to NFTs.

The policy update will also introduce penalties for accounts providing transaction channels, guidance, or issuing cryptocurrencies to Wechat users. Accounts enabling initial coin offerings (ICOs) and transactions of crypto derivatives will also be affected.

The report notes that with the move, Wechat’s management is taking into account the guidelines issued by Chinese regulators earlier this year suggesting that businesses in the industry should steer clear of the financial aspect of such digital assets.

According to Wang Yinying, a Shanghai-based lawyer specializing in blockchain and Web3-related cases, “the new rule’s emphasis is on the narrative that the secondary market for trading digital collectibles might incur speculation and instability of the financial market.”

Wechat Said to Be Acting Preemptively

The legal expert was referring to joint statement issued by the National Internet Finance Association of China, China Banking Association, and the Securities Association of China in April aimed at curbing risks associated with cryptocurrencies.

“Tencent is acting preemptively to keep itself out of trouble,” commented Bao Linghao, a senior analyst at research firm Trivium China. He pointed out that currently there are no formal regulations on NFT trading yet, but emphasized that “Chinese regulators don’t like speculation of any kind, including NFTs.”

This spring, Chinese financial institutions were asked to stay away from NFTs, and their use in a number of areas, including securities, insurance, loans, and precious metals, was banned. Experts believe the People’s Republic is likely to establish a centralized platform for secondary trading of NFTs.

Chinese digital collectibles are built on consortium blockchains, not open blockchains such as Ethereum. Additionally, the guidelines issued in April suggested that they must be bought using the Chinese yuan under real identities to avoid money laundering risks.

SCMP further quoted Wechat as saying that the accounts which display digital collectibles and primary transactions would need to have contracts with blockchain companies certified by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) and refrain from supporting secondary trading.

Blockchains built by the big tech firms like Alibaba Group Holding, Tencent, Baidu, and JD.com were among the first approved by the CAC in 2019, the daily remarked, adding that since last year, consumer brands and Chinese state media have jumped on the NFT bandwagon with collectibles based on such platforms.

What future do you expect for NFTs in China and what’s your opinion about Wechat’s new restrictions? Share your thoughts on the subject in the comments section below.

Binance.US Now Offers Zero-Fee Trading For Spot Bitcoin Pairs

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Customers of Binance.US can now trade four spot bitcoin pairings with zero fees and a low 0.5% fee for using the “Buy Crypto” function.

  • Binance.US now offers zero-fee trading on four spot market pairings for BTC.
  • Customers will still pay a 0.5% fee when using the “Buy Crypto” function.
  • Binance cited rising fears of recession as its reason for lessening fees on its platform.

Binance.US, the American arm of one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, is now offering zero-fee trading with spot bitcoin pairs, according to a press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine.

Binance customers will be able to trade four spot market pairs: BTC/USD, BTC/USDT, BTC/USDC, and BTC/BUSD for 0% fees. Also, users are able to convert from one cryptocurrency to another without fees, as well as use the over-the-counter (OTC) portal without fees. However, users of the platform will still pay a 0.5% fee when using the Buy Crypto function.

“As an established leader on low fee trading, we are excited to be the first US crypto exchange to eliminate spot trading fees on numerous bitcoin pair trades for all users,” said Brian Shroder, CEO of Binance.US.

“We see this as an opportunity to revolutionize the way fees are approached in our industry, increase accessibility to crypto, and help our market and customers in a time of need,” Shroder continued.

On Binance’s breakdown of the fee structure, the company relayed the driving force behind its decision to eliminate many of its fees. “As recession fears mount and inflation costs increase, we believe in offering greater cost savings on Bitcoin and value to everyone in the crypto ecosystem.”

The adjustment to Binance’s fee structure comes after a $200 million funding round –led by Fundamental Labs – which took place this past April. At that time, Shroder stated that “The fundraising enables us to accelerate our expansion, add new product offerings and begin to market for the first time.”

Stablecoin Market Nears 15% of the Entire Crypto Economy’s Market Valuation

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Stablecoin Market Nears 15% of the Entire Crypto Economy's Market Valuation

Roughly two months ago on April 11, the stablecoin economy was valued at $190 billion and was getting closer to surpassing $200 billion in value. However, after the Terra stablecoin fallout, the fiat-pegged token economy lost $16.31 billion in value since then. While that value was erased from the stablecoin market, stablecoins themselves represented 9.35% of the entire crypto economy’s net U.S. dollar value at the time. 61 days later, the crypto economy is worth roughly $1.15 trillion and the stablecoin economy represents 13.8% of that total today.

In 61 Days, Stablecoin Dominance Swelled From 9% to 13.8%


For the first time in history, three stablecoins were top ten digital currencies in terms of market valuation 36 days ago on May 6, 2022. At the time, it was tether (USDT), usd coin (USDC) and terrausd (UST), but that was before the UST implosion.

While terrausd is gone, there’s still three stablecoins in the top ten today, as binance usd (BUSD) is the seventh-largest crypto asset as far as market cap is concerned. Two months ago on April 11, the stablecoin economy was valued at $190 billion but today, the valuation of the stablecoin market is now $159 billion.

On that day in April, the entire crypto economy was valued at $2.03 trillion and today it’s worth roughly $1.15 trillion. Even though Terra’s UST fallout saw billions leave the stablecoin economy, it dominates by a lot more than it did when it was nearing $200 billion.

Stablecoins account for whole lot of trade volume as well, and at the time of writing, fiat-pegged tokens have seen $46.1 billion in trade volume, while all the crypto assets combined saw $71.6 billion. The data shows that 64.38% of all the digital currency trades today are swapped against stablecoin pairs.

For instance, tether (USDT) trades account for 60.26% of bitcoin’s (BTC) global trade volume while BUSD commands 10.05%. USDT and BUSD are BTC’s top two trading pairs at the time of writing, according to cryptocompare.com metrics.

Tether (USDT) is still the king of stablecoins with an $72 billion market valuation that represents more than 6% of the entire crypto economy. Usd coin (USDC) is the second-largest stablecoin by market cap with $53.7 billion in value.

USDC dominates today by more than 4% of the crypto economy and combined both USDC and USDT make up 76.92% of the entire stablecoin dominance of 13.40%. BUSD meanwhile, represents 1.58% of the entire crypto economy. That leaves a little more than 1% of the crypto economy that stem from stablecoins like DAI, FRAX, TUSD, and USDP.

What do you think about the stablecoin economy representing 13.8% of the entire crypto economy? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Solana Halts Block Production, Validators Told to Prep for a Restart, Network’s Decentralization Criticized

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Solana Halts Block Production, Validators Told to Prep for a Restart, Network's Decentralization Criticized

On June 1, 2022, the Solana network halted block production again as the blockchain network has stopped working a number of times during the network’s lifetime. According to the Solana status update, validator operators are being asked to prepare for a restart.

Solana Continues to Be Plagued by Outages, SOL Downtime Denounced by the Crypto Community

The blockchain network Solana (SOL) is down again as the network has been halted by the development team. The Twitter account Solana Status (@solanastatus) tweeted about the incident on Wednesday at 12:56 p.m. (ET) and the Solana status website also explains that block production has been halted.

“Block production on Solana Mainnet Beta has halted. Validator operators should prepare for a restart in mb-validators on Discord,” the status details.

The Solana (SOL) network has been plagued by a number of outages and its been estimated that the proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain has been down a total of eight times. Bitcoin.com News has reported on a number of Solana’s outages and the one that followed Anatoly Yakovenko’s (Solana co-founder) recent commentary.

Yakovenko claimed last month that “If [Bitcoin] eventually doesn’t switch to proof-of-stake nobody is going to use it.” After the statements, Solana’s blockchain lost consensus for over seven hours. Bitcoin.com News also reported on Solana’s mid-September outage and the debate that surfaced after the blockchain’s downtime.

Solana’s development team has formally acknowledged some of the issues it was dealing with and how it “degraded performance.” The team blamed “high compute transactions, which is reducing network capacity to several thousand transactions per second.”

Of course, with Solana going down again, the comments on social media and crypto related forums have not been kind to the crypto project worth $14 billion. “Solana has now failed for the 8th time. The network is currently halted,” one individual tweeted. “Trading of the $14 billion asset is still possible on centralized exchanges, which seems to be the primary use case of a constantly failing network,” the person added.

Bitcoin advocated Dennis Porter wrote: “Solana just stopped. Bitcoin can’t be stopped. Invest accordingly.” According to the Bitcoin Uptime Tracker, the Bitcoin network has been functional for 99.98742319836% of its lifetime.

“The diamond hands of Solana are amazing,” another person criticized on Wednesday afternoon. “0 NFTs have been listed in the last hour. You can’t say the same for any other chain except maybe Terra/LUNA,” the individual added.

Meanwhile, ethereum, XRP, and cardano owners opined why they thought their favorite tokens were way better than Solana. Amid the downtime and at the time of writing, solana (SOL) has lost 9.9% in value against the U.S. dollar. Coinbase also reported on Solana’s latest outage and noted that the exchange had to disable send and receives on the network.

What do you think about Solana halting block production and the number of times the network has gone down? Do you think blockchain uptime is important? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Tron Now Commands the Third-Largest TVL in Defi — Network’s Stablecoin USDD Confronted by Skepticism

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Tron Now Commands the Third-Largest TVL in Defi — Network's Stablecoin USDD Confronted by Skepticism

This week the Tron blockchain has become the third-largest network in terms of total value locked (TVL) in decentralized finance (defi) protocols. Interestingly, 48.19% of the TVL is held by the defi protocol Justlend, an application that’s similar to Anchor Protocol as it offers more than 20% APY for USDD deposits. Amid Tron’s TVL rising, the network’s stablecoin USDD has been confronted by skeptics over the similarities USDD holds with Terra’s UST.

Tron Takes the Third-Largest Position in Terms of Total Value Locked in Decentralized Finance Protocols

On May 30, 2022, Tron managed to become the third-largest defi blockchain in terms of total value locked. At the time of writing, Tron’s TVL in defi is $5.94 billion, which is just below the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) TVL and above the Avalanche (AVAX) TVL.

Amid the Terra LUNA and UST fallout, on May 12, 2022, Tron’s TVL was $3.97 billion and the blockchain was ranked number five in terms of TVL size by chains. On that day, Tron’s TVL was down 16.16% lower than it was on May 5, but after the Terra fiasco subsided, Tron claimed the third position in terms of TVL in defi.

This month, Tron’s defi TVL increased 45.22% and over the last seven days, as it has risen by 13.73%. Tron’s TVL is dominated by a defi protocol called Justlend, as 48.19% of Tron’s aggregate held in defi is hosted on the Justlend application. Justlend has $2.86 billion total value locked and it has increased a great deal since May 21.

$1.08 billion was added to Justlend since May 21, as the protocol’s TVL increased by 58% since then. Furthermore, Justlend was audited by the blockchain security company Certik. Similar to Anchor, USDD deposits on Justlend offer 23.55% APY at the time of writing.

Other notable defi applications on Tron, in terms of TVL balances, include Juststables and Sunswap. Juststables has a TVL balance of $1.41 billion and Sunswap has just under a billion in total value locked. USDD has also managed to become the ninth-largest stablecoin among all the fiat-pegged tokens in existence.

The Tron stablecoin’s market valuation today is $603 million and it has seen $179.6 million in 24-hour global trade volume. Statistics from Cryptocompare indicate that USDT and USDC are USDD’s top two trading pairs. Tron’s new algorithmic stablecoin USDD and the APY on Justlend is arguably eerily similar to the products once offered by Do Kwon, Terraform Labs (TFL), and Anchor team.

Tron’s USDD Stablecoin Faces Numerous Critics and Skeptics

A number of critics have said “USDD is doomed to fail,” and there’s a litany of criticism about the project being so similar to UST. Data scientist Bennett Tomlin has gone as far to say that USDD is not an algorithmic fiat-pegged token concept.

“As far as I can tell USDD is not an algorithmic stablecoin,” Tomlin said. “The only interaction that the TRD members can do is to burn TRX to get USDD. I see no contract to go the other way, and no algorithm adjusting either mechanism, except that minting depends on oracle price of TRX.” Tomlin added:

Like nominally the algorithm in Terra was the mechanism which refilled the AMM in the market module (they lied about this a bunch). This doesn’t seem to have an algorithm at all.

Despite the criticism and speculation, Tron has managed to be a top contender in the world of decentralized finance. Furthermore, Tron’s native token tron (TRX) has managed to climb to the 14th position in terms of the largest market caps in the crypto economy.

Tron Now Commands the Third-Largest TVL in Defi — Network's Stablecoin USDD Confronted by Skepticism

This is because while bitcoin (BTC), ethereum (ETH), and many others printed weekly losses for nine weeks in a row, Tron managed to stave off most of the market carnage. TRX is up 14.7% during the last two weeks and 30.5% against the U.S. dollar over the last month.

What do you think about Tron becoming the third-largest in decentralized finance today in terms of TVL? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.