Iran Goes Crypto, Ethereum Classic Camp Is Against Ethereum PoW Fork + 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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Adoption news

• Iran made its first official import order, worth USD 10m, using crypto this week, in a move that could enable it to bypass sanctions, Reuters reported, citing Tasnim agency. They did not name the crypto used. “By the end of September, the use of cryptocurrencies and smart contracts will be widely used in foreign trade with target countries,” an official from the Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade said on Twitter.

Blockchains news

• Bob Summerwill, Executive Director of the Ethereum Classic Cooperative, a non-profit dedicated to supporting the Ethereum Classic (ETC) protocol, published a letter addressed to a well-known miner and Ethereum (ETH) proof-of-work (PoW) supporter, Chandler Guo, arguing that an “Ethereum POW fork won’t work,” saying that there are numerous obstacles standing in the way of such a fork, that it’s too late to start now as the Merge is weeks away, and that there would be no fixing what is broken in the chain later.

Regulation news

• Thailand plans to overhaul its digital rules to grant more powers to the central bank and tighten the oversight of platforms offering crypto, according to Bloomberg. The Securities and Exchange Commission has been asked to take the lead, Finance Minister Arkhom Termpittayapaisith was quoted as saying. “Right now, the central bank has no room to enter into the regulatory framework except for notifying that cryptos are not a legal means of payment for goods and services,” Arkhom said. “So the framework is not clear enough to regulate the industry.”

CBDCs news

• The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is partnering with the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre, a government-backed industry group, to launch a one-year research program into the case for a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in Australia, focusing on what potential economic benefits it might bring, Reuters reported. It will involve the development of a limited-scale CBDC pilot that will operate in a ring-fenced environment and involve a pilot CBDC that is a real claim on the RBA.

Legal news

• Crypto exchange BitMEX‘s former head of business development Gregory Dwyer has pled guilty on Monday to violating the Bank Secrecy Act by “willfully failing to establish, implement, and maintain an anti-money laundering program at BitMEX, and aiding and abetting the same,” per the US Department of Justice. This crime carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.  Dwyer agreed to separately pay a USD 150,000 criminal fine representing pecuniary gain derived from the offense. 

DeFi news

• DeFi platform 1inch announced that the 1inch Aggregation Protocol and the 1inch Limit Order Protocol have been deployed on the Klaytn blockchain mainnet. 

Gaming news

• Polygon (MATIC) has partnered with South Korea Games publisher and developer Neowiz — creators of the Cats & Soup game for Android and iOS — to create a new Web3 gaming platform, Intella X. The platform will distribute its native IX Token and the shares of the generated platform revenue back to the contributors of the platform ecosystem, said the press release shared with Cryptonews.com.

Investments news

• Crypto-focused data analytics firm Messari is in the process of raising USD 35m at a valuation of USD 300m and has pitched potential investors, The Block reported, citing undisclosed people “familiar with the matter.”  
• Web3 mobile gaming platform MetaverseGo announced it has raised USD 4.2m in a seed round led by Galaxy Interactive with participation from Delphi Digital, Dragonfly Capital, Mechanism Capital, Yield Guild Games, and Emfarsis, among other investors. The funding will be used for software development, securing partnerships with telecommunication providers, and strategic hires, per a press release shared with Cryptonews.com.  
• Methane mitigation company Vespene Energy announced the close of a USD 4.3m financing round led by Polychain Capital, and joined by a number of climate-focused funds. Vespene installs micro-turbines on municipal landfills to convert waste methane into electricity to power a variety of on-site uses, the first of which will be Bitcoin (BTC) mining data-centers. This financing round will enable it to launch its pilot site in California, they said.
• Pinata, an NFT-focused media distribution platform, has raised a total of USD 21.5m in funding, TechCrunch reported. The total amount came from a recently closed USD 18m Series A and USD 3.5m seed round in 2021, with the Series A co-led by Greylock and Pantera, and the seed round co-led by Greylock and Offline Ventures. The fresh capital will be used to grow the team and improve its infrastructure, per the report.

Mining news

• US Bitcoin mining firm CleanSpark said it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire an active Bitcoin mining facility located in Washington, Georgia, for USD 16.2m. The company has also purchased approximately 3,400 of the latest generation Antminer S19 series of machines for approximately USD 8.9m, they added.
• Bitcoin-focused digital asset technology company Marathon Digital said that in the second quarter of 2022, they increased their bitcoin production 8% year-over-year, producing BTC 707. The company continued to install miners in Texas, USA, “in anticipation of energization as we worked through both operational obstacles and a challenging macro environment,” Fred Thiel, Marathon’s chairman and CEO, was quoted as saying.
• US-based digital asset mining company Bit Digital announced that in July 2022, it earned BTC 142.5, an 111% increase compared to the prior month. The company earned ETH 0.5 during July 2022 compared to zero in June.