In a recent Medium post, popular instant cryptocurrency exchange Changelly has announced a new partnership with the world’s leading digital asset exchange, Binance.

Changelly is a well-known service offering more than 100 coins and tokens. In addition, the company is also providing an instant exchange API to partners such as Coinmarketcap, Coinomi and Jaxx.

Prior to the announcement, Changelly’s CEO, Konstantin Gladych, met with Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance on the mediterenean island of Malta. During the rendezvous, the pair discussed a potential partnership as well as regulatory-related issues.

The deal will see Changelly act as mediator between Binance and its partners by bringing new options and trading pairs to the table.

In return, Binance will provide Changelly with some long-needed spotlight and create opportunities to access popular digital assets currently out of reach to Changelly users.

The small country of Malta is slowly but surely becoming a hotspot for blockchain companies. Earlier in the month, Binance announced they would be relocating their headquarters to the capital city of Valetta, citing regulatory hassles in Japan, Hong Kong and their native country of China.

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In a television interview on Wednesday, Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman has envisioned that they would open their own cryptocurrency exchange, supporting trade of digital assets such as bitcoin.

This is seen as a direct follow-up to a deal revealed early Wednesday morning which will see cryptocurrency exchange Gemini allowed use of Nasdaq’s proprietary surveillance technology. The system boasts the ability to stamp out market manipulators and fraudulent traders.

Gemini CEO Tyler Winklevoss reported that the implementation of such technology will lead to the exchange becoming a “rules-based marketplace” – something quite uncommon in the cryptocurrency sector to date.

It appears that Nasdaq may be posturing to become the market leader in providing a safe and regulated environment in which to trade digital assets. Friedman is quoted as saying:

I believe that digital currencies will continue to persist it’s just a matter of how long it will take for that space to mature. Once you look at it and say, ‘do we want to provide a regulated market for this?’ Certainly Nasdaq would consider it.”

Friedman further posited on the SEC of the United State’s decision to rule initial coin offerings (ICOs) as securities and that the future success of cryptocurrencies may hinge on their appropriate regulation.

The Nasdaq Stock Market is the second-largest exchange in the world ranked by market capitalisation, first being the New York Stock Exchange. Since the end of the global recession in 2009, Nasdaq has seen an average annual growth rate of over 18%.

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Responding to a rapidly permeating rumour that Nexon – a US$11.5 billion gaming giant – was in the process of acquiring the world’s longest-surviving Bitcoin (BTC) exchange, the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp, on Wednesday was Nexon’s (Korean subsidiary) chief executive Lee Jung-hun.

Speaking at a press conference from the Nexon Korea head office in Pangyo, the CEO was frank in stating:

“Nexon Korea does not have anything to do with a Bitstamp acquisition.”

To drive the point home, Jung-hun added that Nexon Korea does “not have any plans to link cryptocurrencies with [their] game business.” The CEO did however offer a caveat, revealing that the gaming giant could not definitively rule out the possibility that Nexon would adopt distributed ledger technology sometime in the future.

Should they do so, it’d almost certainly apply to their existing business (i.e., developing games), and not in the form of some capital venture into the crypto-ecosystem, as had been reported by Business Insider earlier on Wednesday.

What Was (Mistakenly) Reported?

Citing two sources close to the alleged offering, the article reported that “the European cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp is up for sale,” and that “a South Korean gaming company is said to be in pole position to acquire it.”

Regarding the bid’s size that was being offered by the ~$11.5 billion multinational (via NXC, the holding company of Nexon Group), it was reported to be “about $350 million,” – over four times what they spent for their majority stake in Korbit last year.

Giving the report some believability (before Jung-hun falsified it), was the fact that late last September, the gaming multinational (indirectly) became the majority owner of South Korea’s third largest cryptocurrency exchange, Korbit.

Their parent company paid 91.3 billion KRW (~US$79.5 million) for 65.19 percent of Korbit; valuing the South Korean exchange at over $120 million. At the time, this breakthrough deal served as a strong indicator that corporate incumbents were very much aware of the nascent cryptocurrency space – and by extension – the distributed ledger technology underpinning it all.

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XLM cryptocurrency wallet, Stellarport, has officially launched it’s decentralized exchange service, supporting Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP) and of course, Stellar Lumens (XLM).

It acts as a portal to the entire Stellar blockchain, allowing users connectivity between their hardware wallets and the new trading exchange, enabling the submission of bids and transactions almost directly from storage. Stellarport also supports account management tools including trading histories, overviews of assets and details of open offers.

The new service also supports any device – PC desktop, mobile and tablet.

Interest in decentralized exchanges has grown since several high profile hacks of cryptocurrency exchanges worldwide. The largest heist in blockchain history came towards the end of January this year, in which Japanese exchange Coincheck was targeted by hackers in a theft of 500 million NEM (XEM) tokens, worth roughly US$534 million at the time.

A decentralized exchange does not rely on any one entity to hold and protect a customer’s assets. Exchanges such as Stellarport operate through an automated peer-to-peer system, removing single points of failure from the network. The decentralized system also results in minimal to no trading fees and eliminates downtime.

However, this does put more onus on the user to keep their cryptocurrencies safe and machines completely free of compromise to maintain individual security.

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Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has hinted that the exchange has finally come up with a way for its users to convert their “dust” into useable currency. “Dust” refers to small balances of cryptocurrency which are untradable as they cannot cover the fees for the minimum transaction amount.  

Rumours have circulated in recent months that the Binance exchange was developing a method that would allow its customers to “sweep” their dust into something another currency like BRB, which can be used within the platform.

Zhao appeared to confirm the rumours, posting on Twitter that his “team has built a broom”.

I hear the team has built a broom, who wants it?

— CZ (@cz_binance) 24 April 2018

Twitter scammers

The news was welcomed on Reddit, though there was fury that his tweet, as so often in the cryptocurrency space, was hijacked by scammers.

Every tweet by a well known cryptocurrency figure shows immediate responses from fake accounts promising giveaways and other get rich quick schemes, often with names deceptively close to legitimate accounts and featuring the same profile pictures.

The problem can be seen in the responses to this recent Tweet from Verge’s official account. The original message is immediately followed by multiple tweets from a similarly named account, with the same picture, which has nothing to do with the Verge Foundation.

Meanwhile, we’re also have a nice surprise for you!

— vergecurrency (@vergieecurency) 24 April 2018

The first response to Zhao’s tweet is even more sophisticated than usual as the scam account has the precious “blue tick” granted by Twitter to confer authority as a “verified account”.

It is a special magic broom that will get you anywhere.

To make things fun, we decided to hold a special promotion. But this time, you can also win a magic broom! To participate, just navigate to these sites:https://t.co/iu8wKHhDw1 – for BTChttps://t.co/caPZ2rmxn0 – for ETH pic.twitter.com/FECNm8AVSP

— С᠌Z (@KThomasDC) 24 April 2018

Some users on Reddit suggested that Twitter’s failure to get to grips with such scam attempts was evidence of a hostility to cryptocurrency, particularly following their recent ban on ICO and crypto advertising.

However, others pointed to simple incompetence or the arms race between scammers and authority. As soon as a platform works out a way to limit nefarious behaviour, the wrongdoers work on a new way around those restrictions.

Maybe more cryptocurrency accounts should follow the lead of Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, who has changed his Twitter name to, “Vitalik ‘Not giving away ETH’ Buterin” and has added “Not giving away ETH” to his profile description. Less than ideal, perhaps, but anyone waiting for Twitter to properly address the problem could have to wait for a long time yet.  

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Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has published a lengthy blogpost explaining its position on regulation. Last week New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced that he had sent letters and questionnaires to leading exchanges, including Kraken, looking for assurances on the quality of their controls and customer protection. Kraken CEO Jesse Powell refused to cooperate, saying that “this kind of abuse” was “not OK”.

Somebody has to say what everybody’s actually thinking about the NYAG’s inquiry. The placative kowtowing toward this kind of abuse sends the message that it’s ok. It’s not ok. It’s insulting. https://t.co/sta9VuXPK1 pic.twitter.com/4Jg66bia1I

— Jesse Powell (@jespow) 18 April 2018

Yesterday’s statement makes clearer the exchange’s position on the New York State’s “Virtual Markets Integrity initiative” and its questionnaire. Included in the statement is a list of things Kraken believes that traders care about, and a list of things that they don’t.

According to Kraken, traders are primarily interested that an exchange works quickly and does not suffer downtime. They also want security and privacy, including a “minimal document requirement for on boarding”.

However, Kraken suggest that traders simply do not care about many of the things that concern regulators, including regulatory approval, “being protected from making risky investments” and, most controversially, “being protected from market manipulation”.

This last has caused raised-eyebrows as though traders may not care about a regulator’s opinion, they do care that markets are run fairly. The view that traders are fine with other players manipulating the market has dampened some of the enthusiasm for what had largely been seen as a principled stand by the San Francisco exchange.

Crypto-commentator Nic Carter pointed out that “this might backfire”, while CryptoRae insisted that traders “do care about market manipulation”:

Hi @krakenfx, I think traders do care about market manipulation.

You shouldn’t be so cavalier with your statements, especially when your exchange is used as a pricing source for other traded instruments. pic.twitter.com/shJUVOIQEl

— CryptoRae (@cryptorae) April 23, 2018

Andreas T. went further, labelling Kraken’s response “idiotic”.  

Kraken’s response in the blog is idiotic. More even so, the “we don’t want to provide answers because “traders don’t care about what you ask”. Most traders are idiots who don’t know they are manipulated. Lack of regulation of exchanges = manipulation of crypto prices.

— Andreas T. (@andreastzav) April 23, 2018

Kraken no longer operates in New York State due to the regulatory overheads. As such it believes there is no need to cooperate with the investigation.

“To be fair, we would have given the same response to the AG [attorney general] of North Korea”, they said.

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Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has tweeted details of a freshly inked partnership with Crypto Savannah, a newly formed innovation hub focusing on blockchain implementation in various sectors across the African continent.

It is understood that this is the culmination of Binance’s billionaire founder recent meeting with the Blockchain Association of Uganda in the lead up to their Africa conference in late May.

The partnership also appears to feature prominent innovative figures in African development, including Aggie Konde, CEO of Msingi East Africa, and Helen Hai, CEO of the Made in Africa Initiative.

The agreement is geared towards supporting economic transformation and youth employment in Uganda, primarily using blockchain technology and encouraging the “embracing the fourth industrial revolution”. In doing so, the hope is that the technology will have a hand in creating thousands of jobs and bringing new investments to the region.

Earlier this month, blockchain operating system Devery (EVE) revealed it will be working with the United Nations Food Programme and the Tunisian Ministry of Education to aid in the delivering of food to almost half a million school children in North Africa using their proprietary distributed ledger technology.

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