Crypto Trends Weekly – Sept. 3 – 9

Breaking crypto news from the last week (Sept. 3 – 9, 2022):

Sept. 3: Crypto exchange Crypto.com has pulled out of a $495-million sponsorship deal with the Union of European Football Association (UEFA) Champions League, citing legal issues it’s facing in some EU countries. Although, Crypto.com lasts a sponsorship for the FIFA 2022 Qatar World Cup, which runs in Qatar from November 21 to December 18.

Sept. 4: Saudi Arabia’s banking regulator appointed Mohsen Al Zahrani to lead its virtual assets and central bank digital currency (CBDC) program, reflecting the Gulf state’s potential crypto ambitions.

Sept. 5: Poolin, one of the world’s major crypto mining pools, has suspended Bitcoin and Ether withdrawals citing “liquidity problems.” Poolin CEO and founder Kevin Pan assured users that funds are safe and said the company might look to debt to solve its liquidity troubles.

Sept. 6: Crypto exchange Binance, the issuer of the world’s 3rd-largest stablecoin, BUSD, said it will convert customers’ holdings in rival stablecoins USD Coin (USDC), Pax Dollar (USDP), and True USD (TUSD) into its own stablecoin (BUSD) on September 29 to “enhance liquidity and capital-efficiency for users.” Meantime, Binance says it has no plans to “auto-convert” Tether (USDT) to BUSD, though this “may change.”

Sept. 7: Franklin Templeton joined the metaverse with a new thematic ETF. The global investment firm has launched The Franklin Metaverse UCITS ETF that tracks the Solactive Global Metaverse Innovation Net Total Return Index. The new ETF will list on the Deutsche Börse Xetra on Sept. 7, and the Borsa Italiana and London Stock Exchange on Sept. 9.

Sept. 8: BNB chain, a layer-1 blockchain by Binance, has announced its own zero-knowledge (ZK) proof scaling technology, called zkBNB. Binance claims zkBNB will improve scalability metrics and transaction speed.

With the help of blockchain analysts firm Chainalysis, FBI agents seized $30 million worth of crypto stolen by the North Korean threat group Lazarus from the token-based play-to-earn game Axie Infinity. Hackers stole over $600 million from Axie earlier this year.

Sept. 9: Over the last three months, the activity of its blockchain developers has decreased by more than 26% in weekly active developers, data analysis from Artemis revealed. Crypto researchers suggest that this is attributed to the departure of “tourist investors” and “tourist builders” that would give real builders to get real work done.