WazirX, Binance boost compliance procedures; Forkast speaks to FTX CEO

Transcript

Welcome to the Daily Forkast, July 2nd, 2021, I’m Justin Solomon of Forkast.News, covering all things blockchain filling in for Editor-in-Chief Angie Lau.

Coming up, WazirX and Binance up their compliance measures, one on one with FTX’s founder and CEO, and it pays to walk — quite literally — in one Chinese district. Now let’s get you up to speed from Asia to the world.

India-based crypto exchange WazirX seems to be going into damage control mode. This following last month’s allegations that it had violated foreign exchange laws over large sums of money. The company announced a partnership with blockchain analytics provider TRM Labs to up the anti-money laundering, anti-fraud measures for transactions on its platform.

Its parent company, Binance, is also pairing up with another blockchain analytics firm, CipherTrace, to use one of its products called Traveler. This is supposed to be in compliance with the Financial Action Task Force Travel Rule that requires virtual assets service providers to pass information on to each other when they move crypto around.

Binance is currently under scrutiny from regulators in a number of markets, including now the Cayman Islands, where the company is reportedly incorporated. Authorities there have come out to say that Binance isn’t licensed to, quote, operate a cryptocurrency exchange from or within the Cayman Islands.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and CEO of Hong Kong-based FTX exchange, has been keeping a close eye on regulatory conversations around the region. And I had a chance to catch up with him earlier today in a wide-ranging interview. And I asked him if proposed regulations in Hong Kong to ban crypto trading for retail investors could force FTX to move elsewhere.

“The devil’s in the details here. There are one or two provisions which could be really worrying. Particularly when you look at what it’s going to end up saying about both locally and globally servicing a broad client base. We completely understand introducing a licensing regime and we need to get that in the need for various disclosures and things like that. But if it’s a regime that’s going to cut off 90% of the world from accessing crypto, then that’s not sort of a workable regime for our business or for most.”

“You just announced this partnership with Tom Brady. You have stadium naming rights in Miami. When you think about sports and your strategy, is this where you see growth?”

“Part of it is that I do think so, part of it is I think that there just aren’t that many comparables for it. If you think about what other things are there that joined together tens millions of people regularly — I don’t you know — it’s sort of like elections, sports, [and] games. You start scratching down pretty deep below the surface pretty quickly there.”

Speaking of sports partnerships, it seems Crypto.com has nabbed another deal with the industry. this time for the launch of an NFT collection, the National Hockey League’s Vegas Golden Knights are auctioning off their first set of seven NFTs, which will be paired with physical collector’s items like jerseys and helmets.

This comes after Formula 1 announced its deal with Crypto.com to feature the platform as the official crypto sponsor for the rest of the season.

Taking a quick look at the markets now, Bitcoin was down two-tenths of a percent by the end of the trading day here in Hong Kong to close at US$33,300 by 4 p.m. local time and in the top ten for cryptocurrencies, a mixed trading day for the most part, with Ethereum performing the worst dropping just over 3% while Doge led the greenside up 1.5%.

And finally, before we go, imaginary money, just by counting your footsteps. A point system in China’s model smart city about 60 miles outside of Beijing lets residents earned a point for every step they count via GPS tracking. Once they earn 20,000 points, they can redeem symbolic red packets which contain 50 e-yuan each through two banking apps. They can do this up to four times.

The authorities there have set aside three million e-CNY, or nearly US$500,000. It’s part of a broader green initiative by the area to promote a healthier lifestyle.

And that’s The Daily Forkast from our vantage point right here in Asia. For more, visit Forkast.News. I’m Justin Solomon. Until next time.