OPNX Enables Margin Trading via oUSD

Blockstream, a blockchain technology firm headquartered in British Columbia, Canada, has moved to expand its activities in Japan with the opening of a new office and the announcement of a partnership with local companies. The infrastructure development company has partnered with Diamond Hands and Fulgar Ventures, CoinDesk Japan reported. Diamond Hands is a Japan-based company involved in providing Bitcoin-related products. It helps companies to integrate Bitcoin and lightning payments into their services. Based in Wilmington, Delaware, Fulgur Ventures invests in early-stage startups. It is particularly focused on Bitcoin and Lightning Network-related projects.Photo by David Edelstein on UnsplashBootstrapping brand awareness Fulgur Ventures is Blockstream’s largest shareholder. The objective is to bootstrap brand awareness within Japan using these partnerships with local companies. To that end, Diamond Hands CEO Koji Higashi will become Blockstream’s brand ambassador. It’s thought that efforts will be made going forward to further expand partnerships with local Japanese companies. Blockstream announced in a press release that it aims to drive adoption of self-custody technologies and Bitcoin layer-2 innovations within the East Asian country. Furthermore, it plans to drive adoption of real-world asset (RWA) tokenization. Commenting on the development, Blockstream Founder and CEO Adam Back stated:"With increased regulatory clarity and rising institutional interest in Bitcoin now is the moment for Blockstream to establish a direct presence in Japan, one of our most important markets." Back added that the company is looking forward to “empowering Japanese enterprises and individuals to fully harness Bitcoin as the foundation for a financial future that's secure, scalable and decentralized.” Tokyo office Another aspect to the expansion involves the opening of an office in Tokyo by Blockstream.  Adam Back is a Bitcoin OG who has often been the subject of speculation in attempts to identify pseudonymous Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto. Back proposed Hashcash, a proof-of-work-based system and forerunner to Bitcoin, in 1997. The Japanese corporate world has demonstrated its interest in Bitcoin in recent months, with local company Metaplanet launching an ambitious plan to acquire 21,000 Bitcoin by 2026, having adopted the Bitcoin playbook pioneered by American business intelligence and Bitcoin development company MicroStrategy. Blockstream’s investment arm, Blockstream Capital, has also been active in the market. Last month, the company invested $75 million into crypto custodian Komainu. Komainu is a joint venture between CoinShares, Ledger and Japanese global financial services company Nomura.  The same month, the company launched two institutional-grade Bitcoin investment funds. The funds, Blockstream Income Fund and Blockstream Alpha Fund, have been devised to cater to a growing demand from institutions for transparent, regulated and secure financial products. A third fund, Blockstream Yield Fund, is due to launch later this year. It will offer Bitcoin holders consistent, low-risk returns on their holdings. Blockstream was founded in 2014. In its earlier years, the company has served as a technology provider relative to the Liquid Network. In Core Lightning, it has developed a well-recognized implementation of the Lightning Network protocol.  To facilitate Bitcoin holders in terms of self-custody of the leading crypto asset, Blockstream developed Blockstream Jade, a hardware wallet built on open-source software. The device offers air-gapped functionality, meaning that users can perform transactions without connecting the device itself directly to the internet.

Terraform Labs Co-Founder Daniel Shin Denies Wrongdoing in LUNA CollapseShin Hyun-seong, popularly known as Daniel Shin, has refuted accusations against him related to the $40 billion collapse of the stablecoin TerraUSD and its companion token, LUNA, according to a report by local news outlet Newspim. He presented this defense during his initial trial at the Seoul Southern District Court on October 30 (local time).Shin co-founded Terraform Labs, the company responsible for issuing TerraUSD and LUNA. His co-founder, Do Kwon, is currently serving a four-month prison sentence in Montenegro for passport forgery.Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on UnsplashProsecution’s allegationsKorean prosecutors allege that since 2018, Shin and his colleagues have concealed the fabricated nature of the “Terra project.” By manipulating trades and releasing misleading information, they purportedly misled investors into thinking the project was successful. It’s believed they sold off their tokens before the LUNA crash in May 2022, earning KRW 462.9 billion ($343.3 million) from these activities. They are suspected of personally taking KRW 376.9 billion from this amount.Prosecutors are focusing on Shin as the potential orchestrator of the LUNA crash. They speculate he began selling LUNA tokens around when Terraform Labs launched the Anchor Protocol in March 2021. This DeFi protocol increased the popularity and value of LUNA tokens. Before the crash, Shin is alleged to have gained at least KRW 154.1 billion.Defense argumentHowever, Shin’s legal team countered by asserting that Shin had cut ties with Kwon in 2020. They argued the decline of TerraUSD and LUNA was due to Kwon’s mishandling of the Anchor Protocol and an external attack, neither associated with Shin. Regarding the exploit, Terraform Labs has pursued legal action in the United States Southern District of Florida, claiming that American market maker Citadel Securities played a part in undermining TerraUSD in May 2022.Defending Shin, his lawyers emphasized that at the inception of the Terra project, there were no legal guidelines specifically for cryptocurrency transactions. Additionally, unlike Do Kwon who kept fleeing abroad, Shin willingly came back to Korea and has been cooperating with the investigation. They also noted he received only 32% of the 70 million LUNA tokens initially promised. Regarding classification, they stated LUNA isn’t legally recognized as a security.Shin’s lawyers further argued the prosecution hasn’t clearly identified victims or adequately outlined the components of fraud in this case. They said the prosecution’s case hinges on viewing LUNA as a security. However, Shin’s legal representatives maintained that under the Korean Capital Markets Act, LUNA isn’t a security, making its trades non-fraudulent.To counter a US court ruling the prosecution presented — that a token is a security — Shin’s defense highlighted that the verdict is from a lower court and remains contested. Earlier, prosecutors had cited a ruling from the United States Southern District Court of New York, which classified the XRP tokens sold to institutional investors as securities.

Bank of Korea Conducts Successful CBDC Pilot Test with Financial InstitutionsThe Bank of Korea (BOK) announced yesterday in a press release that its central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot program operated successfully in a practical setting involving multiple financial institutions.Testing environmentsPreviously, the CBDC system was tested in an isolated cloud environment. In this recent test, the system was installed on the servers of various financial institutions over a five-month period to evaluate its performance.The 1.2 billion KRW ($905,000) project included the participation of six companies, such as Kakao’s Krust Universe, KakaoBank, and KakaoPay, as well as 14 banks and the Korea Financial Telecommunications and Clearings Institute. Kookmin, Shinhan, and Woori were among the participating banks.Four scenariosThe BOK and financial institutions tested the system’s performance under four scenarios: increasing transaction requests per second, increasing the number of active users, reducing the transaction queue size, and adjusting the block generation time ratio.The increase in transaction requests led to a 10% decrease in transactions per second (TPS), from 2,100 TPS to 1,900 TPS, compared to the single cloud environment test. This result is still deemed acceptable, as the highest TPS recorded in the current small payment infrastructure network is 1,200, which occurs on paydays and other high-transaction days.Issues such as slower response times arose with higher transaction request volumes but were resolved by enlarging the transaction queue size and increasing the block formation time proportion in the block generation process. The block generation process involves two stages: block formation, where transactions are recorded, and block validation, where transactions are verified.Greater stabilityThe test demonstrated that transaction errors at individual institutions did not affect others, suggesting that a distributed ledger system offers greater management stability than a centralized system. However, institutional officers cited challenges in problem-solving and communication when using the distributed ledger system.The BOK plans to involve more institutions in ongoing experiments this year, supporting them in testing their smart contracts on the CBDC pilot system.Photo by Bundo Kim on Unsplash