The Nigerian Federal High Court joins the growing list of regulators across the globe to approve the rollout of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) as a legal tender. Named eNaira, the digital currency will be issued by the central bank and supported by a homegrown eNaira wallet.  Nigeria’s CBDC issuance approval was revealed in a federal court hearing held on Oct. 2 led by Justice Taiwo Abayomi Taiwo, according to a report by Voice of Nigeria. The official eNaira website says that the digital version of the Nigerian naira will be made available universally, stating “anybody can hold it.” As previously reported by Cointelegraph, the launch of the Nigerian CBDC was dedicated to mark the country’s 61st Independence Day. While eNaira will continue to circulate alongside its fiat counterpart, it is marketed as a faster, cheaper and more secure option for monetary transactions.

Major DeFi money market Compound’s woes are worsening, with nearly $150 million worth of COMP now at risk due to a buggy upgrade to the protocol that went live last week. On Sept. 30, Cointelegraph reported that a bug had resulted in between $70 million and $85 million worth of COMP tokens being mistakenly offered to users as rewards after an update intended to fix bugs and “split COMP rewards distribution” went awry. Despite the reward distribution error being identified quickly, Compound’s week-long delay on enacting new governance measures meant that the error will not be fixed until Oct. 7.

According to data from eth.btc.com，ethereum network's hashrate is676,172.20 GH/s，mining difficulty is9,061.78T. ETH's price ：$ 2,929.21 Avg Gas Price：351.00Gwei Pending Txs ：127105

Amid a fraught period for some high-profile United States crypto firms and financial regulators, Kraken chief legal officer Marco Santori is calling for a dose of pragmatism going forward. Speaking on Bloomberg’s QuickTake Stock broadcast on Thursday, Santori told viewers, “You’re living in a fantasy world if you don’t believe that this industry is going to face heavier, more Wall Street-like regulation from governments in the U.S. and abroad.” Santori’s comments follow threats by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this month to sue the well-known crypto exchange Coinbase over a crypto yield program the commission deemed to be a security. The move sparked the exchange’s CEO, Brian Armstrong, to adopt a combative and resistant stance on social media, although the exchange has since announced it will scrap the program at issue, in line with the SEC’s wishes. 

Golem Network has launched an app that allows users to mine Ether (ETH) on their laptops, but it could be a long time before riches can be reaped. The decentralized computing resources sharing platform released the Thorg app that allows users to mine Ether on Windows-based PCs and laptops. The app runs in the background and harnesses unused computing power to process the calculations required for proof-of-working mining. Users are rewarded in Golem’s native GLM token, however, and not ETH.

Welcome to the latest edition of Cointelegraph’s decentralized finance, or DeFi, newsletter. In a week where DeFi’s parabolic growth continued elsewhere, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler threatened to tackle stablecoins. What you’re about to read is the smaller version of this newsletter. For the full breakdown of DeFi’s developments over the last week — released a whole lot quicker than Cardano’s smart contracts — subscribe at the bottom of this page.

American multinational investment bank JPMorgan has revealed that institutional investors are starting to shy away from Bitcoin futures in favor of Ether derivatives. In a note to investors on Wednesday, analysts at the Wall Street bank said that Bitcoin futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) have traded at a discount compared to spot BTC prices during September. As a consequence, Ethereum-based products have grown in popularity as investors make the switch to the world’s second-largest crypto asset. The analysts commented that there has been a “strong divergence in demand,” before adding:

A Redditor living in Yemen’s capital city of Sana'a claims to be using cryptocurrencies to buy food packages for families unable to access supplies during an ongoing civil war. According to a Thursday Reddit post from user yemenvoice, the Yemen national has raised roughly $12,000 in crypto donations to be used towards fighting starvation in the Middle Eastern nation. They claim to have provided 15 families with flour, rice, oil and beans and hope to reach 30 more in the near future. “I have tried very hard to help my people by finding any possible way,” said yemenvoice. “I have tried to set up online donation campaigns, but unfortunately, all online donation platforms do not support Yemen. So, I thought of using cryptocurrencies as an alternative method, and indeed it was much easier and more effective.”

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong claims that the United States Securities and Exchange Commission is the only government branch that is unwilling to meet with the firm. Speaking on Anthony Pompliano’s Best Business Show on Friday, Armstrong said that during his visit to Washington after Coinbase went public in April, the SEC was the “only regulator” that refused to meet with him: “I was kind of surprised by that because there are so many different regulators out there. Every single one has been willing to meet with us and every other branch of government,” he added.

The Chinese government is getting more serious about cracking down on the cryptocurrency industry as state authorities are bringing forces to combat crypto operations in the country. The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) officially announced on Friday a set of new measures to fight against crypto adoption in China, including promoting stronger inter-departmental coordination in cracking down crypto activity. 10 Chinese state authorities, including the PBoC, the Cyberspace Administration of China and the Ministry of Public Security, have established a “coordination mechanism” to prevent financial players from participating in any cryptocurrency transactions. According to the announcement, the involved authorities and institutions have completed significant improvements to crypto monitoring platforms to identify illegal cryptocurrency transactions efficiently.

The rapid adoption of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) poses a major challenge for the traditional financial system, an executive at the Chinese central bank has warned. Wen Xinxiang, director of the payment and settlement department at the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), has expressed concerns over the growing popularity of cryptocurrencies and fiat-pegged stablecoins. Pointing to Bitcoin’s market value now surpassing $800 billion and the total stablecoin market capitalization exceeding $120 billion, Wen outlined major risks associated with the crypto market at a payment and settlement forum on Friday, the Shanghai Securities Journal reported.

The Giving Block, a major organization focused on the cryptocurrency donations industry, continues to expand its crypto charity reach with a new partnership. The organization will be working with charitable platform provider RenPSG to allow its donors to move cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) into new donor-advised funds to support nonprofits and other charitable organizations, The Giving Block announced Sept. 23. As part of the partnership, RenPSG will start offering a solution that allows charities to accept more than 45 different cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and Dogecoin (DOGE).

Morgan Stanley's Dennis Lynch shared a light-hearted analogy during a discussion at Morningstar’s yearly investment conference today, claiming that Bitcoin’s insatiable ability to defy the odds and rise from both technical and fundamental adversity portrays that of the South Park cartoon character Kenny. The 24-series show has garnered a global audience base for its weird and wacky sense of humour, epitomised by the long-standing gag that Kenny dies in each episode, only to be rebirthed and gleefully unaware of his brutal demise in the following show. Head of asset management firm Counterpoint, a Morgan Stanley subsidiary — and a keen advocate of the show — Lynch expressed his belief in the resilience of leading cryptocurrency asset Bitcoin since its inception over a decade ago.

Marion Laboure, an analyst at Deutsche Bank’s research division, said she can envision Bitcoin taking the role of digital gold in the future: lasting for centuries and largely not controlled by the government. In an update to Deutsche Bank’s website on “what’s next” for the largest banking institution in Germany, Laboure said she could “potentially see Bitcoin to become the 21st century digital gold,” but warned investors against the crypto asset’s volatility. According to the analyst, most Bitcoin (BTC) purchases are made for investments and speculation rather than keeping the coins for a medium of exchange.  “Just a few additional large purchases or market exits can significantly impact the supply-demand equilibrium,” said Laboure. “[Bitcoin] is too volatile to be a reliable store of value today. And I expect it to remain ultra-volatile in the foreseeable future.”

Acting head of the United States Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) Michael Hsu has warned that the exotic financial products developed in some quarters of crypto and DeFi are reminiscent of those that precipitated the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Speaking before the Blockchain Association on Sept. 21, Hsu warned that “innovation for innovation’s sake [...] risks creating a mountain of fool’s good,” drawing analogies between the rapid proliferation of digital asset derivatives and the explosion in mortgage and debt derivatives, such as the Credit Default Swaps (CDS) that preceded the 2008 global financial crisis: Hsu notes that “it was nearly impossible to hedge the risk of a borrower defaulting” prior to the creation of CDS in the mid-1990s. However, by the time he joined the SEC in 2004, the acting OCC head recounted that credit derivatives promised investors higher risk-adjusted returns using innovative products that “relied heavily on math and financial engineering."

Arca Labs, the innovation arm of digital asset investment firm Arca, has partnered with blockchain tech firm Securitize to launch regulated, tokenized financial products. According to a Thursday announcement, Securitize has signed on to provide a smart contract and issuance platform for the firm, starting with Arca’s tokenized fund dubbed the “Arca U.S. Treasury Fund,” which was launched in July 2020. Arca touts the Arca U.S. Treasury Fund as the first treasury fund registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940 to issue shares as digital assets via the blockchain. The fund meets the same regulatory requirements as a mutual fund, but differs by offering exposure via Ethereum-based digital asset security tokens called “ArCoin.”

The price of Bitcoin fell 5% today following “breaking” (read: weeks old) news that the People’s Bank of China, or PBoC, had declared all cryptocurrency transactions illegal. With that in mind, let's take a nostalgic look at the last 12 years of FUD out of China, and see if we can spot any patterns. 1: Chinese regulators have never exactly been crypto advocates. When blockchain-based digital currencies were still in their infancy, i.e. 2009, China’s Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Commerce barred the use of "virtual currency" for trading real world goods. Though not specifically targeting Bitcoin (BTC), the move did seemingly set the precedent for a decade of anti-crypto regulations.

On September 17, a group of officials led by U.S. attorney Tracy Wilkinson have filed a civil complaint in the United States District Court for the Central District of California claiming that they have identified four digital wallets holding more than 9.8 million Tether (USDT) that was involved in wire fraud, computer fraud and money laundering. According to court documents, the legitimate owner of the funds is a California resident who in April 2021 got swindled out of more than 200 Bitcoin (BTC) by someone impersonating a Coinbase employee. As described in the claim, the unidentified victim was contacted by what appeared to be Coinbase customer support shortly after purchasing some 200 BTC to their Coinbase Pro account on the exchange. The alleged representative of the platform claimed that the victim’s account had been frozen due to the size of the purchase and that a transaction limit increase was needed for the funds to go through. The fraudster also suggested that the victim upgrade their account to Coinbase Prime.

According to data from eth.btc.com，ethereum network's hashrate is703,884.39 GH/s，mining difficulty is9,284.83T. ETH's price ：$ 2,863.65 Avg Gas Price：40.00Gwei Pending Txs ：117677

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele claims that 2.1 million of his fellow citizens are using the government-backed Chivo cryptocurrency wallet, offering a glimpse into the apparent success of the country’s Bitcoin (BTC) gambit.  The controversial president updated his 2.9 million Twitter followers Saturday afternoon, claiming that Chivo “now has more users than any bank in El Salvador” after just three weeks in operation. Bukele indicated that it’s only a matter of time before Chivo adoption eclipses all banks in El Salvador combined. 2.1 million Salvadorans are ACTIVELY USING @chivowallet (not downloads).Chivo is not a bank, but in less than 3 weeks, it now has more users than any bank in El Salvador and is moving fast to have more users that ALL BANKS IN EL SALVADOR combined.This is wild!#Bitcoin