The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) is going after pump and dump groups on Telegram. On Monday an account under the name “ASIC” posted a message in the “ASX Pump Organization” on Telegram to warn around 300 members of the group that “we’re monitoring this platform and we may be investigating you.”: Many of the group’s members assumed the account to be fake, however ASIC confirmed the validity of the now-deleted message to The Australian newspaper.

MintGreen, a Canada-based cleantech cryptocurrency miner, will be partnering with the Lonsdale Energy Corporation to supply heat to residents of North Vancouver in British Columbia starting in 2022. In a Thursday announcement, MintGreen said its “digital boilers” — which it claims can recover more than 96% of the electricity used for Bitcoin (BTC) mining — will prevent 20,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases per megawatt from entering the atmosphere during its arrangement with North Vancouver. The recovered energy will be used to heat 100 residential and commercial buildings in the Canadian city with a population of roughly 155,000. Colin Sullivan, the CEO of MintGreen, said the partnership was aimed at tackling issues related to climate change. According to a December 2020 report from the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction, building operations and their construction accounted for roughly 38% of carbon dioxide emissions in urban areas.

The long wait for a Bitcoin exchange-traded product could soon be over according to sources reported by financial media giant Bloomberg. Citing “people familiar with the matter” Bloomberg has reported that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is poised to approve the first Bitcoin futures exchange-traded funds in the country. The anonymous sources said:

Join Cointelegraph host and analyst Benton Yaun alongside resident market experts Jordan Finneseth and Marcel Pechman on “The Market Report” — which is live right now! Here’s what to expect in this week’s markets news breakdown: After the weekly news round-up, Mati Greenspan, founder and CEO of Quantum Economics, joins to talk about how more institutions are getting involved in Bitcoin, the approval of a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF), regulations and how crypto might help ease wealth inequality. Using insights from Cointelegraph Markets Pro, a platform for crypto traders who want to stay one step ahead of the market, the Cointelegraph experts identify two altcoins that stood out this week: TomoChain‘s TOMO and Stacks’ STX coins.

Prestigious auction house Sotheby’s has launched a new Metaverse themed NFT platform. The platform is dubbed “Sotheby’s Metaverse” and was announced alongside the “Natively Digital 1.2: The Collectors” (ND1.2) auction that will run between Oct. 18 and Oct. 26. The auction consists of 53 lots of tokenized art from the vaults of 19 curators. Welcome to Sotheby's Metaverse. https://t.co/hZvYIkO3xx pic.twitter.com/9Wl9fUwibe

On Thursday, cryptocurrency exchange platform Coinbase published its Digital Asset Policy Proposal, a document offering both a justification and conceptual framework for the comprehensive regulation of digital assets in the United States. Coinbase presented the proposal as a product of dozens of meetings with industry participants, policymakers, crypto innovators and academics that the company’s representatives had held in the last several weeks. The firm’s intention is for the proposal to “animate an open and constructive discussion regarding the role of digital assets in our shared economic future” and offer good-faith suggestions on what a sensible approach to crypto regulation might look like.

The multi-chain self-custodial wallet TokenPocket has obtained the MSB (Money Services Business) license issued by FinCEN to fully expand overseas operations. TokenPocket will apply for compliance licenses in more countries and regions to provide users with diversified related crypto services. TokenPocket is the world's leading multi-chain self-custodial wallet. The wallet's private key is stored in the user's device, and the asset is completely controlled by the user. TokenPocket currently supports BTC, ETH, BSC, Polygon, Solana, HECO, Klaytn, Avalanche, TRX, OEC, HSC, Fantom, Polkadot, Kusama, EOS and other mainstream public chains, providing safe and reliable services to over 10 million users worldwide. The number of TokenPocket’s monthly active users has exceeded 3 million, with users in more than 200 countries and regions around the world.

The Royal Monetary Authority of Bhutan is partnering with Ripple to pilot a central bank digital currency in the mountainous kingdom. In a Wednesday announcement, Ripple Labs said Bhutan’s central bank would be taking advantage of the company’s private ledger to issue and manage a digital ngultrum. According to Ripple, the move was motivated by the Royal Monetary Authority’s, or RMA’s, effort to improve cross-border payments, expand financial inclusion for its residents, and “extend its commitment to sustainability as the only carbon-negative country in the world.” With a population of roughly 800,000, Bhutan’s gross domestic product amounted to $2.5 billion in 2020. Although many news outlets report on the country’s "gross national happiness” as an alternative to traditional finance, thousands of Bhutanese citizens do not have access to a savings account or credit card. The RMA said that it plans to increase financial inclusion in the country by 85% by 2023 by making payments with a central bank digital currency, or CBDC, “easier, faster and more affordable.”

El Salvador has made global headlines with its president's controversial introduction of Bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender — a move that has sparked dissent from many citizens and was met with skepticism by the International Monetary Fund. A new survey suggests that despite these developments, most El Salvadoreans still know little about the veteran cryptocurrency and even less about its smaller-market cap counterparts. Research conducted by the São Paulo-based agency Sherlock Communications suggests that 54% of Salvadoran respondents chose ‘none’ when asked which cryptocurrency they knew best out of a list of five leading coins. While 40% chose Bitcoin over the other listed cryptos — Ether (ETH), Bitcoin, Dogecoin (DOGE) and EOS — the survey did not seek to probe the level or depth of the knowledge these respondents have of the coin. In correspondence with Cointelegraph, Patrick O’Neill, director of Sherlock Communications, commented:

Non-fungible token company Bookblocks.io has partnered with a New York-based organization to help women in Afghanistan have access to education amid the Taliban takeover. Bookblocks.io announced it would be releasing a non-fungible token, or NFT, on Oct. 5 with the proceeds given to Women for Afghan Women, an organization which helps provide women access to education and vocational training in both Afghanistan and the United States. The artwork, inspired by American author Louisa May Alcott, features half a woman’s face covered by a single butterfly wing with the quote “nothing is impossible to a determined woman.” When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in the 1990s, they banned education for almost all women and girls. History has practically repeated itself as the extremist Islamist group seized control of the government following the withdrawal of the U.S. military last month, only advising men and boys to return to school so far. The country’s Deputy Minister of Education Zabihullah Mujahidwhile has cryptically said the Taliban plans to give women and girls access to education “as soon as possible.”

As the Bitcoin network hash rate continues to recover amid global miners accumulating more capacity, the cryptocurrency is getting increasingly difficult to mine. On Tuesday, the Bitcoin network posted another mining difficulty adjustment, rising 3.2% to hit a difficulty rate of nearly 19 trillion, according to data from blockchain explorer BTC.com. The latest adjustment makes up the fifth consecutive surge of Bitcoin’s (BTC) mining difficulty since mid-July, with the difficulty rate increasing more than 31% from around 13.7 trillion, the lowest difficulty level since June 2020.

The Biden administration reportedly intends to nominate Kazakhstani-American attorney, academic and former policy advisor Saule Omarova to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) — the institution that oversees the U.S. banking sector. Omarova has levied criticisms at both crypto assets and the legacy banking sector in the past, having once pledged to “end banking as we know it”. She has characterized cryptocurrency as “benefiting mainly the dysfunctional financial system we already have.” According to a Sept. 22 report from Bloomberg citing three anonymous sources “familiar with the nomination process,” Omarova could be nominated as soon as this week.

Cryptocurrency investment platform eToro has committed $1 million to the GoodDollar universal basic income protocol, supporting the nonprofit’s effort to bridge the global wealth gap through DeFi and smart contract technology.  The additional capital will aid GoodDollar in expanding its protocol and introducing more recipients to cryptocurrency, eToro announced Wednesday. The GoodDollar system works by capturing the interest generated by staking donors’ contributions in leading DeFi protocols such as Aave and Compound. That interest is then distributed to a global community via GoodDollar tokens. GoodDollar token, which is marked under the ticker symbol $G, is described as a reserve-backed cryptocurrency that is distributed daily to registered users as a form of UBI. The UBI model is supported by donors who deposit assets on the platform. A portion of the accrued interest via staking is returned to the donors, with the rest collateralized in the form of new G tokens.

Tokenized sport collectibles projects have raised almost $1 billion in funding in the space of a week. On Sept. 22 Dapper Labs — the firm behind the Flow blockchain and the widely popular tokenized basketball collectibles, NBA TopShot — announced a further $250 million in a funding round led by tech-focused hedge fund Coatue. As reported by Cointelegraph on Wednesday, French-based NFT soccer trading card game developer Sorare raised $680 million in Series B funding led by Japanese fintech giant Softbank. The funding round raised the valuation of the firm to $4.3 billion.

Bitcoin (BTC) mining company BIT Mining plans to invest $12.14 million to develop an 85-megawatt crypto mining center in Ohio. As the company that owns the entire mining pool business operated under BTC.com, BIT Mining set up a joint venture agreement with Viking Data Centers to establish the Bitcoin mining facility. As part of the JV agreement, BIT Mining will pay $10.84 million in cash to Viking Data with the remaining sum to be settled in cash or company stock.

Trading app Robinhood has opened up a waitlist to test a crypto wallet for users to hold their tokens. According to a Wednesday blog post, Robinhood plans to start testing a digital wallet feature on its app that enables users to send and receive cryptocurrencies in October. The move may encourage more Robinhood users to use the app for crypto trading, as it currently only allows them to buy crypto with United States dollars and trade on the platform — users can’t deposit or withdraw in crypto. Robinhood did not specify which tokens the digital wallet would support, but the app currently provides commission-free trading for Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin SV (BSV), Dogecoin (DOGE), and Ethereum Classic (ETC). The company said it planned for the wallets to have security features, including identity verification, multi-factor authentication, and email and phone verification “to keep coins safe from hacks and other threats.”

Digital asset manager Cobo has raised $40 million to advance institutional pathways to decentralized finance products, offering compelling evidence that more Asia-Pacific investors are seeking secure access to the DeFi market.   The Series B financing will be used by Cobo to develop the first DeFi-as-a-service, or DaaS, infrastructure, which allows institutions and their customers to access decentralized finance products in a compliant manner, the company announced Wednesday. Specifically, the capital will be deployed to acquire regulatory licenses and ensure that anti-money laundering guidelines are followed on all products. Cobo further explained that DaaS gives institutions more secure exposure to DeFi smart contracts without the need to understand market complexities. 

One River Digital, a cryptocurrency-focused hedge fund offering exposure to Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), has closed its first funding round after launching last year. One River Digital president Sebastian Bea confirmed Wednesday that the company had raised $41 million in a Series A financing round from investors, including Goldman Sachs and Coinbase Ventures. Other investors included American diversified global insurer Liberty Mutual Insurance and an alternative investment management firm, Infinity Investment Partners, as One River Digital announced on Tuesday.

Last week, some former users of the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange Cryptsy received a notice informing them of a new turn in the ongoing class settlement process. Authorized by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, the document states that those who were defrauded in the 2016 collapse of the digital finance platform may be entitled to receive money from additional recovery. Cryptsy was a crypto exchange that went bust in January 2016 following months of user-reported issues with withdrawing funds from the platform. The court later found that Cryptsy founder Paul Vernon had stolen millions of dollars worth of customers’ digital assets before fleeing to China. Later that year, a group of the exchange’s users initiated a class action against the company and its founder, while what was left of Cryptsy went into receivership. The court-appointed receiver began to liquidate various assets associated with the defunct company, amassing some $1.5 million by June 2017 to be distributed between the victims.