Bybit, one of the world’s top cryptocurrency derivatives exchanges, will halt some of its services to South Korean users ahead of a licensing deadline. The exchange officially announced on Friday that it will discontinue Korean language support from its platforms as well as its official South Korean community on social media. The suspensions will take effect starting on Monday. "Korean traders may still use Bybit products and services. These products and services just won't be offered in the Korean language any more," a spokesperson for Bybit told Cointelegraph.

BBC Russia has reported that Dmitry Vasiliev, the former chief of Russian cryptocurrency exchange Wex, has been arrested in Warsaw, Poland. Wex, which was previously known as BTC-e, was a well-known "dark" exchange in the early days of the cryptocurrency industry. It is alleged to have laundered funds for numerous high-profile crypto hacks, including the notorious Mt. Gox incident. Although Vasiliev is regarded as innocent within Poland's jurisdiction, other countries such as Kazakhstan have an open fraud case against the elusive figure and as such, have reportedly engaged in discussions surrounding the possibility of extradition.

Professional wrestler and actor John Cena said fans only purchased 7.4% of his World Wrestling Entertainment, or WWE, nonfungible tokens (NFTs) that he made available last month. Speaking at Florida Supercon 2021 on Sept. 12, Cena said it was a mistake to market his WWE NFTs as part of a package with physical collectibles — a hat, shirt, wristbands, belt, towel, autographed picture, and the digital collectible. The organization offered 500 gold tier packages with the NFT for $1,000, but only a fraction of them sold. “I talk a lot about failure — this idea failed,” said Cena. “Myself and the folks in the WWE thought $1,000 was a fair price point. We were wrong. We were absolutely wrong.”

Some United States senators are ramping up the anti-crypto rhetoric again, urging federal agencies to take action against the illicit use of digital assets. Senator Maggie Hassan is the latest to raise concerns about the use of cryptocurrency as a means of payment for ransomware attacks. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee member sent a letter on Thursday to several agencies, including the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the Internal Revenue Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

Automated market maker MonoX has today announced a debut capital raise of $5 million from venture firms including the likes of Axia8 Ventures, Animoca Brands, Divergence Ventures, among others. MonoX will use the funds to support its ambitions in reducing the capital and liquidity prerequisites for decentralized finance (DeFi) projects offering swap, lending, borrowing and derivative capabilities on decentralized exchanges (DEXes). The protocol will achieve this through the introduction of a single-sided liquidity model. Though not a revolutionary concept for liquidity pools, it will aim to support the DeFi ecosystem’s growth.

Welcome to the latest edition of Cointelegraph’s decentralized finance, or DeFi, newsletter. Despite Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson's claim that the DeFi space is now “up for grabs,“ it was rival Vitalik Buterin who stole the headlines this week with a feature in Time Magazine. What you’re about to read is the smaller version of this newsletter designed for brevity. For the full version of DeFi’s developments over the last week — released a whole lot quicker than Cardano’s smart contracts — drop your email below.

Maxime Bernier, founder and leader of the People's Party of Canada, has said he supports the adoption of cryptocurrencies in the country. In a Tuesday tweet, Bernier said cryptocurrencies are “another new and innovative way” to counter the actions by central banks, which he claimed are “destroying our money and economy.” The Canadian politician has criticized the Bank of Canada for “printing money” and called out Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for his economic policies. Bernier, a former cabinet minister known by some as Mad Max, has been outspoken in his criticism of vaccine mandates in Canada at a time when the number of COVID-19 cases in the country continues to rise. He has also advocated for ending lockdowns and mask mandates and against the rollout of a vaccine passport system.

German financial regulators have approved a security token offering (STO) based on a Bitcoin (BTC) sidechain. Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) has greenlighted the EXOeu token by game publisher Exordium, making local retail investors eligible to participate in the sale on Stokr, a major European digital marketplace. German investors can invest in EXOeu via Stokr with a minimum investment amount of $100. EXOeu is the second STO ever approved for the German market on Stokr after BaFin approved an STO by parking network ParkinGO last year.

PayPal officially announced on Friday that all eligible customers in the United Kingdom can now buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies using their PayPal accounts. Customers can trade four major cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). As announced previously, crypto trading will only be available to PayPal customers with verified identities. PayPal announced plans to move into the British cryptocurrency market in late August, immediately proceeding with a partial rollout of crypto trading services. The move marks the first expansion of PayPal’s cryptocurrency services beyond the United States.

South Korean crypto exchange Gopax, which is backed by Digital Currency Group, is facing potential closure ahead of the country’s fast-approaching deadline for platforms to submit their requests for an official operating license. To be eligible for a license, all crypto exchanges must show evidence that they are operating using real-name accounts at South Korean banks. The catch is that domestic banks have, for the most part, refused to engage in any risk assessment process for the country’s numerous small and medium-sized exchanges and have only been confident enough to service the country’s top four trading platforms: Upbit, Bithumb, Korbit and Coinone. The deadline for all license applications is now just one week away, on Sept. 24.  In a notice to users published on Friday, the Gopax team wrote that the exchange “is currently negotiating with a financial institution to establish a real-name verification deposit and withdrawal account,” as stipulated by the new regulatory regime. 

More than 200 smart contracts have been listed on the Cardano blockchain explorer following the Alonzo upgrade on Monday — but there’s a catch.  As of now, the 200 smart contracts listed are in timelock and cannot be used by developers until they’re released. The Vercel App currently puts the number of smart contracts readying to be launched at more than 2,200.

The Texas State Securities Board has filed for a hearing with the potential to impose a cease and desist order against crypto lending firm Celsius Network for not offering securities licensed at the state or federal level, while the New Jersey Bureau of Securities has ordered the platform to stop offering and selling interest-earning cryptocurrency products. According to a Sept. 17 filing, the Texas regulator will be holding a hearing related to allegations that Celsius Network is offering and selling securities in Texas that are not registered or permitted in addition to not registering as a dealer under the state’s Securities Act. Should the judge accept that the platform’s offerings represented unlicensed securities, Celsius Network may be subject to a cease and desist order. On the same day, the New Jersey Bureau of Securities announced that it had issued a cease and desist order against Celsius for allegedly “funding its cryptocurrency lending operations and proprietary trading at least in part through the sale of unregistered securities in violation of the New Jersey Securities Law.” According to the state regulator, the platform raised roughly $14 billion from those sales.

Joseph Delong, chief technology officer of decentralized finance (DeFi) platform SushiSwap, announced that a hacker compromised the supply chain of its token launchpad platform, MISO. According to Delong, the “anonymous contractor with the GH handle AristoK3 injected malicious code into the Miso front end,” replacing the auction wallet address with their own and subsequently acquiring 865 Ether (ETH), valued at $3 million. This data can be verified via EtherScan. The hacker exploited the single target of the Jay Pegs Auto Mart token auction, a parody NFT project imitating the value of a 2007 Kia Sedona.

According to data from eth.btc.com，ethereum network's hashrate is670,059.35 GH/s，mining difficulty is8,936.88T. ETH's price ：$ 3,424.08 Avg Gas Price：127.00Gwei Pending Txs ：130964

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has published its report on trends, risks and vulnerabilities in the European Union markets during the first half of 2021 (1H21). Its takeaways included the argument that crypto markets’ extraordinary volatility and growth make a compelling case for the need for a targeted regulatory regime, as sketched out in the European Commission’s proposed Markets in Crypto-Assets regulations. Much has been riding on the EU and global market’s recovery during 1H21 amid the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. ESMA’s report notes that the economic outlook has continued to improve overall, with the European economy now forecast to have reached its pre-pandemic output by the end of 2022, earlier than had been expected. 

On Wednesday, speaking at a meeting of the Exchequer Club — which is a group of senior economic and financial policy professionals headquartered in Washington, D.C. — Acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael Hsu delivered remarks on the topic of safeguarding trust in banking. In the speech, Hsu named reducing inequality, adapting to digitalization, acting on climate change and guarding against complacency as the main priorities of his office. Speaking on the regulatory challenges emerging as a result of digitization of the financial system, the head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) listed rising cryptocurrency-related and decentralized finance (DeFi) activity among the innovations driving changes in banking, disintermediating it in novel ways.

The U.S. Treasury Department is reportedly preparing a review highlighting challenges posed by stablecoin redemptions and the effect of a possible run on the crypto asset market. According to a Sept.16 report from Bloomberg citing anonymous sources, Treasury officials are readying policy recommendations designed to ensure stablecoin holders can freely convert between their tokens and other assets. The report states the lawmakers hope to mitigate “the most urgent risks” associated with Tether (USDT) and other stable tokens, also emphasizing the threats a “fire-sale run” on crypto assets could wreak for financial stability broadly.

A bronze depiction of legendary Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto is now on display for visitors of Graphisoft Park in Budapest. In an unveiling ceremony on Thursday, András Győrfi, the co-founder of the statue project and editor of crypto news site Kripto Akademia, spoke to a crowd of journalists and Hungarian residents before revealing the shining face of Satoshi. The sculpture shows the upper half of a figure with a featureless face wearing a hoodie with the Bitcoin (BTC) logo. Front of #StatueOfSatoshi pic.twitter.com/LvlDmtio1c

Credit rating agency Standard and Poor (S&P) Global believes the country of El Salvador has severely harmed its credit rating after enacting its Bitcoin Law recognizing BTC as legal tender nationwide on Sept. 7. According to a Sept. 16 report from Reuters, El Salvador’s Bitcoin embrace exposes its economy to significant financial risks and could pose challenges for the country’s lending industry. The credit agency also believes the move could also dampen El Salvador’s chances of securing a $1 billion loan agreement it is seeking from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).