Cryptocurrency roundup for January 25: Binance processes $346 mn in Bitcoin for alleged money laundering engine Bitzlato and more

A draft law that is expected to be voted on by the European Parliament's economic affairs committee on Tuesday states that banks will have to set aside a significant amount of capital to cover their crypto asset holdings.
> This is part of the Basel III accord, which requires banks to hold more capital to cope with market shocks without the need for taxpayer aid, Reuters reported.
> The draft law includes an amendment that states that banks must apply a risk weighting of 1,250% of capital to crypto asset exposures, in order to cover a complete loss in their value.
> This is in line with recommendations from the global Basel Committee of banking regulators from December. More here.

Crypto giant Binance has reportedly processed almost $346 million in bitcoin for the Bitzlato digital currency exchange, whose founder was arrested by U.S. authorities last week for allegedly running a "money laundering engine," according to blockchain data seen by Reuters.
> The Justice Department announced on January 18 that it had charged Bitzlato’s co-founder and majority shareholder, Anatoly Legkodymov, a Russian national living in China, with operating an unlicensed money exchange business.
> The department stated that the exchange "fueled a high-tech axis of crypto crime" by processing $700 million in illicit funds.
> Bitzlato had been accused of flaunting the laxity of its background checks on clients, with the Justice Department adding that when the exchange did ask users for ID information, "it repeatedly allowed them to provide information belonging to 'straw man' registrants." Details here.

Binance, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, made a mistake by keeping assets that are used as collateral for some of their crypto assets in the same wallet as funds belonging to its customers, according to an official Binance spokesperson.
> The exchange issues a total of 94 Binance-peg tokens (B-Tokens) and the reserves for almost half of them are stored in a cold wallet called Binance 8.
> However, the wallet contains more tokens than what is required for the amount of B-Tokens issued.
> This indicates that the collateral assets were mixed with customers' tokens. More here.

The District of Columbia Court of Appeals has scheduled a date to hear oral arguments in Grayscale's lawsuit against the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) decision to deny the conversion of its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust to an exchange-traded fund (ETF).
> The hearing is set to take place on Mar. 7, at 9:30 am ET, and will give both sides the opportunity to present their case to the court.
> Grayscale had previously expected the hearing to begin in the second quarter.
> “We previously anticipated oral arguments to be as soon as Q2 2023, so having them scheduled to begin on March 7 is welcome news,” the company stated in a tweet. Full report here.

Venture capital firm Pantera Capital, which manages around $3.8 billion in assets, predicts that decentralized finance (DeFi) will be the future of the crypto market.
> In a letter to investors titled "The Year Ahead," the company's CEO and co-Chief Investment Officer Dan Morehead said, "Blockchain is going to change the world. It will certainly survive these issues," referring to the recent crypto market downturn caused by high-profile exploits and bankruptcies.
> Co-Chief Investment Officer Joey Krug added that he believes the world's financial systems will eventually be based on blockchain and smart contracts.
> He also highlighted that scalability systems have brought transaction fees on the Ethereum blockchain to under 10 cents and expects them to decrease further to around 1 cent in the future, which would make decentralized exchanges more competitive with centralized exchanges. More here.

Blockstream, a leading Bitcoin infrastructure firm, has announced that it has raised $125 million to expand its institutional Bitcoin mining colocation services.
> The funding round was led by Kingsway Capital and included other investors such as Fulgur Ventures. Cohen & Company Capital Markets, a division of J.V.B. Financial Group, acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Blockstream.
> This funding round follows Blockstream’s $210 million Series B capital raise in August 2021, which was used to build several enterprise-class mining facilities with capacity for institutional hosting customers and to strengthen Blockstream’s vertical integration with the acquisition of Spondoolies to design and manufacture Blockstream’s own ASIC and enterprise miner. More here.

The crypto market has seen relatively stable prices, with Bitcoin trading at around $23,000 with little fluctuation.
> However, Ether and DOT saw a slight decrease, with Ether down 1% to $1,614 and DOT down 2.6% in the same period.
> Silvergate, a company that deals in the crypto market, had a significant drop of 11% to around $14.27, despite a gain of 17% during the previous session.
> Other companies in the crypto space such as Coinbase, Block, and MicroStrategy also saw a decline, with Coinbase down 4.3%, Block down 1%, and MicroStrategy down 1%.
> The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, which is a premier fund managed by Grayscale, also fell 2.5% to $11.97.