- October 10, 2023
- Posted by: admin
- Category: BitCoin, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Investments
Need to know what happened in crypto today? Here is the latest news on daily trends and events impacting Bitcoin price, blockchain, DeFi, NFTs, Web3 and crypto regulation.
Binance freezes Hamas-linked accounts after Israeli request, Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried’s legal team seeks permission to cross-examine Gary Wang over FTX lawyers’ involvement in Alameda loan approvals. And a Bitcoin developer has proposed a way to bring more expressive off-chain smart contracts to Bitcoin.
Binance freezes Hamas-linked accounts after Israeli request
Binance has frozen accounts linked to Hamas militants, according to the company’s co-founder Yi He.
This move comes in response to a request from Israeli law enforcement authorities. According to Yi He:
“Hamas is a designated terrorist organization by the United Nations. Therefore, any organization, including banks and trading platforms, will need to cooperate on the receipt of freeze requests. This is not something Binance can decide on its own.“
The company co-founder also added that “Palestine has an organized government. Hamas is a local militant group. They kill civilians; that’s the problem. Hamas is not Palestine; the freeze is targeted towards Hamas, not Palestine.“
They also issued assurances that the freeze would only affect Hamas-linked accounts. With “ordinary civilian accounts” being unaffected.
SBF seeks to probe FTX lawyers’ roles in $200 million Alameda loans
SBF’s legal team is looking for permission to probe the alleged involvement of FTX lawyers in the issuance of $200 million worth of loans from Alameda that were approved by Gary Wang.
As previously reported in the build-up to the highly anticipated trial, an Oct. 1 court ruling provisionally barred SBF from apportioning blame to FTX lawyers who were allegedly involved in structuring and approving loans between Alameda and FTX.
United States Judge Lewis Kaplan granted the government’s motion and ruled that Bankman-Fried’s legal team would have to request permission to make any mention of FTX lawyers’ involvement throughout the trial.
SBF’s attorneys argue that the prosecution has already established that FTX lawyers were present and involved in structuring and executing the loans and intend to carry out their own line of questioning over the scope of FTX counsel involvement.
The defense adds that it could potentially introduce promissory notes that memorialized the loans to Wang, who has previously indicated to the prosecution in proffer meetings that he did not suspect FTX lawyers would coerce him to sign illegal agreements.
Bitcoiner drops BitVM paper: ‘Compute anything on Bitcoin’
A Bitcoin developer has made waves among the crypto community after proposing a new way to bring more expressive off-chain smart contracts to Bitcoin.
Announced in an Oct.9 white paper titled “BitVM: Compute Anything on Bitcoin” by ZeroSync’s project lead Robin Linus, BitVM enables Turing-complete Bitcoin contracts without altering Bitcoin’s consensus rules.
Linus explained that Bitcoin, in its current form, is limited to basic operations, such as signatures, timelocks and hashlocks, but that can now be broadened with BitVM, which Linus says can compute a host of interesting applications.
BitVM: Everything you need to know (and more…)
BitVM is a new Optimistic Roll Up + Fraud Proof + Taproot Leaf + Bitcoin Script computing paradigm designed by Robin Linus at Zero Sync. They published an excellent white paper this morning reviewed by Super Testnet and Sam Parker… pic.twitter.com/9rjIZZrSSI
— Bob Bodily, PhD | #BTC #ETH #ICP (@BobBodily) October 10, 2023
“Potential applications include games like Chess, Go, or Poker and particularly, verification of validity proofs in Bitcoin contracts.”
Many Bitcoiners appeared impressed with the proposal, though others say the proof is in the pudding when it comes to implementation.
Prominent Bitcoiner Eric Wall posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the concepts outlined in the BitVM white paper “check out” and is “cautiously excited” to see what real-world experiments stem from it.
Adam Back, a Bitcoin Core contributor, suggested that people shouldn’t get too excited about the development as it is “effectively a generalization of a two-party game.”
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.
