Headlines
▌Panama’s Supreme Court to Rule on Cryptocurrency Legislation
Panamanian President Laurentino Cortizo sent Bill 697, dubbed the "Cryptocurrency Bill," to the High Court for review and approval on Jan. 26 after he opposed the legislation, claiming it violated core principles of the constitution and cannot execute. The Supreme Court must now decide whether to declare the legislation unenforceable or approve it with amendments. According to an official statement, the government considers sections 34 and 36 of the bill to be unenforceable because they violate the state's principle of separation of powers by creating an executive within the government.
Cryptocurrency
▌Analyst: The suspected North Korean hacker organization transferred 17,000 ETH (about 27.18 million U.S. dollars) related to the Harmony incident again
On-chain data analyst Zach XBT tweeted over the weekend that the suspected North Korean hacker organization "LazarusGroup" transferred 17,000 stolen ETH (approximately $27.18 million) related to the Harmony incident again over the weekend. According to previous news, the Harmony cross-chain bridge Horizon was attacked on June 24 last year, and the loss amounted to about 100 million US dollars. Earlier this month, a suspected North Korean hacker organization transferred 41,000 ETH related to the Harmony incident and deposited it in three exchanges. The FBI confirmed on Monday that Lazarus Group and APT38 were responsible for Harmony cross-chain in June last year.
▌Elon Musk Still Wants McDonald’s To Accept Dogecoin
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has once again come out as a Dogecoin supporter. After being somewhat less forthcoming with his love for Dogecoin in recent weeks, Musk responded to a series of tweets from Mcdonald’s and ultimately to a question from a DOGE community member. Here’s what happened. McDonald tweeted “what did i miss” yesterday, prompting Binance’s Twitter account to reply, “A lot of green candles.” Mcdonald’s then once again showed its love for the crypto community by responding with “wagmi” – an acronym for “we are all gonna make it”, which is often used by the crypto community to build trust and encourage the community not to lose hope. Musk responded with “Oh hi lol.”
▌Ecommerce Giant Amazon To Launch NFT Initiative
According to the report, the e-commerce giant will focus on different sectors with plans to dab into NFT gaming. The platform will reward players with unique items in the form of NFTs. Amazon already offers its Prime service subscribers access to a videogame platform. Members of this service can access the platform’s catalog and receive monthly rewards to claim AAA games. The new NFT initiative could bolster the service by offering new rewards and attracting new users. The NFT platform is currently under development and could run on Amazon proper rather than in Amazon Web Services (AWS), Blockworks reported. The company could reveal further information in April 2023, but there is no official statement from Amazon or its executives.
▌Matrixport Report: US Institutions Account for 85% of Bitcoin Purchases
Matrixport’s latest report cited that Bitcoin has risen by 40% this year, of which 35% of the return occurred during the US trading hours, which means that “85% of the contribution” is related to US investors, indicating that US institutions are currently Bitcoin buyers. The report concluded that this "should be a very positive sign for Bitcoin" as institutional adoption continues. Markus Thielen, director of research and strategy at Matrixport, said the data shows that institutions are not “giving up on crypto,” a sign that we may be entering a new “crypto bull market.” Thielen added that previous data has shown that institutions typically start buying bitcoin first, before investing in other cryptocurrencies.