News Roundup — Craig Wright May Be Admitting That He Stole 80,000 Bitcoin

Major news stories this week;

1. Bitcoin Developers Say Craig Wright May Be Admitting That He Stole 80,000 Bitcoin from Mt. Gox
2. Nomura-Backed Crypto Custody Firm Komainu Wins Operating License in Dubai
3. Shop Till You Drop Using USDC: Solana Pay Integrates with Shopify
4. DAI Stablecoin Surpasses $5B Market Cap on Higher Yield, Lifting Spark Protocol
5. Why PayPal's stablecoin is likely to succeed where Facebook's Libra failed

Story Summaries;

1. Defense attorneys say the ownership claim by the man who says he is Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto implies he stole 80,000 BTC from the exchange. In an ongoing lawsuit filed by Craig Wright, self-proclaimed inventor of Bitcoin, attorneys for the 12 Bitcoin Core developers targeted by Wright filed a preliminary issue application with the UK High Court. The filing purports to dismantle many of the plaintiff's claims, the Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund said in a statement last Monday. Wright claims to own 111,000 Bitcoin that were allegedly stolen from the Mt Gox exchange. The defense notes that Wright lacks any documentation showing ownership of the missing Bitcoin, and accuse him of fabricating the limited documents provided to the court.
2. Komainu, the cryptocurrency custody joint venture of Nomura, Ledger and CoinShares, has received an operating license from the Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA) in Dubai. Komainu can now offer its full range of custody services, including institutional staking and collateral management via its Komainu Connect platform, to clients in the emirate, the company said in a statement. The platform allows clients to deploy their digital assets in collateralization scenarios while they remain in segregated custody, verifiable on-chain.
3. Solana Labs’ decentralized payment protocol, Solana Pay, has taken a decisive step in the e-commerce sector, announcing its integration with Shopify, announced on August 23 via TechCrunch. This development will empower numerous businesses to seamlessly facilitate payments using USDC, the stablecoin closely tied to the U.S. dollar. Initiated in early 2022, Solana Pay operates atop the layer-1 Solana blockchain. With a substantial market cap of $25.9 billion, USDC emerges as the primary currency for this partnership. Shopify, representing a significant 10% of U.S. e-commerce, is no stranger to expansive financial moves. With an economic activity value reaching $444 billion globally, its foray into the Solana ecosystem – comprising over 11.5 million active accounts and boasts 100% outage-free Q2 2023 – is poised to leverage the Solana ecosystem.
4. The market value of all DAI in circulation surpassed $5 billion for the first time since April as crypto investors pounced on interest rates as high as 8%. This follows an extended decline, with DAI’s market cap shrinking to as low as $4.4 billion in late July from a peak above $10 billion early in 2022, according to CoinMarketCap data. The growth also boosted decentralized finance (DeFi) lending platform Spark, which leverages Maker’s credit facility and integrates DAI. The protocol’s total value of assets locked (TVL) increased by near tenfold over the past month to $430 million, according to DefiLlama.
5. PayPal's (PYPL.O) stablecoin is likely to succeed where Facebook's failed, thanks to the payment giant's standing in Washington and policymakers' greater understanding of the issues in the last three years. PayPal this month said it was launching PayPal USD, a crypto token pegged to the U.S. dollar, making it the second major global company to launch a stablecoin after Facebook, now Meta Platforms META.O, unveiled Libra in June 2019. The move, which comes as PayPal transitions to a new CEO announced last week, seems risky after Facebook's stablecoin was crushed by political opposition, and as regulators home in on the crypto sector following several meltdowns. But PayPal is in a stronger position than Facebook, said former officials, executives and analysts. Policymakers are more familiar with stablecoins, crypto tokens typically pegged to a fiat currency, than they were in 2019.

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And that’s all for last week’s news! Wishing you a great week ahead!

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