Asia Express  – Cointelegraph Magazine

Our weekly roundup of news from East Asia curates the market’s essential advancements.

Huawei transfers to hallmark its NFTs

According to a Jan. 28 report by Sina News, Chinese telecom giant Huawei has actually just recently applied for 8 hallmarks associated to its Huawei “YunYunBao” nonfungible tokens (NFT) series. The hallmarks consist of digital antiques in the clinical instruments, furnishings, education, precious jewelry, marketing and telecom sectors. Last April, Huawei revealed its YunYunBao NFTs, including characters influenced by its name cloud service. Huawei NFTs are minted on its proprietary Huawei Petal Chain, which the telecom giant states has more than 1,000 nodes and can deal with over 50,000 deals per second. 

Toyota sponsors blockchain hackathon

In a Feb. 1 Medium post, Sota Watanabe, the creator of Japanese blockchain Astar Network, revealed that Astar had actually gotten a sponsorship from Japanese vehicle maker Toyota for its newest Web3 hackathon. Astar is presently a parachain constructed on the Polkadot blockchain. 

According to Watanabe, over $100,000 in rewards will be dispersed to tasks that establish “intra-company DAO support tools for this hackathon which Toyota employees may actually use in the future.” The hackathon will range from Feb. 14 to March 25.

“Needless to say, Toyota is the largest company in Japan and one of the world’s leading international companies,” Watanabe composed. “We are very excited to be hosting the Web3 Hackathon on Astar with Toyota. During the event, we aim to develop the first PoC DAO tool for Toyota’s employees. If a good tool is produced, Toyota employees will interact daily with products on Astar Network.”

North Korea ravages crypto

On Feb. 2, blockchain forensic analytics company Chainalysis exposed that North Korean hackers took an approximated $1.65 billion out of the $3.8 billion funds siphoned from decentralized finance (DeFi) procedures in 2022. For context, North Korean-associated entities just took $299.5 million in 2020 and $428.8 million in 2021. The company likewise cautioned that regardless of the United States Treasury Department enforcing sanctions on cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash on Aug. 8, North Korean hackers have actually progressively relied on other digital possession mixers, such as Sinbad, to wash taken funds. Chainalysis stated:

“North Korea-linked hackers tend to send much of what they steal to other DeFi protocols, not because these protocols are effective for money laundering — they’re actually quite bad for money laundering given their increased transparency compared to centralized services — but rather because DeFi hacks often result in cybercriminals acquiring large quantities of illiquid tokens that aren’t listed at centralized exchanges. The hackers therefore must turn to other DeFi protocols, usually DEXes, to swap for more liquid assets.”

On Jan. 29, decentralized finance expert Zachxbt claimed he had actually traced another 17,278 Ether (ETH) — worth around $27.18 million — washed by North Korean hackers in the after-effects of the $100 million Harmony Bridge hack last June. According to Zachxbt, the funds were then transferred to 14 wallet addresses spread out throughout 4 exchanges. On Jan. 24, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation verified that North Korea’s Lazarus Group was the mastermind behind the attack. 

No Binance metaverse in the meantime 

In an ask-me-anything session on Jan. 14, Changpeng Zhao, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, stated that the company “is more open to just investing in other virtual reality or metaverse games,” as the company is not a video game-builder and doesn’t have a game structure group. 

“Nobody really knows what metaverse means. Everybody has a different concept of it,” the crypto executive stated, according to a records released on Jan. 27.

Instead, Zhao states that Binance will focus its “next big product” on launching numerous proofs-of-reserves and proofs-of-solvencies to increase its openness. The exchange has actually set an objective of 1 billion users passing Know Your Customer confirmation for the brand-new year. 

Huobi rejects information sharing claims 

Digital possession business owner Justin Sun has actually reacted to allegations that his exchange Huobi offered customer details to Chinese tax authorities. The TRON creator tweeted that Huobi “doesn’t share any client information to tax authorities unless it follows international judicial assistance procedure.”

Previously, Sun applauded the intro of a brand-new 20% Chinese cryptocurrency earnings tax as “a clear indication that the Chinese government views cryptocurrencies as a legitimate form of wealth and wants to ensure its proper taxation.” 

Although based in the Seychelles, Huobi has a large variety of personnel working in mainland China, who supposedly revolted versus the company’s strict brand-new labor policies early this month. 

Huobi creator’s brand-new endeavors

After offering his whole stake in Huobi to Sun’s About Capital last October, Chinese business owner Lin Li has actually committed his time to handling Hong Kong blockchain financial investment holdings company New Huo Technology. On Jan. 30, New Huo introduced a staking technical assistance service, called “Sinohope Staking,” that will initially serve the Cosmos community prior to broadening into Ethereum, EOS and ChainLink. 

According to designers, Sinohope Staking will supply “multi-node deployment, real-time monitoring of node operation process, 7*24h online support, 3-layer wallet structure and multiple signature technologies” for users thinking about staking their possessions on public blockchains. New Huo states it will assist customers established their stake nodes and monitor their operations “without handling or holding any clients’ assets,” and declares customers will maintain “100%” of their staked cryptocurrencies throughout the procedure. 

Bitzlato supposedly bold regardless of sanctions

The co-founder of Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange Bitzlato states the platform will resume after being closed down by United States authorities last month.

In a Jan. 31 YouTube interview, Russian nationwide Anton Shurenko stated that the exchange would open later on at an undefined time and declared approximately 50% of funds kept in taken hot wallets would be readily available for withdrawal at that time. In addition, the expected creator declared he had no concept why his business was singled out. 

On Jan. 18, Bitzlato was closed down after an examination by police authorities, consisting of the U.S. Department of Justice, exposed that the exchange enforced lax Know Your Customer guidelines and supposedly washed over $700 million worth of illegal funds through crypto-fiat deals. Shurenko’s fellow co-founder, Anatoly Legkodymov, was detained in Miami around the very same day. After discoveries that Binance was among the leading counterparties to Bitzlato, the exchange froze a variety of accounts associated with the entity.  

According to current reports, Spanish cops have actually apprehended 3 executives from the company, particularly the CEO, a sales executive and the marketing director.

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Zhiyuan Sun

Zhiyuan sun is a reporter at Cointelegraph concentrating on technology-related news. He has numerous years of experience composing for significant monetary media outlets such as The Motley Fool, Nasdaq.com and Seeking Alpha.