Today in Crypto: Voyager Might Start Fund Distribution in ‘Few Weeks’, Jack Dorsey’s Cash App Posts $2.16B in BTC Revenue for Q1, UK Continues Crypto ATM Crackdown

Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.
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Legal news

• Bankrupt lender Voyager Digital could start distributing funds to creditors in the following week, according to the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors in the lender’s bankruptcy case. In their words, “Voyager is also finalizing everything internally that is necessary to make distributions to creditors.  We are hopeful that initial distributions will begin within the next few weeks.”

Investment news

• Block (formerly Square) reported surging sales of Bitcoin (BTC) on its Cash App platform in the first quarter of the year. It sold $2.16 billion worth of BTC in the quarter, a 25% year-over-year increase, and an increase from $1.8 billion sold in the Q4 of last year. Gross profits from BTC sales were $50 million, according to the Q1 shareholder letter.

Regulation news

• UK’s financial regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), announced that it inspected sites in Exeter, Nottingham, and Sheffield suspected of hosting illegally operated crypto ATMs, as part of a continued crackdown on the sector. Ramona Senior, Head of Economic Crime at the Yorkshire and Humber Regional Organised Crime Unit, claimed that “machines such as these are a key component in the facilitation of money laundering and the movement of funds acquired through criminal activity.”
• The US White House released the “national standards strategy for critical and emerging technologies”, identifying eight technology sectors that it found would have a significant economic impact in the near future – including “Digital Identity Infrastructure and Distributed Ledger Technologies, which increasingly affect a range of key economic sectors,” it said. Others are artificial intelligence (AI), communication and network technologies, semiconductors and microelectronics, biotechnologies, quantum information technologies, clean energy generation and storage, and positioning, navigation, and timing services.

Tax news

• Kenya may impose a 3% tax on the transfer of digital assets, according to proposals for the 2023 finance bill. The proposal covers cryptoassets and non-fungible token (NFT) transfers by exchanges and individuals.

Banking news

• The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) invited individuals, financial institutions, corporates, and other entities in the country to subscribe to its upcoming gold-backed digital token. According to a notice, applications for the RBZ gold-backed digital tokens must be for a minimum of $10 for individuals and $5,000 for financial institutions and other entities. “Holders of physical gold coins, at their discretion, will be able to exchange or convert, through the banking system, the physical gold coins into gold-backed digital tokens,” the bank said.

DeFi news

• Crypto startup Alchemy announced that it was opening up to the public its support for Starknet, a permissionless decentralized ZK-Rollup operating as a Layer 2 (L2) network on Ethereum. Web3 developers building on Alchemy now have general access to the L2, bridging the network’s zero-knowledge (ZK) rollup tech with native account abstraction, thanks to which UI/UX will improve at the wallet level, it said.

Adoption news

• Digital asset use and adoption are gradually increasing throughout Europe, found ResearchAndMarkets.com in its “Europe Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Market 2023” report. In H1 2022, it said, more than half of surveyed crypto owners indicated plans to increase their current crypto holdings over the next 12 months, with the population within the age range 18-39 years estimated to be more interested in doing so as compared to older generations. Bitcoin and Ethereum were among the most favored cryptocurrencies.