🤐Binance's China Secret, 💰SBF Accused of Bribing, 👩🏻‍⚖️NFT Used as Evidence in Russia

April 01, 2023

Your 5 minute emerging market web3 weekly update

In This Issue

Asia
🔸Binance Hid China Presence for Years, Internal Documents Reveal
🔸SBF Accused of Paying $40mm Crypto Bribe to Chinese Officials

Eastern Europe
🔸Pussy Riot NFT Cited as Evidence in Russian Criminal Case
🔸Binance Expands Presence in Georgia With Regional Blockchain Outpost

Latin America and the Caribbean
🔸South American Airline Issues NFT-Based Tickets on Alogrand
🔸UNICEF and Upland Partner to Offer Web3 Training to Brazilian Youth

Africa
🔸South African Reserve Bank Explores Wholesale CBDC Interoperability and Using DLT in Trade Finance Platforms
🔸Cardano-Based Digital IDs to Be Issued to 5 Million Ethiopian Students

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Asia

Image Credit: Alexandre Lallemand via Unsplash

Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, hid its substantial links to China for years, according to internal company documents seen by the Financial Times. Despite executives' claims that Binance left the country in 2017, the documents reveal that the exchange continued to have a presence there, including an office in use until at least the end of 2019, and one Chinese bank that was used to pay some employee salaries. The documents show the extent to which Binance has sought to obscure its operations as regulators scrutinize crypto-related activity.

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has been accused of paying a $40mm bribe to Chinese government officials in order to regain access to trading accounts linked to his sister company, Alameda Research, according to a revised indictment filed in federal court in Manhattan. Prosecutors allege that Bankman-Fried sent the bribe in cryptocurrency to officials, after several attempts to unfreeze the accounts failed. The bribery charge has been added to the 12 counts already faced by Bankman-Fried, who's awaiting trial provisionally set for October.

Eastern Europe

Image Credit: Pussy Riot

The Russian government has cited a NFT titled "Virgin Mary, Please Become a Feminist" (see image above) as evidence for criminal charges against Nadya Tolokonnikova, a member of the Pussy Riot punk band, for offending religious citizens, a criminal offense in Russia. The artwork depicts the Christian icon framed in anatomical details of the female external genitalia and is superimposed over a scan of Tolokonnikova's arrest papers from a 2012 incident. Tolokonnikova has been added to the Russian Interior Ministry's list of wanted individuals, and the action appears to have been triggered by her recent art exhibit, "Putin's Ashes," which debuted in Los Angeles in January.

Binance has opened a new regional hub in Georgia, with the aim of attracting top talent to the blockchain sector, promoting blockchain education, and accelerating crypto adoption in the region. Binance's Georgia team currently comprises 25 people, but the company expects to add dozens more jobs by the end of 2023. The opening of the hub follows a series of strategic partnerships, initiatives, and community events in Georgia, including a partnership with the Georgian Innovation and Technology Agency and a BNB Chain hackathon.

Latin America and the Caribbean

Image Credit: Andrey Metelev via Unsplash

Flybondi, a leading low-cost airline in Argentina, has become the first airline to fully utilize NFTicket by distributing tickets using TravelX's innovative technology built on the Algorand blockchain. With smart contracts, NFTickets allow secure, flexible, and efficient ticket distribution, reducing customer service costs and increasing revenue for airlines. The use of NFTicket creates a secondary market for the airline's ticket inventory, enabling travelers to trade, transfer, or resell their NFTickets with full transparency and confidence.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) is partnering with Upland to offer professional training to Brazilian adolescents and young people in web3, with the help of a digital influencer, @NinaVerso, an avatar created by businesswoman Nina Silva. The avatar will be the face and voice of actions such as classes on augmented reality, the metaverse economy, the role of avatars, and digital entrepreneurship. The project is part of Brazil's 1 Million Opportunities initiative, which seeks to promote the inclusion of vulnerable adolescents and young people in the job market and has already reached 26 million young people, with more than 158,000 opportunities for professional training and income generation, employability, and entrepreneurship.

Africa

Image Credit: Shubham’s Web3 via Unsplash

The South Africa Reserve Bank (SARB) will be conducting its next iteration of Project Khokha, which will focus on wholesale central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and stablecoins. The project aims to explore the governance of the platform, interoperability with wholesale CBDCs, and the use of stablecoins for regional transfers of value. The project will also experiment with the use of DLT in trade finance platforms and how wholesale CBDCs could serve as collateral. However, the SARB has not yet determined whether to move forward with the project, as further work is needed to assess its cost-benefit.

The Ethiopian government is partnering with Input Output Global (IOG) to build a blockchain-based student identity program on the Cardano network. The program aims to give digital IDs to over 5 million students and 750,000 teachers across 3,680 primary and secondary schools in Ethiopia to store their educational records and address issues such as fraud and fake degrees. IOG is contracted to design, build, and maintain the solution, which could eventually expand to universities and reach up to 9 million students in Ethiopia’s education system.

Thanks for reading and have a great week ahead!

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Written by Jon Lira. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

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