Asia Express – Cointelegraph Magazine

East Asia's weekly news roundup reviews the industry's most important developments.

Baybit Open Day Notcoin Woe

Cryptocurrency exchange Bybit has found controversy over the initial listing of Notcoin (NOT), a monetization game and token integrated as a Telegram mini app and on the Open Network.

Basically, not all users will get their Airdrops before the market opens, putting those who already have at a disadvantage. The transaction price was much lower than other exchanges.

“The Baybit team is working very hard to resolve the Notcoin airdrop balance reflection issue,” CEO Ben Zhou wrote in a May 16 post on X, hours before trading began.

“Our wallet has received about 370k in chain transactions from @thenotcoin; only Bybit airdropis sent this way; it takes a lot of time to hold and reflect all balances. We are trying manual credit for all users before the market opens in 1 hour. Please wait. All hands on board.” We are doing our best to deposit NotCoin into your account before the market opens.

Zhou went on to say that a compensation plan will be put in place for all 320,000 users whose normal Notcoin account balances were affected on the exchange's first launch date. He said that 70% of users were given loans before the market opened. “Sorry to disappoint you all. We will make sure it doesn't happen again,” the CEO added.

Not all users were happy.

“Binance and Bitget are listed [NOT] 0.01 byte listed at 0.0007, one user wrote. “That's why they talk about compensation to silence people,” they accused.

According to data from Binance and Bitget, Notcoin has shown volatile trading activity since its debut with a one-day low of $0.000779 and a high of $0.035, while the same asset on ByBit shows a high of only $0.01.

On May 10, Cointelegraph reported that Bybit recently announced Notcoin trading and withdrawals for its users.

In the year Launched in January 2024 with no coins as its name suggests, NotCoin is a free-to-play game on Telegram where users are rewarded with NotCoin tokens by tapping coin icons. The token currently has a fully-merged market cap of $818 million.

Is Hong Kong a crypto hub?

In an interview with Hong Kong media, Devin Wu, chief financial officer of crypto exchange OSL, said the city has been a “testing ground for digital assets” in China and that “more new products” are set to launch following the launch of Bitcoin. Ether ETFs on April 30.

“Today, it's still very much in its infancy, and that's the starting point. [crypto] Industry,” said Wu

“In the future, there may also be margin trading related to digital assets or some derivatives, options, futures, etc. [in Hong Kong]He said.

Last month, the East Asian city became the first in the world to offer both spot bitcoin and ether ETFs. The city has a cyberport initiative that has attracted 150 Web3 and AI firms to settle there by 2023.

The incentive does not match the reality of the income.

Before launch, the Hong Kong crypto ETF attracted nearly $293 million in seed assets under management. Since then, the net trading flow for six positions has reached $29.9 million. Months after release.

But there are still signs of hope for change.

According to a survey by KPMG Advisory and Aspen Digital, 92% of Hong Kong respondents are interested in digital assets, and 54% want to expand digital assets to 5% to 30% of their investment holdings.

“In recent years, some major institutional investors have entered the stage to invest in virtual assets, which has increased the confidence of family offices and high-income people,” said the authors of the survey.

China's attack on crypto MLMs

Chinese police continue to crack down on the use of cryptocurrencies, targeting promoters of dubious or illegal crypto schemes.

Recently, the Anhui State Party Committee's Political and Legal Affairs Committee said it would arrest suspects involved in multi-level marketing (MLM) activities that promote “blockchain, metaverse, digital asset trading, bitcoin mining, and foreign exchange trading.” Activities.

“Given the new characteristics and new trends of MLM activities, especially online MLM, we will actively issue warnings to the public, improve public awareness and ability to prevent MLM, and create a strong social atmosphere to fight MLM,” the law enforcement agency wrote. .

Last year, Cummings police busted a $39 million Bitcoin mining MLM scam in which employers were promised “2% to 30%” returns to lure victims into an alleged Ponzi scheme.

Interestingly, Kunming is the city where the CEO of blockchain bridging protocol Multichain Zhajun was allegedly arrested and has not been heard from since the collapse of the multi-billion dollar DeFi protocol last July.

On May 16, Chinese police busted a $1.9 billion underground banking firm that the criminals used in a scheme to exchange Chinese yuan for foreign currencies using the Tether stablecoin, bypassing the country's strict foreign exchange controls. Chengdu city police released a media report detailing the underground operation and said they had arrested 193 suspects in 26 provinces.

A Chinese gaming company made a 1,100% profit after investing in crypto.

Chinese online game company Boyaa Interactive shares are listed in Hong Kong, its profit for Q1 2024 is estimated to increase by 1,125%, compared to $3.98 million in undisclosed profit in the same quarter last year due to investments in Bitcoin and Ethereum.

At the same time, the core gaming business generates 10% to 15% increased revenue, which makes putting crypto on your balance sheet a wise move in some cases.

Last December, Cointelegraph reported that Boyaa Interactive had acquired $100 million in Bitcoin, Ethereum, USD Coin and Tether in addition to its corporate treasury. Boya said at the time:

“The Internet game business mainly implemented by the group has high logical efficiency with Web3 technology. It provides great value to communities and users, covers virtual property features and other features, which makes Web3 technology easy and widely used in the Internet game industry.

Since then, the company's stock price has tripled, and Boyaya plans to buy an additional $100 million in cryptocurrencies to increase his stake in his initial investment. In its March update, the company announced that it holds 1,110 Bitcoin at an average of $41,790, a total of 14,855 Ether at an average of $2,777, and approximately 8,000,000 units of USDT.

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Zhiyuan Sun

Zhyuan Sun is a reporter at Cointelegraph, focusing on technology-related news. He has several years of experience writing for major financial media outlets such as The Motley Fool, Nasdaq.com and Seeking Alpha.