The fourth Bitcoin halving took place.

On April 20, the fourth halving took place on the Bitcoin network at an altitude of #840,000. The reward for a found block has been reduced from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. The block was mined by the ViaBTC pool.

Halving is a halving of the reward to miners for adding a new block to the blockchain. Satoshi Nakamoto programmed an event in the Bitcoin network every 210,000 blocks, that is, once every four years - until the moment when the emission of cryptocurrency ends with the extraction of 21 million coins (presumably in 2140). The difficulty of mining the first cryptocurrency was 86.39 T. The price of Bitcoin, which fell to $60,000 on the morning of April 19, did not show significant dynamics. At the time of writing, digital gold is trading at $63,880.

 

Telegram Wallet presented USDT transactions on TON.

Integration with the Telegram messenger and Wallet by launching transactions with USDT based on The Open Network (TON). This was stated by TON CEO Andriy Rogozov during the Token2049 conference in Dubai. Telegram does not incur any commissions for USDT transactions; In addition, members can add assets to their Telegram contacts without the address of the person. The statement was made unexpectedly after the Tether company added support to the TON measure by issuing $10 million worth of tokens. Previously, Pavlo Durov announced payments in Toncoin to content creators and other opportunities to earn cryptocurrency using an additional messenger.

 

Shiba Inu has raised $12 million in investments to develop a third-level blockchain.

The Shiba Inu (SHIB) development team is working on creating a layer 3 network using Zama's homomorphic encryption technology. It was this project that attracted investments totaling $73 million. The test version of the third-level network will be launched in the third quarter of 2024. It will meet regulatory requirements and ensure the security and privacy of the community. Funding took place through the sale of TREAT tokens to venture investors. The new blockchain is privacy-focused and is based on Shibarium, a layer-2 solution for Ethereum. Shiba Inu's chief developer, Shitoshi Kusama, declined to disclose the full list of investors but noted that none of them are based in the United States.

 

Thailand will block access to “unauthorized” Crypto platforms.

Thailand's Securities and Exchange Commission cited earlier decisions by countries such as India and the Philippines to block unauthorized platforms. They do not disclose the names of these platforms. Previously, authorities have already blocked exchanges such as Binance and Bybit.

 

ZKasino was accused of stealing $33 million worth of cash from users.

Retailers of the blockchain casino ZKasino sent 10,515 ETH worth $33.9 million to the Lido staking protocol, instead of turning these funds over to users and investors.

Ethereum was deposited by early participants in the project through a place to farm the native token ZKAS. The project team promised that they would be able to turn around the assets.

However, in the 20th quarter, ZKasino announced the launch of a measure for “making changes to the full plan.” All ETH platform converts into ZKAS “at a reduced rate of $0.055” due to 15-month vesting.

The distributors also changed the wording on their website, revealing a statement indicating that ETH was being turned over.

The suspicious transfer of funds on Lido was confirmed by EmberCN analysts.

 

The decentralized lending protocol ZeroLend will launch the ZERO token on April 29, 2024.

Decentralized lending protocol ZeroLend has hinted at launching its ZERO token on April 29, 2024, according to Foresight News. The announcement was made through the release of the date "29.04.2024" and the symbol "$ZERO". In previous news from Foresight News, ZeroLend closed a seed round of funding in February of this year, raising $3 million. On April 18, Aevo published the ZeroLend ZERO token for pre-market trading.

 

Brazil's digital bank Nubank announces support for cryptocurrency transactions.

According to Foresight News, Brazilian digital bank Nubank has announced support for cryptocurrency deposits and withdrawals. Bank customers can now use the Nubank app to send and receive Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. Nubank also announced plans to expand support for more tokens in the near future. This move by Nubank is an important step towards integrating cryptocurrencies into mainstream banking services in Brazil. This also reflects the growing acceptance of digital currencies around the world. However, the bank has not yet specified which additional tokens it plans to support in the future. Nubank's announcement is expected to encourage other financial institutions to consider integrating cryptocurrency transactions into their services.

 

Stripe will restore payments in cryptocurrencies after a six-year break.

Payment service Stripe announced the addition of support for transactions in the USDC stablecoin in the summer. Stripe President and Co-Founder John Collison explained that transactions are instantly processed on-chain and automatically converted to fiat. The company has opened a waiting list.

In 2018, Stripe abandoned digital assets, citing Bitcoin's high volatility. Clients will be able to transact with USDC on Solana, Ethereum, and Polygon. At the end of 2019, Stripe withdrew from Facebook's Diem project. In 2021, Collison described himself and the company as “enthusiastic Bitcoin fans.” Let us recall that in June 2023, Forbes included Stripe among the top five cryptocurrency projects in the top ten most innovative private companies in the fintech sector.