While the entire cryptocurrency community is waiting for bitcoin to fall by half, the industry is not standing still, but continues to surprise with news. Someone creates new partnerships, and someone closes. Someone is lucky, and someone loses money. What events did the past week bring us this time?

Coin98 integrates Conflux eSpace

Coin98, a leading cryptocurrency wallet, has announced the integration of Conflux eSpace Network, the Conflux blockchain ecosystem, into its mobile app. Coin98 is constantly improving with new integrations. Recently, they have significantly improved the user experience with the introduction of the Linea blockchain.

“Coin98 users can not only create/ restore Conflux wallets but can also send & receive CFX and other CRC20 tokens natively. Moreover, they can securely explore the Conflux eSpace ecosystem and seamlessly seek out new opportunities within the decentralized world.” the publication notes.

The Conflux blockchain, which is known for its compatibility with the Ethereum virtual machine (EVM), has lower gas consumption and a higher number of transactions per second (TPS) compared to Ethereum. The purpose of the integration is to provide users with a familiar environment for developing applications and exploring the ecosystem. In addition, the partnership emphasizes efficiency and accessibility in the development of blockchain technologies.

To take advantage of the new features, users need to update their Coin98 Super Wallet and explore the Conflux eSpace. With an emphasis on simplicity and security, Coin98 allows users to manage multiple blockchain wallets with a single passphrase, providing convenient access to a full range of blockchain services.

Is It a Game Project Or A Scam Scheme?

A new gaming project called Uniapt, which claimed to run on the second-tier Ethereum Blast platform, turned out to be just a decoy for a fraudulent scheme. The project tricked users into downloading supposedly game files that were actually a Trojan virus. This became known thanks to Chinese gamer Bobby Shen, who informed X that his assets had been stolen.

We all know the myth of the Trojan Horse, where the Greeks won the war by using trickery. The principle of this method is based on the same tricks. First, innocent people are convinced to download malicious files to their computers. After that, trojans steal users' private keys, jeopardizing their security and privacy.

However, apart from being a fraud, Uniapt has successfully received a yellow tick from X. Such a badge is considered a sign of legitimacy and reliability, which encourages many to believe in the authenticity of the project. It is ironic that the Uniapt account constantly advises to beware of scammers in its posts on X.

“Sorry, We Are Closed”

While some cryptocurrency exchanges, such as Coinbase, WhiteBIT, Korbit and others, have cut ties with Russians and blocked their crypto wallets since the first days of the full-scale invasion, Binance continued to operate. However, in early September 2023, they announced their withdrawal from the Russian market and the sale of the rights to the newly created CommEx exchange.

At the time, Binance refused to disclose any details about the founders or executives of the exchange. But later, CommEx stated that they operate independently of Binance, but some of their key employees are former employees of the exchange.

After about six months of operation, CommEx published an announcement that it was discontinuing the platform and closing registration of new users.

“We regret to inform our platform’s users that due to strategic planning adjustments, CommEX platform has decided to begin suspending some services” the company said, recommending that users immediately withdraw their assets to third-party wallets.

According to the statement, the platform will stop servicing futures trading on March 28, and will also start suspending P2P trading on April 2. On April 23, CommEx plans to completely shut down its spot trading platform and suspend its website until May 10.

South Korean Police Catch a Couple of Cryptocurrency Fraudsters for $4.1 Million

South Korean police have caught a pair of fraudsters who stole $4.1 million from a pensioner by promising profitable cryptocurrency investments.

According to the report, the victim was promised high returns on cryptocurrency investments from September 2022 to December 2022. The fraudsters guaranteed a 70% return on a monthly investment of 1 billion won.

The police quoted the fraudsters saying:

“It’s a boom period for coin (cryptocurrency). If you invest 1 billion won, I will call it 1.7 billion won a month later.”

The victim transferred 5.5 billion won to the fraudsters in six different transactions, who then forged accounting certificates to present them as proof of investment.

The fraudsters showed fake crypto investment balance sheets and real estate contracts.

The police said the fake balance sheet showed 20 billion won in cryptocurrency, although none of the victim's 5.5 billion won in funds made it to the cryptocurrency trading account. Although the police arrested the fraudsters in time, information about the refund has not yet been made public.

Avalanche and Chainlink Cooperate to Settle Australian Assets

The Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) and Chainlink Labs have presented the results of a recent collaboration that aimed to combine the Avalanche and Ethereum blockchain networks for online payments.

They used an interoperability solution provided by Chainlink called the cross-chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP). This allowed them to demonstrate how customers will be able to access, trade, and seamlessly settle assets tokenized in different currencies between different networks.

Using the protocol, ANZ imitated the purchase of tokenized assets on the Ethereum network at a price set in one stablecoin, while the transaction was initiated and settled on the Avalanche platform in another stablecoin.

This initiative is based on the concept of Delivery vs. Payment (DvP), a standard protocol for settling securities transactions. Lee Ross, Head of Technology at ANZ, commented on the cooperation as follows:

“Chainlink’s CCIP played a key role in abstracting away the blockchain complexity of moving tokenized assets across different chains and ensuring atomic cross-chain DvP.”

ANZ's collaboration with Chainlink and Avalanche emphasizes the ongoing interaction between traditional finance and decentralized finance (DeFi) in the tokenized asset ecosystem. During the project implementation, ANZ stated that it intends to deploy the solution on the blockchain network, which will help usher in a new era of blockchain payments in the financial services industry.