The recent reports stated that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of Thailand has brought new regulations about advertising for crypto businesses. It is the result of raising government scrutiny of the sector.
The SEC noted in a recent announcement that the new regulations will properly display investment hazards in marketing and offer a balanced index of expected risk and returns.
The Guidelines Of ASCI :
"Operators must provide details of advertisements and spending including the use of influencers and bloggers to the SEC along with terms and time frame," stated SEC, saying that operators had 30 days to become comfortable with the new rules.
India's rules and regulations for crypto ads
In February 2022, ASCI (Advertising Standards Council of India) kept a set of 12 guidelines regarding the advertisement and promotion of virtual digital assets (VDAs) and services. It included cryptos and non-fungible assets (NFTs) also. All advertisements that have been released or published on or after April 1, 2022, have to have adhered to the guidelines.
Thailand cryptocurrency businesses randomly promote their products on several social media platforms. There are also billboards to promote the sector all over the city of Bangkok.
According to the ASCI standards, cryptocurrency commercials must have added warnings regarding the unsafe atmosphere of the asset class. It should be much like mutual fund advertisements.
Background Information :
Notably, the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, conducted a discussion about the regulatory prospects of cryptocurrencies in November 2021. According to media reports, a significant agreement took place at that time among the members. That aimed to take steps against ads that attempt to mislead the youth using over-promising and non-transparent ads.
Mentionable, In June 2022, a report of ASCI disclosed that over 400 crypto-associated advertisements violated advertising and promotion guidelines for virtual digital assets (VDAs) including guidelines for influencer advertising in the early five months of this year.
According to Manisha Kapoor, CEO of ASCI, "Some influencers discussed crypto confidently without total understanding of it. It creates an impression that it is secure, it's fine and a cool thing."
The recent data shows that 419 out of 453 complaints ASCI handled between January and May 2022 required revisions.
Previous Scenario :
Notably, Thailand had restricted the use of cryptocurrencies as a means of payment for goods and services. It was said that the wider use of digital assets would be unsafe for the nation’s financial system and economy.
Business operators along with crypto exchanges, must not offer such payment services. They were banned from providing such services that promote the use of digital assets to pay for goods or services. Was said by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Though, it was expected that the new regulation would not affect trading or investments in digital assets according to the agency.
The restrictions on the use of digital currencies for goods and services exchanges came into force starting April 1. Companies in Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy aimed to have until the end of April to be comfortable with the new rules as the regulator stated. It was said that the hurdles on cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin for commercial transactions are in series with regulations in Europe, the U.K., South Korea, and Malaysia. Mentionable, countries like Japan, Canada, etc. are very much serious about crypto use among the public. Those countries are not only enthusiastic to use it on personal devices but also it is quite legalized in those countries. They also came up with crypto ATMs. Crypto ATMs are now one of the significant topics over the internet. Along with several uses, they balanced it through regulation and guidelines.
Tether has submitted a motion to exclude Roche Freedman from the class action lawsuit. In addition, the legal counsel for Bitfinex and Tether has requested that the law firm ensure that any defendant-issued papers have not been shared and either return them or destroy them.
After filing a petition to be removed as counsel in the case, Tether (USDT)-issuer Tether is demanding that the law firm Roche Freedman be "terminated" from its role as counsel for the Bitfinex and Tether class-action lawsuit.
The rise of the dispute
Elliot Greenfield of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP filed a request for a court order on Wednesday on behalf of the legal firm that represents Tether and Bitfinex. The motion asked the court to remove Roche's law company from the case altogether and to confirm that they have either returned or destroyed all defendant-issued papers and have not shared them with any third party, including Ava Labs. Greenfield also demanded that Roche's law firm certify that they have returned or destroyed all.
The request comes shortly after Roche submitted a notice of motion to withdraw from the Tether class-action lawsuit amid the ongoing fallout from a recent CryptoLeaks expose. The expose alleged that a United States lawyer had a secret pact to "harm" Ava Labs competitors in exchange for AVAX tokens and Ava Labs equity.
Greenfield’s remarks
Greenfield said Roche's remarks that were published on the CryptoLeaks website expressed a "severe worry" that Kyle Roche "may be abusing the discovery process" and "misusing material" he obtains via litigation.
Greenfield said that the issues are very pertinent to the case, and he highlighted the fact that Roche Freedman LLP "has issued a series of document requests seeking material that has no obvious relation to the claims and defenses in this complaint."
Greenfield stated that the withdrawal of Kyle Roche from the case "does little, if anything, to address the serious issues regarding the potential misuse of discovery:" Even though Kyle Roche has filed motions to remove himself and others from the case, Greenfield stated that the withdrawal of Roche "does little, if anything, to address the serious issues."
Greenfield further said that the "removal would not disadvantage Plaintiffs" since the plaintiffs would continue to be represented by "two other major and experienced companies," namely Selendy Gay Elsberg PLLC as well as Schneider Wallace Cottrell Konecky LLP.
The class-action complaint that was brought against Tether and Bitfinex in 2019 said that the defendants manipulated the cryptocurrency market by creating unbacked USDT "in an attempt to convey to the system that there was a massive, organic desire for cryptocurrency assets." In the last few days, Roche has withdrawn from the cases that it was involved in against Binance, Solana, Tron, BitMEX, Nexo, and Dfinity.
Exposure of Roche Freedman's 'intoxicating' links to Avalanche/Ava Labs
The legal company that represented Ira Kleiman in his unsuccessful action against Dr. Craig Wright has been exposed for launching nuisance lawsuits against Ava Labs' blockchain competitors.
Roche Freedman is well-known for initiating class action lawsuits against blockchain businesses because they deceived customers by marketing unregistered securities as tokens. Videos published by Crypto Leaks indicate that these lawsuits have nothing to do with protecting common 'crypto' investors. Instead, it seems that the cases are meant to cripple Ava Labs' competitors, so increasing the value of AVAX, of which Roche Freedman's partners were handed substantial amounts in addition to an ownership share in Ava Labs.
Final Thoughts
Roche explains in one video that his company shared office space with Ava Labs beginning in 2019 and that Roche personally resided with Ava Labs co-founder and chief operating officer Kevin Sekniqi after Roche's relocation from New York to Miami. Roche adds that he trusts Gün and Sekniqi "like brothers" and that they have "the same interest."
According to the Decentralized Engineering Corporation (DEC), the company behind the Solana-based protocol TRIP that enables mobility-based applications, the ride-sharing industry is poised for another paradigm shift, with Web3 protocols permitting new companies and drivers to bid for rides using a matching algorithm.
According to DEC, companies and passengers can collaborate and compete in a common economy on the TRIP platform. The protocol also gives the most active participants a role in its governance, which benefits both drivers and customers.
The first service intended to operate on TRIP is Teleport, a decentralized ride-sharing program run by parent company DEC that is set to start in December. DEC announced a $9 million seed round funded by Foundation Capital and Road Capital on October 27.
The Foundation Capital and Road Capital co-led the seed round, with participation from Thursday Ventures, 6th Man Ventures, 305 Ventures, and Common Metal. Uber's third-ever employee, engineer Ryan McKillen, as well as social media influencer Jake Paul, Flexport founder Ryan Petersen, and Farcaster co-founder Dan Romero, are among the individual strategic investors.
according to Paul Bohm, CEO of DEC and founder of Teleport, Uber "basically operates a monopoly—incredibly it's concentrated." According to Bloomberg data, Uber controls an estimated 72% of the US ride-sharing market as of June.
TRIP is Aimed to be a Decentralised Protocol
According to Paul Bohm, CEO of DEC and founder of Teleport, ridesharing giant Uber "basically operates a monopoly—incredibly it's centralized." According to Bloomberg data, Uber offers the infrastructure that links drivers and riders and takes a big share of the fee, garnering an estimated 72% of the US ride-sharing market in June.
TRIP is intended to be a decentralized protocol into which multiple app developers may plug to create a marketplace that links drivers and passengers, all without the need for centralized power at the center.
Bohm believes that this will encourage both cooperation and competition, encouraging players to deviate from the paradigm of behemoths such as Uber and Lyft while also driving companies to innovate to produce the greatest app based on a shared economy.
DEC will utilize the seed financing to accelerate its implementation in the coming months, with Teleport and TRIP demonstrating at Solana's Breakpoint conference in Lisbon in November and Art Basel Miami in December.
According to Bohm, Uber is "atrocious" at delivering service around large-scale events, thus the plan for Teleport's initial test is to give "table stakes or higher quality."
He believes that full implementation of the service will take six to nine months, with further decentralization envisaged as DEC seeks to validate the idea. According to Bohm, certain companies and automobile fleet owners have shown interest in using TRIP to develop their apps, similar to what DEC has done with Teleport.
The additional funds, according to Bohm, will be used to "launch TRIP permanently in specific cities." It will also assist the corporation in meeting its decentralization goal.
Riders in the TRIP ecosystem can pay with USD Coin on Solana and fiat currency through Apple Pay thanks to a blockchain-based mechanism, while drivers can accept the stablecoin as payment directly to their bank accounts or have it transferred into their wallet.
"By turning ride-sharing into a protocol and Teleport is constructing what Uber could not do in 2010, and what Uber should be building now," said Ryan McKillen, a former Uber employee and one of the seed round investors. Thursday Ventures, 6th Man Ventures, 305 Ventures, and Common Metal were among the other investors.
Conclusion
TRIP is not the first attempt to construct a decentralized ridesharing service, but Bohm believes that recent developments in decentralized finance (DeFiDeFi) have yielded token models that can make this go-round work for all players.
According to Precedence Research, the ride-sharing sector would be worth $344.4 billion by 2030. According to Statista, Uber is the most popular ride-sharing app in the world, with 93 million people using it every month.
Thodex suddenly stopped trading in April 2021 due to an unspecified outside investment. It needed a four- to five-day pause in trading to work.
But after one day, Özer said that the company had been forcefully stopped trading due to cyberattacks. Though, claimed that customer funds were safe. That time, he promised to return the investors' capital shortly.
But on the same day of that claim, 62 people were confined by Turkish police. All the systems and computers of that company were seized. Also, accounts were frozen.
The Suspicion Raised :
After that incident, Özer flew to Albania to get rid of administrative activity. Though, the Turkish govt. was getting ready to have him extradited. The manhunt continued for months.
Later, Özer was found in Vlorë. Vlorë is a coastal city, the third most crowded region in Albania. Özer's identity was marked and confirmed through biometric documents.
In April 2021, it was claimed that Thodex had transferred $125 million in Bitcoin to Kraken. Kraken is a U.S. exchange. Thodex had transferred the amount before it closed. Whitestream, the Blockchain tracking firm that discovered the incident. It was said that it appeared to be a “cash out operation,” and executives stole customer funds.
The Govt. Steps :
The government of the country has expressed concern about high crypto uptake in the country. The govt. aimed to pass a bill seeking to establish new rules for the crypto industry.
Thodex was unable to access its digital assets due to the trading platform abruptly halted trading. The platform is filled with fraud allegations and thousands of criminal complaints.
Additionally, the platform shared a statement on its website this week. According to the statement, it would be closed for four to five days as a sale process is taking place.
According to the post, their services will be closed for about five working days until the share transfer completes. However, users do not need to worry about their investments.
Before that statement, the trading was considered the first halt for "six hours of planned maintenance work.”
But the users who were unable to withdraw their capital or access their accounts took to Twitter voicing the concern that they may have been scammed.
Defendant Statements Of The Founder :
Existing in the market since 2017, Thodex claimed that "negative” media reports regarding the company were not the truth.
It claimed that the Global prominent banks and funds, whose names they were going to announce when the agreement process will be completed, have been eager to invest in their company and even the companies proposed a partnership for a long time.
According to them, for that process, the transactions need to be stopped temporarily and the sale process required completion.
However, according to the primary assessment by police, Thodex CEO Faruk Fatih Özer had flown from Istanbul Airport. He is suspected to have fled to Thailand. He had with him $2 billion worth of digital assets. He has stopped all his social media accounts for safety as the reports say.
Later, Özer did not continue his silence. He published a new statement through the Thodex Twitter account.
Rejecting the allegations, Özer said that in the platform where approximately 700,000 users conduct crypto trading. So, the platform has never exploited or done any fraud to anyone, and nor will it in the future.
He also explained that when the company had undergone a cyberattack in 2018, it had gone through a total TL 25 million loss. But it never intends to fill the blank space through illegal activities. He added the platform has recently gone through "unusual fluctuations” in company accounts that took place during the almost three-month-long partnership negotiations.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club has a suspiciously low number of boating chances while having a large number of Apes that seem bored or uninterested—10,000 of them, to be exact—in the form of NFTs. Now, one Bored Ape NFT holder—who also happens to be a boat owner—plans to alter that by launching a decentralized yachting club.
What is Bored Ape Yacht Club?
Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), which is often referred to informally as Bored Apes or just Bored Ape, is a collection of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that was constructed on the Ethereum network. The collection is comprised of profile photographs of cartoon apes that have been created procedurally by an algorithm.
Yuga Labs is the firm that Bored Ape Yacht Club reports to as its parent. After being issued for the first time on April 20, 2021, the project was made available for live pre-sale beginning on April 23, 2021. Owners of a Bored Ape NFT are given entry to an exclusive online club, invitations to exclusive in-person events, and rights to the image's intellectual property.
BAYC’s latest initiatives
The Bored Yachts Club intends to establish a decentralized, NFT-gated yachting platform to provide its members with the opportunity to charter actual yachts in a variety of locations around the globe, with the revenues from these charters being donated to charitable organizations. The effort will begin with "Lady Amanda," the only boat owned by club founder Jad Comair. However, the long-term objective is to recruit other yacht owners while allowing them the freedom to donate monies to charitable organizations of their choosing.
Melanion Capital is a French investment business that established a Bitcoin-themed exchange-traded fund (ETF) focusing on crypto sector firms in 2021. The CEO and the founder of Melanion Capital are Comair. According to his statements to Decrypt, he started investing directly in the most prominent cryptocurrency much earlier, in 2014.
An NFT, or non-fungible token, is a kind of blockchain token that may be used to represent ownership of an object. Over the last few years, the market for digital products such as Bored Ape-style profile photos, digital artwork, and collectibles has exploded. The market generated a total of $25 billion in trade volume in only the year 2021, and the Bored Ape Yacht Club is considered to be one of the most remarkable achievements in this sector.
Comair, an avid art collector, drew into non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and he has said that he discovered an affinity with the celebrity-packed Bored Ape Yacht Club as a sort of digital identity, in addition to the possible financial prospects.
Latest updates on the yacht
Bored Ape NFT holders are granted wide permission to utilize their artwork in the creation of derivative works and projects of any kind, courtesy of Yuga Labs. Others have used their Apes to produce items like clothing, toys, food and marijuana packaging, and even themed restaurants that serve fast food. Comair decided to transform his ape into a made-up version of the yacht's mascot and fake skipper.
There is no official connection between the Bored Yachts Club and Yuga Labs, and participants do not need to have a genuine Bored Ape NFT to purchase and make use of one of these NFT membership permits. His ownership of an ape came long before the conception of a decentralized marketplace for boat rentals.
Final thoughts
Comair expresses the hope that the platform will attract additional yacht owners from all over the world. This, according to Comair, can help fulfill the dual purpose of letting those yacht owners fill up empty charter windows when the boat is not being rented) while also contributing to charitable organizations in the process. In addition, because boats are able to operate on international seas outside of the authority of land-based authorities, Comair views the Bored Yachts Club as a possible stepping stone to a "crypto city" of sorts that is connected to a port.
