Welcome to Finance Redefine, a newsletter designed to bring you the most important developments of the past week. A newsletter delivering essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights every week.
Last week in DeFi, the Tornado Cash developer was found guilty of money laundering. Alexey Pertsev was sentenced to more than five years in prison.
In other news, Binance finds an antidote to infamous address poisoning scam, Polymarket raises $70 million with investments from Vitalik Buterin and Peter Thiel, DeFi faces difficult future in European Union there is.
Tornado Cash developer found guilty of money laundering
Alexey Pertsev, developer of cryptocurrency mixing protocol Tornado Cash, has been found guilty of money laundering. This can have potentially serious implications for open source code developers.
On May 14, Dutch judges at the s-Hertogenbosch Court of Appeal found Pertsev guilty of money laundering. The developer was sentenced to five years and four months in prison for laundering $1.2 billion worth of illegal assets on the platform.
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DeFi may struggle to remain decentralized after new EU laws.
New regulations from the European Union may soon force DeFi protocols to make difficult decisions. The crux of the problem is the tendency of many DeFi protocols to have centralized front ends and intermediaries.
The EU’s Markets in Cryptocurrency Assets Regulation (MiCA), which will come into effect by the end of 2024, will require DeFi protocols to comply with the same licenses as traditional financial services companies and understand customer needs. This places a burden on many DeFi protocols. You may not be able to endure it, or you may not want to endure it.
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Binance Develops “Antidote” to Address Poisoning Scam After $68 Million Exploit
Security experts at Binance have developed an “antidote” to the growing number of address poisoning scams that trick investors into willingly sending funds to fraudulent addresses.
According to a report shared with Cointelegraph, the security team at the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange developed an algorithm to detect millions of poisoned cryptocurrency addresses.
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Polymarket raised $70 million from Vitalik Buterin of Founders Fund.
Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm Founders Fund and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin led a $70 million fundraising effort for Polymarket, a platform for betting on political events.
According to Bloomberg, Polymarket successfully raised $70 million across two funding rounds as betting on the 2024 US presidential election gains momentum. The latest Series B Polymarket funding round was led by Founders Fund, raising $45 million.
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DeFi Market Overview
DeFi’s top 100 tokens by market capitalization had a mixed week, with most trading in the green on the weekly charts, according to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView. Total value locked in DeFi protocols remained above $90 billion.
Thank you for reading our roundup of the most influential DeFi developments this week. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights and education about this dynamic and evolving space.