Major banks like HSBC and Standard Chartered are allegedly under pressure from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) to accept cryptocurrency exchanges as clients. According to a June 15 report, The Bank of China and the UK-based companies were questioned by the HKMA in a meeting in May about why they did not accept Bitcoin exchanges as clients. Less than a month prior, the HKMA sent out a circular to financial institutions advising them to keep an eye on recent market events and take a more aggressive stance towards emerging markets like the cryptocurrency industry. The insider also mentioned that taking on crypto customers is not popular. The push in Hong Kong in favor of cryptocurrencies comes amid an unstable regulatory climate for exchanges in the US. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Binance and Coinbase on June 5 for breaking national securities laws. According to Binance.US, its ties with its financial partners in the U.S. are under a lot of strain as a result of the SEC’s complaint. Additionally, once its banking relationships were broken by local payments provider Zepto, Binance Australia was obliged to shut down all AUD services, including withdrawals and deposits. A new set of crypto legislation was adopted by Hong Kong on June 1 and made it possible for locally licensed crypto businesses to start up, enabling retail investors to trade cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH).
After filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy over a year ago, Voyager Digital is getting ready to relaunch its app and let users withdraw their money. Customers will first get 35.72 percent of their claims as part of the bankruptcy plan, which was accepted by the court on May 17. After 30 days, they can also withdraw cash. In addition, pending ultimate decision of Alameda Research’s preference claim against Voyager, an additional $445 million in customer cash could possibly be made available to creditors. Voyager made two previous bankruptcy plan proposals after initially declaring bankruptcy on July 5, but all were rejected. The $1.4 billion transaction with FTX US, the company’s US subsidiary, fell through after FTX declared bankruptcy, and the $1 billion deal with Binance was abandoned.US also broke down.
