Bitcoin Daily: Ethereum Protocol Aave Raises $25M; BOE Head Takes Stance Against Bitcoin

Singapore’s Qume is seeing an influx of new customers in the wake of the charges from the U.S. against BitMEX, CoinDesk writes.

CEO Aditya Mishra said the company has seen around 2,000 customer sign-ups in the last week or so as almost 30 percent of BitMEX’s trading volume has been withdrawn by customers since U.S. regulators cracked down on the firm Oct. 1.

Mishra said he’d already been seeing the “Wild West”-like nature of the crypto derivatives space, with the new activity from U.S. regulators not coming as a surprise. He said Qume’s goal, since forming early in 2019, was to build a regulatory-friendly, more decentralized experience for things like custody.

Aave, an Ethereum-based loan protocol, has raised $25 million in a funding round, according to a report from Crypto News.

The round was led by Blockchain Capital, Standard Crypto, Blockchain.com Ventures and more. The money will be used to help Aave expand into the Asian market, and help it achieve more institutional adoption.

Aave recently announced its governance model to help the community access more participation, with old Aave token LEND now able to be swapped for the new Aave token at a ratio of 100 LEND to 1 Aave.

BitMEX has announced a new Chief Compliance Officer in Malcolm Wright, who will serve in the role for 100x Group, which operates HDR Global Trading Limited, which runs BitMEX.

Malcolm, according to a press release, boasts a wide background in anti-money laundering and compliance, saying compliance was “non-negotiable, and a prerequisite for exchanges to be embraced by regulators and institutional investors alike.”

Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey said he doesn’t see the value of Bitcoin as a mode of payment, cautioning it as a legitimate use, Reuters reports.

He said the popular cryptocurrency “may have extrinsic value in the sense that people want it,” but that he couldn’t see the broader use because of the uncertainty over its valuation.