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On Friday, Binance, the largest crypto exchange, announced on Twitter that it would be proactively withdrawing from Canada.

We had high hopes for the rest of the Canadian blockchain industry, the company wrote in a tweet. Unfortunately, new guidance related to stablecoins and investor limits provided to crypto exchanges makes the Canada market no longer tenable for Binance at this time.

While Canada is a small market for crypto globally, its noteworthy as the one-time home of Changpeng Zhao, commonly known as CZ, the cofounder and CEO of Binance. Zhao moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, with his mother and sister from China in 1989 to join his father, who was enrolled in a doctoral program to study geophysics.

Binance joins a longer list of crypto companies that have chosen to leave Canada due to its regulatory environment, including Paxosthe former issuer of the Binance-branded stablecoin BUSDand the decentralized exchange dYdX.

The decision comes on the heels of February guidance issued by Canadas securities regulator to compel exchanges to register with the agencyfailure to meet preregistration requirements would mean an exchange can no longer operate. It is unclear whether this decree contributed to Binances decision. A spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Not every crypto company has chosen the same strategy. Binances competitor, the U.S. exchange Kraken, signed a pre-registration undertaking with the Ontario Securities Commission on March 30 as a step toward complying with the national guidance.

The Canadian Securities Administrators have laid out clear expectations of the rules they expect crypto trading platforms to follow, said MarkGreenberg, Krakens managing director for Canada, in a statement shared with Fortune. It is for individual companies to make informed decisions on whether they want to play by the stated rules of the game, or leave.

Binance has faced regulatory difficulties globally as it reckons with its heightened status following Novembers collapse of FTX, including investigations by U.S. agencies into money laundering violations. In March, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission sued Binance and Zhao, alleging the exchange was illegally offering services to U.S. customers, along with a raft of other charges.

On Thursday, The Information reported that Binance.USwhich the parent company claims operates independently of its international exchangewas exploring ways to reduce Zhaos stake in order to reduce additional scrutiny. Binance representatives maintain that the company has turned a new leaf from its early days in 2017when it rapidly grew into the worlds largest exchangeand has made efforts to come into compliance, such as hiring the former Department of Justice and Drug Enforcement Agency lawyer Noah Perlman as its chief compliance officer.

In its tweet on Friday, Binance expressed optimism that it would be able to return to Canada when the regulatory environment improves.

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Binance to leave Canadathe one-time home of cofounder CZclaiming market conditions are no longer tenable - Fortune

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao speaking at a press conference during Web Summit 2022.

Ben Mcshane | Sportsfile | Getty Images

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance halted bitcoin withdrawals for several hours on Monday, citing heavy volumes and a surge in processing fees, before clearing them at a higher cost.

Late on Sunday and again early on Monday the world's biggest crypto exchange shut bitcoin withdrawals saying there was a glut of pending transactions because it hadn't offered so-called miners a high enough reward to log the trades on the blockchain.

The halt pushed bitcoin lower though its losses were marginal, with the cryptocurrency last down about 1% to $28,162, its lowest in nearly a week.

"Our set fees did not anticipate the recent surge in (bitcoin) network gas fees," Binance said in a tweet. "We're replacing the pending bictoin withdrawal transactions with a higher fee so that they get picked up by mining pools."

Gas fees refer to payments made to crypto miners whose computing power processes transactions on the blockchain.

"If the withdrawal amount is large, the gas fee required to process the transaction may also be large, especially during times of high network congestion," Joshua Chu, group chief risk officer at blockchain technology group XBE, Coinllectibles and Marvion.

"We need more information as to what has led to the large withdrawals." After an hour-long stoppage late on Sunday and several hours on Monday, Binance said withdrawals resumed.

"To prevent a similar recurrence ... our fees have been adjusted." In a separate tweet Binance denied there had been large outflows from the platform.

In March, Binance hadsuspendeddeposits and withdrawals citing tech issues. Twenty-four hour trading volume on Binance was $6.9 billion according to analytics site CoinMarketCap, more than eight times the next-largest venue, Coinbase.

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Binance lifts block on bitcoin withdrawals amid heavy volumes - CNBC

The FUD induced by false alarm of U.S. government selling its Bitcoin [BTC] holdings took a profound impact on the exchange token of the Binance[BNB] ecosystem as well. At one point, BNB plunged to $301, recording the biggest drop in nearly two months.

Is your portfolio green? Check theBNB Profit Calculator

The coin regained some lost ground as it reached $305 at the time of writing, still 1.98% down in the last 24 hours, as per CoinMarketCap.

What could possibly aid BNB on its way to normalcy was the new feature Binance unveiled to improve strategy trading on the platform.

Binance, the worlds largest cryptocurrency exchange, announced the launch of Trading Bots. This signaled a shift away from traditional trading strategies and towards automated trading.

Crypto trading bots are automated software that helps you buy and sell cryptocurrencies at the correct time.

Binance also listed out functions that will be released to users by June 2o23 as part of the implementation.

In addition, Binance said that the Rebalancing Bot account will be renamed as Trading Bots. Under Trading Bots new spot and futures grids could be created.

Furthermore, users will have the option of running futures grids through their Trading Bots account while trading on the same symbol through their futures account at the same time.

Moreover, users will earn hourly trading fee savings for the Trading Bots account when they use their BNB balances.

The announcement of the new trading feature catalyzed trading activity on the BNB Chain. After the dip recorded on 10 May, daily active users rebounded to a 5-week high in the last 24 hours.

The surge in the number of users boosted the number of transactions processed on the chain.

While increased network traffic was a matter of joy for BNB enthusiasts, the chains liquidity continued to tumble.

The total value locked (TVL) on the BNB Chain fell by more than 3% in the last 24 hours to $5.22 billion, extending its month-long winless streak.

How much are1,10,100 BNBs worth today?

The development activity on the chain remained tepid after recording a steep fall earlier in the week. This was a worrying sign as it indicated that future enhancements on the chain might be delayed.

Unsurprisingly, this impacted the sentiment of investors as they turned strongly bearish on BNB. However, the supply held by large addresses, which was stagnant until 10 May, showed an uptick in the last 24 hours.

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Binance announces new feature to bolster trading as BNB continues to record losses - AMBCrypto News

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Top crypto exchange Binance has made an important announcement as regards ETH Staking withdrawals.

The crypto exchange says that following feedback from the community, it will reduce the processing time for ETH Staking withdrawal requests to five days, starting from May 18 at 8:00 a.m. (UTC). This is a major reduction from the initial processing time required, which is 15 days.

To better meet the needs of users, Binance says it will actively work to further cut the processing time for ETH Staking withdrawal requests.

The Ethereum (ETH) network's Shapella upgrade, which enabled staked ETH withdrawals to take place on April 12, marking Ethereum's final transition to proof of stake (POS).

After a successful upgrade, Binance enabled Ethereum staking withdrawals, wherein ETH Staking participants would be able to redeem ETH with their BETH holdings on April 19.

Per the initial announcement, it will take 15 days to several weeks before users' ETH withdrawal requests can be fully processed.

Now, this is set to change as this time has now been reduced to five days. However, Binance maintains that the time required to fully process ETH Staking withdrawal requests would be determined by the overall amount of ETH withdrawals requested by participants and the Ethereum network and is, therefore, subject to change.

Binance, however, noted that there would be no further announcement on changes to the processing time for ETH Staking withdrawals, if required.

In late April, Binance rebranded ETH 2.0 Staking to ETH Staking and introduced Wrapped Beacon ETH (WBETH) on the ETH Staking service. WBETH represents a liquid staking token, where 1 WBETH represents 1 BETH, and the total staking rewards accrued by the BETH token on ETH Staking will allow users to participate in DeFi projects outside Binance.

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Binance Makes Important Announcement on Ethereum (ETH) Staking Withdrawals - U.Today

PitchBook recently released its Q1 2023 Crypto Report, dedicated to crypto investments, which shows that the most active companies in terms of investments are Binance and Coinbase.

The PitchBook report shows that cryptocurrency companies raised $2.6 billion in venture capital globally in the first quarter of 2023, with 353 funding rounds.

While these are still big numbers, they represent an 11% decrease in total deal value and a 12.2% decrease in the number of deals compared to the previous quarter.

In fact, from this perspective, the first quarter of 2023 was the worst since late 2020, i.e. before the start of the last big bull run. It also marks the fourth consecutive quarter of declining investment activity in the crypto sector.

However, while it was a down quarter overall, there were some upside parameters in the detail.

For example, seed rounds were up 33.3%, while late-stage rounds grew by as much as 209.2%. The biggest problem was the 16.7% drop in early-stage rounds.

Furthermore, the most notable acquisition, according to the report, was that of streaming platform Streami by Binance, through the acquisition of a majority stake in Streamis GOPAX exchange.

In fact, the real decline began in the second quarter of 2022, the quarter in which the Earth/Moon ecosystem imploded.

In fact, the all-time high was reached in the first quarter of that year, the quarter that followed the crypto markets all-time highs.

Since then, the decline has been continuous, although much less pronounced in the last quarter than in the previous three.

It should be noted that the current level of investment in the crypto sector is lower than in the first quarter of 2021, when the last major bull run was just beginning, but still significantly higher than in the last quarter of 2020.

Thus, for the time being, the current level remains higher than the pre-bull run level.

The report notes that the crypto market has grown rapidly over the past decade, attracting a large number of users, including institutional investors who have poured billions of dollars into it.

Blockchain technology itself has also evolved, moving far beyond the simple recording and transfer of value to being used for secured lending, automated market making and the tokenization of off-chain assets.

According to PitchBook analysts, future cryptocurrency innovation could even threaten established players such as Visa, Mastercard and American Express, which have enjoyed decades of total dominance due to their ability to charge fees of up to 3%.

However, the collapse of several crypto companies in 2022 highlights that there are still significant challenges in the industry, so much so that mainstream adoption is unlikely to happen before better regulations and guidelines are released, according to the report.

The lack of clear regulation would be a major concern for the crypto industry, so much so that it is seen as a limiting factor.

The report cites the EUs MiCA as one of the most comprehensive regulatory frameworks already in place.

PitchBook analysts believe that 2023 could be a turning point for the industry, as they expect financial regulators and central banks around the world to increase their focus on cryptocurrencies starting this year.

They also state that cryptocurrencies and web3 will continue to grow and evolve in the future, despite the recent challenges that have emerged over the past year.

They highlight how the crypto ecosystem has made significant progress in recent years, including decentralised finance (DeFi).

In this regard, they note that the crypto industry is still in its early stages, so there is still plenty of room for growth and innovation.

Speaking of the future, they expect established exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase to become active acquirers in 2023, particularly by targeting smaller competitors such as cryptocurrency exchanges, custodian services or peripheral activities such as financial technology (fintech) securities brokerage.

In other words, if so far many of the key players in new investment in the crypto sector have been funds or firms from the traditional investment world, it is possible that in 2023 it will be the larger crypto companies themselves that become the real protagonists in this regard.

Binance is the largest exchange in the world and Coinbase is the largest US exchange. Moreover, the demise of FTX has only strengthened these two giants, the latter of which is already listed on the Nasdaq.

Emerging opportunities in the crypto sector that investors could focus on include zero-knowledge proofing and Web3 identity.

Companies to watch include Intmax and Obol.

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Binance first for crypto investments - The Cryptonomist