Moody’s to Develop a Scoring System for Stablecoins, Hive Ransomware Group Dismantled, Animoca Brands Subsidiary Hiring a Head of Degen Relationships

Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.
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Stablecoin news

• Credit rating agency Moody’s plans to develop a scoring system for stablecoins, as the asset class grows and faces increased scrutiny from regulators and investors, Bloomberg reported. The scoring system will allegedly include up to 20 stablecoins, analyzing the quality of each reserve’s attestation, but it will not be an official credit rating.

Legal news

• The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray said that the international law enforcement groups have dismantled the Hive crypto ransomware group – its front- and back-end infrastructure in the US and abroad. “Last July, FBI Tampa gained clandestine, persistent access to Hive’s control panel,” said Wray. “Since then, for the past seven months, we’ve been able to exploit that access to help victims while keeping Hive in the dark, using that access to identify Hive’s victims and to offer over 1,300 victims around the world keys to decrypt their infected networks, preventing at least $130 million in ransom payments, cutting off the gas that was fueling Hive’s fire.”
• Crypto miner Argo Blockchain is facing a class action lawsuit that alleges it made misleading statements during the initial public offering (IPO) of its American depositary shares (ADS) in 2021. According to a filing dated January 26, the company made untrue or incomplete statements, omitting “to state other facts necessary to make the statements made not misleading.”

Gaming news

• Game studio Darewise Entertainment, a subsidiary of Animoca Brands, is hiring a ‘Head of Degen Relationships’. The person will be the ambassador of the play-and-earn, sci-fi civilization-building game Life Beyond universe in the crypto space, connecting with the key opinion leaders, communities, and events to publicly represent the project around the world, said the job ad.
• Emergent Games, a Web3 games studio that brought together industry veterans from PlayStation, Activision, and NCsoft, announced the launch of Resurgence, a Web3-based survival MMORPG, on ImmutableX. Resurgence is the latest partner to be welcomed into the ImmutableX ecosystem, which includes Gods Unchained,  Illuvium, Guild of Guardians, Undead Blocks, and more.

Regulation news

• The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is probing registered investment advisers over whether they are meeting rules around custody of client cryptoassets, Reuters reported, citing three sources with knowledge of the inquiry. The SEC enforcement staff are asking investment advisers for details about what the firms did to assess custody for platforms including FTX.

Payments news

• Payment services provider BitPay partnered with Web3 infrastructure company MoonPay to provide BitPay users with access to over 60 of the most popular cryptocurrencies, said the press release. Additional benefits of the integration include fast delivery to any owned wallet address, as well as the ability for buyers to pay with their preferred method, including credit card, debit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or a variety of local bank transfer methods, it added.

Career news

• US-based start-up Ripple announced that it named General Manager Monica Long as president. Long originally joined in 2013 as Ripple’s first marketing/communications hire when the company had only 10 employees. She has since been instrumental in scaling and growing the company, most recently serving as general manager of both RippleNet and RippleX, said the announcement.  
• Ledgible, an institutional and enterprise crypto tax and accounting platform, announced that it added two new strategic executives: Paul Diegelman as Chief Revenue Officer, and Will Coleman as Head of Institutional Product. Diegelman comes from Fiserv, where he most recently served as Vice President, Head of BD and Partnerships for Data and Connectivity. Coleman was the principal architect of attest services to support crypto investment funds for Cohen & Company, said the announcement.