Musk reportedly sealed the deal on Oct. 27, with a handful of Twitter executives escorted to the door as the new owner of the social media platform cleaned house.

Binance had indicated that it would co-invest in Twitter in May 2022, alongside 18 other investors that included the likes of cryptocurrency investment firms Sequoia Capital Fund, Fidelity Management and Research Company.

Related: How Crypto Twitter could change under Musk’s leadership

Binance’s founder confirmed on Oct. 28 that the company had indeed put its money on the table as Musk finalized his ownership of Twitter. CZ took to the newly-owned platform to confirm that the company had wired the funds earlier in the week.

Commenting on questions in the thread, CZ said that he was not involved in facilitating the transaction himself and joked that he thought the transaction had been processed through traditional banking means and not over a blockchain or cryptocurrency transaction.

Binance’s $500 million stake in Twitter makes it the fourth biggest contributor to the takeover. The Lawrence J. Ellison Revocable Trust invested $1 billion to make it the biggest contributor to the Musk-led acquisition of the social media platform.

Cointelegraph has reached out to Binance to ascertain the finer details of its Twitter investment, its total shareholdings and other potential partnerships entailed.

In an Oct. 24 announcement, the Justice Department said Guochun He and Zheng Wang attempted to obstruct the prosecution of an unnamed global telecommunications company based in China, which allegedly involved paying a U.S. government employee roughly $61,000 in bribes using Bitcoin (

BTC

$20,219

). However, the individual was a double agent working on behalf of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and did not move against authorities in the Eastern District of New York in the case against the China-based company.

According to an analysis by cryptocurrency risk management firm Elliptic, He and Wang used Wasabi Wallet to conceal the BTC transactions allegedly used for bribes. The firm reported that the privacy wallet had previously been used in an attempt to launder BTC from the July 2020 Twitter hack and the attacks on crypto exchanges Bitfinex in 2016 and KuCoin in 2020.

“The same properties of digital assets that make them attractive to criminals — such as censorship resistance, pseudonymity and the ease with which they can be transferred across borders — also make them valuable tools for all intelligence agencies looking to fund clandestine operations,” said Elliptic.

According to the Justice Department, the two Chinese intelligence officers began the scheme in 2019 by directing the double agent to steal confidential information related to the prosecution of the company — which Elliptic suggested may be Huawei. He allegedly made separate bribes of $41,000 and $20,000 in BTC to the agent for providing “secret” documents and rewarding the release of information, respectively.

Related: No crypto for criminals: Coinjoin BTC mixing tool to block illicit transactions

Following the creation of the Justice Department’s National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team in October 2021, the government department has taken many enforcement actions against individuals and entities using crypto for illicit actions including money laundering and related to cybercrimes. In 2022, the Department of Justice seized roughly $500,000 in fiat and crypto from a hacking group tied to the North Korean government, and it has taken steps to move forward on a criminal prosecution case against a U.S. citizen who allegedly violated sanctions through crypto.

BTC

$19,291

) payments market will reach $3.7 billion by 2031, registering a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.3% from 2022 to 2031, with private keys and hardware driving the sector expansion, Allied Market Research forecasted in a report published on Oct. 24. 

According to the document, operational demand for efficiency and transparency in payments systems, along with data security services growth and a surge in demand for remittances in emerging economies, are among the major factors supporting growth in the sector in the coming years. The report also stated:

“Furthermore, increase in demand for bitcoin among banks, and financial institutions and untapped potential in emerging economies are expected to provide lucrative opportunities for the bitcoin payments market expansion during the forecast period." 

In 2021, the private keys segment accounted for three-fourths of the overall Bitcoin payments market share, according to the report, and the segment is expected to maintain its dominant position throughout the forecast period, with nearly 20.3% of CAGR until 2031, followed by the hardware sector that is set to grow 19.8% during the same period. 

Related: Tap-to-pay Bitcoin Lightning Bolt cards strike El Salvador

E-commerce transactions are likely to keep their relevance in the sector, growing nearly 20.2% by 2031, per the report. The Asia-Pacific region is predicted to continue its market dominance by 2031, although the fastest growth is expected to come from North America, with a CAGR of 18.6% during the period.

Referring to the barriers and challenges in the space, the report acknowledges that high deployment costs and low global awareness about the use of Bitcoin can hamper the sector's progress. It noted:

“Distributed ledger technology has spread from cryptocurrency to a wide number of applications in the financial and government industry. However, numerous people and financial & government industries across developing nations such as India, Africa, and Australia are less aware regarding transactions made using bitcoin payment, which hampers growth of the bitcoin payment market across the globe." 

As reported by Cointelegraph, the cryptocurrency bear market has impacted how people pay with crypto, but Bitcoin remains a major payment tool despite huge volatility, making up more than 50% of all sales on payment service provider BitPay's platform. The data revealed that the sales volume of BTC payments on BitPay peaked at 87% in 2021 before declining during the bear market of 2022. 

Related: Blockchain games and metaverse projects raised $1.3B in Q3: DappRadar

Gamers, athletes and content creators back WWVentures WWVentures, a boutique crypto venture firm, has raised $15 million for its Web3 fund — putting the company on track to invest in metaverse, decentralized finance and blockchain gaming startups. The funding round was backed by a slew of notable gamers, content creators and athletes, including former UFC Champion Michael Bisping and Trent Alexander Arnold of Liverpool F.C. The fund will focus exclusively on startups with a “community-first approach” to development and will aid their growth through social capital and community-building support.

Happy to be involved with this project and a proud investor. Let’s go! @WW_Ventures https://t.co/q6td5fiDna

— michael (@bisping) September 27, 2022 Scalability-focused blockchain raises $18.2M Ethereum Virtual Machine-based blockchain Shardeum has received $18.2 million in seed funding from over 50 investors, including venture firms Jane Street, The Spartan Group and DFG. Shardeum is a proof-of-stake network focused on solving one of blockchain’s biggest pain points: scalability. As the name implies, the platform uses sharding — a type of database partitioning — to increase throughput capacity. Shardeum claims that its scaling capacity is superior to other layer-1 blockchains.

Avalanche-native platform rises $6M for NFT marketplace Myna Swap, a luxury collectible marketplace that allows users to convert their physical assets into digital twins via NFTs, has raised $6 million in seed funding. Investors include Polygon Studios, Blizzard Avalanche Fund, Spartan Capital and Wave Financial. The platform, which offers trading and vaulting services, is geared toward collectors of sneakers, sports cards and watches and was built on the Avalanche blockchain. Myna Swap is set for launch later this year.

Alexis Ohanian backs Antic in $7M raise Web3 co-ownership infrastructure provider Antic has raised $7 million in funding led by Sheva and Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six venture studio, with additional participation from Pantera Capital, Sound Ventures and Dapper Labs. Antic described co-ownership technology as an emerging concept within the Web3 community that allows companies to establish blockchain-based ownership models more easily.

Crypto banking platform closes $18M Series A Web3 banking platform Juno has raised $18 million in Series A funding led by ParaFi Capital, with additional participation from Hashed, Jump Crypto and others. Juno provides a crypto-native checking account that allows users to bank with their digital assets more easily. Following the investment round, Juno is planning to expand its product offerings and launch a tokenized loyalty program that allows users to earn coins for taking their paycheck in crypto or spending digital assets with their Juno card.

Related: FTX and Visa partner to permit crypto payments in 40 countries

Wintermute Labs leads Zerion funding round Web3 wallet and DeFi aggregator Zerion has closed a $12.3 million Series B funding round led by Wintermute Labs, the venture arm of liquidity provider Wintermute. Zerion will use the funding to further develop its Web3 wallet by integrating advanced data and enabling better cross-chain identity management for Ethereum-compatible blockchains. Zerion claims that its trading volume has grown from $47 million in 2019 to more than $1.5 billion.

The growth of the Web3 VC industry is showing no signs of slowing down.

Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal is the latest to join the party after raising $50 million for a new startup fund. https://t.co/XqEuvk5PV3

— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) August 25, 2022 thirdweb lands $24M from major VC investors Web3 developer platform thirdweb achieved a lofty valuation of $160 million following its Series A funding round that landed the company $24 million. The Series A funding was led by Haun Ventures and included several notable investors such as Coinbase Ventures, Shopify, Polygon and Protocol Labs. Founded in 2021, thirdweb is developing the infrastructure layer for Web3 that could enable more seamless app development across blockchains.