The Algorand Foundation announces Algorand Ventures’ strategic investment in HesabPay. It is reported that HesabPay is Afghanistan's first and only interoperable digital payment platform. The platform was originally established to solve the humanitarian aid crisis. More than a dozen organizations, including the World Food Program, have leveraged the platform to directly Send funds to beneficiaries in Afghanistan. HesabPay has since expanded its use cases and now allows users to buy airtime, pay electricity bills and send digital funds to other users.

KuCoin Ventures announces partnership with TON Foundation. As part of this collaboration, KuCoin Ventures will provide a funding to support the development and expansion of the TON ecosystem, specifically supporting 5 TON-based mini-applications focused on real-world blockchain payments or GameFi solutions . These grants will support various ongoing initiatives within the TON ecosystem, such as Future3 Campus and TON Bootcamp, by funding innovative projects, R\&D efforts, community building activities, and marketing activities.

Swiss crypto bank Seba has announced a name change to Amina as part of its global expansion strategy. Amina aims to combine elements of traditional banking, digital banking and crypto banking. The company has received a license from the Securities and Futures Commission in Hong Kong to provide crypto trading services in the region and has opened an office in Abu Dhabi as part of its accelerated growth in strategic hubs in Switzerland, Hong Kong and Abu Dhabi.

The two co-founders of Bitcoin cloud mining company Hashflare, Ivan Turogin and Sergei Potapenko, who face 18 charges of fraud and money laundering, have successfully appealed their extradition to the United States from Estonia, the Estonian Tallinn Circuit Court said in a statement. On November 29, it overturned a lower court order denying their extradition to the United States. Their defense presented "evidence concerning conditions of detention in the United States" that the government failed to consider and claimed there were procedural irregularities in issuing the extradition order. In overturning the orders, the Circuit Court cited the practice of the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights.

Identity management company Okta has revealed that hackers stole the information of all users of its customer support system in a cyber breach two months ago. The company notified customers that it had determined that hackers downloaded a report containing the names and email addresses of all customers who used its customer support system. Okta said: "While we have no direct evidence that this information is being actively used, we have notified all customers that this document increases the security risk of phishing and social engineering."

Executives from banking giants JPMorgan and Apollo have revealed plans for a tokenized “enterprise mainnet” formed during their partnership on the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) Project Guardian pilot. In an interview with Forbes, Christine Moy, a partner at Apollo Global Management, explained how production-grade tokenization helped create JPMorgan’s new trading product, intraday buybacks. Tyrone Lob, the lender’s head of blockchain, revealed that the new system has already processed more than $900 billion in assets, adding: “Prior to this there was virtually no intraday repo market and now around $2 billion is settled daily through our platform intraday repurchase transactions in U.S. dollars." Moy said that the system operates as an enterprise mainnet, which has a first-mover advantage in the competition to provide tokenized investment tools; the "enterprise mainnet" provides scalability, and applications can be added Tap into a network of institutional banks, broker-dealers and asset managers with existing KYC regulations.

According to the Hong Kong Economic Times, Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission Chief Executive Officer Leung Fengyi responded today to the Hounax virtual asset platform fraud case that raised questions about the one-year grace period set by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission. Liang Fengyi said that the virtual asset platform supervision regulations will take effect from June 2023 to June 2024, with a one-year grace period. Even if the grace period ends immediately, fraud will still occur, so the grace period and other measures will not be changed for the time being.In addition, Huang Lexin, director of the Licensing Division and head of the Financial Technology Group of the Intermediary Department of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, also pointed out that the original intention of launching the grace period is to allow existing virtual asset operating platforms enough time to prepare and apply for relevant licenses. In the future, it will continue to Monitor market information and social platforms, etc., hoping to protect investors.

The Digital Currency Office of the Bank of China Head Office released the "Bank of China Cross-border E-commerce B2B Digital RMB Application Solution." The solution explores and improves the cross-border payment experience through digital renminbi, and provides cross-border trade participants with comprehensive services such as cross-border capital circulation, Chinagoods order information matching, and foreign exchange compliance. By building an umbrella wallet structure, it achieves "horizontal connectivity at home and abroad. , vertically supporting the entire system.” At present, this model has been successfully implemented among some customers of Yiwu Commodity City.

Azuki DAO announced that it will rebrand its name to “Bean” and drop its lawsuit against Azuki founder Zagabond over the $39 million minting incident. Azuki developers said that the DAO will be renamed the memecoin project and become part of the Ethereum Layer2 Blast ecosystem. The developers also claim that Bean has also received $10 million in funding from "well-known investors" for its development and acceleration within the Blast ecosystem.