Roland Guirdonan
Roland is a Public Relations & Communications guru with an immense passion for the blockchain and crypto industry. A fusion of his expertise and passion led to the dawn of Optimisus in 2020.
Articles by Roland Guirdonan
1 year ago
1 min read
Decentralized platform MakerDAO has revealed its plan for a major update dubbed Endgame, aimed at enhancing efficiency, resilience, and participation through the use of AI tools and open, scalable processes. The ultimate goal of the update is to become the most widely-used stablecoin project within three years. MakerDAO co-founder Rune Christensen announced that Endgame would streamline and parallelize the Maker Ecosystem, launching a new unified brand identity and six new SubDAOs that users can farm, spearheading permissionless innovation and collateral allocation. The first step towards Endgame will focus on establishing a unified brand for the ecosystem through a beta launch
1 year ago
1 min read
Justin Sun, the founder of TRON and CEO of BitTorrent, has announced that he will start trading meme coins. Sun made the announcement on Twitter, stating “I’ve decided to begin actively trading meme coins and promising projects through my public address.” Meme coins are a type of cryptocurrency that often use internet memes as their branding or marketing strategy. They typically have no underlying value and are not backed by any assets. Despite this, they have gained significant popularity in recent months, with coins like Dogecoin and Shiba Inu seeing massive gains. Sun is no stranger to meme coins, having
1 year ago
1 min read
Pepecoin (PEPE) traders are bullish despite a recent price correction, as three whales accumulated the token earlier this week, according to on-chain analytics tool Lookonchain. The price of PEPE fell nearly 50%, but the whales bought more tokens, with 0x50C1 withdrawing 1.4T PEPE ($2.76M) from Binance, 0x2Baa buying 212B PEPE ($429K) with 223 ETH ($412K) at $0.000001942, and 0x3AE8 purchasing 424B PEPE ($864K) with 450 ETH ($831K) at $0.000001957. Despite the price decline, CoinGecko data shows PEPE had over $420 million in trading volume in the past 24 hours, with trading volumes shifting from Uniswap to Binance after the latter
1 year ago
1 min read
Estonia’s crackdown on cryptocurrency companies has resulted in almost 400 virtual asset service providers (VASPs) either shutting down voluntarily or having their authorizations revoked following the government’s recently enhanced Terrorist Financing Prevention and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws. The amended laws expanded the scope of VASPs, increased licensing fees, and capital and information reporting requirements, along with introducing the Financial Action Task Force Travel Rule. Almost 200 domestic crypto service providers voluntarily shut down, with 100 active crypto firms now registered in Estonia as of May 1. The country has made a considered effort to enact strong AML laws over the
1 year ago
1 min read
On May 8, 2023, it was reported that DEUS Finance, a DeFi protocol, was hacked over the weekend, resulting in a loss of more than $6 million. The hacker exploited a vulnerability in DEUS Finance’s own stablecoin DEI on the BNB Smart Chain and Arbitrum networks. PeckShield, a blockchain security firm, reported that the attack on BNB Smart Chain resulted in a loss of over $1.3 million, while the attack on Arbitrum resulted in a loss of over $5 million. Recovery efforts have been made, with some of the lost funds being recovered through white hat hacking techniques and being
1 year ago
1 min read
Binance exchange announced that it has resumed withdrawals of Bitcoin. The service was temporarily halted twice within a 12-hour period due to a “large volume of pending transactions.” According to Binance’s tweet earlier on Monday, the set fees did not anticipate the recent surge in Bitcoin network gas fees. The exchange has attempted to solve the issue by replacing the transactions with a higher fee so that they get picked up by mining pools. Binance further explained that “pending transactions are being processed by replacing them with higher transaction fees” after it resumed Bitcoin withdrawals. In order to prevent similar
1 year ago
1 min read
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is investigating Binance over allegations that Russian agents used the platform to circumvent financial sanctions. According to a Bloomberg report citing five anonymous sources, Russia has been supposedly moving money through Binance to avoid sanctions imposed on the country in 2022 for invading Ukraine. The DOJ’s national security division is leading the investigation, which is yet to determine whether Russia used the platform or whether someone inside Binance helped the country to avoid sanctions. In addition, the DOJ is conducting a separate criminal investigation against the crypto company, which could see the company and
1 year ago
1 min read
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, has announced that it will list Pepe Coin and Floki Inu on its platform. The news comes as a big boost for both projects, as it will provide them with access to Binance’s vast user base and liquidity. Pepe Coin is a decentralized meme token that aims to bring together the worlds of cryptocurrency and meme culture. The project has been gaining popularity in recent months, thanks to its unique approach to community building and marketing. The token is named after the popular internet meme Pepe the Frog and has a
1 year ago
2 mins read
CertiK, a blockchain security company, recently claimed that it has successfully frozen $160,000 in stolen funds from Merlin, a decentralized exchange based on zkSync, that experienced an insider “rug pull” last week, costing users $1.8 million. In a recent update, CertiK confirmed that it was able to block the stolen funds with the assistance of its partners and is closely monitoring the movement of these funds. However, the firm noted that its attempts to recover the funds through collaboration with Merlin proved unsuccessful. CertiK has since reached out to law enforcement agencies in the United States and the United Kingdom
1 year ago
1 min read
Four major U.S. media outlets, including Bloomberg, Dow Jones, The New York Times, and the Financial Times, have renewed their efforts to obtain the identities of non-U.S. customers of crypto exchange FTX. The media firms filed a new objection to the motion to seal their identities on May 3, citing the lack of legal basis to redact the names according to non-U.S. data privacy laws. The media outlets argue that section 105 of the Bankruptcy Code, which grants the bankruptcy court judicial power, does not permit foreign law to override the right of access to information under U.S. constitutional and
1 year ago
1 min read
The crypto world has seen its fair share of meme coins, with Dogecoin leading the pack as the most famous one. But in the last month, a new contender has emerged that has taken the crypto world by storm – Pepe Coin (PEPE). PEPE is a decentralized digital currency that is built on the Ethereum blockchain. Like Dogecoin, it features the beloved internet meme frog Pepe as its mascot. In just 30 days, PEPE has seen an incredible surge of 2,300%, surpassing other top meme coins such as Dogecoin and Shiba Inu. In the past 24 hours alone, PEPE has
1 year ago
1 min read
Recent reports reveal that the banking crisis in the United States is deepening. Nearly half of America’s 4,800 banks are currently “burning through their capital buffers,” with many of them potentially insolvent, according to banking expert Professor Amit Seru from Stanford University. Professor Seru’s report highlights that over 2,315 banks are holding assets worth less than their liabilities, including some of America’s largest banks. A “globally systemic entity with assets of over $1 trillion” is among those at risk. The Federal Reserve’s monetary tightening is yet to fully impact the economy, with a massive wall of debt accumulating. Some experts
