Today in Crypto: Russian, Iranian Investors Turn to Dubai’s Crypto Shops to Get Around Sanctions; CryptoPunks NFTs See $2.3M Sales Jump After Tiffany Partnership

The U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) announced Monday (Aug. 1) that it has finalized new rules intended to help fight misleading advertisements.

The ads in question encourage investing in high risk products. Through the new rules, firms approving and issuing marketing will be required to have the appropriate expertise, and firms marketing some higher-risk investments will have to do more checks to ensure customers and investments are well-matched.

Furthermore, new rules around crypto in Dubai have reportedly attracted clientele who struggle with trading the digital assets in their home countries.

Bloomberg wrote Monday that the over-the-counter (OTC) structure there lets customers from Russia, Iran or other places under Western sanctions purchase crypto back home and sell it for cash in Dubai.

The report noted there are no international sanctions on Russia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) hasn’t put any penalties there, so shops in Dubai are allowed to handle crypto in that way.

Additionally, bitcoin miners earned $574.9 million in July, which was a 14% decrease from the prior month, Seeking Alpha wrote Monday.

This came as rising electricity costs and more competition posed threats to the industry. According to the report, some miners have also begun selling their bitcoin rigs.

In more crypto-related news, Bloomberg reported Monday that some skeptics think MicroStrategy’s recent bitcoin strategy won’t pan out.

Fifty-one percent of the company’s available shares are currently sold short, per the report. They have a notional value of $1.35 billion, per data from S3 Partners. The company’s stock serves as a way to invest in bitcoin, but it’s erased over 75% of its value from a high in February 2021.

Meanwhile, North Koreans have reportedly been plagiarizing from others to try and get remote work at crypto firms — with the goal of helping the government in its illicit money-raising efforts.

According to a Bloomberg report Monday that quoted cybersecurity researchers, the fraudsters work off details from sites like LinkedIn, copying them illegally for fake resumes. This helps them get work with U.S. crypto firms, with a reported goal of raising “money for government weapons development programs.”

In other news, the floor price for the CryptoPunks non-fungible token (NFT) has gone up 10% in the past day, per data from CoinGecko.

The interest most likely comes from the recent partnership between Tiffany & Co., the high-end jewelry brand, and Chain, a blockchain startup, per a CoinDesk report. That will give Punk owners a way to buy up to three necklaces for 30 ETH, or $50,000, as of Aug. 5 this year.

Following the Tiffany & Co. partnership announcement Sunday (July 31), CryptoPunks saw a $2.3 million jump in sales.

Finally, Binance.US said in a company blog post Monday that it will delist its AMP token, after the Securities and Exchange Commission named that coin as a security.

Binance.US said the company is in a “rapidly evolving industry” and it has to respond to market and regulatory developments. In a lawsuit, the SEC listed nine digital assets that it said are securities, and Binance.US said it is delisting AMP “out of an abundance of caution.”

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