Wed 29/03

Good Morning. Our Referral program is live. Please see the bottom of the letter for more details 😀 . In news today; the UP govt is training the workforce in AI and blockchain, govt brought in a lot of taxes through crypto trades, and a startup that took birth in a dorm room is Africa’s biggest exchange now.

🚄 UP Govt Training Workforce in AI, IoT, Blockchain: According to Yogendra Upadhyay, a minister in Uttar Pradesh, the state currently has over 9,000 start-ups that are registered, and the government has implemented several programs to develop the skills of the workforce, particularly in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT), and blockchain. The number of registered start-ups in Uttar Pradesh is rapidly increasing, and more aspiring entrepreneurs are coming forward, as per the minister. The Uttar Pradesh government, led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, has introduced various programs to enhance the skills of the workforce, focusing on fields such as AI, IoT, blockchain, and other areas.

₹ India Collected Rs 157 Crore Tax From Virtual Assets In 2022-23: The Indian Finance Ministry has announced that it collected Rs. 157.9 crore through tax deducted at source under section 194S of the Income Tax Act, 1961, for the transfer of virtual digital assets (VDA) during the fiscal year 2022-23 up to March 20, 2023. The ministry provided this information in response to a query from Ram Nath Thakur, an MP from Janata Dal (United), who sought details about the tax revenue collected by the government from cryptocurrencies. India does not regulate crypto assets, but the government has introduced a comprehensive taxation system for the transfer of VDAs under the Prevention and Money Laundering Act of 2002. The government levies a tax of 30 percent on profits made during transactions of private-created or virtual digital assets, regardless of whether the investor holds them for the long term or short term.

🚀 From Dorm Room To $1.75 Billion: Yellow Card, a cryptocurrency exchange, has become the biggest centralized exchange in Africa with $1.75 billion in transactions conducted since its inception in 2019. The platform was created by co-founders Chris Maurice and Justin Poiroux, who launched it from their dorm room at Auburn, Alabama. Yellow Card's service is similar to Block's Cash App, allowing users to purchase cryptocurrencies with fiat currencies, which can then be sent across borders. The exchange supports money transfers to 16 African countries, and its streamlined process allows for easy conversion of crypto to local currencies at the destination end of the transaction. Yellow Card now has 1.4 million users across the continent and employs approximately 220 individuals.

⚖️ CFTC sues Binance: The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has lodged a complaint against Binance, accusing the company of breaching regulatory rules. The civil action was filed with the District Court of the Northern District of Illinois and includes Changpeng Zhao (CZ), Samuel Lim, and three Binance companies as defendants. The complaint alleges that the defendants facilitated the trading and derivative orders on commodities illegally for US citizens. Specifically, it is claimed that they accepted orders, and property as margin, and ran a facility for futures, options, swaps, and leveraged retail commodity transactions involving digital assets like bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), and litecoin (LTC) for people based in the United States.

What Is A zkEVM?:A zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) is a virtual machine that executes smart contract transactions in a way that’s compatible with both zero-knowledge-proof computations and existing Ethereum infrastructure. This enables them to be part of zero-knowledge rollups, layer-2 scaling solutions that increase transaction throughput while lowering costs.