A little-known cryptocurrency exchange in South Korea appears to be the entity behind two mysterious Ethereum transactions that included well over $2 million in gas fees.

Binance is set to launch a fiat-crypto trading platform for UK residents, allowing both institutional and retail investors to buy and sell cryptoassets using both pounds and euros.

Singapore’s first carpooling app, Ryde, is starting to accept bitcoin payments in its app, which includes a built-in cryptocurrency wallet.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• The Entity Behind the Mysterious Ethereum Transitions With Millions in Fees Revealed Itself
• Binance to Launch Fiat-Crypto Trading Platform for UK Residents
• Singapore’s First Carpooling App Lets Customers Pay With Bitcoin

At the time of writing, bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $9,430.93 (-0.62%) with a daily Top Tier volume of $2.42 bn. As for ether (ETH), it is trading at $233.37 (-0.34%) with a daily Top Tier volume of $577.11 million. The MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 10 Index is currently tracking at 3,112.59 (-0.32%).

The Entity Behind the Mysterious Ethereum Transitions With Millions in Fees Revealed Itself

The entity behind last week’s mysterious Ethereum transactions that included up to $2.5 million in gas fees each has seemingly revealed itself and appears to be a little-known South Korean peer-to-peer crypto exchange Good Cycle.

Blockchain analytics and security firm PeckShield pointed to Good Cycle, adding it appears to be a Ponzi project that could easily be hacked because of several security flaws, including using HTTP instead of HTTPS.

On its website, the South Korean trading platform confirmed it suffered “repeated” hacks, and blockchain data shows it sent two transactions to the mining pools that got the gas fees, Ethermine and SparkPool, with a message saying “I am the sender.”

Each one of the mining pools mined a block with one of the transactions containing $2.5 million in gas fees. Both waited for the sender to reach out and, on June 15, Ethermine distributed the fees to its miners. SparkPool’s deadline was larger, and Good Cycle contacted it before it was over. It’s currently unclear what SparkPool’s move will be.

SparkPool has notably been in this situation before, after mining a transaction with a $300,000 gas fee attached to it. In the end, it split the fee with its sender.

Binance to Launch Fiat-Crypto Trading Platform for UK Residents

Binance is reportedly preparing to, later this summer, launch a dedicated crypto trading platform for UK residents. According to a report, the platform “was designed to allow both institutional and retail investors to buy and sell cryptocurrencies using pounds and euros," and it will be regulated by UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

Binance is looking to add support for up to 65 cryptoassets at launch, and the platform will support deposit/withdrawals for buying/selling of crypto via UK's Faster Payments service for GBP transfers and Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). Teana Baker-Taylor, who joined Binance as its UK director in May, was quoted as saying:

"Interest and participation in the UK digital asset markets is growing; not just in-depth with its current participants, but also in breadth. As crypto services mature and evolve, we’re able to create new options to engage and capture interest from a wider audience with varying risk appetites, such as products that earn a yield for participation, like staking and passive savings.”

In a blog post published last month, Binance had hinted at the new exchange, saying its new UK director would be “developing Binance’s presence in the U.K. and leading expansion across the European region.”

Singapore’s First Carpooling App Lets Customers Pay With Bitcoin

Singapore’s first carpooling app, Ryde, is letting its customers store and convert bitcoin to the company’s cryptocurrency RydeCoin, with zero transaction costs. Users will be able to top up their crypto wallets in the app with a maximum of S$ 999 (around $700 USD) and pay for rides with the funds.

While Uber rides, through an integration with Fold, can be paid for using Bitcoin’s lightning network, Ryde is the first carpooling app to directly incorporate cryptocurrency payments, even letting users store the funds in its built-in digital wallet. Ryde’s founder and CEO Terence Zou, speaking to CoinDesk, said:

“I have been watching the developments of this particular space and increasingly I’m sanguine about the prospects of cryptocurrency and its usage.”

Ryde is set to, in the long run, open its RydePay wallet to more cryptocurrencies.

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