Prosecutors in South Korea have launched an investigation into Bithumb, one of the country’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, over claims that company funds were improperly used to assist a former executive in purchasing an apartment.

Officials from the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office raided Bithumb’s headquarters in Yeoksam-dong and other locations on Wednesday., according to local media report.

Wu Blockchain reported that some projects had paid up to $10 million in fees to list their tokens on Upbit and Bithumb.

The probe focuses on allegations that Bithumb provided a 3 billion KRW ($2 million) security deposit for an apartment rental in Seongsu-dong, Seoul, for Kim Dae-sik, the company’s former CEO and current advisor.

The Financial Supervisory Service, South Korea’s financial regulator, initially reviewed the case before forwarding it to prosecutors. Speaking to The Chosun Daily, a Bithumb spokesperson reportedly acknowledged some of the allegations were correct, adding Kim repaid the loaned amount in its entire after securing a loan.

Bithumb has faced multiple legal challenges in recent years, including tax probes and a raid related to a price manipulation probe. Its latest challenge comes as the firm was reported to be considering listing shares on the Nasdaq.

Bithumb was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CoinDesk.

Disclaimer: Information gathered for this article was translated with the use of artificial intelligence.

UPDATE (March 20, 12:33 UTC): Adds additional details and background.

Alex Dolesky thought his startup’s push to «financialize» the sleepy uranium spot market would be a hit as nuclear energy stages a global comeback. All that tokenized yellowcake’s looking more like gold.

Months after netting its first $1.7 million from venture investors, Uranium Digital raised another $6.1 million in a seed round led by Framework Ventures.

The financing will accelerate Uranium Digital’s buildout of a spot trading platform for uranium that uses crypto infrastructure on the backend. It claims to be the first institutional market — crypto-powered or not — for a critical clean-energy commodity that, perplexingly, doesn’t enjoy the same easy trading of its dirtier peers, coal, natural gas and oil.

A radioactive mix of high regulations and low mainstream demand previously stymied the emergence of a robust uranium spot market, Dolesky said in an interview. While the strict rules over who can take settlement of yellowcake, a powdered form of uranium oxide concentrate, aren’t going anywhere, the global demand for nuclear energy is taking care of the rest.

Nuclear power is on its comeback tour. The energy source once derided by unfortunate disasters — most recently the Fukushima meltdown — is cropping up as a salve for rapidly increasing electric needs. The surge is fueling newfound interest from investors and institutions for an accessible spot market.

In crypto Dolesky said he’s found an efficient avenue to create the first. He says he’s «abstracting away» the usual pain points of on-chain trading so that Uranium Digital will look and feel familiar for institutional clients.

«Crypto rails for efficiency, speed and execution purposes — it’s a unique opportunity,» he said.

As the platform nears its launch date Dolesky plans to pour more capital into his business and engineering teams.

He realized after the pre-seed that the company’s proposed solution had an even deeper well of potential users than what he called his most optimistic projections. Meeting the excess demand meant moving faster and raising more money.

«The response we’ve gotten from the traditional market has been such that we’re effectively going live sooner than anticipated,» he said.

The Uniswap community has greenlit two governance proposals to propel the growth of the Unichain network and Uniswap V4 protocol.

The initiatives, dubbed «Uniswap Unleashed,» introduced a new grants program and liquidity incentives while hinting at initial steps for a “fee switch,” a long-contested protocol vote that would pay out a portion of trading fees to holders of Uniswap’s UNI.

Relevant governance posts have not directly mentioned a fee switch but noted plans to “activate revenue.”

The foundation requested $95.4 million for its grants budget and $25.1 million for operations over two years, plus $45 million for liquidity incentives to attract users and fuel ecosystem growth through developer campaigns.

Both proposals passed with more than 80% of UNI token holders in favor, governance data shows.

The passage could now put into motion the fee-switch, a longtime community goal that would shift some protocol revenue — currently over $1 billion annually — from liquidity providers to UNI holders. Its activation, delayed by past failed votes, hinges on legal preparations by the foundation.

The proposal was initially proposed in July 2021 to pilot the switch for a small set of Uniswap protocol pools. The switch will not increase fees for users but will retain a small portion of what is currently paid out to liquidity providers (LP), or users who lock up their tokens on Uniswap in exchange for fee rewards.

However, it could mean lesser fee earnings for Uniswap’s LPs and more rewards for holders of Uniswap’s native token UNI, which accrues value for UNI holders — leaving the proposal hanging for the past few years. One such vote failed to pass in 2023 after being voted against by influential token holders.

Part of the steps toward sharing revenue would be to make the Uniswap Foundation — a non-profit that helps develop and maintain Uniswap — a legal entity, giving it clarity on legal status and the ability to contract with other protocols.

“If our vetting is successful and we believe the creation of a legal entity for Uniswap Governance is in its best interest, we would propose to Governance to implement a legal entity structure,” the proposal said.

“If adopted, this step would pave the way for the potential introduction (or re-introduction) of a governance proposal for delegators to earn Protocol revenue,” it noted.