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Bitcoin And Biases — Bitcoin As ESG Money
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Annual percentage yields, or APY, on crypto borrowing and lending platform Aave have surged to record levels after capital withdrawals sent the decentralized finance, or DeFi, protocol into a liquidity crunch. At the time of writing, variable APY on borrowing stablecoin Dai via Aave has surged to 24.88%, compared to approximately 6.50% the day prior.
According to cryptocurrency researcher Igor Igamberdiev, blockchain personality Justin Sun was responsible for at least billions of dollars in withdrawals in the past few hours. Aave’s total value locked, or TVL, fell to $14.7 billion from $17.89 billion the day prior, based on data from DeFi Pulse.
In a series of tweets, Aave developers revealed that financial modeling platform Gauntlet Network submitted an Aave Improvement Protocol, or AIP, to disable the borrowing function for xSUSHI and DeFi Pulse Index (DPI) tokens as a precautionary measure. In addition, the AIP also called for disabling Automated Market Maker, or AMM, liquidity provider tokens on the Aave AMM Market as an extra safeguard.
Earlier in the week, members of the Aave community voiced concerns regarding vulnerabilities with using xSUSHI tokens as collateral for borrowing on the platform. Aave developers alleged that the Gauntlet Network team ran simulations showing that it would not be economically feasible to exploit xSUSHI tokens on Aave. However, Aave developers claim that the Gauntlet Network still put forth the AIP despite these results. The AIP is currently in the voting phase, with “Yes” votes heavily favored.
Prior to today’s flight, Aave was the most popular DeFi protocol as ranked by Defi Llama. The platform has a lot of traction among cryptocurrency enthusiasts looking to yield farm or take out a stablecoin loan by pledging their digital currencies as collateral.
U.S. Senator Bill Hagerty (R-VA), who was elected in 2020 to represent Tennessee after a stint as Ambassador to Japan, spoke to newly appointed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra regarding cryptocurrencies in a banking committee hearing, saying “I just want to make certain as you exercise those oversight responsibilities that we don’t stifle innovation in this arena.”
“Digital ledger technology offers a tremendous amount of promise in terms of financial innovation and inclusion. It’s an industry where I think the United States is leading, has led, and I’d like to see us continue to lead there. Especially when we look at other countries like China and the Chinese Communist Party that has moved to ban private sector activity in that arena.”
Hagerty introduced legislation with Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) in July to study China’s adoption of a digital currency. Chopra and Hagerty have notably clashed previously during the former’s confirmation hearings, with Hagerty even introducing a bill to require congressional approval for the bureau’s funding.
In a late July Senate floor speech Hagerty opined “We’re using the cryptocurrency market as a pay-for. Have we fully vetted how this new regulation and taxation will affect this rapidly developing industry? Will leadership in this industry flee the United States as a result?”
Chopra criticized Facebook’s adoption of Libra during his time on the Federal Trade Commision, and advocated for the Federal Reserve to adopt an instant payments service called FedNow. The CFPB warned consumers against Bitcoin as early as 2014, saying at the time that they should be “be aware of potential issues with virtual currencies such as unclear costs, volatile exchange rates, the threat of hacking and scams, and that companies may not offer help or refunds for lost or stolen funds.”
AMC Entertainment is in the process of updating its technical infrastructure to allow consumers to pay online with Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), and Dogecoin (DOGE) for movie tickets. But it doesn’t stop there. In a Twitter post early Friday morning, Adam Aron, the company’s CEO, asked if users would be potentially interested in paying with Shiba Inu as well. At the time of writing, 97,582 Twitter users had already taken part in the poll, with approximately 85% of voters choosing “Yes.”
The iconic theatre chain has taken a growing interest in crypto as of late. Last week, its CEO discussed the possibility of issuing a company-specific cryptocurrency. Earlier this month, AMC enabled its customers to purchase digital gift cards via Dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies using the BitPay wallet. Back in September, Aron expressed interest in minting commemorative movie tickets as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, during a CNBC interview.
On Friday, Shiba Inu overtook Dogecoin to become the world’s ninth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. According to Etherscan, the daily number of Shiba Inu transactions has surpassed 140,000, just shy of its all-time high of 172,411 daily transactions achieved in May.
In light of a record run-up, the Shiba Inu ecosystem has expanded to include ShibaSwap, a decentralized exchange, or DEX. Total value locked, or TVL, on ShibaSwap amounts to $537.92 million based on data from Defi Llama. There are currently 29 coins
Dodgers and Giants. India and Pakistan. Vin Diesel and The Rock.
Time to add another rivalry to the list: Aave and Yearn.
Earlier this week, Cream Finance—an Ethereum-based lending protocol— suffered its third attack this year as hackers made off with a cool $130 million. Now, people are starting to point fingers. In a Thursday article, DeFi publication Rekt suggested that Yearn Finance, an ever-expanding set of decentralized lending and trading protocols that began integrating with Cream last year even as it merged with Pickle Finance and pursued other ventures, should bear the blame: “The Yearn Finance decentralised monopoly has grown too large, and its operators; [sic] too careless. Why accumulate so many protocols if you don’t care for their users?”
The war of words is spilling out onto Twitter, where thinly veiled subtweets from prominent Aave contributors abounded.
So, what’s this all about? And what’s it got to do with Aave, a totally different lending protocol with similar services?
Yearn Finance and Cream Finance, which was forked from Compound, share a connection via the two developer teams, and the projects share integrations, such as the Iron Bank. Some Aave community members, meanwhile, have suspected Yearn developers of forking Aave to their own ends. So when details of the $130 million hack broke, some Aave community members took the opportunity to throw shade not at Cream, but at Yearn, which has a wide reach.
Banteg, one of the most prominent Yearn developers, took issue with that. “Maybe don’t bad mouth other projects while sitting on an 11 figure vulnerability,” he tweeted. (Banteg has yet to respond to a Decrypt request for comment.)
Banteg’s tweet followed one from Yearn founder Andre Cronje today: “Aave core after 24 hour defamation marathon on yearn for cream being exploited, while Aave is vulnerable to the same exploit.”
Such rumors likely prompted Tron founder Justin Sun to pull billions of dollars in crypto out of his Aave liquidity holdings today.
Yet that exploit information wasn’t fully public; it was the type of intel sharing the Soviets and Americans might have done through backchannels during the Cold War. Now, if such a vulnerability exists, it’s out in the open, leaving Aave exposed. The protocol’s users are now voting on a governance proposal to temporarily freeze or disable features that could lead to the same exploit that affected Cream. The proposal calls the measures “precautionary.”
Stani Kulechov, founder of Aave, told Decrypt that he doesn’t see any bad blood between the two projects. He added, however, “We build together but it’s always tricky once everyone is looking at their own communities.”
The string of exploits has prevented CREAM from rising to the top of decentralized finance. And while DeFi degens aren’t often ones to cry over spilt milk, they will argue about who spilt it.
It’s been a wild week for canine-themed meme coins and tokens. Shiba Inu (SHIB) vaulted into the top 10 for the first time and dethroned Dogecoin (DOGE) in terms of total market cap, then DOGE recaptured momentum and flipped the script. Now it has happened again.
Over the last 24 hours, Shiba Inu has started regaining some of the ground lost on Thursday and now it’s back above Dogecoin. At a current price of $0.00007640 per token, Shiba Inu is up 13% over the last 24 hours and now sits ninth on CoinGecko’s list of largest cryptocurrencies.
Meanwhile, DOGE is on the decline, down almost 8% over the last day at a price of about $0.29 per coin. Dogecoin rose rapidly yesterday—some 30% in just a couple hours’ time in the early morning. But now it’s losing some of that steam and has fallen back below SHIB to claim the 10th-place spot on CoinGecko’s ranking.
Dogecoin remains well off of its all-time high of $0.73 set in May—it’s down 60% since then. Meanwhile, the Ethereum-based Shiba Inu is currently just 12% off of its all-time high price ($0.00008616) set early Thursday.
DOGE exploded in popularity earlier this year, rising from a price of about $0.005 on January 1 to the aforementioned peak in May. The original meme coin led various dog-themed pretenders and held the throne up until Wednesday, when a surge of momentum around Shiba Inu finally elevated the token to the top of the meme heap.
Meme coins and tokens are highly susceptible to changing social media sentiment (such as, say, Elon Musk’s tweets) and can be extremely volatile. Shiba Inu, in particular, is up 980% over the last 30 days according to CoinGecko—and that entire span came after a previous price bump following its listing on popular exchange Coinbase.
While DOGE and SHIB are well ahead of the meme pack, other dog coins are also popping this week. Case in point: Floki Inu (FLOKI) was up more than 200% yesterday following lowered fees and potential impact from a physical marketing campaign in London. Even today, it’s still up 61% over the last 24 hours, and 473% over the last month.
The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.
The American entertainment company, primarily known for professional wrestling – WWE – joined forces with Blockchain Creative Labs to launch a non-fungible token marketplace. The digital collectibles will capture iconic moments from grand events like Wrestlemania and SummerSlam and will have an eco-friendly focus.
Despite retracing a bit from the record trading volumes in August, the NFT craze is still a tempting industry in which many companies want to dip their toes. The latest example came from World Wrestling Entertainment.
Apart from the iconic digital collection of The Rock (arguably one of WWE’s most influential superstars of all times), the NFTs will include many other prominent wrestlers.
A report reads that the initiative will become live after a collaboration between the wrestling organization and the non-fungible token business and creative studio – Blockchain Creative Labs. The former will also depict the best moments of SummerSlam and Wrestlemania throughout the years – WWE’s top events. Scott Zanghellini – Senior Vice President of the entertainment firm – commented:
“Blockchain Creative Labs has quickly become a leader in the space with an incredible executive team that understands the NFT arena and its potential.”
Eluvio blockchain technology will also play a role in the move as it will generate the digital collection. Interestingly, it is an eco-friendly blockchain protocol, meaning that the NFTs should not be an object of environmental concerns.
The upcoming marketplace will serve as a hub for fans to trade, purchase, sell, and store digital tokens. However, its official launch date has not been announced yet.
While some consider non-fungible tokens as a unique way to enter the digital asset industry, others like Joe Rogan are not entirely aware of what exactly their concept is. The sports commentator, comedian, and popular podcast host recently said he finds them difficult to understand and even called them a cryptocurrency “hustle.”
Rogan argued that there is no point in spending a considerable amount of money on a digital artwork when people can download it for free:
“Here’s my problem, I can have that photo and I can have it on my phone.”
On the other hand, the sports commentator is not against the cryptocurrency sector, admitting that he is a digital asset hodler. Nonetheless, he did not disclose which tokens he has exposure to.
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Decentralized Finance (DeFi) platform Cream Finance (CREAM) says that its lending market suffered a hack resulting in the loss of crypto assets worth approximately $130 million.
Cream Finance says in a tweet that the attacker exploited a vulnerability in the first version of the C.R.E.A.M. lending market platform.
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“Our Ethereum C.R.E.A.M. v1 lending markets were exploited and liquidity was removed on October 27, 1354 UTC. The attacker removed a total of ~$130m USD worth of tokens from these markets…
No other markets were impacted.”
The attacker made away with 2760.22 Ether (ETH) and 60 other tokens of varying amounts and value, according to blockchain security firm SlowMist.
The Cream Finance says it has now fixed the vulnerability and paused activity on its Ethereum-based lending markets.
“With the help of friends from iearnfinance and others in the community, we were able to identify the vulnerabilities and patch them.
In the meantime, we’ve paused our v1 lending markets on Ethereum and we’re in the process of putting together a post-mortem review.”
According to blockchain security firm BlockSec, the attack involved several transactions and incurred total gas fees of approximately 9.16 ETH. At the time of writing, ETH is trading at around $4,150 per CoinGecko, translating to a transaction fee of about $37,556.
The total value locked on Cream Finance is currently $1.36 billion, according to analytics platform DeFi Llama.
This attack is not the first time Cream Finance has suffered a security breach resulting in the theft of funds. In late August, the platform was hacked for Ethereum and Amp (AMP) tokens worth around $26 million at the time.
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A popular crypto strategist and trader is updating his analysis on three altcoins he says are primed to hit all-time highs.
The pseudonymous crypto analyst known as Capo tells his 183,700 followers that he’s still “all in” on altcoins.
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The trader expects DOT, the native asset of smart contract platform Polkadot, to “outperform all the majors.”
DOT is trading at $43.12 at time of writing, according to CoinGecko. Capo predicts it could surge past $250.
$DOT
Very bullish. It should outperform all the marjors.
Main targets are $250 and $650
I’m long on PrimeXBT: https://t.co/1YWbBb6qTE https://t.co/cP6eOk7v4e pic.twitter.com/GtH7zxZln2
— il Capo Of $NOIA (@CryptoCapo_) October 28, 2021
The trader is also bullish on the Cardano-backed altcoin project Coti (COTI).
COTI is an enterprise-grade platform that allows organizations to build their own payment solutions and digitize any form of currency using the networked datastructure protocol Trustchain.
The 182nd-ranked asset by market cap is trading at $0.55 at time of writing, up nearly 9% in the past week. Capo says COTI’s “minimum target is $1.70.”
$COTI chart update
Nothing has changed. It’s consolidating above the previous highs.
Minimum target is $1.70 pic.twitter.com/VfXuwPBX0x
— il Capo Of $NOIA (@CryptoCapo_) October 28, 2021
Capo is also optimistic about NOIA, the native token of the Syntropy ecosystem. Syntropy is an open-source protocol aimed at improving the internet via encryption and optimized performance.
NOIA is trading at $0.36 at time of writing, up 12.5% in the past seven days. Capo predicts the 331st-ranked asset by market cap will be trading between $1-2 at some point in December.
$1-2, and above $3 for the end of the cycle
— il Capo Of $NOIA (@CryptoCapo_) October 28, 2021
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