Tag: Hodler’S Digest

Metaverse tokens surge after Meta tanks, Dorsey roasts Diem after it shuts down, a new malware can target 40 browser wallets: Hodler’s Digest, Jan. 28-Feb.5

by Cointelegraph

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

Hodlers beware! New malware targets MetaMask and 40 other crypto wallets

According to a report from security researcher 3xp0rt, a powerful new malware variant known as the “Mars Stealer,” an upgrade of the information-stealing Oski trojan of 2019, can target more than 40 browser-based crypto wallets, including MetaMask and Coinbase Wallet, along with popular two-factor authentication (2FA) extensions. 

The nefarious software utilizes a grabber function that steals private keys after it has been downloaded, unbeknownst to the user who may have visited or utilized various channels, such as file-hosting websites, torrent clients and any other shady downloaders.

Notably, the malware checks the set language of the device, and if it matches the language ID of locations such as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Russia, the software leaves the system without any malicious activity. 

However, for any device with a language outside of those categories, the malware targets files holding sensitive information, such as crypto wallets’ address info and private keys. Then, it leaves without a trace.

Jack Dorsey: Diem was a waste of time, Meta should’ve focused on BTC

Twitter founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey has unsurprisingly slammed the move of a competitor, with Meta (formerly Facebook) taking the hit for its “wasted effort and time” not working on Bitcoin. 

Dorsey is an avid Bitcoin supporter who has made the asset a focus of his newer, shinier company, Block. During an interview with BTC bull Michael Saylor on Tuesday, Dorsey commented on the recent shutdown of Meta’s stablecoin project, Diem, which has been plagued with regulatory pushback since it began. 

“Those two or three years or however long it’s been could’ve been spent making Bitcoin more accessible for more people around the world,” the almighty Dorsey said from his throne.

Rise of Web3: Metaverse tokens surge as Meta’s share price plunges

Speaking of Meta, the firm’s share price took a nosedive of around 26% on Thursday following a lackluster quarterly earnings report that revealed an annual profit decrease and a decline in daily active users. 

Meta reported $33.67 billion worth of total revenue for Q4 2021, compared to $28 billion the year prior. However, its net income fell to $10.28 billion from $11.2 billion one year earlier. A hefty $10 billion investment in its Reality Labs division also contributed to the disappointing quarterly results. 

While the centralized metaverse-focused firm faced choppy waters, native tokens from decentralized counterparts in The Sandbox (SAND) and Decentraland (MANA) jumped 17.5% and 20%, respectively. Commenting on the news, Animoca Brands chairman and co-founder Yat Siu suggested that this was part of a broader trend in which the top talent and users from Web2 platforms are shifting to the open world of Web3.

$2.5B in stolen BTC from Bitfinex hack awakens

According to blockchain analytics bot Whale Alert, a hefty $2.5 billion worth of BTC obtained via the 2016 Bitfinex exchange hack moved from the hacker’s wallet to an unknown address on Tuesday. 

The funds have remained inactive since 2016 as the hackers are essentially unable to cash out the holdings. Many onlookers have pondered whether the hacker has started moving the funds around again to manipulate the market and scare investors into selling their BTC. 

The largest transaction Whale Alert detected was around 10,000 BTC, or $383 million, while other transactions amounted to as little as 0.29 BTC. The wallet address that received the blacklisted BTC now holds a total of 94,643.29 BTC, which is around $3.6 billion.

Another solo Bitcoin miner solves valid block, becoming the 4th in 2022

A solo Bitcoin miner and Solo CKPool user with a whooping 1.14 petahashes per second (PH/s) of computing power was lucky enough to generate a $240,000 block reward on Tuesday. While the odds of it happening were estimated to be lower than 20%, it is apparently the fourth “blockfind” for the CKPool since mid-January. 

The miner utilizes the Solo CKPool, a service that offers anonymous solo Bitcoin mining for a fee. While the miner is described as a “whale” in this instance due to their high computational power, in January a CKPool miner with a minuscule hash rate of just 126 terahashes per second (TH/s) was able to solve a valid block. 

CKPool’s solo miners have solved 264 blocks over the entirety of the Bitcoin blockchain’s existence, representing a mere 0.037% of the total 721,240 blocks solved.

Winners and Losers

At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $37,948, Ether (ETH) is at $2,830 and XRP is at $0.61. The total market cap is at $1.76 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap.

The top two altcoin gainers of the week are OpenDAO (SOS) at 76.22% and ConstitutionDAO (PEOPLE) at 61.80%. The top three altcoin losers of the week are Moonbeam (GLMR) at -22.63%, Frax Share (FXS) at -18.20% and Telcoin (TEL) at -14.74%.

For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.

Most Memorable Quotations

“Structurally, on-chain, it’s not a bear market setup. Even though I would say we’re at peak fear. No doubt about it, people are really scared, which is typically […] an opportunity to buy.”

Willy Woo, Bitcoin on-chain analyst 

 

“This whole thing with Libra and then Diem, I think there’s a ton of lessons [there]. […] Hopefully, they learned a lot, but I think there’s a lot of wasted effort and time.”

Jack Dorsey, founder and CEO of Block

“Do not ask me to do a fucking NFT.”

Kanye West, hip hop icon 

“Losing a half-million dollars worth of crypto by mistake is something that needs to be addressed before crypto can become mainstream. When it’s this easy to lose everything, there’s no way your grandma is going to be using it.”

u/0150r, Reddit user 

“If you only focus on eliminating risks associated with a specific industry in regulatory efforts, you would also eliminate any potential benefits and opportunities that would otherwise be offered by the same industry.”

Elçin Karatay, Turkish law expert

“I think we’re not entering a long-term crypto winter. […] There have been changes in expectations of interest rates, and that’s been moving crypto markets. But it’s been moving markets more generally as well.” 

Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX

“We can avoid making the same mistakes we did with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and social media generally if we can develop an intellectual framework for regulating the Metaverse now.” 

Bradley Tusk, CEO and founder of Tusk Ventures

“It’s become clear to me that #Bitcoin will be the one asset and L1 still around in 20+ years with increased compounding relevance over time.”

David Marcus, co-founder of Diem

Prediction of the Week 

Can Ethereum price reach $4K after a triple-support bounce?

Pseudonymous chart analyst Wolf has read the tea leaves and forecasted that Ether will continue its recent rebound up to around the $4,000 region. 

Central to Wolf’s short-term prediction over the next couple months is whether Ether’s so-called triple-support scenario could push the price past $3,330, which would establish an inverse-head-and-shoulders (IH&S) pattern that could launch the price toward late-2021 levels. 

In a “perfect” scenario, a break above the IH&S neckline may push the Ether price to as high as the maximum distance between the neckline and the head, which would be around $4,000 in this case.

FUD of the Week 

Wormhole token bridge loses $321M in largest hack so far in 2022

The Wormhole token bridge was the victim of a major breach this week, as attackers made off with a whopping 120,000 Wrapped Ether (wETH) worth roughly $321 million at the time. 

The cross-chain bridge supports several blockchains, allowing the attacker to target the Solana side of the bridge by minting 120,000 wETH. They then redeemed 93,750 wETH for ETH, worth roughly $254 million, on the Ethereum network. 

The Wormhole team stated shortly after the incident that it was working to replenish enough ETH “to ensure wETH is backed 1:1,” with reports surfacing the following day that venture capital fund Jump Crypto had dipped into its own pocket to do so. The hacker has also been offered a bounty of $10 million by the Wormhole team to return the funds.

Youtuber and alleged thief publicly refuses to return investors’ funds after $750k rug pull

Disgraced content creator and influencer Paul “Ice Poseidon” Denino found himself in hot water this week after YouTuber and “internet detective” Coffeezilla published a not-so-flattering series of videos about him. 

Coffeezilla initially posted a video interview between the two in which Ice Poseidon allegedly confirmed that he rug-pulled around $750,000 worth of investors’ money from a crypto project he launched called “CxCoin.”

The CxCoin project was pitched to his investors as a long-term investment. However, within a few weeks of launch, the influencer said he stopped working on the project and decided to pull out around $300,000 from the liquidity pool. He cited the crashing crypto market as the reason for this move, and then said he wouldn’t return the funds. He also allegedly bought a brand new Tesla only a few days after the funds went missing.

Kanye West says no to NFTs

Hip hop legend Ye, more commonly known as his birth name Kanye West, shut down any notion of jumping into NFTs on Monday after he made a strongly worded Instagram post to his 10.7 million followers stating, “Do not ask me to do a fucking NFT,” and that he only wants to work on “building real products in the real world.”

“STOP ASKING ME TO DO NFTs I’M NOT FINNA CO-SIGN … FOR NOW I’M NOT ON THAT WAVE I MAKE MUSIC AND PRODUCTS IN THE REAL WORLD,” he stated in a follow-up comment on his Instagram post. 

While some might call it FUD that a major celebrity and cultural icon like Kanye West is not hopping aboard the NFT gravy train, it is kind of refreshing to see a popular figure not mindlessly shill something they do not fully comprehend.

Best Cointelegraph Features

What the hell is Web3 anyway?

Web3 — or Web 3.0 as crypto boomers like to call it — is a topical buzzword with only a very vague definition. Everyone agrees it has something to do with a blockchain-based evolution of the internet but, beyond that, what is it, really?

Web3 developer growth hits an all-time high as ecosystem matures

Web3 developer growth hit an all-time high in 2021, yet challenges lie ahead for new developers flooding the space. 

NFT philanthropy demonstrates new ways of giving back

Organizations and artists are using NFTs to give back to children in need, demonstrating new potential for nonfungible tokens. 

Source

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Eth2 rebrands to consensus layer, Elon Musk fails to boost DOGE, YouTube gaming head switches to Polygon Studios: Hodler’s Digest, Jan. 23-28

by Cointelegraph

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

Analysts say Bitcoin’s bounce at $36K means ‘it’s time to start thinking about a bottom’

Bitcoin had a turbulent week, its price dropping as low as $33,300 and surging as high as $38,000 before retracting back to the $36,000 region at the time of writing. 

Many analysts have attributed the uninspiring performance of BTC, along with other assets such as stocks, to macro factors such as expectations that the United States Federal Reserve will embark on several interest rate hikes throughout 2022 to tame inflation. 

While many people claim the Fed’s actions will put an end to the current bull market, other forward-looking individuals such as Bollinger Bands creator John Bollinger have questioned whether the market bottom is in and if it’s time to accumulate and hodl again. 

“It’s time to start thinking about a bottom in cryptos,” Bollinger tweeted. “However, the ability to get outside the lower Bollinger Band repeatedly strongly suggests a retest of some sort will be needed. My plan is wait for a bottom and a bounce, then look for a retest as an entry.”

NFL star’s massive tax bill highlights problems with BTC salaries

Speaking of Bitcoin woes, someone who may be feeling the sting of the current state of the market is NFL star Odell “OBJ” Beckham Jr. 

On Nov. 12 last year, OBJ signed a one-year deal with the Los Angeles Rams worth $750,000. A few weeks later, he announced a partnership with Cash App to receive 100% of that yearly salary in BTC. 

At the time, Bitcoin was breaking new all-time highs around $69,044 but has since plummeted around 46% to $36,000. Sports business analyst and senior executive producer for The Action Network Darren Rovell said that OBJ’s salary is now worth significantly less than it was when he signed the deal. However, he appears to have used some fuzzy math in coming up with his numbers given that NFL salaries are paid weekly, not upfront.

Fading power? Weak DOGE spike after Elon Musk makes McDonald’s offer

On Tuesday, erratic billionaire, Tesla CEO and space tycoon Elon Musk offered to eat a Happy Meal from McDonald’s live on TV if the global fast-food giant started accepting Dogecoin as an official payment method. 

The founder of Tesla, who allegedly obtained that title via intense litigation against the firm’s actual founders many moons ago, has often sent shock waves across crypto markets with a single tweet. However, it appears his influence may finally be waning. 

On this occasion, DOGE only spiked a mere 7% to roughly $0.145 after his tweet and has since dropped back to $0.138 at the time of writing. Around 10 hours after his tweet, McDonald’s responded by stating, “Only if Tesla accepts Grimacecoin,” making reference to a fake coin depicting Grimace, a fuzzy purple McDonaldland mascot introduced in the 1970s.

Eth2 is no more after Ethereum Foundation ditches name in rebrand

The Ethereum Foundation revealed that it had removed all references to “Eth1” and “Eth2” this week in favor of calling the original blockchain the “execution layer” and the upgraded proof-of-stake (PoS) chain the “consensus layer.” 

Individual features of the network such as the Beacon Chain, “the merge,” and shard chains are now also referred to as “upgrades.” 

The foundation cited several reasons for its decision to upgrade its terminology, arguing that the previous terms provided a “broken mental model for new users” and that the rebrand helps with scam prevention, inclusivity and staking clarity. Under the new terminology, the combination of the execution layer (Eth1) and the consensus layer (Eth2) will be labeled as “Ethereum” moving forward. 

“One major problem with the Eth2 branding is that it creates a broken mental model for new users of Ethereum. They intuitively think that Eth1 comes first and Eth2 comes after. Or that Eth1 ceases to exist once Eth2 exists,” the foundation wrote, adding that “neither of these is true. By removing Eth2 terminology, we save all future users from navigating this confusing mental model.”

YouTube head of gaming Ryan Wyatt to resign and join Polygon Studios as CEO

YouTube’s head of gaming Ryan Wyatt announced on Tuesday that he will be leaving the firm in February to pursue his passion for blockchain and Web3 development.

Wyatt has lined up a role as CEO of Polygon Studios, the gaming and NFT arm of the layer-2 Ethereum scaling network. Polygon reportedly has plans to support its subsidiary studio with $100 million worth of funding towards Web3 and NFT gaming projects. 

“I will be focusing on growing the developer ecosystem through investment, marketing and developer support and bridging the gap between Web 2.0 and 3.0,” Wyatt said. “I’ll be leading the Polygon Studios organization across gaming, entertainment, fashion, news, sports and more.”

Winners and Losers

At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $36,580, Ether (ETH) is at $2,394 and XRP is at $0.59. The total market cap is at $1.65 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap.

The top two altcoin gainers of the week are Son of Babydoge (SOB) at 385383025% and PsyOptions (PSY) at 1632684%.  

The top three altcoin losers of the week are Mercenary (MGOLD) at -100%, Ruyi (RYB) at -99.99% and MYTEAMFINANCE (MYF) at -99.97%.

For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.

Most Memorable Quotations

“Overall, the Fed is comfortable with equity and risk markets selling off as it tightens financial conditions and so could reduce inflation. Bond yields have risen after the meetings, equity and crypto markets have given back gains. The Fed continues to add downside risks to risky markets.”

Bilal Hafeez, CEO and head of research at Macro Hive 

“Facebook seems to be the antithesis of what actual consumers want their digital futures to look like. […] Mark [Zuckerberg] and his team are not the best custodians of our digital futures.”

Michael Auerbach, founder of Subversive Capital 

“We need simplicity of usage. We need easy programmability. We need composability that is natural to the applications. I don’t see the current Ethereum evolutions targeting any of those goals.”

Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of Near Protocol

“Of course, we also have certain competitive advantages here, especially in the so-called mining. I mean the surplus of electricity and the well-trained personnel available in the country.”

Vladimir Putin, President of Russia

“We’re not necessarily out there looking for celebrities, but when they make a blatant or open comment that says ‘Hey, IRS, you should probably come look at me,’ that’s what we do.” 

Ryan Korner, IRS criminal investigation agent 

“El Salvador just bought 410 Bitcoin for only 15 million dollars. Some guys are selling really cheap.”

Nayib Bukele, President of El Salvador

“I will eat a Happy Meal on TV if McDonald’s accepts Dogecoin.”

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla 

“When it comes to custody, customers want to wake up in the morning knowing their assets are still there. Security in the digital asset space has evolved over the last few years to provide better control and better transparency — that’s why most of us are using multi-party computation today,”

Michael Shaulov, CEO of Fireblocks

Prediction of the Week 

ETH to hit $20-trillion market cap by 2030: Ark Invest

Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest bullishly predicted that Ether could reach a total market cap of around $20 trillion within the next 10 years, suggesting an average ETH price of between $170,000 and $180,000. 

The optimistic prediction came via Ark’s “Big Ideas 2022” report, with the firm highlighting the Ethereum network’s rapid rate of adoption and growth in utility and efficiency over the past couple of years as key indicators for future price targets. 

According to Ark, smart contracts and decentralized applications on Ethereum are “usurping traditional financial functions at the margin.” The report highlighted that banking and lending, exchanges, brokerages, asset management, insurance and derivatives can all be found on Ethereum-based smart contracts.

FUD of the Week 

Qubit Finance suffers $80 million loss following hack

It was reported on Friday that Binance Smart Chain-based protocol Qubit Finance was hacked, resulting in an estimated loss of more than $80 million worth of digital assets. 

The addresses linked to the assault stole 206,809 Binance Coin tokens from Qubit’s QBridge protocol. According to blockchain analysis firm PeckShield, the protocol was hacked to create “a huge amount of xETH collateral” that was subsequently used to drain the entire quantity of BNB stored on QBridge. 

The Qubit team released a statement notifying clients that they are still monitoring the hacker and their impacted assets. The post explained that the team has contacted the attacker to offer the maximum reward as determined by their bounty program. There may be some hope in getting a large portion of the funds back, as supposed white hats lately have been returning the funds in exchange for decently sized bounties.

Indonesian regulator takes cue from Islamic NGOs, bars crypto sales for institutions

Indonesia’s financial watchdog Otoritas Jasa Keuangan (OJK) has come out with an anti-crypto stance, warning local financial institutions on Tuesday against offering or facilitating any crypto asset sales.

OKJ’s official Instagram account posted the warning, sounding the alarm over the usual negative crypto tropes such as the growing number of Ponzi schemes and market volatility-related risks.

The post also quoted the chairman Wimboh Santoso, who stated that financial institutions are strictly prohibited from offering crypto sale services in any form.

“OJK has strictly prohibited financial service institutions from using, marketing, and/or facilitating crypto asset trading,” he wrote in an official Instagram post.

More evidence game devs hate NFTs and crypto

Data from the latest edition of the annual “State Of The Game Industry 2022” by the Game Developers Conference revealed that most game developers and studios have no interest in developing or working with NFTs or crypto payments.

The survey polled 2,700 game devs, and 72% of respondents indicated that their studio is “not interested” in integrating crypto as a payment tool, while 70% stated that they had no interest in NFTs. Furthermore, a mere 1% outlined that they were already working with NFT tech or crypto. 

There were also 14 comments posted from respondents in the survey regarding NFTs and crypto, with only one input holding positive views. Regarding NFTs, one developer in particular wrote: 

“How this hasn’t been identified as a pyramid scheme is beyond me.”

Best Cointelegraph Features

Here’s how to keep your crypto safe

The first step in compounding gains with crypto investments is to be super diligent and to avoid losing your vigilance.

Bitcoin ‘Doji’ points to bullish reversal scenario as BTC holds $36K support

BTC is down more than 50% from its $69,000 all-time high and traders seem to have no clue about the cryptocurrency’s next move.

Blockchain-enabled digital fashion creates new business models for brands

A “digital-first” model is disrupting the fashion sector, as blockchain technology shows advanced capabilities in Web3 e-commerce and sustainability.

Source

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Animoca Brands doubles valuation to $5B, OpenSea tops $3.5B in January volume, Microsoft eyes Metaverse gaming: Hodler’s Digest, Jan. 16-22

by Cointelegraph

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

NFT-focused Animoca Brands valued at $5B following $358M raise

NFT and virtual property-focused firm Animoca Brands secured $358 million worth of funding earlier this week at a valuation of $5 billion. 

The company said the fresh funds will go towards financing strategic acquisitions and investments, product development, and IP accumulation. The firm has gone from strength to strength over the past 12 months, raising more than $216 million in 2021, while its valuation has more than doubled since its previous capital raise in October.  

A key area of focus for Animoca is GameFi, with the firm pointing to research suggesting that the video gaming sector will grow to around $829 billion by 2028. The firm is also invested heavily in the virtual property and Metaverse space, with The Sandbox metaverse being one of its prime jewels.

Bitcoin dumps to hit six-month lows near $38K

Bitcoin’s price dropped a hefty 7.5% in the space of 12 hours to briefly sit around $38,000 in the early hours of Friday morning (UTC). During the depths of the selloff on Tuesday, BTC’s price fell below $35,000.

It is unclear what sparked the sharp price dip and whether it is purely crypto-related or a symptom of a larger trend across the traditional financial market. However, it is quite certain that, while BTC and other assets are down, crypto influencers will be flocking to Twitter to cheesily ask their followers if they have “bought the dip yet?” like they do every single time the markets are in the red. 

One potential reason for Bitcoin’s downfall could be that bears are trying to tank the price so that they hit their targets before their futures contracts expire. The InvesetAnswers Twitter account, which has over 85,000 followers, suggested that bears “need #Bitcoin under $41,000 to pocket $132 million in gains” by Friday.

OpenSea surpasses $3.5B in monthly Ether trading volume setting new ATH

While the crypto market may have cooled in January, it appears that the NFT sector is booming with countless investors who are aping into tokenized collectibles, among other things.  

It was reported on Monday that top NFT marketplace OpenSea had reached a new all-time high in terms of monthly volume after it topped $3.5 billion. At the time of writing, the figure stands at a whopping $4.3 billion, suggesting an average daily volume of around $204 million in January so far. 

The surge in NFT trade volume appears to be led by the price increases of several Yuga Labs projects such as the Bored Ape Yacht Club, the Mutant Ape Yacht Club and the Bored Ape Kennel Club.

An Indonesian 22-year-old makes $1M by selling NFT selfies on OpenSea

Reports surfaced at the start of this week regarding a crafty 22-year-old college student from Indonesia who made around $1 million selling NFTs depicting five years’ worth of selfies. 

Semarang-based computer science student Sultan Gustaf Al Ghozali converted and sold nearly 1,000 selfie images as NFTs on OpenSea. According to Ghozali, he took photos of himself, either standing or sitting in front of his PC for five years, as a way to look back on his journey to graduation. 

He set the initial price for each NFT selfie at $3 without expecting interest from serious buyers, but the project exploded in popularity on the back of support from prominent members of Crypto Twitter.

Microsoft’s massive Metaverse move: Buying Activision for $69B

Microsoft announced on Tuesday that it is acquiring gaming giant Activision Blizzard for $95 per share at a valuation of $68.7 billion, with the deal slated to close in the 2023 fiscal year. 

Activision Blizzard boasts a strong list of iconic gaming series such as Call of Duty, Overwatch and World of Warcraft. Activision titles will be added to Microsoft’s Xbox and PC Game Pass service. 

Microsoft noted that the acquisition will help the company provide the “building blocks for the Metaverse.” CEO and chairman Satya Nadella explained:

“Gaming is the most dynamic and exciting category in entertainment across all platforms today and will play a key role in the development of metaverse platforms.”

Winners and Losers

At the end of the week on Friday, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $38,651, Ether (ETH) at $2,807 and XRP at $0.68. The total market cap is at $1.80 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap.

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top two altcoin gainers of the week are Perpetual Protocol (PERP) at 3.62% and BitTorrent (BTT) at 2.04%.  

The top three altcoin losers of the week are Harmony (ONE) at -35.08%, Loopring (LRC) at -34.25% and Kadena (KDA) at -32.04%.

For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.

Most Memorable Quotations

“Most crypto assets currently use distributed ledger technology (DLT), it might be that this changes as the technology and industry evolve. Therefore, the government proposes to remove the reference to DLT from the definition of qualifying crypto assets.”

Her Majesty’s Treasury (United Kingdom) report

“After doing a lot of research on Bitcoin, I really believe it is the future of money, man. Bitcoin is valuable, secure, and no one can mess with it.”

Francis Ngannou, UFC heavyweight champion

“Bitcoin 90-day correlation to the S&P 500 is currently at its highest since October 2020.”

Arcane Research report

“Bitcoin is in a unique phase, I think, of transitioning from a risk-on to risk-off global digital store of value, replacing gold and becoming global collateral. So, I think that’s going to be happening this year.”

Mike McGlone, senior commodity strategist at Bloomberg

“To date, the DeFi space has been used primarily for speculative activities. Users invest, borrow and trade crypto assets in a largely unregulated environment. The absence of controls such as Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering rules, might well be one important factor in DeFi’s growth.”

Agustín Carstens, general manager of the Bank of International Settlements (BIS)

“We made the move to the corporate balance sheet on a Bitcoin-standard back in August of 2020, and since then, we’re up more than 300 percent on our initial investment. […] It’s really done its job of protecting us against inflation and it worked as we intended it to.”

Aly Hamam, co-owner of Tahini’s restaurant chain

“While most tend to focus on high-profile ransomware attacks against big corporations and government agencies, cybercriminals are using less sophisticated types of malware to steal millions in cryptocurrency from individual holders.”

Chainalysis

“We’re not sellers. […] We’re only acquiring and holding Bitcoin, right? That’s our strategy.”

Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy

“The reason why regulators have to limit advertising is probably because of such high demand. Most of our  users come from word of mouth anyway. […] So, I don’t think it’s going to have a huge impact.”

Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance

Prediction of the Week 

Nations to adopt Bitcoin, crypto users to reach 1B by 2023: Report

After trading sideways for most of the week, Bitcoin’s price nosedived on Thursday and continued lower on Friday. BTC dropped from $43,596 down to $38,251 inside of Thursday, according to Cointelegraph’s BTC price index, before reaching new six-month lows on Saturday. January has largely been a downward and sideways month for Bitcoin’s price action, which is not unlike its historical price performance during the month. 

One report Cointelegraph covered this week, however, sees potential for further crypto adoption in 2022. Digital currency exchange Crypto.com produced a report showing a large uptick in crypto industry participants in 2021. According to the firm, there were 295 million crypto owners at the end of 2021, up from 106 million in the first month of the year. Crypto.com believes crypto ownership could surpass 1 billion this year. 

“Nations can no longer afford to ignore the growing push towards crypto by the public,” the report said.

FUD of the Week 

Crypto.com shares details on security breach: 483 accounts compromised

Crypto.com revealed details about its security breach that resulted in the loss of roughly $33.8 million worth of digital assets on Monday. The firm initially halted withdrawals on the platform and revoked all customer two-factor authentication (2FA) tokens after spotting “unauthorized activity on a small number of user accounts.”

In a statement on Thursday, Crypto.com said that 483 accounts had been compromised, with “4,836.26 ETH, 443.93 BTC and approximately US$66,200 in other currencies” stolen from clients.

The firm stated that it has now implemented an additional layer of protection in which a new whitelisted withdrawal address must be registered within 24 hours before the first withdrawal. It is unclear if that solution will soothe the users who had their funds drained already.

Singapore bars crypto service providers from advertising in public spaces

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) issued a new set of guidelines on Monday for digital payment token (DPT) providers, barring them from marketing their services in public places, such as on public transportation, social media platforms and broadcast and print media.

MAS also warned the public of the high-risk nature of crypto assets as it introduced new guidelines that will apply to all registered crypto service providers as well as those that are in a transitional period. The guidelines stipulated:

“MAS stresses that DPT service providers should conduct themselves with the understanding that trading of DPTs is not suitable for the general public. These Guidelines set out MAS’ expectation that DPT service providers should not promote their DPT services to the general public in Singapore.”

EU securities regulator calls for proof-of-work crypto mining ban

In a recent interview, European Securities and Markets Authority vice chair Erik Thedéen raised concerns over the growing use of renewable energy in Bitcoin mining.

Thedéen asserted that Bitcoin mining has become a “national issue” and sounded the alarm over crypto potentially undermining climate change goals. He specifically took aim at proof-of-work (PoW) mining, which is primarily used by Bitcoin and a few other forked altcoins.

He advocated for proof-of-stake (PoS) as a better, energy-efficient alternative, with some commentators suggesting that he could be a secret Ether bull waiting for the rollout of Eth2 later this year. (As a refresh: Eth2 will transition the Ethereum network from PoW to PoS.)

“We need to have a discussion about shifting the industry to a more efficient technology,” he said.

Best Cointelegraph Features

Blockchain assessment: How to assess different chains?

Before investing your valuable resources, you should assess blockchain projects based on various factors, including community, use case, the team and longevity, among other factors. 

Early birds: US legislators invested in crypto and their digital asset politics

United States lawmakers remain underinvested in crypto, but this is likely to change in 2022.

MiamiCoin has now raised $24.7 million… but who will benefit?

CityCoins presented an overview of MiamiCoin technology on the third day of The North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami, Florida.

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Binance CEO’s net worth hits $96B, Jack Dorsey launches BTC defense fund, Bill Miller apes into Bitcoin: Hodler’s Digest, Jan. 9-15

by Cointelegraph

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

Binance CEO CZ is the richest crypto billionaire at $96B: Bloomberg

Bloomberg has estimated Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao — also known as “CZ”— to be the 11th-richest person in the world at a net worth of around $96 billion, making him the wealthiest billionaire in crypto. 

However, Bloomberg’s tabulation excluded CZ’s personal holdings of crypto assets such as Bitcoin and Binance Coin, suggesting that the $96 billion could become much larger in the future. 

To make the list of the top 10 richest people, CZ will need to look under his sofa and find a spare $11 billion to surpass Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. Topping the list is South African bad boy and Tesla co-founder Elon Musk, who has accumulated $263 billion on the back of the success of his heavily subsidized electric vehicle company.

Disney patents technology for a theme park metaverse

Disney has obtained a patent that will enable the creation of personalized interactive attractions for its theme park visitors. 

The technology could reportedly be used to develop licensed, headset-free augmented reality attractions, involving such features as personalized 3D effects displayed on physical spaces across its parks that correspond with visitors’ journeys to different locations. 

The patent, dubbed the “Virtual-world Simulator,” was filed in the United States. It appears the move is part of Disney’s broader push to enter the metaverse sector, with CEO Bob Chapek noting in a Q4 conference call last year: 

“We’ll be able to connect the physical and digital worlds even more closely, allowing for storytelling without boundaries in our own Disney metaverse.”

Billionaire investor Bill Miller puts 50% of net worth in Bitcoin

Famous investor Bill Miller has now put 50% of his net worth in Bitcoin, as well as major industry firms like Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy and BTC mining firm Stronghold Digital Mining.

Miller was an early investor in Amazon, which he says still accounts for nearly 100% of the rest of his portfolio. He said he’s been gradually accumulating Bitcoin since the price hit $30,000 in mid-2021. 

The investor stated that he no longer considers himself just a “Bitcoin observer” but rather a real Bitcoin bull. Miller initially bought his first Bitcoin back in 2014 when BTC was trading around $200 and then purchased a “little bit more overtime” when it became $500.

Tonga to copy El Salvador bill making Bitcoin legal tender, says former MP

Former Tongan member of parliament Lord Fusitu’a outlined a bill for Bitcoin to become legal tender in the island nation. Fusitu’a stated that the country’s Bitcoin bill is almost “identical” to the one that was enacted in El Salvador. 

Fusitu’a, who currently serves as chairman of the Oceania chapter of the Global Organization of Parliamentarians Against Corruption, outlined five points in the roadmap for the bill’s adoption, predicting that it will pass in parliament around September or October, and potentially be legislated by the end of 2022 if all goes to plan. 

In 2021, it was widely speculated that Tonga would become one of the next countries to adopt BTC as legal tender, and optimism appears to be high among Tongans in 2022.

Jack Dorsey announces Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund

Former Twitter CEO, Bitcoin maxi and Block founder Jack Dorsey announced plans to create a “Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund” with Chaincode Labs co-founder Alex Morcos and University of Sussex academic Martin White.

The announcement, shared via Dorsey’s mailing list, states that the fund will help provide a legal defense for Bitcoin developers, who are “currently the subject of multi-front litigation.” 

“The main purpose of this Fund is to defend developers from lawsuits regarding their activities in the Bitcoin ecosystem, including finding and retaining defense counsel, developing litigation strategy, and paying legal bills,” the announcement stated.

Winners and Losers

At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $43,121, Ether (ETH) at $3,292 and XRP at $0.77. The total market cap is at $2.05 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap.

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Oasis Network (ROSE) at 47.47%, Secret (SCRT) at 32.23% and NEAR Protocol (NEAR) at 25.73%. 

The top three altcoin losers of the week are Loopring (LRC) at -14.23%, yearn.finance (YFI) at -13.52% and Ravencoin (RVN) at -13.01%.

For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.

Most Memorable Quotations

“It’s more going to be an exercise in asking questions and seeking input from the public rather than taking a lot of positions on various issues, although we do take some positions.”

Jerome Powell, chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, on the Fed’s upcoming digital currency report

“Centralization is antithetical to the ethos of DeFi and poses major security risks. Single points of failure can be exploited by dedicated hackers and malicious insiders alike.”

CertiK

“We’re already at a quarter of that number, so we’ve got 24% of Americans owning Bitcoin. It won’t be that much of a stretch for it to get to a third. Bitcoin is becoming more and more mainstream. People are hearing about it everywhere — it isn’t going away.”

Ric Edelman, founder of Edelman Financial Engines

“Wikipedia really can’t be in the business of deciding what counts as art or not, which is why putting NFTs, art or not, in their own list makes things a lot simpler.”

Jonas, Wikipedia editor

“Solana prioritizes scalability, but a relatively less decentralized and secure blockchain has tradeoffs, illustrated by several network performance issues since inception.”

Alkesh Shah, digital asset strategist for Bank of America

“The number of addresses with the minimum number of Bitcoin is actually growing compared to the number of whales. I think you get a profound retail trend everywhere in the world; people onboarding Bitcoin, they trust Bitcoin more and more. It’s really the people that will push the price up.” 

Pascal Gauthier, CEO of Ledger

“Subsequent employee surveys made it clear: recharge weeks work.”

L.J. Brock, chief people officer at Coinbase

“Most cryptocurrency investors are ready to pay tax but are concerned whether their move will violate the Revenue Code.”

Suppakrit Boonsat, president of the Thai Digital Asset Association

Prediction of the Week 

Traders say Bitcoin run to $44K may be a relief bounce, citing a repeat of December’s ‘nuke’

Bitcoin had somewhat of a rocky trading week, as the flagship cryptocurrency fell to a price of $39,675 on Monday, according to Cointelegraph’s BTC price index. BTC found itself priced at $44,315 by Wednesday. The asset hit $44,448 on Thursday before subsequently dropping later in the week. 

Although Bitcoin’s price increased on Tuesday, its Wednesday rally came on the same day it was reported that U.S. inflation rose at an annual pace of 7% in December, the highest in 40 years.  

Even though Bitcoin’s price rallied in the days following Monday’s drop below $40,000, the potential for further downward action remains a possibility as of Wednesday, according to widely-followed Twitter personality Material Scientist.

“Remainder of bids was just pulled,” one of the tweets stated. “Either they’re done accumulating and use liquidity to chase now, or we see the same thing as in late November (pulled bids + stacked asks a few days later).”

In the case of Bitcoin trading, bids refer to buyer demand seen on exchange order books. Following its $68,969 peak in November 2021, BTC declined notably through the rest of the month, falling down to $41,614 by early December.

FUD of the Week 

LCX loses $6.8M in a hot wallet compromise over Ethereum blockchain

Liechtenstein-based crypto exchange LCX confirmed on Sunday that one of its hot wallets was compromised after the platform temporarily suspended all deposits and withdrawals. 

The hack was initially highlighted by blockchain security firm PeckShield, which spotted a suspicious transfer of ERC-20 tokens from LCX to an unknown Ethereum wallet. The compromise was then promptly confirmed by LCX, which announced that several crypto tokens were compromised, including Ether, USD Coin (USDC), Sandbox (SAND) and its native LCX token. 

According to an investigation by PeckShield, LCX lost a total of around $6.8 million via the hot wallet hack.

FTC issues public warning about new crypto ATM scam

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) posted an alert earlier this week regarding a new crypto ATM scam that involves nefarious QR codes. 

The FTC stated that the scam starts with fraudsters impersonating figures, such as public officials, law enforcement agents, or potential dating partners on dating apps, who all spin various fables to dupe the victim into sending crypto.

If the victim falls for the fake story, they are directed to withdraw cash and then head to a crypto ATM and purchase some crypto. Once they purchase the crypto, the fraudster shares a QR code with the victim that diverts the funds back to the scammer upon scanning.    

“Here’s the main thing to know: nobody from the government, law enforcement, utility company or prize promoter will ever tell you to pay them with cryptocurrency. If someone does, it’s a scam, every time,” the FTC said.

Pakistan’s central bank reportedly wants to ban crypto

According to reports from local media outlets, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) wants to ban all crypto transactions in Pakistan, arguing that assets such as Bitcoin are illegal and shouldn’t be used for trade.

Pakistan’s Sindh High Court reportedly held a hearing related to the legal status of crypto in the country, with several Pakistani authorities, including the SBP, calling for a ban on the sector via a document submitted to the court. 

Alongside the usual tropes of investor protection and money laundering and terrorism concerns, the document urged the court to follow the model of countries such as China, whose government has stamped out the local crypto sector to pave way for a spawn of satan central bank digital currency (CBDC).

Best Cointelegraph Features

QuickSwap founder: L2s are the path to mass adoption

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Green and gold: The crypto projects saving the planet

As the world argued about the ethics of crypto, these projects changed the world for the better during 2021.

Volcanos, Bitcoin and remittances: A Tongan lord plans for financial security

A former lawmaker from the island nation wants to use Bitcoin to secure his country’s financial security.

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SEC delays spot Bitcoin ETF decisions, Nike enters Metaverse arena, and a crypto exchange gets hacked: Hodler’s Digest, Dec. 12-18

by Cointelegraph

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

Russia to decide between blanket crypto ban and legalizing exchanges in 2022

A recent report shows that Russia could potentially see a countrywide ban on cryptocurrency. Alternatively, it’s possible that crypto trading via regulated exchanges may continue under strict oversight. 

On the one hand, Russia’s central bank is said to be behind a potential move to make crypto illegal in the country, according to Reuters. On the other hand, Anatoly Aksakov, who heads the Russian parliament’s Committee on Financial Markets, publicly disclosed that the industry may continue to operate under regulations that would ensure greater tax compliance. However, Aksakov left open the possibility of an outright ban.

US Senate confirms CFTC chair as President Biden announces commissioner picks

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) now has a permanent chairman following approvals by the United States Senate. On Thursday, Rostin Behnam, who had been serving as acting chairman, was given the permanent position. The CFTC is one of three U.S. governing bodies responsible for crypto industry regulatory oversight.  

Behnam has previously commented on the crypto space, noting that the CFTC should focus more on the sector. He noted in October: “Given the size, the scope and the scale of this emerging market, how it’s interfacing and affecting retail customers, and with the scale of the growth being so rapid, potential financial stability risks in the future, I think it’s critically important to have a primary cop on the beat.”

The CFTC’s overall brass is also changing. In the coming months, four CFTC commissioner spots must be filled, which is a large number given that the regulatory body typically carries five commissioners.

NYDIG raises $1B in funding, valuation now $7B

New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG) is now worth roughly $7 billion after the company successfully raised $1 billion from WestCap and other venture investors. Led by co-founder and CEO Robert “Robby” Gutmann, NYDIG is a company dedicated to providing access to investment opportunities centered around Bitcoin (BTC).

“NYDIG plays a unique role in the industry, empowering companies of all types to incorporate Bitcoin in a secure and compliant way,” WestCap partner Scott Ganeles said in a public statement announcing NYDIG’s additional capital achievement. “We are proud to partner with Robby and his outstanding NYDIG team as they forge new paths to accessibility and further accelerate Bitcoin adoption.”

Just did it: Nike enters the Metaverse game following RTFKT acquisition

Sports apparel company Nike officially joined the Metaverse this week by acquiring virtual sneakers and collectibles brand RTFKT. 

Prior to the move, Nike expressed strong interest in this emerging market by pursuing Metaverse-specific patent and trademark filings for its logo. The company also publicized a job search for people with specific Metaverse expertise. 

“Our plan is to invest in the RTFKT brand, serve and grow their innovative and creative community and extend Nike’s digital footprint and capabilities,” Nike’s CEO and president John Donahoe said.

SEC delays decisions on Bitwise and Grayscale’s Bitcoin ETFs

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has decided to delay a verdict on two physically-backed Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) until February 2022. The Commission published its decision on Wednesday. 

The two ETF applications were filed by Bitwise Asset Management and Grayscale. Whereas Bitwise aimed to introduce an entirely new spot Bitcoin ETF, Grayscale intended to create a spot offering by repurposing its current Grayscale Bitcoin Trust product.

The SEC has turned down multiple Bitcoin spot ETF applications in 2021. The Commission delayed one such product from WisdomTree earlier in 2021, only to deny it in December.

Winners and Losers

At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $46,292, Ether (ETH) at $3,852 and XRP at $0.79. The total market cap is at $2.16 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap. 

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are yearn.finance (YFI) at 52.51%, OKB (OKB) at 31.83% and Avalanche (AVAX) at 29.75%. 

The top three altcoin losers of the week are Decred (DCR) at -22.85%, Theta Fuel (TFUEL) at -17.98% and BitTorrent (BTT) at -17.65%.

For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.

Most Memorable Quotations

“DeFi is the most dangerous part of the crypto world. This is where the regulation is effectively absent, and — no surprise — it’s where the scammers and the cheats and the swindlers mix among part-time investors and first-time crypto traders. In DeFi, someone can’t even tell if they’re dealing with a terrorist.”

Elizabeth Warren, U.S. senator 

“I argue that we are winning [the digital currency] race because of the sum of free-market activity taking place inside the U.S. regulatory perimeter with digital currencies and blockchain-based financial services. The sum of these activities are advancing broad U.S. economic competitiveness and national security interests.”

Dante Disparte, head of global policy and chief strategy officer at Circle

“Stablecoins can certainly be a useful, efficient, consumer-serving part of the financial system if they’re properly regulated. Right now, they aren’t. They have the potential to scale, particularly if they were to be associated with one of the very large tech networks that exist.”

Jerome Powell, U.S. Federal Reserve chair

“Bitcoin is not a good substitute for transactional currency. Even though it was created as a silly joke, Dogecoin is better suited for transactions. The total transaction flow that you do with Dogecoin, like transactions per day, has much higher potential than Bitcoin.”

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla

“[Crypto] companies have the cash and have been bidding away very senior talent who only have one or two years of crypto experience with offers that they cannot turn down.”

Adrianna Huehnergarth, engagement manager for Heidrick & Struggles

“The beauty of crypto is that you can be based anywhere. There is this community approach regardless of where you kick-start a flywheel from.”

Matt Zhang, founder of Hivemind Capital Partners 

“Cryptocurrencies cannot become a means of payment.”

Sethaput Suthiwartnarueput, governor for the Bank of Thailand

Prediction of the Week 

Here’s why Bitcoin traders expect choppy markets for the remainder of 2021

Bitcoin’s price has been on a rollercoaster the past week. The coin saw prices as high as almost $51,000, while also visiting levels below $46,000, based on Cointelegraph’s BTC price index. 

According to a report from Delphi Digital, Bitcoin’s price could finish out the year trading relatively sideways. The firm noted the recent spike in stablecoin transactions as reason to be cautious. Much like the May 2021 price crash, current market conditions are defined by much higher than normal stablecoin volumes, presumably as investors exit BTC positions and enter into stablecoins.

The “most likely path forward” for BTC in the short term is choppy or sideways action, Delphi Digital stated. However, any major risk-off event in the broader market could negatively impact the leading digital currency.

FUD of the Week 

Indian prime minister Modi’s hacked Twitter account attempts BTC scam

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi suffered a Twitter account hack on Dec. 12. Although the nefarious party only had control of the account for a short period of time, they were able to send out a scam tweet from the account, proclaiming false news. 

The hackers tweeted that India had picked up Bitcoin as an official currency — a sizable lie considering the headlines El Salvador made in the lead-up to actually adopting BTC as legal tender in September 2021. The tweet sent out by the hackers included a lie about India purchasing hundreds of BTC, as well as an external link.

Modi also suffered a Twitter account hack in September 2020. 

AscendEX loses $80M following ERC-20, BSC, Polygon hot wallet compromise

Hackers recently siphoned nearly $80 million in digital assets from crypto trading platform AscendEX. Estimates from analytics outfit PeckShield put the total number of stolen crypto assets at $77.7 million. The sum consists of $8.5 million worth of Polygon-based tokens, $9.2 million of Binance Smart Chain-based tokens and $60 million worth of Ethereum-based tokens.

The pillage affected the platform’s hot wallet but not its cold storage amounts, as per a tweet from the crypto platform on Dec. 11. AscendEX also noted in the same tweet that customers who lost funds would be covered by the platform.

UK advertising watchdog bans crypto ads for Coinbase and Kraken

Coinbase, Kraken and several other crypto-involved companies received backlash from the United Kingdom’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for certain advertisements. The ASA claimed the ads did not adequately provide viewers with proper risk warnings, and that they preyed on viewers who lacked crypto expertise.  

One ad from Coinbase Europe noted the large profit outcome an early Bitcoin investment would have yielded if held until 2021. The ASA pushed back on the ad, essentially saying it made it look like the future would hold similar profit potential. The ASA also pointed out that the ad lacked an explanation that the future does not promise the same rewards reaped in the past.

Best Cointelegraph Features

The Metaverse will bring unbridled evolution to NFTs

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A letter to Zuckerberg: The Metaverse is not what you think it is

“Because the crypto space is largely a challenge to central banks, at least in a lot of people’s minds, then anything that happens in banking and finance is interesting to us.”

Daft Punk meets CryptoPunks as Novo faces up to NFTs

“When it was finally time to take off the mask and get on the plane home, it was weird.”

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Vitalik Buterin outlines path to ETH 2.0, Visa launches crypto advisory service, Biden’s anti-crypto nominee for Comptroller withdraws: Hodler’s Digest, Dec. 5-11

by Cointelegraph

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

Vitalik Buterin outlines ‘endgame’ roadmap for ETH 2.0

With the long-awaited transition to Eth2 coming closer to fruition, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin outlined an “Endgame” roadmap on Monday to finally achieve the landmark upgrade. 

While Buterin did not address the centralization issue with block production as the network works towards scalability, the 27-year-old essentially solved everything else to do with block validation.  

He suggested the idea of implementing “a second tier of staking, with low resource requirements” to carry out distributed block validation; introducing “either fraud proofs or ZK-SNARKS to let users directly (and cheaply) check block validity;” and introducing “data availability sampling to let users check block availability [and] add secondary transaction channels to prevent censorship.”

“We get a chain where block production is still centralized, but block validation is trustless and highly decentralized, and specialized anti-censorship magic prevents the block producers from censoring,” Buterin explained.

Coinbase adds ‘ETH2’ despite Ethereum upgrade postponing difficulty bomb

Speaking of Eth2, major crypto exchange Coinbase added a mirror version of Ethereum’s native token, ETH, labeled Eth2, to its crypto price index on Tuesday. The new listing had no trading activity but was priced the same as ETH. 

Despite the rollout of Eth2 not being expected until at least mid-2022, Coinbase listed a token bearing its name just days ahead of the smart contract network’s “Arrow Glacier” upgrade that will give devs more time to work on the groundwork for Ethereum 2.0. 

On Thursday, Coinbase also announced that it will be expanding the platform’s support to crypto hardware wallets starting with Ledger’s models. The rollout will be phased in gradually from the start of 2022.

Major Indian bank breaks ‘banking ban’ with WazirX crypto exchange deal

According to reports from local media outlets, India’s leading private bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, became the first of its kind to partner with a crypto firm after it penned a deal with top crypto exchange WazirX. 

The deal, which enables traders to liquidate their digital assets via Kotak’s banking services, marks a major milestone for a local crypto industry that has been bogged down by countless issues presented by the banking sector and the Indian government. 

“WazirX has opened an account with Kotak which can be used to receive and pay money to investors trading on the exchange. The account is yet to become operational. Paperwork, KYC, and some testing are on,” said one of the people familiar with the matter.

Biden’s controversial anti-crypto Comptroller nominee withdraws

President Joe Biden’s crypto skeptic nominee for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Saule Omarova, withdrew her candidacy from consideration on Tuesday. 

Omarova is a divisive figure who has essentially called for the banking and crypto sectors to be gutted on many occasions, often sparking widespread pushback from Republican politicians who hold opposing views and have tacitly accused the professor of harboring Marxist sympathies.

Commenting on her withdrawal from the candidacy, Biden said that “Saule was subjected to inappropriate personal attacks that were far beyond the pale.”

Visa announces new crypto consulting service for merchants and banks

On Wednesday, global payments giant Visa unveiled a new consulting and advisory service for crypto-curious firms, financial institutions and retailers that are looking to take the plunge into the sector. 

Visa said that its crypto-focused advisory services can advise on anything from crypto features and services to NFTs and CBDC-focused digital wallets. 

According to Visa, the company’s interest in crypto is driven by the need to remain competitive and meet consumer demand. Citing a recent in-house study, Visa said that “40% of crypto owners surveyed report they would be likely or very likely to switch their primary bank to one that offers crypto-related products in the next 12 months.”

Winners and Losers

At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $47,524, Ether (ETH) at $3,956 and XRP at $0.81. The total market cap is at $2.20 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap. 

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are NEAR Protocol (NEAR) at 6.44%, Huobi Token (HT) at 5.11% and BitTorrent (BTT) at 4.61%.  

The top three altcoin losers of the week are THETA (THETA) at -32.53%, Cosmos (ATOM) at -32.04% and Qtum (QTUM) at -31.65%.

For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.

Most Memorable Quotations

“If DeFi were to become widespread, its vulnerabilities might undermine financial stability. These can be severe because of high leverage, liquidity mismatches, built-in interconnectedness and the lack of shock absorbers such as banks.”

Bank of International Settlement

“I do think that once regulation comes on board, we’ll see a whole new class of investors into this space. And I think that’s what we’ve seen in other jurisdictions, like over in Singapore.”

Adrian Przelozny, CEO of Independent Reserve

“$100,000 by the end of the year is a difficult prediction to make. […] I think $100,000 could be in target in 2022 but this year, I’m not so sure.”

Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise

“Because we have access to sensitive information and upcoming policy, I do not believe members of Congress should hold/trade individual stock and I choose not to hold any so I can remain impartial about policy making. […] I also extend that to digital assets/currencies (especially bc I sit on Financial Services Committee).”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), U.S. House of Representatives’ Financial Services Committee member

“We don’t want banks to be directly involved in digital asset trading because banks are [responsible] for customer deposits and the public and there is risk.”

Chayawadee Chai-Anant, senior director at the Bank of Thailand

“In a world where money becomes a core feature of the internet, the U.S. should aggressively promote the use of the dollar as the primary currency of the internet, and leverage that as a source of national economic competitiveness, security and a major upgrade needed for more efficient and inclusive financial services.”

Jeremy Allaire, CEO and co-founder of Circle

“We don’t need knee-jerk reactions by lawmakers to regulate out of fear of the unknown rather than seeking to understand.”

Patrick McHenry, U.S. representative

“The point of crypto is to have true decentralization, and the projects that succeed will be the projects that achieve that.”

Brian Brooks, CEO of Bitfury

Prediction of the Week 

Bitcoin could ‘drive people nuts’ for months with $53K BTC price ceiling — analyst

Over the past couple of weeks, Bitcoin has suffered bouts of downward price action, reaching a low of $41,614 on Dec. 3, according to Cointelegraph’s Bitcoin price index. Since then, BTC’s price has traveled in a range between $46,000 and $52,000. 

On Monday, crypto trader and podcaster Scott Melker, also known as The Wolf Of All Streets on Twitter, gave his thoughts on the Bitcoin market. 

Crypto’s top asset could potentially be rangebound between $42,000 and $53,000 for multiple months, Melker tweeted. On a broad level, the trader noted $53,000 as a hurdle to break above in order to continue on an upward price route for BTC. 

“Everything between the two numbers now is ranging chop that will drive traders into a panic,” Melker added. “People will be extremely bullish at 53K and bearish at 42K if either is reached.”

FUD of the Week 

Bitmart hacked for $200M following Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain exploit

Crypto exchange BitMart was the victim of a hot wallet hack that resulted in the loss of almost $200 million worth of digital assets. 

Blockchain security and data analytics firm PeckShield first highlighted the hack on Sunday after it identified two nefarious transfers worth $100 million on Ethereum and $96 million on the Binance Smart Chain. According to the company, the hack was a straightforward case of transfer out, swap, and wash. 

The hackers made away with a mix of over 20 tokens, including Binance Coin, Safemoon, BSC-USD and BNBPay, along with large amounts of meme coins such as BabyDoge and Floki Inu.

India to set maximum penalty for violating crypto norms at fine of $2.7 million or 1.5 years in jail

According to reports from Bloomberg’s Indian unit, BloombergQuint, the local government may soon outline penalties for non-compliance to its upcoming crypto policies. The publication noted that the punishments could range from a maximum fine of 20 crore rupees ($2.7 million) or 1.5 years in jail.

While the regulatory landscape is currently opaque in India, it has been previously reported that Indian investors may soon have to shift their crypto holdings to exchanges that are regulated under the oversight of the Securities and Exchange Board of India.

Pundits are expecting Prime Minister Narendra Modi to give crypto investors a deadline to comply with the new rules and declare their assets before cracking down on any misbehavior.

Gamer-hate: Ubisoft’s new NFT project vid gets 96% dislike ratio

Gaming giant Ubisoft saw major pushback this week from the gaming community after it announced its new NFT project dubbed “Quartz” on Wednesday. It appears that fans of the company were peeved at what they perceived as a quick cash grab, with thousands of people threatening to boycott the company. 

The Assassin’s Creed developer’s YouTube video introducing the new project and roll-out of its usable in-game NFTs named “Digitz” received a 96% dislike video ratio. In fact, comments slamming the project received more likes than the video itself, with user “OperatorDrewski” commenting that: 

“To me, this is a blatant signal that you’re just milking the Ghost Recon franchise for literally every cent while putting in minimal effort into the actual game itself. Not playing a GR game in the future if there’s this level of degeneracy in the team.”

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Jack Dorsey steps down from Twitter, MicroStrategy snaps up 7K BTC and Square rebrands to Block: Hodler’s Digest, Nov. 28-Dec. 4

by Cointelegraph

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

Jack Dorsey has stepped down as Twitter CEO

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey announced Monday that he has stepped down from his role as CEO. Replacing Dorsey will be Twitter board member and chief technology officer Parag Agrawal, who was unanimously appointed to CEO by the company’s board of directors.  

Dorsey also serves as the CEO and chairman of crypto-friendly payments tech firm Square, and it is unclear if he left Twitter to solely focus on the platform’s plans to develop a decentralized Bitcoin (BTC) exchange. He did note, however, that the company does not need to be founder-led to thrive.  

“I believe it’s really important to give Parag the space he needs to lead,” said Dorsey. “I believe it’s critical a company can stand on its own, free of its founder’s influence or direction.”

Former Citi banker launches $1.5B crypto fund, taps Algorand as first partner

On Monday, 14-year Wall Street veteran and former Citi banking executive Matt Zhang announced a $1.5 billion multi-strategy fund called Hivemind Capital Partners that is aiming to support up-and-coming crypto projects.  

In particular, the fund will place a strong emphasis on crypto infrastructure builders, virtual worlds and Metaverse projects, and programmable money. The fund’s first technology partner will be proof-of-stake-based blockchain Algorand. 

While Hivemind is yet to announce any major funding, Zhang said the firm will support crypto entrepreneurs with infrastructure that cannot currently be offered by traditional asset management models.

Square rebrands to Block as focus shifts to blockchain

Speaking of Square, the firm revealed on Wednesday that it had rebranded to Block, suggesting it may be ramping up its focus on the blockchain sector. 

The company said the rebrand will bring the payments firm together with Cash App, the decentralized Bitcoin exchange project tbDEX, and music and video streaming platform Tidal. As part of the rebrand, Square Crypto, the cryptocurrency-focused unit of the payments firm, will be changing its name to Spiral and joining the Block family.

“Block references the neighborhood blocks where we find our sellers, a blockchain, block parties full of music, obstacles to overcome, a section of code, building blocks, and of course, tungsten cubes,” said Square.

MicroStrategy purchases $414.4 million worth of Bitcoin, with total BTC balance eclipsing $3.5 billion

MicroStrategy, the analytics software firm led by fervent Bitcoin bull Michael Saylor, announced on Monday that it had snapped up a 7,002 BTC worth $414.4 million. 

After the purchase, Saylor stated that the company’s total BTC holdings stood at a whopping 121,044, acquired for roughly $3.57 billion at an average price of $29,534 per BTC. To fund that latest shopping spree for digital gold, the firm sold 571,001 shares of company stock between Oct. 1 and Nov. 29 at $732.16 apiece. 

MicroStrategy first bought Bitcoin back in August 2020 as part of its treasury strategy, and with Saylor at the helm, the firm has purchased the asset relentlessly since—regardless of price—and is showing no signs of slowing down any time soon.

Meta expands crypto advertisement eligibility on Facebook

Social media virtual reality firm Meta expanded the eligibility requirements for running crypto ad campaigns on Facebook and Instagram this week, enabling companies more freedom in running digital asset product-related promotions. 

Prior to Meta’s latest update of its crypto advertising guidelines, a limited number of crypto firms were able to advertise on Facebook as the platform only recognized a small number of regulatory licenses. 

According to the updated policy, crypto exchanges, trading platforms, wallet providers, mining infrastructure firms, crypto lenders and borrowing services can now receive written permission to run ads on Facebook. The firm cited maturation and increased regulation of the sector as the reasons why it changed its tune.

Winners and Losers

At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $55,468, Ether (ETH) at $4,407 and XRP at $0.95. The total market cap is at $2.54 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap.

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Terra (LUNA) at 62.30%, Stacks (STX) at 33.85% and Polygon (MATIC) at 29.04%. 

The top three altcoin losers of the week are Gala (GALA) at -30.67%, WAX (WAXP) at -19.18% and Immutable X (IMX) at -17.85%.

For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.

Most Memorable Quotations

“There are certain services that we have that don’t really fit the regulatory mold. So there’s this gray area that the whole industry exists in, and that’s not specific to us. […] That’s just the nature of the fact that we’re dealing with an innovative technology that really doesn’t necessarily fit the criteria that existing regulators perceive as possible.”

Jonathon Miller, managing director for Kraken Australia

“A CBDC would be one of the tools to fight crypto. […] We assume that people would find CBDC more credible than crypto. CBDC would be part of an effort to address the use of crypto in financial transactions.”

Juda Agung, assistant governor of Bank Indonesia

“If a coin has a large number of users, then we will list it. That’s the overwhelming significant attribute. Consider, for example, meme tokens; even though I personally don’t get it, if it’s used by a large number of users, we list it. We go by the community, my opinion doesn’t matter.”

Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance

“There’s always hope for the Chinese crypto industry. We still have information sources and we keep getting more and more users, evangelists, developers and others. There’s nothing to worry about. Everything happens for the best.”

Anonymous, executive at a Chinese crypto publication 

“It is one thing to say that a stablecoin issuer itself must be a regulated bank — I think that is probably overkill, as there are perfectly effective ways for nonbanks to meet our legitimate regulatory concerns, but there is at least a clear relation between the existing framework of bank regulation and the specific measures that stablecoin issuers must address to operate safely. It is, however, quite another thing to contemplate that wallet providers may need to be completely separated from commercial firms.”

Randal Quarles, exiting U.S. Federal Reserve governor

“Innovations are coming, proof-of-stake is much more computational efficient and low on energy consumption. Innovation is key here and it is coming.”

Gary Nuttall, emerging technology consultant at Distyltics

“Cryptocurrency may be tricky to understand, but the value of a major crypto donation converted into cash is not.”

James Lawrence, co-founder and CEO of Engiven

“Undoubtedly, metaverse land is the next big hit in the NFT space. Outputting record sales numbers and constantly increasing NFT prices, virtual worlds are the new top commodity in the crypto space.”

DappRadar post

Prediction of the Week 

Bitcoin tests traders’ nerves as analyst reissues $400K BTC price forecast

Bitcoin started the week on Nov. 28 with a drop from nearly $55,000 down to almost $53,300, followed by a push up past $58,000, according to Cointelegraph’s Bitcoin price index. Following Sunday’s price action, most of the rest of the week saw BTC trade in a range between $55,800 and $59,300.

In a Wednesday tweet, crypto trader Michaël van de Poppe gave his thoughts on the crypto market, noting a desire to see sub-$60,000 BTC turn to support. 

“It’s very simple. Below $60K I’ve remained cautious/bearish as I’d like to see that area flip,” he tweeted. “Levels to watch for buys; $53K-54K zone and $47-50K zones for #Bitcoin,” he added. “When to buy #altcoins? December. Nothing has changed past weeks.” 

In a separate tweet on Wednesday, van de Poppe also provided his thoughts on a few possible price targets for the bull cycle top, noting price ranges between $350,000 and $450,000 for Bitcoin and between $10,000 and $17,500 for Ethereum, in addition to ranges for other assets as well. He tweeted out the same list with the same numbers back in April 2021, with the exception of Elrond, for which the new list gave an updated possible price range target.

FUD of the Week 

Vladimir Putin says cryptocurrencies ‘bear high risks’

Russian President Vladimir Putin, a man with a squeaky-clean reputation who has most certainly never engaged in any nefarious activity, took time out of his busy schedule this week to voice his concerns over the risky nature of crypto speculation. 

According to reports from local media outlets on Tuesday, Putin aimed criticism at the “Russia Calling!” investment forum in Moscow. The 69-year-old called for greater monitoring and regulation of crypto in Russia and astutely pointed out that certain countries are seeing significant adoption of digital currencies.

“It is not backed by anything, [and] the volatility is colossal, so the risks are very high,” he said. “We also believe that we need to listen to those who talk about those high risks.”

Bitcoin fails ‘worst-case scenario’ monthly close for the first time, starts December sub-$57K

Bitcoin failed to hit the November closing price of $98,000 demanded by Twitter personality PlanB’s so-called “floor model.” With Bitcoin sitting at $57,000 on Nov. 30, the actual price was roughly 71% below the forecast price.

In a Wednesday Twitter post, PlanB noted that he would give his famous model one more month, but was adamant in stating that $100,000 per BTC is still “on track” by year-end as he pointed to the S2F model. He further explained:

“No model is perfect, but this is a big miss and the first in 10y! Outlier/black swan? I will give Floor model 1 more month. S2F model unaffected and on track to $100K. Watch out for trolls confusing Floor and S2F model!”

BadgerDAO reportedly suffers security breach and loses $10M

DeFi protocol BadgerDAO reportedly suffered a $10 million security breach this week, with users on Twitter highlighting a “nasty frontend attack” where funds had been taken out of people’s wallets using “rug approval” at about 2 a.m. UTC on Thursday. 

While BadgerDAO hadn’t officially confirmed the attack at the time, it said that all smart contracts on the platform had been paused to prevent additional potentially malicious withdrawals.

The malicious actors targeted the protocol on the Ethereum network at contract address 0x1fcdb04d0c5364fbd92c73ca8af9baa72c269107, and users that have interacted with this contract are urged to revoke permission from their wallet.

Best Cointelegraph Features

NFT art will never be mass-market — NFT licenses may be

NFT digital art sales generate headline after headline, though this is not the real mass-market use of this novel technology.

Lines in the sand: US Congress is bringing partisan politics to crypto

“There are too many members of Congress that don’t have enough of a base of understanding. Congress needs to come in and bring regulations to this space.”

Wear-to-earn NFTs target the billion-dollar fashion industry

Here’s how “wear-to-earn” NFTs will impact the fashion sector and what may happen if they become a trend.

Source

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NFT land sells for 550 ETH, eToro to delist ADA and 1M ETH burned since August: Hodler’s Digest, Nov. 21-27

by Cointelegraph

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

Axie Infinity virtual land slot sells out for 550 ETH

A plot of virtual land in the widely popular monster-battling NFT game Axie Infinity sold for 550 Ether (ETH) this week, with the sum worth more than $2.2 million at the time of writing. 

The piece of virtual land was purchased on Thursday and is classified as Genesis, the rarest form of virtual real estate available in the Axie Infinity ecosystem. The game enables players to use Pokémon-like Axie monster NFTs to battle other players or complete challenges to earn blockchain rewards. Users can also buy, sell or rent land to other players.

The game’s developers said on Thursday that they believed it was “the largest sum ever paid for a single plot of digital land.” However, a quick Google search shows that a piece of virtual real estate in Decentraland sold for 618,000 MANA ($2.9 million at current prices) the previous day.

eToro to delist Cardano by 2022 for US users due to regulatory concerns

Retail trading platform eToro announced on Tuesday that it will be delisting Cardano (ADA) and Tron (TRX) for U.S. customers by the end of the year due to regulatory concerns.

By the start of 2022, users will no longer be able to open new positions in the tokens or stake them. Additionally, wallets holding the assets will effectively be in withdrawal-only mode until the first quarter of 2022, when the selling will also become limited.

In the case of ADA, many onlookers were puzzled by the move, as the asset has never had any notable regulatory troubles or legal issues. Cardano has also worked to ramp up its regulatory compliance this year, partnering with blockchain analytics provider Confirm as part of a push to meet financial regulations.

Celsius expands funding round to $750M, tips $7B to $10B valuation in 2022

Celsius Network expanded its $400-million Series B funding round, undertaken in October, to $750 million earlier this week as a result of oversubscription in the firm’s capital raise.

CEO Alex Mashinsky told Cointelegraph that the firm’s valuation stands at $3.5 billion following the Series B, and bullishly predicted that Celsius will be worth “double or triple” that in 2022. 

Mashinsky pointed to the firm’s ability to provide services in almost every sector of crypto when highlighting the growth potential of the business. The company currently offers lending and DeFi services along with yields from its crypto mining business, and the CEO said it has plans to enter NFTs soon.

Shiba Inu team issues scam alert to SHIB investors

The team behind beloved memecoin Shiba Inu (SHIB) issued a public warning on Sunday against online scams that primarily target SHIB-curious altcoin investors.

The scammers are said to be circling on Twitter and Telegram, waiting for any chance to pounce on unwary investors by impersonating official accounts and targeting hashtags such as #shib, #shibarmy, #leash, #shibaswap and #bone.

Shiba Inu’s scam alert wanted users to be careful in fake Telegram groups in particular and noted that the official community is not offering any kind of promotions, including airdrops, bonuses, giveaways or gifts, and will not ask for any wallet keys and credentials.

1 million ETH has been burned since the implementation of EIP-1559 in August

Blockchain research firm CryptoRank highlighted on Wednesday that over 1 million Ether, worth around $4 billion, had been burned since the London hard fork went live in August. The upgrade to the network saw the introduction of a burning mechanism as part of Ethereum’s fee structure. 

According to CryptoRank, the platform responsible for wiping the most Ether out of existence was NFT marketplace OpenSea with 110,237 ETH ($439 million) burned, while decentralized exchange Uniswap V2 accounted for 97,583 ETH ($388 million).  

Data from Ultrasound Money shows that the current burn rate for Ethereum is 10,451 ETH per day, equating to 7.26 ETH per minute. While many onlookers said that the London hard fork would see ETH promptly become a deflationary asset, it appears there is much more room to burn. The current yearly burn rate is 3.8 million ETH compared to the 5.4 million ETH that is issued every 12 months.

Winners and Losers

At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $54,292, Ether (ETH) at $4,020 and XRP is at $0.94. The total market cap is at $2.43 trillion. 

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Gala (GALA) at 173.91%, Zcash (ZEC) at 58.07% and The Sandbox (SAND) at 57.88%. 

The top three altcoin losers of the week are Nexo (NEXO) at 22.53%, WAX (WAXP) at 21.17% and ICON (ICX) at 20.83%.

For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.

Most Memorable Quotations

“[An NFT is] a chunk of digital data that records who a piece of digital work belongs to. […] What’s really captured the public’s imagination around NFTs is the use of this technology to sell art.” 

Collins Dictionary  

“We thought that CME futures were going to be a very effective element of the portfolio. We never thought they would be effective when they would be 100% of the product.”

Anna Paglia, global head of ETFs and indexed strategies at Invesco 

“I’m actually not convinced, somewhat controversially I guess, that Dogecoin is good for the crypto market. […] Dogecoin has some inflationary dynamics itself that would make me reluctant to hold it.” 

Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple

“India is home to the highest number of crypto owners in the world, and the onus lies on the government to protect the interest of a large number of crypto investors in the country.”

Jay Hao, CEO of crypto exchange OKEx

“We see risks in participating [in the crypto sector], but we see bigger risks in not participating.”

Matt Comyn, CEO of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia

“I can tell you that being in a licensed jurisdiction is much better than being in an unlicensed jurisdiction. And this is because it really changes the conversations that we have with the partners that we get to work with.”

Adrian Przelozny, CEO of Independent Reserve, speaking on incoming regulation in Australia

“I don’t know what the solution is. But I do know for the millions of new users coming, they should not be shamed for going to other ecosystems. Neither should devs be shamed for building on them.”

Su Zhu, CEO and co-founder of Three Arrows Capital, commenting on the Ethereum network

“Finding a way to balance regulation that protects investors and innovation is hard, especially in a space where new financial offerings appear every few months.”

Yuriy Kovalev, CEO of Zenfuse

Prediction of the Week 

The Metaverse is a $1T opportunity after users increase 10x: Grayscale report

Crypto investment giant Grayscale published a bullish report on metaverses this week, predicting that the sector could become worth more than $1 trillion in the next few years once the tech becomes mainstream. 

The report argues that open metaverse platforms backed by an “interconnected crypto-economy,” such as native tokens, DeFi services, NFTs and decentralized governance, have “created a new online experience” that’s rapidly attracting new users.

Analyzing “global all-time active metaverse wallets” data since the start of 2020, Grayscale found the user base has grown by ten times to reach roughly 50,000 as of June 2021. 

“Compared to other Web 3.0 and Web 2.0 segments, Metaverse virtual world users are still in their early innings, but if current growth rates remain on their current trajectory, this emerging segment has the potential to become mainstream in the coming years,” the report read.

FUD of the Week 

You shall not pass: Tolkien estate blocks ‘The Lord of the Rings’ JRR Token

A The Lord of the Rings-themed “JRR Token” project was forced to close down this week following legal action from the family and estate of the famed series’ late author J. R. R. Tolkien.

The project heavily borrowed intellectual property from the beloved series, such as images of mythical rings, Hobbit holes, and a wizard looking eerily similar to Gandalf the Grey. The estate’s lawyer, Steve Maier, described the case as a “particularly flagrant case of infringement,” adding that the estate is “pleased that it has been concluded on satisfactory terms.” 

According to the settlement, developer Matthew Jensen promised to shut down the token and delete any content that infringes the estate’s trademark rights to the J. R. R. Tolkien name and intellectual property relating to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

Indian parliament’s agenda for winter session includes bill on banning ‘private cryptocurrencies’

According to reports from local media outlets, the Indian government will look at “The Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill” as part of a group of 26 bills this coming Monday. 

The bill proposes the prohibition of “all private cryptocurrencies” except for assets “to promote the underlying technology of cryptocurrency and its uses,” and is said to be part of a move to pave the way for the creation of an official digital currency from the government. 

In March 2020, India’s supreme court overturned a blanket ban on crypto imposed by the central bank two years prior, but local media states the government is now looking at alternative ways to regulate the sector as opposed to an outright ban.

Spanish regulator raises alarm on Binance promo by soccer star Iniesta

Andrés Iniesta, the legendary Spanish football player and former FC Barcelona star, was sent a warning this week from Spain’s financial watchdog, the Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores (CNMV), over his promotion of the Binance crypto exchange. 

On Wednesday, Iniesta posted some pictures of himself on Twitter pretending to use a laptop that featured the Binance homepage with the caption, “I’m learning how to get started with crypto with Binance.” 

In response, the CNMV wrote: “Hi Andres Iniesta, cryptoassets carry some significant risks due to being unregulated products.” It is unclear how bothered Iniesta was by this message, as it was most likely a paid promo for Binance.

Best Cointelegraph Features

Deterring adoption? Balancing security and innovation in crypto

Security is necessary to protect crypto users but regulators may force companies to adopt processes that stifle innovation.

Just buy it: Nike wants to bring sneakerheads into the Metaverse

Nike intends to sell you digital products in the Metaverse, and you will buy them because Nike knows how to make you want them.

Powers On… Why aren’t more law schools teaching blockchain, DeFi and NFTs?

To counsel clients involved in the DeFi space, wouldn’t you want a lawyer with the technological literacy to understand blockchain and the legal issues surrounding it?

Source

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Elon Musk dumps $1.1B in Tesla stock, NYCCoin launches with mayor’s blessing and Mastercard pushes crypto-linked cards in Asia: Hodler’s Digest, Nov. 7-13

by Cointelegraph

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

Crypto markets tag $3T combined market cap for first time

At the start of this week, the combined cryptocurrency market cap broke $3 trillion for the first time. The market has fluctuated heavily this year, previously topping out at $2.62 trillion during the height of the bull run in May, before crashing down to as low as $1.24 trillion in mid-July. 

CoinGecko’s data tracks 10,418 digital assets across 518 cryptocurrency exchanges, and the surging momentum in the latter half of 2021 comes on the back of Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Polkadot (DOT) and Solana (SOL) all pushing past new all-time highs.

Bitcoin still remains the dominant force in crypto, with its $1.21 trillion market cap being more than double that of second-ranked Ethereum at $550 billion. Meanwhile, the combined capitalization of all other crypto assets sits at roughly 40%, or $1.24 trillion.

BREAKING: Mastercard launches crypto-linked cards across Asia-Pacific

On Tuesday, Mastercard announced that it will be launching crypto-linked payment cards across the Asia-Pacific region that will enable users to instantly convert their digital assets into fiat currency. 

The cards are being launched in collaboration with three crypto service providers: Amber Group and Bitkub in Thailand, and CoinJar in Australia. Mastercard hasn’t outlined what crypto assets will be supported at this stage but did hint that Bitcoin and Ether would be at the top of the list. 

“Rather than directly transferring cryptocurrencies to a merchant, cardholders will now be able to instantly convert their cryptocurrencies into traditional fiat currency which can be spent everywhere Mastercard is accepted around the world, both online and offline,” Mastercard said.

NewYorkCityCoin launching this week with Mayor-elect Eric Adams’ blessing

NewYorkCityCoin (NYCCoin) launched on Thursday, with Mayor-elect Eric Adams giving the coin’s issuers, CityCoins, a public endorsement ahead of the rollout. Adams stated last week that he wanted to have a CityCoin for NYC that mirrors Miami’s MiamiCoin.  

While Adams welcomed the project to New York this week, CityCoins has yet to officially partner with the local government. It may want to do so soon, however, as the NYCCoin project will divert 30% of its mining rewards to a custodied reserve wallet that the local government can use to support whatever initiatives it chooses.  

“We’re glad to welcome you to the global home of Web3! We’re counting on tech and innovation to help drive our city forward,” Adams said.

Elon Musk offloads $1.1B in Tesla stock

According to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, erratic billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk offloaded more than 934,000 Tesla shares worth around $1.1 billion on Thursday. 

Musk made around a 180% gain on his sold shares with an average sale price of around $1,170, marking his largest fire sale of Tesla stock to date. The CEO had teased a potential sale over the weekend after polling his 63 million Twitter followers about whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock. The poll was in response to public pushback against billionaires who may or may not have paid their fair share of tax. 

This sale only accounted for 1% of Musk’s holdings, and the filings show that he planned to sell the stock as part of his tax obligations back in September. The world now awaits if he will sell another 9% to appease the 58% of respondents who voted “yes” to his poll.

Zimbabwe may be the next country to embrace Bitcoin as legal tender

Zimbabwe’s government was rumored to be looking at utilizing Bitcoin as a legal tender to meet growing demand in the country, according to local news outlets. 

The news, reported on Nov. 7, suggested that discussions with local businesses are already underway. Retired Brigadier Colonel Charles Wekwete, permanent secretary and head of the e-government technology unit in the office of the president and cabinet, was confirmed as the source of the speculation. 

A couple of days later, however, news also surfaced that Zimbabwe was not looking to adopt Bitcoin whatsoever, and was instead exploring central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). Zimbabwe’s minister of information, Monica Mutsvangwa, had the unfortunate job of quashing the rumors and providing a major buzzkill for Bitcoin maxis.

Winners and Losers

At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $63,185, Ether (ETH) at $4,577 and XRP at $1.17. The total market cap is at $2.75 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap. 

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Loopring (LRC) at 100.64%, Kadena (KDA) at 99.70% and Livepeer (LPT) at 80.35%. 

The top three altcoin losers of the week are OMG Network (OMG) at -25.57%, Arweave (AR) at -16.86% and Cosmos (ATOM) at -15.68%.

For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.

Most Memorable Quotations

“For the second time in five months, we announced the seizure of digital proceeds of ransomware deployed by a transnational criminal group. This will not be the last time — the U.S. government will continue to aggressively pursue the entire ransomware ecosystem and increase our nation’s resilience to cyber threats.”

Merrick Garland, U.S. attorney general

“If Apple were to add support for #Bitcoin to the iPhone and convert their treasury to a Bitcoin Standard, it would be worth at least a trillion dollars to their shareholders.”

Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy

“The crypto community is ambitious, daring and full of potential. Innovation is about synergy. It’s beyond technology and about people. It’s about us.”

Kristina Cornèr, editor-in-chief at Cointelegraph

“I believe that in the next three to five years, the DeFi industry will grow massively. It’s already growing rapidly, but the advantages of peer-to-peer technologies can and will be more widely experienced.”

Anton Bukov, co-founder of 1inch Network

“If the results of this ‘development’ phase conclude that the case for CBDC is made, and that it is operationally and technologically robust, then the earliest date for launch of a U.K. CBDC would be in the second half of the decade.”

The Bank of England

“We are taking a high degree of focus on issues surrounding the security of personal information and the digital yuan and have made relevant regulatory and technological adjustments to meet this objective. We have adopted a principle of anonymity for small transactions regarding the digital yuan and will only step in to regulate under the law for large transactions. When it comes to collecting personal data, we seek only to collect what is necessary and the minimum of what is legally required, which is far less than electronic payment apps of today.”

Yi Gang, People’s Bank of China governor

“It is not reasonable to build a financial system that demands investors also be sophisticated interpreters of complex code.”

Caroline Crenshaw, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission commissioner 

“Crypto is becoming cultural, it’s becoming cool. […] It used to be that if you were investing in crypto, you were kind of weird.”

Cuy Sheffield, head of crypto at Visa

Prediction of the Week 

Bitcoin to hit $250K in January 2022 but ‘invalidate’ S2FX BTC price model — New prediction

Digital currency analyst Matthew Hyland recently tweeted his thoughts about Bitcoin’s potential upcoming price action. In short, his multi-tweet write-up essentially explained his prediction that BTC will surpass $100,000 on its way to $250,000, validating one popular price model and invalidating another. 

The Stock-to-Flow (S2F) and Stock-to-Flow Cross-Asset (S2FX) price models, built by PlanB, a pseudonymous Twitter personality known for his Bitcoin analysis, each have price targets of upcoming relevancy. December 2021 should tap into a BTC price of at least $100,000 per coin, according to the S2F model. The S2FX model notes a price expectancy of around $288,000 per BTC before the next halving, which should occur in 2024. 

The price models are based around Bitcoin’s block reward halving cycles. Bitcoin halvings occur every 210,000 blocks — which takes about four years. The time in between is the halving cycles.  

Essentially, Hyland thinks BTC will keep pace with the S2F model in hitting $100,000, but the asset will only reach about $250,000 during the present halving cycle (concluding in 2024) — the result of big players selling early before $288,000. Big players will likely get retail investors hyped for BTC after $100,000 is reached in line with the S2F model, according to Hyland, leading those mainstream folks to look next toward the $288,000 price target of the S2FX model. 

This week produced notable excitement in the Bitcoin price category. The asset turned in a new all-time high just below $69,000 before dropping slightly below $63,000, all on Wednesday, according to Cointelegraph’s BTC price index.

FUD of the Week 

Nigeria’s central bank reportedly freezes crypto traders’ accounts

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) was reportedly laying on the FUD this week after it ordered local commercial banks to freeze accounts tied to at least two crypto traders. The CBN banned banks from servicing local crypto exchanges over concerns of volatility, money laundering and terrorism financing.   

Local media outlet Peoples Gazette reported the news on Nov. 7, stating that CBN’s director of banking supervision, J.Y. Mammanand, laid down the law, directing his bank to shut down the naughty crypto traders’ accounts and move their funds to “suspense accounts.”

The crackdown is reportedly part of a broader move from banking regulators to immediately close the accounts of Nigerian residents or companies “transacting in or operating cryptocurrency exchanges” using local banks, as CBN execs think that the majority of these transactions are nefarious.

Coinbase shares to open lower after 75% drop in net income in Q3

Coinbase (COIN) shares promptly dipped around 13.1% in after-hours trading following the release of underwhelming third-quarter financial results on Thursday. The firm posted $1.235 billion worth of revenue in Q3, falling well below FactSet’s estimates of $1.614 billion. 

The firm’s profits equated to $406 million, which marked a 74.7% decrease compared to the second quarter but did beat analysts’ expectations of $380 million. Coinbase also reported earnings of $1.62 per share, which came in 10% short of the consensus estimate. The firm appeared to be unfazed by the results, and the report highlighted that Coinbase is focused on the long term. 

“Coinbase is not a quarter-to-quarter investment, but rather a long-term investment in the growth of the crypto economy and our ability to serve users through our products and services. We encourage our investors to take this point of view,” the report read.

Beeple’s Discord compromised, timed to coincide with Christie’s auction

An admin account for Beeple’s official Discord channel was hacked on Wednesday, resulting in a fake NFT drop being promoted to the group that saw users duped out of an estimated 38 ETH. 

An admin account with the handle “Multi” confirmed to the group on Wednesday that their account had been compromised despite having two-factor authentication settings switched on. The hacker went on to impersonate an admin and the Beeple Announcements Bot, and promote a fake and “cheap” NFT drop from Beeple on Nifty Gateway. 

The members of the group were expecting a cheap NFT drop to be released on the back of Beeple’s most recent $29 million auction, as the artist has done such a thing before to cater to all audiences. However, not only did the members partake in a fake drop, they didn’t even receive any NFTs for their trouble.

Best Cointelegraph Features

Meme tokens and dogcoins flood the market as price wars heat up

Latinx communities are driving forward adoption, as crypto is proven to meet their diverse needs in a way that traditional finance cannot.

Blockchain metaverse startups: Unparalleled investment potential

Think of how essential the internet is to everyday life now — that’s what the Metaverse could become in a lot less time than the internet did.

Crypto kids fight Facebook for the soul of the Metaverse

“The Metaverse doesn’t start in virtual reality — it starts with ownership of assets, [the] ability for anyone to create and trade value.”

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Bakkt stock goes parabolic, GBTC outpaces BITO ETF and Tom Brady offers 1 BTC for 600th touchdown ball: Hodler’s Digest, Oct. 24-30

by Cointelegraph

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

Bakkt shares skyrocket after partnering with Mastercard and Fiserv

On Monday, the share price of the Intercontinental Exchange-backed crypto services company Bakkt (BKKT) surged 120% on the back of two major partnerships with Mastercard and Fiserv. 

Both partnerships were announced on Monday, with the Mastercard deal enabling Bakkt’s U.S. customers to buy, sell and hold crypto assets via custodial wallets. Meanwhile, the strategic collaboration with global payment provider Fiserv gives Bakkt the chance to offer merchant-facing digital asset services. 

The news sparked a bullish rally that saw BKKT surge by 120% to sit at $30.60 by the end of trading on Monday.

ProShares Bitcoin-linked ETF launches on NYSE

ProShares achieved a major milestone for the crypto sector this week after the firm debuted its Bitcoin (BTC) futures-based exchange-traded fund (BITO) on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on Tuesday. 

ProShares’ Bitcoin Strategy ETF saw around $1 billion in volume on its opening day, with Bloomberg analysts stating that it was arguably the largest first-day volume for an ETF in terms of “natural” or “grassroots interest.” 

After two days on the NYSE, ProShares’ ETF became the fastest fund ever to reach $1 billion in assets under management. Following ProShares’ ETF, many onlookers are waiting to see how the next in line performs. At the time of writing on Friday, Valkyrie just launched its Bitcoin futures ETF on the NYSE.

GBTC delivered better returns than Bitcoin ETFs last week

While there has been a lot of hype surrounding the long-awaited launch of the first U.S. Bitcoin ETFs, Grayscale’s executives highlighted that the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) actually outperformed them last week. 

Over a seven-day period starting from Oct. 19, the industry stalwart GBTC returned around 8.8%, while the new and shiny ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF dipped around 0.5%.

Despite Grayscale outlining plans to convert GBTC into an ETF, Barry Silbert, CEO of Grayscale’s parent company Digital Currency Group, was still keen to rub salt in the wound, as he highlighted GBTC’s higher trading volumes compared to BITO. As of Monday, GBTC’s volume totaled $374 million, while BITO managed to generate $286 million.

Volt Equity’s ‘Bitcoin revolution’ ETF goes live on NYSE

Speaking of ETFs, Volt Equity’s Bitcoin ETF went live on the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 28. 

The Volt Crypto Industry Revolution and Tech ETF, which is trading under the ticker BTCR, opened at $21 in a nod to Bitcoin’s max supply of 21 million BTC. BTCR tracks companies with significant exposure to Bitcoin, such as MicroStrategy, Tesla, Twitter, Square, Coinbase and several BTC mining firms. 

According to Volt Equity, the ETF is implementing a management approach informed by PlanB’s Bitcoin stock-to-flow model, a quantitative model intending to predict BTC’s price. Volt Equity told Cointelegraph that the firm will gauge the market behavior of Bitcoin and adjust its exposure to mining firms if the asset drops in value significantly.

NFL quarterback Tom Brady gives fan 1 BTC for his historic 600th-touchdown-pass ball

Superstar NFL quarterback Tom Brady almost lost the ball he threw for his record 600th touchdown pass this week after wide receiver Mike Evans mistakenly handed it off to a fan after scoring.  

Evans apparently did not realize that it was the quarterback’s record pass at the time. However, Brady revealed after the game on Monday that he offered the fan 1 BTC as thanks for handing it back quickly.  

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers also agreed to give the fan two signed team jerseys, a helmet with Brady’s autograph, Mike Evans game cleats as well as a jersey signed by the wide receiver, season tickets for the rest of the year and through 2022, as well as a $1,000 credit towards purchases at the team’s store. Many onlookers have complained that it was a weak offer, as the ball could have sold for a much higher value via auction.

Someone bought $3,400 worth of SHIB last August. It’s now worth $1.55 billion

On Thursday, an unknown crypto billionaire was unveiled after their wallet address was shown to be worth $5.63 billion in SHIBA INU (SHIB). 

The anonymous SHIB hodler’s $3,400 investment in the dog-themed token in August 2020 equated to a value of $1.55 billion. Out of the total of 44 purchases since that time, the investor never spent more than $3,200 on the asset at one time.  

SHIB has gained around 85,437,459% over the past 12 months, and the asset temporarily ousted Dogecoin (DOGE) as a top-10 ranked coin this week. SHIB surged to a market cap of $40.3 billion on Thursday, while DOGE tallied in at $31.6 billion at the time. 

SHIB has since seen a sharp pullback, allowing DOGE to briefly regain its status as the number one memecoin. At the time of writing, DOGE’s market cap sits at $36.1 billion, while SHIB’s figure stands close behind at $38.5 billion.

Winners and Losers

At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $62,540, Ether (ETH) at $4,420 and XRP at $1.08. The total market cap is at $2.66 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap. 

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are SHIBA INU (SHIB) at 164.03%, Curve DAO Token (CRV) at 58.39% and Decentraland (MANA) at 54.46%. 

The top three altcoin losers of the week are OKB (OKB) at -23.74%, XDC Network (XDC) at -12.94% and Stacks (STX) at -9.66%.

For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.

Most Memorable Quotations

“Anybody that does the homework […] ends up investing into it. Look at Ray Dalio, a Bitcoin skeptic, now a Bitcoin investor.”

Anthony Scaramucci, founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital

“#Bitcoin is the most practical solution for a consumer, investor, or corporation seeking inflation protection over the long term.”

Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy

“To a degree, we think rising regulations could be a positive for Coinbase’s competitive positioning, particularly versus business models that predominantly rely on markets being unregulated.”

Peter Christiansen, Citi analyst

“As of yesterday, the total size of the digital asset market was $2.7 trillion. Among that $2.7 trillion, nearly 60% were commodities. […] Given the size, the scope and the scale of this emerging market, how it’s interfacing and affecting retail customers, and with the scale of the growth being so rapid, potential financial stability risks in the future, I think it’s critically important to have a primary cop on the beat.”

Rostin Behnam, acting chairperson of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission

“Creators, owners and operators or some other persons who maintain control or sufficient influence in the DeFi arrangements, even if those arrangements seem decentralized, may fall under the FATF definition of a VASP where they are providing or actively facilitating VASP services.”

Financial Action Task Force

“GameStop is looking for a unique individual who can help accelerate the future of gaming and commerce. In this future, games are the places to go, and play is driven by the things you bring. Future creators won’t just build games but also the components, characters, and equipment. Blockchains will power the commerce underneath.”

GameStop job post

“The conversation has shifted dramatically, where I think there’s a little bit of an understanding [from professional sports organizations] that there’s something here. I meet very little resistance these days that NFTs are a thing.”

Caty Tedman, head of partnerships at Dapper Labs

“There may be some parallels here between the 2017 bull run and this 2021 cycle; however, adoption is far greater, open interest is higher, and the utility of crypto is unrecognizably farther along than in 2017.”

Steven Gregory, CEO of Currency.com

Prediction of the Week 

Bitcoin price dip matches October 2017 with BTC ‘explosion’ still forecast before 2022

Bitcoin’s price sustained a bit of turbulence this week, trading above $63,000 before falling down to around $58,000, based on data from Cointelegraph’s BTC price index. Following the dip, Bitcoin’s price rallied back up past $62,000. 

Zooming out on a longer time horizon than just this week reveals similarities in price action between 2021 and 2017 (one of the crypto market’s notable bull runs) according to charting from Twitter user Smart Crypto. The Twitter personality posted a tweet showing two charts side by side — one from 2017 and one from 2021. 

Both charts showed Bitcoin’s price action from July until the end of the year. The charts look as if 2021 rhymes with 2017 in terms of Bitcoin’s price action. If BTC’s chart continues playing out similarly to 2017, the asset could be in for a notable rise in value ahead. Smart Crypto’s tweet was seemingly based on analysis from Twitter user TechDev. 

FUD of the Week 

CFTC reportedly investigating decentralized prediction platform Polymarket

Earlier this week it was reported that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) was investigating Polymarket, a New York-based decentralized prediction market platform. 

The news was first reported by Bloomberg, citing anonymous sources who claimed that the CFTC was looking to gauge whether the firm was enabling customers to trade binary options and conduct swaps that should be registered with the financial regulatory agency. 

“Polymarket is firmly committed to complying with applicable laws and regulations and to providing information to regulators that will assist them with any inquiry,” a spokesperson from Polymarket said.

SEC reportedly knocks back Valkyrie’s leveraged Bitcoin ETF

It was reported on Thursday that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had knocked back two Bitcoin ETF applications from Valkyrie and Direxion. 

On Tuesday, Direxion filed for a product that would enable investors to buy contracts that short the price of BTC, while Valkyrie applied for a leveraged BTC futures ETF the following day. 

As many onlookers have pointed out, the SEC appears to specifically favor Bitcoin ETFs that offer direct exposure to futures contracts, as opposed to funds that are directly backed by the asset, or ones that are leverage-based and shorting-focused in this instance.

US gov attorneys to target individuals and gatekeepers for crypto prosecutions

A group of high-ranking U.S. government attorneys from the SEC, Department of Justice (DOJ) and CFTC outlined their agencies’ directives for white-collar crypto enforcement on Wednesday. 

The SEC’s enforcement director, Gurbir Grewal, said the regulator is putting its focus on gatekeepers, as he noted that “they’re the first line of defense more often than not against all manner of misconduct.” Grewal added that the SEC is also keeping an eye on unregistered crypto exchanges, unregistered and fraudulent initial coin offerings, and crypto-lending platforms.

Nicholas McQuaid, the principal deputy assistant attorney general of the DOJ’s Criminal Division, said that his agency is looking to crack down on fraudulent individuals specifically. While Vincent McGonagle, the acting director of the Division of Enforcement for the CFTC, said that regulators are focusing on the wild west of decentralized finance (DeFi).

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Bitcoin (BTC) $ 25,799.91 3.82%
Ethereum (ETH) $ 1,817.97 2.66%
Litecoin (LTC) $ 87.67 5.40%
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) $ 109.64 3.83%