Crypto
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Gate.io experiences slowdown in deposits and withdrawals due to node maintenance
Users of the crypto exchange Gate.io are facing slow deposits and withdrawals on transactions due to a node maintenance from a third-party cloud provider, according to a Dec. 18 announcement. Gate.io said that transactions are still being processed and claimed that user funds are safe. The company stated: “At this moment, we are monitoring the network connection status of our cloud service providers and will expedite the deposits and withdrawals as soon as the network connection is restored.” It is unclear if the delay in transactions is related to OKX’s outage, which was caused by a hardware failure at a Hong Kong data center of its primary infrastructure provider, Alibaba Cloud. As reported by Cointelegraph, Alibaba’s Cloud server went offline on Dec. 17 and...
The Federal Reserve’s pursuit of a ‘reverse wealth effect’ is undermining crypto
The Federal Reserve’s strategy to hike interest rates may continue, making it difficult for the crypto industry to bounce back. For crypto assets to become the hedge against inflation, the industry needs to explore ways to decouple crypto from traditional markets. Decentralized finance (DeFi) can perhaps offer a way out by breaking away from legacy financial models. How Federal Reserve policies are affecting crypto In the 1980s, Paul Volcker, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, introduced the interest hiking policy to control inflation. Volcker raised interest rates to over 20%, forcing the economy into a recession by reducing people’s purchasing capacity. The strategy worked, and the Consumer Price Index (CPI) went down from 14.85% to 2.5%. Even now, the Federal Reserve continues t...
Why is Ethereum (ETH) price down today?
Ether (ETH) price is down on Dec. 16 and the pre-FOMC rally to $1,350 was obliterated after Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell issued hawkish statements following a 0.50% hike in interest rates. The Ether sell-off follows a market-wide decline that has sent Ethereum network fees plummeting by 39.90% in the past 30-days. Daily Ethereum network fees and daily active users. Source: TokenTerminal The total value locked in Ethereum-based smart contracts also decreased by decentralized finance by 4.49% in 24-hours. Following the FTX exchange scandal, regulators are attempting to fast-track new regulations on the cryptocurrency sector. Total USD value locked on the Ethereum network. Source: DefiLlama While some analysts believe Ethereum still possesses multiple bullish catalysts that warrant inv...
Total crypto market cap takes another hit, but traders remain neutral
The total cryptocurrency market capitalization dropped 8.1% in the past two days after failing to break the $880 billion resistance on Dec. 14. The rejection did not invalidate the 4-week-long ascending channel, but a weekly close below $825 billion will confirm a shift to the lower band and reduce the support level to $790 billion. Total crypto market cap in USD, 12-hour. Source: TradingView The overall investor sentiment toward the market remains bearish, and year-to-date losses amount to 66%. Despite this, Bitcoin (BTC) price dropped a mere 2% on the week, down to the $16,800 level at 17:00 UTC on Dec. 16. A far different scenario emerged for altcoins which are being pressured by pending regulation and fears that major exchanges and miners could be insolvent. This explains why the total...
Industry execs confident in DeFi adoption despite security flaws: Finance Redefined
Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you significant developments over the last week. Industry experts are confident in DeFi and believe the sector would continue to see adoption despite its security flaws, primarily due to the mammoth failure of centralized exchanges. Despite the continued growth, however, the decentralized exchanges have lost $30 million on liquidity provider incentives. Popular hardware crypto wallet Ledger introduced a new DeFi tracking feature that pairs with its hardware wallets to monitor performance analytics of over 1,000 protocols. The Lodestar Finance protocol that was exploited for over $5 million on Dec. 10 had a Mango Markets connection, wherein the exploiter copied t...
OKX cites intermittent outage amid Alibaba Cloud equipment anomaly
Crypto exchange OKX witnessed service disruptions after primary infrastructure services provider Alibaba Cloud announced a hardware failure in Alibaba Cloud’s Hong Kong data center. Alibaba Cloud Hong Kong IDC Zone C server went offline on Saturday at roughly 10 pm ET and failed to recover for over seven hours at the time of reporting. On-chain data further confirms that OKX processed no transactions during this timeline. Partial list of Alibaba Cloud’s global infrastructure. Source: Alibaba Cloud Alibaba Cloud’s website shows that the Hong Kong (China) server hosts three availability zones, which have been operational since 2014. The cloud provider confirmed the outage through an official announcement, as shown below. Alibaba Cloud’s official announcement about service disrupt...
US Financial Stability Oversight Council urges congressional action on crypto
Officials with the United States Financial Stability Oversight Council, or FSOC, have recommended U.S. lawmakers pass legislation aimed at addressing regulatory gaps for crypto-related activities. In its annual report released on Dec. 16, the FSOC recommended members of Congress pass legislation granting “explicit rulemaking authority for federal financial regulators over the spot market for crypto-assets,” noting that tokens previously identified as securities would be exempt. The council also noted the lack of a comprehensive regulatory framework — specifically addressing stablecoins and visibility and supervision of crypto firms — in the United States. The FSOC cited the recent downfall of crypto exchange FTX as part of its background information in recommending actions on digital asset...
Bitcoin and Ethereum gave back their gains, but has anything actually changed?
Crypto markets threw a nice head fake this week by rallying into resistance on a “positive” Consumer Price Index (CPI) report, before retracing the majority of those gains right after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell took on a surprisingly hawkish tone during his post-rate-hike presser. The Fed hiked interest rates by 0.50%, which was well within the expectation of most market participants, but the eyebrow-raiser was the Federal Open Market Committee consensus that rates would need to reach the 5%–5.5%+ range in order to hopefully achieve the Fed’s 2% inflation target. This basically threw cold water on traders’ lusty dreams of a Fed policy pivot taking place in the first half of 2023, and the damper on sentiment was felt throughout crypto and equities markets. As the charts below...
SBF prosecutors reportedly dig into donations made to top US Democrats
The prosecutors investigating former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) have reportedly reached out to top members of the Democratic Party demanding information about the political donations made by the entrepreneur. Democratic members from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and Congressman Hakeem Jeffries were contacted by SBF prosecutors for information to aid their ongoing investigations, according to a New York Times report. The United States attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York sent an email to the Democratic Party elections lawyer Marc Elias, asking for details on donations made by SBF. Similar emails were sent over to other members of the Democratic and Republican parties. The Royal Bahamas police arrested ...
Kazakhstan central bank recommends a phased CBDC rollout between 2023-25
Kazakhstan, the world’s third-largest Bitcoin (BTC) mining hub after the United States and China, found feasibility in launching its in-house central bank digital currency (CBDC), a digital tenge. The National Bank of Kazakhstan (NBK) revealed the finding following the completion of the second phase of testing. In late October, Binance CEO Changpeng’ CZ’ Zhao announced that Kazakhstan’s CBDC would be integrated with BNB Chain, a blockchain built by the crypto exchange. The country’s primary motivation for conducting studies on CBDC was to test its potential to improve financial inclusion, promote competition and innovation in the payments industry and increase the nation’s global competitiveness. The pilot research focused on offline payments and pr...
SEC was “asleep at the wheel” about FTX – US Rep. Sessions
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was “asleep at the wheel” regarding how FTX Group and its subsidiaries met financial and corporate control requirements, Representative Pete Sessions said in the Saturday Report on December 17. “We need to look at what the Securities and Exchange Commission was doing”, stated the Texas Congressman, adding that “the SEC was asleep at the wheel for these billions of dollars that we now find out about a year later.” The SEC filed charges against Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the former CEO of FTX, on Dec. 13, claiming that Bankman-Fried violated the anti-fraud provisions of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. In the complaint, the SEC requests an injunction to prohibit Bankman-Fried fro...
Algorithmic stabilization is the key to effective crypto-finance
After the collapse of Terraform Labs’ cryptocurrency, Terra (LUNA), and its stablecoin, Terra (UST), the notion of “algorithmic stabilization” has fallen to a low point in popularity, both in the cryptocurrency world and among mainstream observers. This emotional response, however, is strongly at odds with reality. In fact, algorithmic stabilization of digital assets is a highly valuable and important class of mechanism whose appropriate deployment will be critical if the crypto sphere is to meet its long-term goal of improving the mainstream financial system. Blockchains, and other similar data structures for secure decentralized computing networks, are not only about money. Due to the historical roots of blockchain tech in Bitcoin (BTC), however, the theme of blockchain-based digita...
