crypto blog
Wintermute suffers $160M attack, Kraken CEO departs and US bill aims to ban algo stablecoins: Hodler’s Digest, Sept. 18-24
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 Kraken’s Jesse Powell will step down as CEO, stay on as board chair After more than a decade heading up crypto exchange Kraken as CEO, Jesse Powell has decided to pass the torch to the company’s chief operating officer, Dave Ripley. Powell is not done with Kraken, however. He will become chair of the board for the organization. “It’s just gotten to be more draining on me, less fun,” Powell said, as quoted in by Bloomberg. Ripley joined Kraken as chief operating officer in 2016. South Korean ministry recommends...
The biggest Bitcoin fund just hit a record -35% discount — A warning for BTC price?
Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), a cryptocurrency fund that currently holds 3.12% of the total Bitcoin (BTC) supply, or over 640,000 BTC, is trading at a record discount compared to the value of its underlying assets. Institutional interest in Grayscale dries up On Sep. 23, the $12.55 billion closed-end trust was trading at a 35.18% discount, according to the latest data. GBTC discount versus spot BTC/USD price. Source: YCharts To investors, GBTC has long served as a great alternative to gain exposure in the Bitcoin market despite its 2% annual management fee. This is primarily because GBTC is easier to hold for institutional investors because it can be managed via a brokerage account. For most of its existence, GBTC traded at a hefty premium to spot Bitcoin prices. But It starte...
Post-Merge ETH has become obsolete
For years, various blockchain projects were rumored to be future “Ethereum killers,” projects that would unseat Ether from its throne and usurp its title as the top digital asset. That day seems to have come, though it appears it was an inside job. Lido-staked Ethereum (stETH) and other liquid staking derivatives are primed to render Ether (ETH), as an asset, obsolete. The transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoW) allows everyday decentralized finance (DeFi) users to benefit from rewards previously reserved for miners simply by holding stETH or any other ETH liquid-staking derivative. This has given way to a wave of interest across the industry, from individuals to institutions across centralized finance (CeFi) and DeFi. In the past month, the ETH liquid staking der...
Biden’s anemic crypto framework offered us nothing new
The long-awaited cryptocurrency regulation framework released by President Joe Biden’s Treasury Department this month attempted to outline a plan for managing the burgeoning crypto industry. Unfortunately, the department’s assessment failed to embody more substance than a mere mission statement. While Biden’s administration appears to be taking a “whole-of-government approach” toward overseeing the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector and its ripple effects on the traditional economy, they are focused predominantly on defending against negative events — such as financial crime — and failing to facilitate positive events, such as the wealth-building opportunities that crypto offers to Americans excluded from the traditional big-banking system. The new framework was a follow-up to Biden’s exe...
MEVbots backdoor drains users’ Ethereum funds via arbitrage trading bot
MEV gain, an Ethereum (ETH) arbitrage trading bot built by MEVbots, which claims to provide stress-free passive income, has been actively draining its users’ funds via a fund-stealing backdoor. Arbitrage bots are programs that automate trading for profits based on historical market information. An investigation of MEVbots’ contract revealed a backdoor that allows the creators to drain Ether from its users’ wallets. Our analysis confirms what the @mevbots promotes for the so-called “MEV gain” has a fund-stealing backdoor. Do *NOT* fall prey to it https://t.co/z2eDqMF36b. And thanks @monkwithchaos for the heads-up https://t.co/dhSNGljoH0 pic.twitter.com/HWfCAwbae4 — PeckShield Inc. (@peckshield) September 23, 2022 The scam was first pointed out by Crypto Twitter’s @mo...
NFT ecosystem attempts a bounce back amid bearish market sentiment
Over the past two years, nonfungible tokens (NFTs) gave the crypto ecosystem the boost it needed to grab mainstream attention — owing to the involvement of prominent artists and celebrities. However, despite the enormous losses suffered by NFT investors following the ongoing, 10-month-long bear market, the ecosystem showed sustainable signs of a comeback in the last two weeks. Since Sept. 12, the performance of blue-chip NFT collections witnessed a steady growth, inching back toward the 10,000 Ether (ETH) that was lost in mid-August 2022, according to data by NFTGo. The performance of blue-chip NFT collections. Source: NFTGo On Sept. 20, the market capitalization, which is derived from the floor price and the trading price of NFTs, spiked nearly 16.5% at roughly 11.25 million ETH. Mar...
What is a cryptocurrency mining pool?
In the early days of Bitcoin (BTC), crypto enthusiasts only required a basic personal computer with an internet connection to generate new BTC tokens through a distributed computing process known as mining. However, with more people chasing the same number of block rewards, Bitcoin’s mining process has become more challenging with time. In fact, the quantum of rewards will progressively reduce by half every four years, making it less rewarding for individual miners who will need to allocate greater computational resources with time. Available on blockchain protocols that employ a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism, this mining process requires application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) to be deployed in the form of large rigs so as to complete the complex nature of mathema...
How crypto is playing a role in increasing healthy human lifespans
It’s a question that’s infatuated scientists for decades: how can we prolong life expectancy — giving humans everywhere more years of good health? This field is known as longevity science, and within this industry, experts argue care which regards ageing as a normal but treatable ailment are rare — and of the approaches available, they can only be accessed by those who are highly educated and privileged. Just some of the key tenets that govern this approach to medicine involve therapeutics, personalized medicine, predictive diagnostics and artificial intelligence. The goal is to eliminate a “one size fits all” attitude toward treatment, and ensure that therapies are customized to an individual’s unique medical profile. This can matter in many different ways — ...
Price analysis 9/23: SPX, DXY, BTC, ETH, BNB, XRP, ADA, SOL, DOGE, DOT
The S&P 500 index has declined about 5% this week while the Nasdaq Composite is down more than 5.5%. Investors fear that the Federal Reserve’s aggressive rate hikes could cause an economic downturn. The yield curve between the two-year and 10-year Treasury notes, which is watched closely by analysts for predicting a recession, has inverted the most since the year 2000. Among all the mayhem, it is encouraging to see that Bitcoin (BTC) has outperformed both the major indexes and has fallen less than 4% in the week. Could this be a sign that Bitcoin’s bottom may be close by? Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360 On-chain data shows that the amount of Bitcoin supply held by long-term holders in losses reached about 30%, which is 2% to 5% below the level that coinci...
B. Riley may purchase up to $100M stake in Bitcoin miner Iris Energy
Australia-based crypto mining firm Iris Energy has signed a deal with B. Riley giving the capital market company the option to purchase up to 25 million of its shares. According to a Friday filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, Iris Energy inked an agreement with B. Riley Principal Capital II related to the “potential offer and sale” of up to 25 million of the Bitcoin (BTC) mining firm’s ordinary shares, worth $100 million. The filing states B. Riley has a 24-month timeframe to complete the purchase starting “as soon as practicable” after the effective date of the registration statement. Because Iris Energy qualifies as a “foreign private issuer” under U.S. securities laws, the firm said it intended to follow “most Nasdaq corporate governance listing standards” ...
Bitcoin was almost named Netcoin by Satoshi Nakamoto, hints domain data
Coming up with a good name is often one of the most challenging decisions one needs to make when launching a new service or business. Historical data of domain name purchases suggest that Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin (BTC), had an alternate naming option in mind that did not make it to the whitepaper. Bitcoin.org, the website domain linked to the original Bitcoin, was created on Aug. 18, 2008, under AnonymousSpeech, a service in Japan that allowed users to buy domain names anonymously. Domain purchases under AnonymousSpeech around similar timelines revealed the creation of Netcoin.org on Aug. 17, 2008 — just a day prior to the creation of Bitcoin.org. Did you know? A day before the https://t.co/oDfOFzFVNi domain was first registered, someone purchased https://t.co/KLzoDxJjrz us...
NFTs bring in-game ownership to a new level, says Blokhaus founder
Nonfungible tokens (NFTs) have taken the gaming world by storm. Whether it’s through limited edition collectibles, avatar enhancement or play-to-earn incentivization, digital assets have given in-game ownership a new meaning. The ways in which NFTs are available to players are becoming increasingly tangible. In the case of Blockxer, the latest blockchain game from Blokhaus Inc., every component of the game has been NFT-ized and available for modification by users. Mark Soares, the founder of Blokhaus Inc., told Cointelegraph that when every aspect of the game is an NFT, users can create completely “bespoke” game experiences. Everywhere a user turns in this 8-bit, arcade-inspired game, there is an NFT — from the background and the characters to the weapons and more: “Imagine the ...
