Crypto news
Lawyers for Celsius investors file motion to have interests represented in court
An international law firm representing groups of Celsius investors has filed a motion to appoint a committee to represent their interests in the crypto lending firm’s bankruptcy case. In a Thursday filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York, lawyers with the law firm Milbank requested the appointment of an “Official Preferred Equity Committee” to represent certain Celsius shareholders. According to the filing, the equity holders “urgently require their own fiduciary” for representation in court alongside Celsius debtors and an Unsecured Creditors Committee, or UCC. “The need for a fiduciary to pursue the Equity Holders’ interests is particularly critical when one considers the practical realities of these cases: There are only two groups of real ...
Pentagon contracts with Inca Digital for a security-focused digital asset mapping tool
Digital asset data analytics company Inca Digital will study the implications of digital assets for national security under a year-long contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the company announced on Friday. DARPA is the R&D branch of the United States Department of Defense. Inca Digital will work on a project called “Mapping the Impact of Digital Financial Assets,” which will aim to create a “cryptocurrency ecosystem mapping tool” to provide information to the U.S. government and commercial businesses. Besides looking at possible money laundering and sanctions evasions, the project will contribute to understanding interactions between traditional and digital financial systems, money flows into and out of blockchain systems and other uses...
LUNC investors react to CZ’s 1.2% trading tax recommendation on Binance
The infamous collapse of the Terra ecosystem, which erased market prices of TerraUSD (UST) and LUNA tokens, continues to trouble anxious investors as co-founder Do Kwon, crypto exchanges and the community together tries to identify the best route for a sustainable price recovery. Most recently, Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao, the CEO of crypto exchange Binance, recommended a flat 1.2% trading tax on LUNC trades that could be burned to reduce the token’s total supply and improve its price performance. Addressing the community, CZ stated: “We will implement an opt-in button (on the Binance exchange), for people to opt-in to pay a 1.2% tax for their LUNC trading.” However, the exchange would begin the taxation for opt-in traders following the consensus of 25% of the LUNC investors, making sure that earl...
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...
