Multi-Million BNB Chain Hack and Bitcoin’s Battle for $20K: This Week’s Crypto Roundup

In terms of general market movements, not much has happened in the last seven days. Its total capitalization remained somewhat flat at around $990 million, unable to break the coveted $1 trillion mark. Bitcoin’s price, as well as for the majority of altcoins, also failed to make a significant difference.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s price is trading at around $19,700 – roughly where it was this time last week. Volatility is currently absent from the cryptocurrency market, and Bitcoin is no exception. The bulls attempted to rally above $20,000 and even managed to hold the price above this level for a couple of days, reaching a weekly high of just $20,500 (on Binance).

Unfortunately, today, the price dropped below $20K when the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics released information on the jobs added through September. The number exceeded expectations, and market participants took it as a sign that the current measures to curb inflation and stimulate consumption are insufficient, thus pushing the price down.

Similar to BTC, ETH is also charting a 0.2% increase over the past seven days, indicating a flat trend with range-bound trading. Most of the altcoins followed suit.

The most exciting, albeit in the bad sense of the word, was yesterday’s hack of the BNB chain. Someone managed to exploit a security vulnerability in BNB Bridge and obtained at least $100 million worth of cryptocurrency. Developers were quick to react and froze some of the funds while the entire network was paused.

The blockchain is now working as usual, and the vulnerability has been patched, but work to recover the funds is ongoing.

All in all, the last week wasn’t as eventful as the previous ones, but it’s still very interesting to see how the next seven days will unfold. As is well known in the cryptocurrency industry, markets don’t stay calm for long, and it’s these periods of apparent inactivity that are usually the precursor to a big move.

Market data

Market cap: $986 billion | 24H Vol.: $54B | BTC dominance: 38.1%

BTC: $19,697 (+0.2%) | ETH: $1335 (+0.2%) | ADA: USD 0.42 (-3.1%)

This week’s crypto headlines you shouldn’t miss

Binance Smart Chain Paused After $600 Million BNB Hack (Report) The BNB chain was temporarily halted after it suffered a security breach. It resulted in over $100 million being compromised. The network is now operational, but the teams are working to freeze and possibly restore the funds.

3 Reasons Why Bitcoin Bottom Can Join: ARK Invest Crypto Analyst. Bitcoin’s price is trading near the coveted $20,000 level and has been stuck in a range between $18,000 and $24,000 for quite some time. However, an analyst from ARK Invest has provided data that may be the bottom.

These crypto leaders have scaled back since the market crash in May. The market crash has affected cryptocurrency-related companies, and many of them had to cut staff to cope with the crypto winter. In this article we take a look at some of the managers who have also left.

Bitcoin and Gold Correlation Peaks to Annual Highs. There has been a noticeable shift in market structure recently as the correlation between Bitcoin and gold took a new turn. The latter is at annual highs, which comes as a result of the strengthening of the US dollar and rising interest rates.

Bitcoin Lightning Network public capacity exceeds 5000 BTC. The Lightning Network – the largest Bitcoin scaling solution – has seen its capacity expand to over 5,000 BTC for the first time ever. This comes despite a nearly 60% decline in BTC’s price this year.

Leading Asset Manager Fidelity Introduces $5 Million Ethereum Index Fund. Fidelity – one of the world’s leading asset managers – has offered an Ethereum Index Fund to its clients through its brokerage division. The product grossed over $5 million since sales began at the end of September.

Diagrams

This week we have chart analysis of Ethereum, Ripple, Cardano, Binance Coin and Polygon (MATIC) – click here for full price analysis.