Crypto Winter blows out Bitcoin speculators
Be[in]Crypto has been trawling through the news for the past week to keep you up to date on the most important events in the ecosystem. The stories range from Ethereum’s declining volumes, a massive Chinese data breach, the Central African Republic’s new cryptocurrency hub, Shiba Inu’s incoming stablecoin and the Celsius bog.
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No end in sight for cold crypto winter
The fall in asset prices shows no signs of reversing as markets tumble under the weight of bearish sentiments. A report from Glassnode indicates that low prices have led to bitcoin “tourists” and “speculative entities” leaving their positions, while only long-term HODLers remain.
BTC was not the only crypto asset that suffered a setback, as data on the chain shows that Ethereum had its own problems. ETH transaction volumes for the second quarter of 2022 were $ 1.68 trillion, a 49% decrease from 2021.
Assets are not the only areas affected by the winter, as crypto exchanges have had their own share of the humble cake. Last week, Vauld became the last stock exchange to suspend withdrawals, trading and deposits, citing “volatile market conditions.” Oslo Børs’ statement indicated that there is still a possibility of total restructuring, and has applied to the courts for a moratorium on legal action.
While the markets were shaking, Sam Bankman-Fried reiterated his desire to rescue companies struggling by expanding credit lines. The FTX boss revealed that he still has some “a few billion” after helping BlockFi and Voyager through his quantitative trading company, Alameda Research.
Hackers continue their spree
The crypto industry registered reports of hacker activity in the last week. The British Army’s Twitter and YouTube accounts were hacked, and the perpetrators used the accounts to promote fake NFT projects. The accounts were restored within 24 hours, with a full-scale investigation underway to arrest the culprits.
Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, raised the alarm over the massive data leak to one billion Chinese people with the information sold on the dark web. The hacker has set the price for the information at 10 BTC, and this may have implications for Binance as bad players can obtain sensitive, private information.
A wave of romance scams is sweeping across the United States with nearly $ 200 million lost to scammers in the first six months of the year. The report noted that the average victim lost $ 10,000 on fraud involving fake cryptocurrencies, with millennials as the most targeted demographic.
In a positive light, Brazilian police beat a criminal organization that used crypto to launder the proceeds of illegal gold mining operations, while researchers at the University of Chicago have developed an algorithm to predict crypto fraud up to one week in advance.
The state of crypto legislation around the world
Last week was iconic for cryptocurrencies, as legislators globally passed a number of groundbreaking bills. The European Union had a preliminary agreement that required that all details about all crypto transactions be collected, which triggered different opinions. For Brian Armstrong, the new bill is seen as a welcome development that can “serve as a model for other countries to follow.”
In the United States, the government has banned employees involved in regulations related to the crypto industry from holding cryptocurrencies. The new rule was the idea of the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) with the only exception that employees can hold $ 50,000 in mutual funds in companies that work in the crypto space.
The Government of the Central African Republic (CAR) launched a cryptocurrency hub last week. The hub, Sango Project, comes packed with an e-residency program, and a citizenship program as the country’s president argues that “digital gold” will serve as the engine of the nation’s civilization.
Stablecoins and lawsuits
Shiba Inu revealed that the ecosystem is approaching the launch of its original stablecoin called SHI. Shytoshi Kusama, the main developer, stated that stablecoin is part of the attempts to give stablecoin real benefit apart from the tag of the meme coin.
Aave, a leading crypto project, followed in Shiba Inu’s footsteps to announce the launch of GHO, a US dollar-denominated stackcoin to make access to DeFi features easier. To prevent a recurrence of TerraUSD (UST) de-pegging, GHO will be over-pledged and backed by several cryptocurrencies.
While rival blockchains unveiled a number of developments, Solana was hit by a class action lawsuit alleging that major players in the Solana ecosystem profited illegally from SOL. The claims filed by the offended persons claim that SOL was sold without any registration declarations, which constitutes a breach of existing securities legislation.
The Celsius saga is far from over
The troubled crypto platform Celsius has repaid loans worth $ 142 million to MakerDAO and a further $ 67 million to Aave and Compound while trying to find a foothold after suspending withdrawals for customers. It is rumored that FTX and Nexo will help the struggling company, but it seems that the company is swimming alone ashore.
Despite the brave attempts of the company, it has been plagued with reports of fraud and illegalities. Last week, a former employee of the company filed a lawsuit against the company, accusing it of market manipulation, accounting failure and branding it as “a classic Ponzi scheme”.
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