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🇰🇷The purchase of Gopax will allow Binance to return to the South Korean market
The world's largest cryptocurrency trading platform is close to completing Binance's acquisition of South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Gopax. Thus, after a two-year break, Binance will again enter the market of the Asian country.
Previously, Binance worked in this market through its subsidiary, but was forced to close it due to disagreements with regulators.
Citing a local media report, popular blockchain journalist Colin Wu wrote that Binance "recently completed due diligence on its purchase of Gopax."
Binance had planned to announce the purchase around Christmas, but the announcement was delayed due to long discussions about the cost. A total of 41.2% of Gopax was purchased from current Gopax CEO Lee Jun-Heng.
Gopax is one of the five largest digital asset exchanges in Korea, along with Coinone, Upbit, Corbit and Bitsum.
🤔Could XRP become a Stablecoin?
The developer said that, theoretically, it could assume two scenarios both of which are themselves fairly impossible. The first assumes that all centralized and decentralized crypto platforms would only sell XRP for a certain amount of fiat. Wind rejected this on the grounds that there are too many crypto platforms.
I suppose the only hypothetical way would be if shops and people started pricing goods and services in a fixed value of XRP, which would only work if their suppliers, employees, everyone did the same. Never going to happen.
- WietseWind - 🛠 XUMM
The second scenario sounds even more futuristic because it assumes that businesses and people will start valuing goods and services at a fixed cost in XRP. Obviously, such a development would require a global consensus, which is unlikely to ever happen.
Nevertheless, the developer's basic thesis that 1 XRP equals 1 XRP has merit. For example, Wind argues that XRP only begins to have value in dollar or currency terms when it comes into contact with the world outside of the XRPL network, where the cryptocurrency initially "lives.
The equivalent price of XRP is stated in dollars or something else, which is determined by supply and demand, and since the price people offer is unstable, the same is true for XRP, the developer summed up.
"XRP lives on its own network. There can't be a price in the network protocol because: price versus what? The price of XRP is made up of the interaction with the world on the network: supply and demand. And since the price people offer is never stable, XRP can't be either."
Or maybe it's not so crazy? When the dollar loses its status as the world's currency and we buy everything with XRP.
✔️KuCoin Earn launched Dual Investment products BNB
The press service of KuCoin trading platform has assured that users have been able to use the new Dual Investment products on KuCoin Earn service. They launched at 13:00 Moscow time on December 28, 2022. The two new services have been named BNB and BNB-U.
As for the first product, it is designed for customers who want to receive high rewards for their Binance Coin (BNB) assets or for participants who want to sell BNB at a higher price in the future compared to the market price at the settlement date. Speaking of BNB-U, it has been noted that it is designed for those users who want to receive the highest rewards for their Tether (USDT) assets or, acquire BNB at a lower price in the future compared to the current value today.
Binance reminded that dual investment is an advanced financial product that is not protected from the principal and has high returns. Exchange customers can use BNB, BTC, ETH or USDT to sign up and start earning.
To do so, one has to select the type of coin, target price and annual interest rate. When the product expires, the latter will be compared to the spot market price at that time.
The press service of the trading platform stressed that dual investment is a product with a special type of risk, which is closely related to serious price fluctuations and high volatility on the market. In such conditions it may be difficult for the trader to predict the potential difference between the target price and the market price at maturity.
The exchange's specialists advised their own clients to study the market before signing up for the services, as well as thoroughly research all possible product features and potential risks.
🗣️Ripple developer criticized by self-proclaimed Satoshi
Ripple developer David Schwartz again commented on the words of self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto - Craig Wright. He stated that the latter made a very silly argument and then decided to make a completely irrelevant one in an attempt to defend his incorrect point of view.
Schwartz called Wright pathetic and offered to justify the claim or apologize and retract it. Recall that earlier, a man claiming to be bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto stated: the CTO of Ripple (XRP) is ignorant of finance, the legal framework, institutional investment banking and understands nothing about the principles of blockchain and cryptocurrencies.
According to Wright, the XRP digital coin is extremely useless. It simply offers traders a useless pump-and-dump scheme to speculate and defraud investors. He expressed his belief that the cryptocurrency has no practical utility
Schwartz stressed that Craig made his argument and the developer showed him decency and respect by offering rational criticism. But, Wright didn't even try to defend his point of view, and just kept bringing up irrelevant distracting facts that were irrelevant.
The Ripple CEO noted: this is a standard pattern of Wright's behavior. When he can't sue, Craig attacks his critics with a tirade of irrelevant, incoherent nonsense. As a result, skeptics learn that the fake Satoshi doesn't care if he's wrong, and interacting with him just generates a stream of painful nonsense. They stop interacting with the businessman, and he thinks he's won the debate and is self-affirming. That said, Schwartz emphasized: Wright did not try to defend his position, for he understands that this is impossible.
According to Ripple's CTO, he doesn't understand why Craig likes to blame everyone else for something that he himself is guilty of. The developer noted: he should have been smarter and noticed this trick earlier, just ignoring the entrepreneur's words.
🔮Jim Cramer: "I wouldn't invest in cryptocurrencies even in a million years"
While discussing the collapse of the FTX exchange on CNBC, Jim Cramer called digital currencies "the new money for morons". He stressed that he would never invest in cryptocurrencies now because the industry is too poorly regulated and he doesn't believe in them. Kramer recalled that he once invested in one of the companies in the cryptocurrency industry and had a hard time getting his money back.
"I think anyone who owns different coins like Litecoin is just an idiot. I didn't go to college to be an idiot. And to these altcoin owners, I would advise them to sell them," Jim Cramer stated.
The investor also called on the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to increase pressure on the cryptocurrency market and remove this "money for morons" from the financial industry. Cramer stressed that regulators need to destroy the principled ability to "create money" because cryptocurrencies are "worse than any of the worst stocks on the Nasdaq."
Finally, Jim Cramer advised to keep their money in large traditional banks like JPMorgan Chase.
Recall that even two years ago, Cramer could be called a bitcoin enthusiast. He advised diversifying his investment portfolio with cryptocurrencies and said that bitcoin could serve as money. However, he sold his BTC holdings by mid-2021.
🐂Expert Bobby Lee: The bull market will start in 2025
During a recent interview with CNBC, veteran trader and investor Bobby Lee said a bullish trend will not start in the cryptocurrency market until 2025. He noted: the expert knows how to admit he is wrong and did make a mistake when he said that the value of bitcoin (BTC) will reach $100,000 this year.
Lee said that after peaking at $69,000, the bull market ended and now we are in the thick of a bear market. According to the expert, it is unfortunate, but such are the cycles. Looking at the charts, the expert does not expect anything good for the market in the next 2 years.
In his last interview, Lee noted that the cryptocurrency bear market will not slow down after the collapse of FTX last month. Sentiment has shifted towards extreme caution. This is due to the lack of a regulatory environment, and the market is insufficiently secure and fraud-proof.
According to Lee, although cryptocurrencies are positioned as a decentralized market, trust in the industry is still an important factor when using exchanges, storage services and more. Lee believes that regulation of the industry is necessary to protect consumers and mass adoption of digital currencies. However, it remains to be seen whether new rules proposed by financial regulators and state authorities can make a difference.
Last October, Lee predicted that there would be significant growth driven by fear of missing out (FOMO) that would push the BTC exchange rate to the $100,000 mark. He assured: bitcoin will attract more media attention, which in turn could trigger another price spike.
Lee also made similar predictions in late 2019 when he launched his own digital currency wallet Ballet. At the time, he said the $100,000 value would be reached during the next bull rally, but that didn't happen.
🐕Shiba Inu combustion schedule changed dramatically in December
Shiba Inu (SHIB) token burning volumes fell sharply in December 2022. The current movement is not an anomaly, but a return to normal. The team announces an important event.
Just under 177 million SHIBs were burned last week, statistics from CryptEye show. Adjusting for the value of 1 SHIB - $0.0000086 - that's about $1,500. In the first 19 days of December, 304 million coins were burned. The forecast for all of December is 500 million Shiba Inu tokens.
That's half as many as in the fall period. Back then, about 1 billion shiba coins were burned each month. In the summer of 2022, the figure was even higher - 4 billion SHIB monthly.
However, this drop is not an anomaly, but a return to the usual figures. This is indicated by looking at the annual graph of flaring.
We should expect new developments in the Shiba Inu market. Earlier, the developers posted a countdown timer on the site with an image of a Shiba Inu dog staring out the window in the dark. And a message appeared on Twitter associated with the token:
Get your seat belts ready.
🔙U.S. Democrat Party agencies will return the $1 million they received from FTX
Three organizations affiliated with the Democratic Party of the United States have announced plans to return donations received from the bankrupt FTX exchange. The funds of more than $1 million will be used to pay victims.
The Democratic National Committee (DNC), Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) announced the refunds.
"Given the allegations of possible campaign finance misconduct by FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, we are allocating funds to repay contributions received since 2020 in the amount of $815,000. Once an action plan is agreed upon, we will return the funds immediately," said a DNC spokesperson.
DSCC and DCCC will refund $103,000 and $250,000 respectively. Meanwhile, the FTX founder himself has previously reported donating about $40 million to various Democratic organizations. He later said that he had secretly donated a similar amount to Republican groups as well.
Interestingly, the White House received from Bankman-Fried a noticeably larger amount of about $5.2 million, while officials refused to answer questions about the fate of these funds, sending them to the DNC representatives.
🔥FTX news: heated debate in Congress, Binance back in the crosshairs
The former head of FTX has finally been detained and may be transported to the US in the near future. However, the number of news about the bankrupt trading platform does not decrease.
Trivial embezzlement
FTX's new director John Ray III appeared before the US House Financial Services Committee. Specifically, he revealed that the former management of the exchange stored private keys unencrypted. Therefore, the exchange's funds, including client money, were constantly at risk.
John Ray believes that the bankruptcy was caused by trivial embezzlement, rather than by some malicious and sophisticated scheme of fraud.
It was simply the use of client money to one's advantage.
In addition to the negligent attitude to the clients' money, the exchange did not keep records. For example, FTX and the US division of FTX US were held in the same database.
Is Binance again to blame for the collapse of FTX?
In general, many interesting statements were made in Congress. Shark Tank host Kevin O'Leary, for example, stood up for Bankman-Fried. He blamed the collapse of FTX its main competitor, the largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance. The whole thing, he said, was a carefully spun action to drown the enemy. The show's host cited personal conversations with a former FTX executive.
Sam Bankman-Fried revealed that Binance along with Changpen Zhao owned a 20% stake in FTX, while not helping to develop in any way, and instead submitted one by one applications for licenses from regulators in various countries for Binance. According to O'Leary, the two major exchanges were feuding, resulting in FTX eventually collapsing.
Two days before FTX's bankruptcy, everything was already clear
The court materials regarding FTX's bankruptcy also reveal interesting information about how events unfolded on the eve of the platform's collapse. For example, it was revealed that Ryan Salame, head of FTX in the Bahamas, had been in contact with the local regulator about possible FTX fraud two days before the bankruptcy filing.
The bankruptcy was announced on November 11, and on the 9th, Salame reported that FTX was sending money to a related company, Alameda Research. Such an outrage could only be approved by the firm's co-founders Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang, as well as CTO Nishad Singh.
💰Record amount of funds withdrawn from Binance
Several analytical companies and experts have analyzed the situation with the exchange Binance for the last day. In particular, it was noted that users of the world's most popular trading platform provided a record amount of money outflows over the past 24 hours, according to December 13, 2022.
Thus, researchers service DefiLlama said that over the past 24 hours they recorded a net outflow of $2.95 billion of cryptocurrency assets from the wallets, belonging to the trading platform Binance. According to experts, customers withdrew stabelcoins, as well as two flagship cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Ethereum for about $1.64 billion.
As of 2 p.m. Moscow time, Binance exchange wallets stored cryptocurrencies worth a total of $62.13 billion . The Ethereum network accounted for $31.13 billion, Tron for $11.39 billion, BSC for $10.8 billion and Bitcoin for $8.8 billion.
Experts service Nansen assured that the exchange Binance experienced the highest daily outflow of funds since June this year. According to analysts, more than $2bn worth of digital assets had been withdrawn from the trading floor as of December 12. Specialists noted: it was virtual assets ETH and tokens standard ERC-20.
In addition, Chinese journalist Colin Wu reminded readers that the technical service of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance temporarily froze the withdrawal of funds in stabelcoin USD Coin (USDC). The press service of the site asked customers not to worry and assured that the funds are safe. This situation occurred because the channel to exchange PAX/BUSD pair to USDC requires transactions through a bank in New York in U.S. dollars (USD).
The site's head Changpen Zhao (CZ) assured users that withdrawals will be restored when banks open within a few hours. Withdrawals of crypto assets in USDT and BUSD are still available.
🛡️Former U.S. auditor general: Mazars report fails to confirm Binance's reliability
Douglas Carmichael believes that the stock exchange has not published data that could shed light on its financial condition or liquidity. The professor points out that the document does not mention the effectiveness of the company's internal controls over financial reporting:
"I can't imagine how this report could answer questions about the adequacy of Binance's asset collateral."
The former chief auditor emphasises that Mazars has not expressed an "opinion or assurance", suggesting that the auditor does not vouch for the data presented. Mazars has only said that it has agreed to all audit procedures requested by Binance. In doing so, Carmichael notes, it "made no representation as to the appropriateness of these procedures."
In addition, the letter was addressed to Binance Capital Management in the British Virgin Islands, although it is unclear whether the assets audited belong to that entity.
Audit firm Mazars last week published a report that confirmed the November findings of cryptocurrency exchange Binance's more than 100% ratio of the exchange's bitcoin reserves to customer assets.
📈MXC cryptocurrency rose 76% in 24 hours
Experts from CryptoDiffer told about the most successful cryptocurrencies in terms of profitability over the past 24 hours as of 18:00 Moscow time on December 10, 2022. The analysts highlighted 7 virtual assets at once, with MXC (MXC) becoming the leader among them.
Quotes of this digital token increased by 75.7% over the last 24 hours. It was traded at $0.045 with trading volumes of $34.96 million. For the first time in history, MXC was in the top 200 in terms of the maximum offer size on the market, taking 198th place in the rating.
In second place, in terms of profitability, was the cryptocurrency Wemix (WEMIX), which recovered its position after a sharp collapse in quotations due to problems in South Korea. The virtual token gained 38.7 percent in the last 24 hours, while being 56.6 percent lower than a week ago. The value of the asset equaled $0.385, and daily deals were worth $10.34m.
Next on the list was the cryptocurrency Orachain Token (ORAI), whose rate reached $2.2 and thus rose by 35.3% over the past day. Trading volumes were $2.09 in 24 hours. By the way, over the past week this crypto-asset has risen by 132.7%.
Also, investors were significantly pleased by the new cryptocurrency Hooked Protocol (HOOK), which quotations jumped by 17.5% in the reporting period and were fixed at $2.75. The volume of trade transactions for a day - $177.25 million.
In addition, such cryptocurrencies as SingularityNET (AGIX), OAX (OAX) and Zebec Protocol (ZBC) grew in value. Their quotes were $0.056, $0.239 and $0.0182, respectively.
Speaking about AGIX it rose by 14.8%. OAX, in its turn, added 13.9% in value. Price of ZBC grew by 13.7% during the last 24 hours.
🤨WAVES cryptocurrency raised suspicions among regulators
It became known: the management of blockchain project Waves received an "investment warning" from the Korea Federation of Exchanges (DAXA). The reason is that native Stablecoin USDN has too high volatility. Crypto-exchange Upbit will decide in the next 2 weeks whether to stop transactions with WAVES.
The Digital Asset Exchange Joint Advisory Body (DAXA) has named Waves (WAVES) as a risky asset. This applies to the two target markets on the Upbit exchange: WAVES/KRW, WAVES/BTC. The fact is that the virtual coin can be used as collateral for USDN Stablecoin, and this cryptocurrency is algorithmically pegged to the value of the US dollar (USD). Recently, however, USDN quotations began to fluctuate wildly and diverged from $1.
Upbit experts have been monitoring the USDN price trend for several weeks and found out: there is a high probability that the value of the pegged cryptocurrency WAVES could also fluctuate rapidly. This would potentially lead to losses for investors.
Over the next two weeks, Upbit management will determine whether or not to discontinue final support for WAVES on its platform. The exchange team has initiated a vetting process to designate warning points. Digital assets designated as risky cannot be deposited on the trading platform until the review process is completed.
Waves representatives have not yet commented on the situation and assured that they will independently investigate the reasons for distrust of their project on the part of South Korean financial regulators.
Members of the organization DAXA, however, assured that in connection with the collapse of Terra and FTX began to more carefully examine all the coins and tokens, presented on the local exchanges. The institution aims to prevent critical situations that could lead to the bankruptcy of traders and investors.
🤔Buterin chose the most interesting elements of the Ethereum ecosystem
Vitalik Buterin revealed what he likes about the Ethereum cryptocurrency (ETH) ecosystem, publishing a lengthy article on his blog.
Buterin listed the types of existing Stablecoins and chose his favorites, which turned out to be RAI (RAI) and Liquity USD (LUSD) coins, whose rate is backed by ETH stock instead of fiat currency.
Vitalik believes that these assets have maximum stability and a much higher level of security than traditional centralized steblecoins, particularly Tether (USDT) and Binance USD (BUSD).
The creator of Ethereum has identified promising areas for decentralized service providers.
In his view, platforms for betting on various sports and political events, synthetic digital assets (e.g., those tied to real estate values) and platforms that integrate different blockchains and thereby empower customers will be very popular.
Vitalik talked about the methods developed to identify users of decentralized networks for various transactions, including participation in airdrop and voting on various issues.
Buterin also described the advantages of decentralization, which, in his opinion, makes it possible to strengthen protection of the digital platform against cyberattacks, increase efficiency of the ecosystem management scheme and make it interoperable.
🤓Three cryptocurrencies became more expensive by 20% or more in 7 days
According to statistics from analytical resources, three cryptocurrencies from the top-100 rankings by maximum market capitalization rose in price by more than 20% over the past week. The data were relevant as of 12:00 Moscow time on December 4, 2022.
The best result was demonstrated by Fantom (FTM). Quotes of this virtual currency grew by 26.36%, despite a 3.7% correction on the rate chart during the last day The digital asset was traded at $0.24 with the total supply of coins in circulation at $611.11 million. This allowed to settle on the 65th position in the rating of best. During the week traders provided deals with FTM in the amount of $1.22 bn.
As for the other two cryptocurrencies, they were GMX (GMX) and Trust Wallet Token (TWT). The former traded at $54.6, while the latter could be purchased at $2.42. They gained 21.84% and 20.43% respectively. The market capitalization of GMX cryptocurrency was $436.5 million, while TWT was equal to $1 billion. Market participants provided trading volumes of $262.97 million and $1.04 billion respectively for the week.
Curiously, at a distance of 30 days, quotations of Trust Wallet Token have already soared by 104%.
Convex Finance was the worst performing cryptocurrency during the week, slipping to 99th place on the list of top cryptocurrencies with $281.58 million. CVX virtual token was trading at $3.92, which is 10.22% cheaper than its value seven days ago. Traders secured decentralized finance sector virtual token transactions totaling $17.70 million during the week.
📊Experts gave a prediction on Ethereum
The main altcoin has been moving near the $1200 mark since December 17 this year. According to experts, the first signs of possible asset growth are emerging. Technical models suggest that ether could well overcome the $1330 level by March 2023, but it needs to hold above $1180 support to do so.
The Ethereum ecosystem's long-awaited move to the PoS consensus algorithm in September 2022 paved the way for additional Level 2 integration. Subsequent upgrades could increase Ethereum's scalability by a factor of 100, which would significantly lower gas fees and increase transaction speeds.
That said, it is worth considering that the competing Solana platform is currently experiencing difficulties, which could fuel investor interest in Ethereum. At the same time, experts emphasized that the macroeconomic environment continues to put pressure.
The key risk factor remains the Federal Reserve, which does not yet plan to soften its monetary policy. In this regard, analysts do not exclude the probable decline of Ethereum closer to $1000. This level may become an excellent springboard for the development of a steady upward trend in the future.
Earlier edition of Crypto.rú informed: more than 4000 new crypto-machines appeared in the world for the last 12 months, about what representatives of CoinATMRadar informed. As of January 1, 2022 their number was estimated at 34,358 units, but by December 30 the total number of cryptocurrency ATMs reached 38,597.
Experts emphasized that within 8 years the number of such devices in different jurisdictions may increase by 60%. Retail users are increasingly using digital assets as a full-fledged means of payment, which accelerates the acceptance of cryptocurrencies in society.
📉SOL cryptocurrency continued to fall
According to blockchain services, the value of Solana token (SOL) continued to fall as of December 29, 2022. The price of the virtual currency lost 5.85% over the last 24 hours, and cumulatively has already fallen by 22.5% over the past week. The digital asset was available for purchase at $9.43.
At the same time, analysts from CoinDesk stressed that other major cryptocurrencies remained at the same price level without losing ground. Industry-wide market capitalization lost 0.8% in the last 24 hours as stock markets faced renewed fears of a coronavirus pandemic.
For example, Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index and Japan's Nikkei 225 lost about 1 percent as of Asian afternoon hours on Thursday, Dec. 29, while the Shanghai Composite was down 0.44 percent. According to Bloomberg, the decline in stock prices also came amid a weakening to risk appetite among market participants. This traditionally happens in the last days of the year.
The pressure on Solana came from their close ties of the blockchain startup to entrepreneur and FTX exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried. He has been charged with fraud and misappropriation of funds from the trading platform's customers.
Since 2020, Bankman-Fried has acted as a key supporter of Solana, launching decentralized exchange Serum on the then-network and investing heavily from the Alameda Research fund to develop projects across the ecosystem.
According to the DeFiLlama service, in addition to the drop in SOL cryptocurrency prices, the value of Solana-based applications has dropped by about 98% since November 2021. Experts noted that the sharp drop in Solana's performance came after Terra (LUNA) collapsed in May this year, the market dipped in July and after FTX-related issues were revealed early last month.
📊Ether exchange rate forecast from market researchers
Experts from Delphi Digital, an independent research boutique that provides institutional analysis of the digital asset market, made a forecast for the ether (ETH) exchange rate. They noted that liquidity is the backbone of any financial market. In their view, it can sometimes be used to predict upcoming price fluctuations.
The company's researchers presented a metric that compared Ethereum's normal dollar (USD) price to Total Loans Outstanding Metrics, which included data from the decentralized AAVE, Compound and MakerDAO protocols. The technical metrics reflected the amount of existing liquidity in the network. Experts assured that looking at this graph, it is easy to see that liquidity in the smart contracts of these protocols has a direct impact on the price performance of the ether cryptocurrency.
Due to the high correlation, it was possible to use these values as an analysis tool. According to analysts, Ethereum's tight dependence on market liquidity should not surprise traders, as the performance of the industry's second-largest cryptocurrency is highly dependent on trading volume, market depth and overall level of network usage.
Cryptocurrencies are used as liquidity exposure tools. By contributing relatively less collateral, investors are able to gain additional liquidity and transact without actually owning digital assets.
At the end of 2022, ETH unfortunately showed no signs of a price rebound ahead of 2023. The volatility of the asset was at its lowest during the year due to a general decline in network activity and a lack of demand for risk-taking. This led to a serious decline in volume and liquidity.
In addition to macroeconomic factors, the Ethereum network recorded an extended period of increased issuance growth due to extremely low network activity. Experts stressed: without an increase in the number of users, the burning mechanism will not work properly, making the cryptocurrency inflationary again.
📈Decentralized applications gained popularity in 2022
According to a report by DappRadar portal, the demand for decentralized cryptocurrency applications (dApps) increased by 50% in 2022.
This year the average number of dApp users reached 2.37 million per day. This figure is 50% higher than the figure recorded in 2021. Gaming apps proved to be the most popular, as they were launched by an average of 1.15 million people per day performing 7.4 billion transactions.
However, the decentralized financial services market saw a strong decline. The value of cryptocurrencies locked in DeFi smart contracts declined 74% to $55 billion in December.
58% of assets accounted for services created on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain. DeFi in the BNB Chain network is second in this indicator, holding $6.5 billion worth of coins (12% of the total value).
The NFT industry came out on the plus side, albeit a small one. Compared to 2021, the trading volume of non-exchangeable tokens increased by 0.41%, while the number of transactions increased by 10% to 68.35 million. Separately, it is worth noting the more than nine-fold increase in the number of traders. This year, 10.6 million unique users traded NFT.
📉Computing capacity of Ethereum Classic network dropped by 45%
The Ethereum Classic (ETC) cryptocurrency blockchain's processing power has declined by 45% over the past three months.
The ETC network's hash rate began to rapidly increase ahead of the Ethereum blockchain's (ETH) transition to the PoS consensus algorithm, which took place on September 15.
In just five days, the ETC network's capacity more than quadrupled, reaching a peak of 199.5 terahashes per second on September 16. However, the hash rate then began to decline and by December 23, it had fallen by 45% from its historical high.
The negative trend is likely due to the bearish trend prevailing in the cryptocurrency market, which led to a drop in mining yields. Now ETC mining is not profitable if the cost of electricity exceeds $0.06 per kWh (4.19 rubles). Obviously, many miners have chosen to shut down equipment or refocus on mining other coins.
The Ethereum Classic exchange rate was also moving down. Compared to the figure recorded in mid-September, the cryptocurrency's price fell by 52%. In addition, on December 19, the value of the asset fell to a five-month low of $14.74 (on Coinbase exchange).
📱Huawei: The current telecommunications infrastructure is not suitable for meta-universes
Huawei, a Chinese corporation specializing in telecommunications, has published a report in which it expressed doubts that the existing communication standards are suitable for meta-universes. According to the company's experts, 5G and 6G are much better suited for this task. This was stated by Abhinav Purohit, Huawei's chief business and strategy consultant.
"A meta-universe is first and foremost a collective virtual space that brings people from different parts of the world together in one place, allowing everyone to have the same experience. It seamlessly blends virtual content with the physical world," said Purohit.
So to realize something like this, you need high download speeds, streaming speeds, and proper hardware to keep the virtual worlds running smoothly. This requires at least a few other technical advances: hybrid and local real-time remote rendering, video compression and edge computing.
Changes in network optimization and communication standards will also be necessary to reduce latency between devices and different mobile networks. This will be greatly improved by the widespread adoption of 5G, says Purohita, but ultimately innovation is needed in several areas at once.
📈TON cryptocurrency value up 39% in a week
On December 18, 2022, only one cryptocurrency from the top 100 by market capitalization rose in value by more than 10%. The virtual coin Toncoin (TON) became the leader of this timeframe in terms of profitability. Its quotations jumped by 38.88%. This allowed the virtual currency to climb into the list of the top twenty virtual currencies, taking the honorable 20th place for the first time in its history.
Experts attributed such rapid growth in the value of the digital asset to the recent statements of entrepreneur Pavel Durov, who assured that he would develop a decentralized exchange and non-custodial wallets for integration into the Telegram messenger. The value of TON has locked in at $2.6 at the time of writing the news. Market capitalization was at $3.17 billion. Over the past 24 hours, Toncoin quotations increased by 6.7%, while trading volume for the week was equal to $154.29 million.
The second place in terms of profitability for the week went to XDC Network (XDC). However this virtual currency gained 7.58% in the last 7 days. Its price was fixed at $0.023, which allowed to rise to the 88th line in the ranks with the index of $289.09 billion. During the week, traders provided transactions with the cryptocurrency in the amount of $22.26 million.
As for the flagship cryptocurrencies, bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) fell slightly over the past 7 days. Digital gold was trading at $16,721, falling again below a key support level of $17,000. At that, the asset capitalization equaled $321.66 mn. This indicator lost 2.61%.
Ethereum has become cheaper by 7.25% over the last 7 days. Its quotations fell to $1180, while the total supply of coins circulating in circulation amounted to $144.48 bn.
🏠Pensioner from Nizhnekamsk mortgaged his apartment for fake crypto-investments
The fraud scheme is simple - the victim saw an advertisement on the Internet where unknown people promised a monthly income of 90,000 rubles. Considering that the pension of a Nizhnekamsk resident is 15,000 rubles, the temptation was too great and the pensioner left his phone number on the website. He was then contacted by a "cryptocurrency analyst" who introduced himself as Nikolay Kiyatkov.
At first, the caller offered to "start trading" for 30,000 rubles. After funding the account and "converting to cryptocurrency," the pensioner began to make trades. Seeing how quickly the chart with the amount of profit on the page of his personal account was growing, the man made several more deposits. For one of them, the victim even took out a loan against the security of the apartment in the amount of about 3 million rubles.
When the victim wanted to withdraw part of the profit, the fraudsters started stalling and demanding additional funds:
"Nikolai told me: in order to withdraw all the money from my brokerage account in the amount of about $43,000, I have to transfer 261,000 rubles for the collection. The money was to be brought to me the same day. But I never saw the dollars".
The citizen of Nizhnekamsk made his first deposit in September 2022 and went to the police only in December. In total the pensioner lost 3.56 million rubles and remained with the credit which now should be paid off. The law enforcement authorities opened a criminal case under the article "Fraud".
😒DeFi sector has been volatile over the past week
According to Crypto.cоm experts, the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector weekly indices have fallen over the past 7 days, as of December 14, 2022. Analysts highlighted that the market capitalization and trading volume indices were negative at 1,870 (-2.03%) and 431 (-18.44%) respectively, while the volatility index was positive at 268 (+144.05%).
The big news in the DeFi industry was that Ethereum core developers confirmed the launch of the Shanghai hardfork in March 2023 during the All Core Devs Call #151. The update will support unfreezing and withdrawals from the Beacon Chain stack, allowing network members to redeem ethers (ETH) locked in the original contract.
ConsenSys will begin internal beta testing of the zkEVM private network next week, allowing shns developers to pool assets between the Goerli test network and zkEVM to test smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps) and deploy them using MetaMask and Infura tools.
Osmosis developers have launched their own version of Curve 3Pool for the Cosmos ecosystem. This will make it easier to trade stablcoins with "minimal impact on price or value fluctuations" and enable support for USDC and USDT.
The TRON-based USDD stablecoin lost its peg to the U.S. dollar (USD) and fell to $0.97. This created an imbalance in the Curve USDD/3CRV liquidity pool, which is almost 82.5% in USD. Developer Justin Sun announced that TRON has committed more capital to provide USDD and restore the peg.
Lodestar Finance's credit platform suffered a hacking attack. The attackers managed to take an instant loan (Flash Loan) and stole $6.5 million. The founders of Nomad Bridge announced that they will restart the bridge and partially compensate users for the loss of funds stolen by the hacker in August this year.
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😐Hacker stole all cryptocurrency from DeFi Lodestar Finance
Cryptocurrency lending platform Lodestar Finance has lost all of its cryptocurrency holdings in a cyberattack.
An attacker managed to exploit a vulnerability in the service's smart contract to artificially increase the rate of plvGLP tokens. The hacker then borrowed the coins stored in the pool against a small amount of plvGLP and transferred approximately $6.4 million worth of GLP digital assets to his wallet.
Some DeFi users managed to take credits and withdraw tokens while the price of plvGLP remained high. As a result, Lodestar Finance staff had to intervene in the situation.
DeFi employees estimate that they can recover GLP's digital assets worth approximately $2.4 million. In this regard, the platform's representatives are asking the criminal to get in touch with them and return the stolen coins in exchange for a generous reward.
DeFiLlama's website indicates that the Lodestar Finance smart contract has blocked $10.99 worth of tokens, and the value of the virtual currency borrowed exceeds $138 million. Thus, due to a vulnerability in the software code, the pool has been almost completely emptied.
🌐Most promising Web 3 cryptocurrencies according to experts
Cryptoinvestor, founder of Cryptemic Investment and Cryptemic Academy Anton Yanushkevich believes: there are several cryptocurrencies in the Web 3 ecosystem that contribute to the decentralized development of the Internet and have clear investment potential: Zcash (ZEC), Decentraland (MANA), Filecoin (FIL) and Chainlink (LINK).
Zcash is curious in that it provides maximum anonymity for transactions, with payments being either private or public. The user makes his or her own choice based on personal preference. According to the expert, this cryptocurrency has excellent investment potential.
MANA coin from Decentraland performs service functions and is necessary for the functioning of the economy within the virtual world of this project. Filecoin is a decentralized network for secure data storage. Generally speaking, it is the Web 3 version of Yandex.Disk, where landlords of free storage space are rewarded in FIL tokens.
Also worth noting is Chainlink. It's a blockchain-based decentralized oracle network that allows smart contracts to access and validate external resources. Given the startup's close cooperation with SWIFT payment system, it will enable crypto-transfers in favor of traditional financial institutions in a short time and at minimal cost in the future.
StormGain exchange expert Dmitry Noskov suggests: there are three major cryptocurrencies in the Web 3 ecosystem: Chainlink, Filecoin, Theta. Theta can be considered the most promising of them. The uniqueness of the project is that it solves the issue of delivery of video content in high resolution and at minimal cost. These are important pluses for any consumer, and he will be willing to pay for it, which will allow the startup to actively develop.
Ernest Rajewski, Managing Partner at GetMiner, expressed an opinion: the current year showed that the main cryptocurrency in the Web 3 ecosystem was Ethereum, which acted as a platform for many decentralized applications. At the moment, Stepn (GMT), Avalanche (AVAX) and Polygon (MATIC) should be paid attention to in the investment plan. The specialist stressed that the most popular Web 3 digital coins can be found on the Binance platform. The main leaders of digital assets segment are Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether.
🎒Crypto Banter disclosed information about portfolios of leading investors
The cryptocurrency market is struggling to recover from the recent FTX crash, but the situation is still challenging. However, this does not prevent large investors from steadily accumulating assets by buying different digital coins at better prices.
On Wednesday, December 7, Crypto Banter's team reported that they contacted several popular investors to learn more about their portfolios. The first was a popular holder under the nickname Bitboy, who is popular in tight circles. It turned out that the investor is betting on Ripple, Cardano, Polygon, Hedera and Internet Computer. According to the expert himself, he expects a significant growth in the value of these assets over the next few years.
There is also information about the investment portfolio of HEX developer Richard Hart. The specialist is most actively investing in Ethereum, Monero, Bitcoin and HEX. Recently, the expert predicted that the crypto market's flagship may drop as low as $10,000 in the foreseeable future. This area could be optimal for potentially opening long-term long positions.
Earlier edition of Crypto.rú informed: according to some analysts, some indicators point to the fact that in the near future the crypto market flagship may once again switch to a bearish trend phase. Triggers for the development of such dynamics could be a decrease in hash rate in the BTC ecosystem, a steady downward trend in the market and a clear decline in buying activity.
It was emphasized that the hashrate level by December 7 decreased by 7.3%. The similar was observed only in summer 2021. At that time, the Chinese leadership officially put a ban on the mining of digital assets in the country. Then the hash rate fell by almost 28%.
📰Key news on the FTX bankruptcy aftermath overnight
Researchers of analytical resource CryptoCompare published next Crypto Roundup report about main news of cryptocurrencies for the last day. According to December 5, 2022, the events related to the collapse of FTX trading platform were noted as key.
In particular, former FTX CEO postponed testifying before the US Congress, FTX Japan division planned to launch withdrawal feature for users, and it was revealed that cryptocurrency lender Genesis owed $900 million to Gemini customers.
FTX exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried said that he would not be able to attend a U.S. Congressional hearing scheduled for December 13 to testify. He requested a postponement from the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services. The businessman motivated his decision by a desire to complete his own analysis of the situation that led to the collapse. The businessman wants to come to court with a base of evidence of his innocence, apparently understanding what he faces.
In addition, the FTX Japan division has confirmed that it will resume the ability to withdraw funds for customers in early 2023. If the compensation plan works, Japanese exchange users could be among the first to get their funds back. The press office said6 it will publish information on client assets held in the service's wallets and trust account every week.
Cryptocurrency lender Genesis and its parent company Digital Currency Group (DCG) owed Gemini customers about $900 million, which happened because the exchange used a product called Earn that offered investors the ability to borrow funds to earn interest.
🕵️Former FTX.ÚS president Brett Harrison seeks funding for new startup
Former FTX.ÚS president and CEO Brett Harrison plans to launch a startup that will create cryptocurrency trading software for large investors.
Harrison said he has already entered into an agreement with a venture capital firm to provide $6 million in funding. He now plans to raise about $60 million in the first round of funding to launch the new project.
In September, more than a month before FTX collapsed, Harrison officially announced his resignation from the exchange's executive positions. So he was able to avoid targeted criticism about his involvement in the embezzlement of user funds.
Earlier, the trustee in bankruptcy case FTX Andrew Vara (Andrew Vara) said that the default of the exchange was the fastest corporate collapse in the history of the United States, and called on the court to appoint an independent expert to investigate the case.
