🚨 Bitcoin miner CleanSpark slashes 2023 hashrate guidance on build-out delays
Bitcoin miner CleanSpark is lowering its 2023 hashrate guidance from 22.4 EH/s to 16 EH/s because of build-out delays coming from its infrastructure partner, Lancium. CleanSpark did, however, meet its 5.0 EH/s year-end hashrate in October and is now projecting to reach 6.0 EH/s by Dec. 31.
Lancium was expected to provide first 50 megawatts this month and the next 150 megawatts in the spring, Bradford said. Instead, that capacity only will be available in late 2023 — or even later, given current market conditions. Margins in the industry are hurting amid higher costs and lower bitcoin prices. Some of the largest players are cash-strapped and struggling to pay bills.thousands of machines from competitors in recent months.
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🪙 MakerDAO to execute bundled governance actions, including pay for delegates
MakerDAO, the decentralized autonomous organization behind the Maker DeFi project, is set to execute eight governance proposals that have been voted on by the community in what the protocol has called its “most important deployments of 2022.”
The DAO’s delegates voted on the proposals on Dec. 11. The bundle includes a compensation package for recognized delegates, the onboarding of Gnosis DAO (GNO) token as collateral for DAI and raising the DAI savings rate from 0.01% to 1%. The Block previously reported that the DAO was looking to adopt GNO as collateral for minting its stablecoin DAI.
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💰 Cardano adds over 20,000 new staking addresses on average monthly for over a year
Cardano’s (ADA) ecosystem continues to expand despite the uncertainty in the cryptocurrency market, which has been heavily impacted this year by the implosion of the Terraform Labs ecosystem and now by the crypto exchange collapse involving FTX.
According to data acquired by Finbold, Cardano has added 22,327 new staking addresses on average monthly for 13 months. Indeed, figures from Pooltool, a Cardano data aggregation tool, indicate that ADA’s staking wallets reached total stake addresses of 1,232,459 on December 9, compared with the 942,117.
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📣 Three Arrows Capital co-founder says it wasn’t luna that took it out, but FTX
Three Arrows Capital co-founder Kyle Davies said that it wasn’t luna, an ensuing credit squeeze or declining crypto prices that brought the hedge fund to its knees. He said 3AC’s death knell came from being liquidated on FTX before it collapsed.
Davies broke down how the hedge fund unwound on a podcast with hedge fund manager Hugh Hendry. He claimed that the fund survived the collapse of luna, the ensuing credit squeeze and decline of crypto prices — only to succumb when it was liquidated by FTX. He also claimed FTX and Alameda shared internal information and that the trading firm knew its liquidation level and deliberately hunted it.
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💸 Blockstream's unicorn status in jeopardy as it seeks fresh funding: Bloomberg
Crypto infrastructure firm Blockstream is looking for a fresh injection of capital at a significantly lower valuation than it raised at last year. The startup raised $210 million in a Series B round led by Baillie Gifford and Bitfinex in August 2021, which brought its valuation to $3.2 billion.
Founded in 2014, the startup has raised a total of $299 million to date, according to data from Crunchbase. It provides infrastructure services to the crypto industry and recently partnered with fintech firm Block to launch a solar and battery-powered mining facility. It's also made a number of acquisitions over the years including SponDoolies-Tech and Adamant Capital.
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🇮🇳 Indian Crypto Association Seeks Relief from High Taxes
A prominent Indian cryptocurrency trade body – Bharat Web3 Association (BWA) – has red-flagged the high taxes and regulatory uncertainty in its draft of concerns and recommendations submitted to the Indian Finance Ministry, which is holding consultations in the run-up to the budget for 2023-24.
The Finance Ministry introduced a 30% capital gains tax and 1% transaction tax deduction at source (TDS) in the budget for 2022-23. It also clarified that profits made on crypto transactions will not be allowed to be carried forward and offset against losses. These harsh moves hurt the crypto trade badly, and Indian crypto exchanges witnessed a fall in trading volume in the range of 90%.
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🚨 Crypto criminals set to launder $10 billion by 2025
As the increasingly popular yet largely unregulated cryptocurrency industry expands, it attracts a growing number of dishonest and malicious participants for whom the budding blockchain technology has presented new opportunities to get rich quickly.
According to the study, Elliptic has, by 2022, “identified over $4.1 billion of illicit or high-risk crypto that has been laundered through either asset-hopping or chain-hopping,” made possible by decentralized exchanges (DEXs), cross-chain bridges and coin swap services.”. carried out by blockchain analytics platform Elliptic and published on November 30.
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🏦 Kraken to layoff 1,100 people to ‘adapt to current market conditions’
U.S.-based crypto exchange Kraken has announced laying off 1,100 staff members, equating to 30% of its workforce, as a response to weathering crypto winter. with Powell saying the company will assist in finding new work opportunities for those impacted.
Powell said Kraken had tripled its workforce over the past few years to cope with rising demand. The reduction in headcount reverts numbers back to a year ago. Departing staff will “receive comprehensive support,” including 16 weeks of separation pay, performance bonuses for eligible individuals, four months of healthcare, and support with visa issues and work placement opportunities.
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🇪🇺 Fintech Plum rolls out crypto investing to customers in Europe
European fintech platform Plum is rolling out crypto investing services to customers in France, Belgium, Spain and Ireland. Customers will be able to buy fractional shares in five of the leading cryptocurrencies.
Plum will provide the service through a partnership with crypto unicorn Bitpanda, according to a release from Plum. The app will integrate Bitpanda's API tools to enable customers to access Bitpanda's crypto services through Plum's user interface. All investments are physically backed and kept in cold storage, according to the release.
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📶 Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade confirms 1st testnet “Shandong”
2022 will certainly be considered a major year for several platforms. For FTX, Terra, and other troubled platforms, it certainly wasn’t a pleasant year. But, for the Ethereum [ETH] network, with its transition from proof-of-work [PoW] to proof-of-stake [PoS].
Now, once again, the network was back making headlines. During a recent weekly call, developers at the Ethereum Foundation shed light on the Shanghai update. This is expected to be the next major upgrade following the Merge. The Shanghai update is scheduled to take place in the second half of 2023.
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💰 DEX aggregator 1inch to protect MetaMask users from frontrunning
Decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch is introducing a feature called RabbitHole that's designed to prevent MetaMask users from getting hit by a certain form of frontrunning.
The issue at hand is sandwich attacks. This is where a trader frontruns a large buy order by buying the token first, pushing up the price. Once the buy order goes through, the token's price rises higher, at which point the trader sells at the higher price (or vice versa for the whole maneuver). It results in the victim seeing the trade executed at a worse price.
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🟠 Ravencoin spikes 20% following Binance Pool announcement
Ravencoin (RVN) spiked 20% following Binance Pool’s announcement of mining services for the proof-of-work (PoW) coin. According to CryptoSlate data, RVN jumped to $0.024 from $0.021 within one hour of the revelation.
Binance Pool’s announcement revealed that it would charge a 1% mining fee, and users could only participate in the pool after verifying their accounts. Ravencoin was one of the proof-of-work networks miners flocked to after Ethereum transitioned to the Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism. The initial rush saw its hashrate increase by as much as 5-times.
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🇦🇪 Dubai's DMCC partners with ComTech for blockchain-based gold trading
Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC) has partnered with ComTech Gold to enable blockchain-based trading of physical gold bars. an online platform created by the DMCC to track the provenance of physical commodities kept in its vaults in the UAE.
The actual tokenization will happen on the XDC blockchain network with the creation of ComTech Gold Tokens, or CGO. Each CGO will represent one gram of gold stored in a DMCC vault. Every gold bar deposit will carry a Tradeflow warrant for additional security and transparency. The UAE ranks fourth on the list of global gold consumption behind China, India, and the United States. Gold consumption in the UAE reached 12.5 tonnes in Q1 2022, a 50% increase from the previous year.
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💰 FTX Launches Strategic Review of Assets as Hacker Dumps ETH
Bankrupt FTX has launched a strategic review of all its assets to see how they can be recovered for maximum value for its stakeholders’ benefit. A Nov. 19 press statement from the bankrupt crypto exchange said the strategic review would be for FTX Trading Ltd, known as FTX.com, and the over 100 companies affiliated with it.
According to the press release, many of the regulated and licensed subsidiaries of FTX, both inside and outside the US, like LedgerX LLC and Embed Clearing LLC, have “solvent balance sheets, responsible management, and valuable franchises.”. To go ahead with the assets review, the bankrupt exchange has submitted motions before the bankruptcy court. It is asking for an interim relief that will allow the operation of a global cash management system and allow the company to pay critical vendors.
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🏦 Bitstamp Follows Other Exchanges in Canceling Orders for FTX and Celsius Tokens
Bitstamp is set to disable new orders and cancel existing orders for all FTT and CEL trading pairs, it announced on Friday. FTT is the proprietary exchange token of FTX, which offered customers small discounts on trades for holding FTT before the firm’s high-profile slide into bankruptcy last week.
CEL offered users of the now defunct crypto lender Celsius a small increase in rewards on the platform before the lender shut down withdrawals in June. The move comes after many other exchanges in the crypto world have already started prohibiting users from trading FTT: Binance removed the FTT/BTC, FTT/BNB, FTT/ETH and FTT/USDT trading pairs from its platform earlier this week.
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📈 Total crypto market cap makes 4 week high to $874B following CPI release
The total crypto market cap recorded inflows of $27.2 billion in the last 24 hours to post a four-week high of $871.4 billion. This suggests investors’ confidence is returning following the FTX scandal and wider, ongoing macro factors.
Since bottoming, signs of returning confidence have presented with a slow trickle upwards. This sentiment was boosted on Dec. 13 following better-than-expected U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) data, showing a 7.1% year-on-year increase. Economists’ expectations were for a 7.3% increase. Market leader Bitcoin saw a spike to just below $18,000, and capital inflows jumped at 13:30 (UTC,) the time of the CPI announcement.
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🪙 Arkansas Electric Utility to Offer Energy Sweetener to Battered Crypto Miners
An Arkansas energy provider is sweetening the deal for crypto miners in the state with a special tariff to keep costs down as the industry faces compounded challenges. state which already has some of the lowest energy costs in the U.S.
First proposed earlier this year, the energy charge ranges from $0.75 to just over a penny per kilowatt-hour, a spokesperson for the company told Arkansas Business. Entergy, which is the state’s largest power company, will evaluate whether customers qualify for the special tariff based on their power usage and whether they are directly involved in crypto mining. which is already below the national average of $0.13.
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🇬🇧 UK Includes Crypto Assets in Financial Services Reform Package
The UK government today announced a package of more than 30 reforms to financial regulation, including the extension of tax breaks for investment managers to cover crypto assets. Dubbed the “Edinburgh Reforms,” the measures are designed to replace EU regulation.
The announced measures include publishing a formal response to the consultation on expanding the Investment Manager Exemption to cover crypto assets, which will facilitate their inclusion in the portfolios of overseas funds managed in Great Britain without creating a risk of UK taxation. Treasury include setting up a financial market infrastructure sandbox next year.
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🪙 USDC could get access to Fed’s RRP via BlackRock partnership
USDC stablecoin could get indirect access to the Federal Reserve’s risk-free liability, as its partner BlackRock is set to apply for the Fed’s reserve repo (RRP) program. Circle CFO Jeremy Fox-Geen recently announced that the stablecoin issuer.
The Circle Reserve Fund is managed by BlackRock, which qualifies Circle as an indirect investor in the government money market fund. The reserve will comprise 20% cash held at the Bank of New York Mellon, and 90% short-term U.S. Treasuries. Circle said that it will convert all its existing Treasury holdings into the Circle Reserve Fund by the end of March 2023.
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📣 MoonPay’s Soto-Wright wants web3 to ‘permeate culture’ — at a challenging time
MoonPay has rolled out several new NFT-focused infrastructure tools over the past year, targeting celebrities and big brands. CEO Ivan Soto-Wright thinks big brands’ demand for web3 is undimmed, even after a series of disasters in the wider crypto space.
Soto-Wright is one of web3’s busiest executives. While running a $3.4 billion company, he finds ample time to schmooze musicians and television stars, largely thanks to his efforts to broker NFTs to the rich and famous. Lil Baby, the rapper, gave MoonPay a shout-out in a song released in October — “Invest a lil’ somethin’ into MoonPay just to try somethin’” — after spending time with Soto-Wright. Few Series A founders live in $38 million Miami mansions. Soto-Wright does.
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💰 Celsius clients with collateral stuck on failed crypto platform turn to bankruptcy process for relief
After crypto lending platform Celsius paused withdrawals in June and then went bankrupt, borrowers have been unable to get their collateral off the platform. A former director at Celsius told CNBC that the company’s failure to match its assets and liabilities contributed.
Alan Knitowski holds an MBA, has worked in technology and finance for over 25 years and is CEO of a mobile software company that trades on the Nasdaq. That didn’t prevent him from getting duped by a crypto firm. Knitowski borrowed $375,000 from crypto lender Celsius over several years and posted $1.5 million in bitcoin as collateral.
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🚨 Attackers pocket $20 million in exploits on Ankr and Helio
The first attack targeted a liquid staking token product run by Ankr, resulting in a loss of more than $5 million. An unknown hacker leveraged a vulnerability in Ankr's smart contract to mint trillions of aBNBc, a reward token tied the price of Binance’s exchange token BNB, as noted by BlockSec and other analysts.
Once the attacker minted those tokens, they sold and drained all of its liquidity across decentralized exchanges on BNB Chain to get away with more than $5 million. Ankr acknowledged the exploit, adding that it was working with exchanges to stop deposits from addresses connected with the attacker. aBNBc on decentralized exchanges, the price of the aBNBc token collapsed by more than 99%.
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📣 BitDAO launches modular Ethereum Layer 2 network Mantle
BitDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization with a treasury worth over $1.7 billion, has launched an Ethereum Layer 2 network called Mantle, the DAO announced on Wednesday. This type of design is said to create networks that are more efficient and have greater scalability.
BitDAO’s Layer 2 network stack has three distinct layers, according to the announcement. One layer is for transaction execution while the other two handle transaction finality and data availability, respectively. Mantle is BitDAO’s attempt to solve some of the challenges facing Layer 2 networks, a spokesperson for the DAO told The Block. “BitDAO aims to bring the spotlight back from Alt-L1s.
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🚨 LINE’s Crypto Exchange Bitfront to Shut Down Amid Bear Market
Bitfront will halt trading services by December 30, 2022, while clients have until March 31, 2023, to withdraw their funds. Bitfront – a cryptocurrency platform operated by internet company LINE Corporation – announced it will cease its services as of March 31, 2023.
The US-based exchange Bitfront informed its customers they should withdraw their assets by the end of March 2023 as it will halt all services and delete their information after that date. The notorious crash of FTX is a prime example of an industry participant that triggered a wave of criticism. It filed for a voluntary Chapter 11 Bankruptcy at the beginning of November after failing to honor customer withdrawals and revealing severe liquidity issues.
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💰 Crypto Lending Still Popular as Biggest Lender in Asia Aims to Raise $100 Million
The biggest crypto lender in Asia- Matrixport, aims to raise funding of $100 million amidst the recent FTX turmoil. The recent FTX contagion has put other lending protocols, such as Genesis, BlockFi, and Gemini earn, into trouble. The news about the new funding round when the crypto lending platforms are struggling has surprised everyone.
Matrixport is a Singapore-based startup founded by Jihan Wu. Earlier, Jihan Wu also co-founded Bitmain, a company that designs integrated circuit chips for Bitcoin mining. He left Bitmain in 2019 to start Matrixport. According to a Bloomberg report, the crypto lending company handles $5 billion of monthly trading volume and has over $10 billion of assets under management. Matrixport raised over $100 million in a Series C funding round in Aug. 2021.
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⚡️ Block Earner Sued For Alleged Unauthorized Crypto Services
Block Earner, a fintech business in Sydney, has been sued by Australia's financial watchdog over suspicions that it sold unregistered cryptocurrency goods. There are numerous levels of products available from Block Earner that provide a return on cryptocurrency holdings.
According to the Australian Securities and Investment Commission, or ASIC, these services are unauthorized managed investment schemes that ought to have been regulated. In a statement given by the regulator, ASIC stated that it has started a civil fine case with the federal court to obtain proclamations, injunctions, and monetary sanctions. The court has not yet set a date for the initial hearing.
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💰 South Korea and Singapore Hit Hardest by FTX Collapse: Report
The fallout from the FTX collapse will be measured for years to come. Geographically, three Asian countries have been impacted the most. The report is slightly misleading, however, as it ranked the top 30 countries by monthly users, not the amount lost by customers in each country.
The third largest user base was also an Asian country, with Japan accounting for 223,513 unique users on average visiting FTX.com monthly. Japanese investment giant, SoftBank, invested $100 million in FTX earlier this year, it reported. Taiwan and India were also in the top ten, and Asian countries in the top 15 accounted for more than 25% of the users of FTX. The details from the FTX bankruptcy filings were unveiled over the weekend.
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🇨🇦 Canada’s largest pension fund writes off $95M FTX investment
According to the pension fund, it made two investments in the embattled exchange between October 2021 and January 2022 through its Teachers’ Venture Growth (TVG) platform. Its first investment in Oct. 2021 was worth $75 million, while its second investment was $20 million.
Ontario Teachers revealed that it carried out a robust due diligence process that explored the exchange-provided materials and other research materials on commercial, regulatory, tax, financial, technical, and other matters. The pension fund said the financial loss from the FTX investment would have a minimal impact on its plan, given its size relative to its total net assets and strong financial position.
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💰 FTX bankruptcy filings highlight 'complete failure of corporate controls'
Fresh FTX bankruptcy filings called out Sam Bankman-Fried and the rest of the failed crypto exchange's leadership for a "complete failure of corporate controls" and cited the former CEO's "incessant disruptive tweeting" since the exchange imploded. If granted, the move would help consolidate the myriad of bankruptcies into one U.S. court.
The company’s bankruptcy lawyers argue that Bankman-Fried is actively trying to disrupt the bankruptcy process for the myriad of corporate entities that fall under the FTX umbrella. The embattled crypto mogul has set up a fight against the lawyers and executive hired to shepherd the wind-down process, the new CEO and lead lawyer for FTX’s bankruptcy argue. The filing lays out FTX’s current assets and describes the case as “unprecedented”
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