FreeCryptoCurrency.Me

Cryptocurrencies and crypto-related stocks had a mixed start to the week, while GBTC saw the discount on the fund’s net asset value approach 50%.

Bitcoin whipsawed above and below $17,000 over the past 24 hours, as ether fell 1.6% to trade at $1,251.

Markets are set to be driven by this week’s economic indicators and central bank decisions — namely tomorrow’s U.S. inflation data release for November and Wednesday’s U.S. Federal Reserve interest rate decision. 

BTCUSD chart by TradingView

Tron’s algorithmic stablecoin — Decentralized USD (USDD) — slipped from its supposed parity with the U.S. dollar. It’s the second time since June the stablecoin has lost parity. Previously it dropped to $0.96 before bouncing back to its intended value.

The drop came after the stablecoin’s liquidity on Curve – an Ethereum-based decentralized platform where traders can trade USDD against three other stablecoins within a liquidity pool – shrank.

BTCUSD chart by TradingView

Elsewhere, Binance’s BNB token plunged 4.6% over the past 24 hours. Reports on Monday suggested executives at the exchange could be charged imminently by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Crypto stocks and structured products

The S&P 500 rose 0.3%, while the Nasdaq 100 traded down marginally.

Coinbase was trading at $40.80, up 1.4%, at 11 a.m. EST, according to Nasdaq data. Silvergate shares dipped to $20.82, down 2.9%. MicroStrategy shares were lower by 3.4%, trading around $196.

Block tacked on 2.5%, having bucked the downward trend in crypto-related stocks on Friday. Shares in Jack Dorsey’s firm were trading above $66.

Grayscale’s GBTC and ETHE were trading at significant discounts at the top of the week. The discount refers to the prices of the shares relevant to the net asset value (NAV). This means shares in GBTC trade at a discount of more than 48% to the value of the bitcoin in the fund. 

The fund’s ether product, ETHE, was trading at a discount of more than 50%, according to The Block data. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Nillion, a startup building a decentralization platform without a blockchain, raised $20 million in seed funding.

Investment firm Distributed Global led the round, and Big Brain Holdings, Chapter One, GSR, HashKey, OP Crypto and SALT Fund were among the more than 150 investors. The company’s team includes founding team members from Uber, Indiegogo and Hedera Hashgraph, as well as leaders from Coinbase and Nike. 

The project is based on a mathematical innovation invented by cryptography professor Miguel de Vega called Nil Message Compute.

“Nillion could open a new universe of use cases blockchain never imagined,” David Gan, founder and general partner of OP Crypto, said in a statement. “What proof-of-work did for blockchain, I think NMC may do for multi-party computation as a technology.”

While decentralized file storage isn’t new, many existing protocols such as Filecoin and IPFS use blockchains. Nillion will enable “the fragmentation and dispersion of data across the Nillion network of nodes which creates privacy while still allowing the underlying data to be computed on quickly.” Unlike blockchain technology, Nillion’s network nodes do not need to communicate with each other to store transaction data. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Crypto insurance firm Evertas secured $14 million in funding in a Series A round, according to a report from CoinDesk.

The round was led by Polychain Capital and saw participation from investors including Sino Global Capital, CMT Digital Holdings, Matrixport and Morgan Creek. Several angel investors also participated including former Coinbase executive Balaji Srinivasan and BH Digital’s Colleen Sullivan.

Evertas is a specialist insurance firm for the crypto industry which offers insurance for everything from theft and loss in relation to crime and custody, to more niche services like coverage for malfunctioning smart contracts.

The startup, founded in 2017, previously raised $5.8 million in a seed round this time last year led by Morgan Creek Digital, which also led Evertas’ $2.8 million seed raise in 2020.

Earlier this year, Evertas won approval to call itself a Lloyd’s of London coverholder, a type of specialty insurance provider authorized by Lloyd’s to write and service policies covering risk in geographies or niche sectors requiring high levels of expertise.

The digital assets sector is underserved by the broader insurance market, in part because it is so young but also due to its volatility. Broker Aon estimates the crypto market insurance rate is below 2%, according to Bloomberg Law. 

At the height of the bull market, insurance for digital asset firms could be a hard sell, said Dave Roque, head of digital assets insurance at USI, in a recent interview with The Block. That mentality shifted dramatically as the market soured, with his company witnessing  a 350% increase in client acquisition from fintech and crypto companies within the last year.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Bitcoin miner Terawulf will grow faster than expected into early 2023 despite industry woes as it bumped its hashrate guidance for the first quarter of next year up 16%. Shares tumbled more than 30%.

The hashrate will increase 4.3 EH/s to 5 EH/s by the first quarter of 2023 after restructuring a contract with hardware company Bitmain that will see TeraWulf getting more machines at the same cost.

The company also announced that it raised $10 million in fresh capital to repay a convertible promissory note. It had raised $17 million in equity and debt in October. That total comprises $6.7 million registered direct offering of common stock in addition to a previous issuance of $3.4 million of convertible promissory notes to some of its largest shareholders. 

The news comes amid an 80% slump in the price of ASICS as the difficulty of mining increases with higher energy prices and declining bitcoin prices. Margins are getting squeezed as miners are increasingly cash-strapped and buried in debt.

TeraWulf and Bitmain agreed to cancel a delivery of 3,000 S19 XP Pro machines and replace it with a batch of 14,000 S19j Pro miners in the first quarter, together with the application of remaining unused deposits with manufacturer Bitmain. TeraWulf will incur no additional costs.

The move will allow it to make full use of the 160 megawatts in power capacity that the company will have available.

“There is no doubt the mining business has been challenging over the last 12 months; however, we are strategically positioned as one of – if not the – lowest-cost producers of Bitcoin and we will continue to strategically and prudently expand our operations while remaining focused on cost savings and profit margins,” said Nazar Khan, co-founder and chief operating officer of TeraWulf.

The company said that its all-in cost to mine is approximately $6,300 per coin, assuming a total self-mining fleet hash rate of 5.0 EH/s, energy cost of $0.035/kWh, current network hash rate of 249 EH/s and total self-mining fleet load of approximately 137 megawatts.

“We firmly believe that TeraWulf will be one of the few bitcoin miners that can sustainably and profitably operate in a low bitcoin price environment,” Khan said.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Members of ENS DAO, the decentralized community for the Ethereum Name Service Project, are currently voting to elect people who will lead smaller groups within the DAO from next year.

The ENS DAO vote is to select stewards for three working groups. In the ENS community, working groups are sub-groups of the DAO that handle specific functions. These smaller groups have stewards, members chosen by the community, to make decisions for the DAO without having to involve the larger community. This type of architecture helps to streamline the management of the DAO along core areas, the ENS documentation states.

These groups are the meta-governance, ENS ecosystem, and public goods working groups. The meta-governance working group is responsible for providing oversight on DAO governance matters, while the ENS ecosystem working group focuses on supporting users and organizations associated with the project. The public goods working group specializes in funding projects within the ENS and broader web3 ecosystem.

The current vote is to elect three stewards for each of the three working groups. DAO members vote by selecting their preferred candidates from the pool of people who put themselves up for election. Once elected, these stewards will have a six-month term beginning from Jan. 1, 2023. The voting period will end on Dec. 15, according to details on the ENS DAO Snapshot voting page.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Tron’s algorithmic stablecoin called Decentralized USD, known by its ticker USDD, slipped further from its supposed parity with the US dollar earlier today.

USDD dropped to slightly below 0.97 earlier today before recovering to around $0.98. This marks the second time the stablecoin has slipped out of dollar parity since it was first founded earlier this year. In June, the stablecoin dipped all the way to $0.96 before bouncing back to its intended value.

The drop in USDD’s price comes as liquidity for the stablecoin has shrunk on Curve – an Ethereum-based decentralized platform where traders can trade USDD against three other stablecoins within a liquidity pool. Currently, more than 80% of all funds in the liquidity pool are held in USDD alone, indicating that traders are preferring other stablecoins: USDT, USDC and DAI.

USDD Price Chart. Image: CoinGecko

Functioning as a crypto-backed decentralized stablecoin, USDD can also be issued by the Tron DAO Reserve with tron coins and other collateral assets to maintain its value. While the stablecoin’s main collateral is tron, the Tron DAO Reserve also maintains additional collateral in the firm of bitcoin and centralized stablecoins.

The Tron DAO Reserve claims the USDD stablecoin is collateralized up to 200%, meaning that for each stablecoin, it claims to hold $2 worth of collateral. Its official website claims that USDD has a market capitalization of slightly over $725 million, backed by more than $1.45 billion in collateral reserves. 

As the stablecoin lost its dollar peg, Tron founder Justin Sun said on Twitter that he purchased more than 1 million in USDD, helping to protect the peg. Sun shared a transaction showing he swapped Circle-issued USD Coin (USDC) to USDD, via 1inch, a popular decentralized exchange aggregator on Ethereum. However, it’s unclear whether the assets used to buy back the USDD came from the Tron DAO Reserve or Sun’s personal assets. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The U.S. Justice Department is continuing to weigh up charging crypto exchange giant Binance for possible money laundering and criminal sanctions violations, according to Reuters.  

It is also looking into the exchange’s top executives, including CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ), according to the report. Disagreements between prosecutors are holding up any potential conclusion to the criminal investigation, the report noted, citing four people familiar with the matter. 

The investigation has been running since 2018 and spans prosecutors across three different offices, including the Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington in Seattle and the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team. A portion of those working on the case believe evidence justifies moving “aggressively” against the exchange, the report said. Others want to take more time to review the evidence. 

Binance’s law firm Gibson Dunn has held meetings with Justice Department officials in recent months, according to Reuters’ sources, arguing that a criminal prosecution such as this one would put even more pressure on an already stressed crypto market. Three people said that the discussions included potential plea deals.

“As has been reported widely, regulators are doing a sweeping review of every crypto company against many of the same issues,” a said a Binance spokesperson. “This nascent industry has grown quickly and Binance has shown its commitment to security and compliance through large investments in our team as well as the tools and technology we use to detect and deter illicit activity.”

The Block contacted the DOJ for comment but had not heard back before publication time. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Bybit has rolled out a system that will allow its customers to verify the crypto assets that the crypto exchange platform holds in its reserves, the company announced last week.

The Bybit proof of reserves system utilizes Merkle Trees, a type of data structure that can be used for on-chain verification. Bybit says customers with funds on the platform can use the system to confirm that the exchange holds 100% of their assets.

The Merkle Tree-based system also allows customers to check the platform’s reserve ratio, the announcement stated. Reserve ratios help to prove whether crypto exchanges hold enough assets to cover the balances held by users. Bybit’s reserve ratio is currently 1:1, based on Saturday’s announcement.

This is the latest user assurance step taken by the crypto exchange in the wake of the FTX collapse. Bybit has previously published the wallet addresses that hold its reserves. The platform’s assets can also be viewed on this Nansen dashboard.

Bybit is also the latest to roll out a system for users to verify its holdings following the FTX bankruptcy. Crypto exchange platforms like Binance and Crypto.com have also released their own proof-of-reserves statements. These audits and transparency efforts have also come amid massive withdrawals by customers worried about the financial health of other crypto exchanges.

These proof of reserves reports have, however, led to further questions for some platforms. Crypto exchanges like Gate.io and Huobi recently came in for some scrutiny amid allegations that their audits showed borrowed funds as part of their reserves.

Despite these efforts, some critics say it is not enough. They point to the fact that these reports often paint an incomplete picture of the financial health of these crypto exchanges. Information concerning liabilities and fiat reserves have not been part of these reports.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Oasys completed the final phase of its mainnet, marking a significant milestone for the gaming-focused blockchain firm.

The three-step process started on Oct. 25 with initial validators taking over the running of nodes and ensuring the stable performance of Oasys Layer 1, also called the Hub-Layer. This was followed by the integration of the Verse-Layer, which confirmed successful rollups to the Hub-Layer.

Finally, essential ecosystem components were integrated to enhance the user experience, including a portal for managing activities within the Oasys ecosystem.

Oasys is one of several blockchain ecosystems that have developed over the last year specifically targeting web3 gaming.

While its private token sale earlier this year saw participation from the likes of Republic Capital, Jump Crypto, Crypto.com, Huobi, Kucoin, Gate.io, Bitbank and Mirana Ventures, it has also partnered with traditional gaming giants.

In addition to crypto native firms like Yield Guild Games, its initial validators include the likes of Square Enix, SEGA, Bandai Namco and Ubisoft.

Despite this vote of confidence, traditional gaming companies remain divided on web3. While Oasys’ partners may have embraced web3 —Bandai Namco even established a $25 million fund for web3 and metaverse startups in April — other companies continue to avoid it.

Blockchain integrations have been banned on Grand Theft Auto and Minecraft servers, while gaming platforms like Steam have spoken out against the use of NFTs. Concerns often include that NFTs could be exploitative and volatile prices could exclude people from games. 

Others have taken a more neutral stance. Epic Games hosts several blockchain games on its store, including Blankos Block Party, but doesn’t actively promote the use of blockchain or NFTs. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Several key events are happening this week, all of which could be the start of important crypto trends to keep an eye on as they continue to develop heading into 2023.

Crypto markets have seen a tight correlation to traditional markets, which have several key events this week.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) is seeing a new trend pop up in revenue sharing, a controversial topic pertaining to token security classification. Solana also has a new protocol going live that could open up its ecosystem to a host of new protocols, users, and applications.

Macro events  

It’s an extremely busy week of the year for financial markets after a couple of weeks off from any major news from the Fed.

The most important event this week is the Federal Reserve’s interest rate decision, which is projected at a 50bps increase. Selini Capital CIO Jordi Alexander tweeted in November that a 50bps increase is almost a lock. There’s still a lot of contagion to work through in crypto, but the macro environment has improved since mid-year, Jordi said in a separate tweet.

The main Fed press conference occurs on Wednesday at 2:30 p.m. EST. FOMC economic projections and the interest rate decision are coming out 30 minutes prior to the conference.

Uniswap fee switch governance voting begins

The largest decentralized exchange (DEX) by fees Uniswap is opening up voting to turn on its “fee switch” this week.

The goal of the fee switch is to increase Uniswap’s trading volume, liquidity and ecosystem sustainability via fee generation. The additional accrued fees will go to the Uniswap treasury, and not be distributed to users. The initial pilot program would be live for 120 days.

If passed, Uniswap will begin the pilot program and will implement a 10% fee on three of its largest trading pools.

Serious discussions around the fee switch proposal began in July. Uniswap’s decision on this proposal “will set precedent for the whole industry,” it wrote in its initial proposal. Rival DEXs such as Sushiswap began discussions around a new proposal to direct fees to users who stake sushi.

The pilot program will be used to evaluate the impact of turning on the fee switch and how it impacts trade execution for the DEX.

Neon Labs mainnet is going live

Developer tooling platform Neon Labs is launching its mainnet on Monday, which will allow Ethereum applications to start building on Solana.

Neon Labs is the first Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) for Solana and will have its own native token neon. The neon token will be used to pay transactions and participate in governance. Users will be able to use Neon with the popular crypto wallet Metamask.

Neon Labs claims Ethereum-based applications will have access to use Solana for scalability and tap into its liquidity without changing any code. Neon Labs is also developing full compatibility between Ethereum and Solana applications, but a date for this release has not been announced. For now, Ethereum-based developers will be able to build on the network, but not compose with native Solana applications.

Notable protocols such as Aave and Curve will launch on Neon’s EVM post-mainnet launch.

“Neon EVM unites the best of two worlds, Ethereum and Solana, and puts to rest the Ethereum killer narrative once and for all,” said Neon Labs CEO and Founder Marina Guryeva.

EVM is the most popular crypto software that allows developers to build and run decentralized applications. EVM-compatibility allows applications to build or port over to different chains. This has been a barrier to entry between Ethereum and Solana developers and ecosystems.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.