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The French Central Bank has determined that its wholesale central bank digital currency (wCBDC) would improve cross-border payments, it announced on Friday.

Bitcoin attracted flows from altcoins throughout Q2 of this year. However, since the recent Ripple ruling, its market dominance has slipped — giving ground to altcoins. Now, an analyst suggests signals for a Q3 altseason are emerging.

“There are Q3 altseason signals,” Gordon Grant, managing director of trading at Genesis Trading, told The Block, adding: “If you look at risk proxies that tend to guide when altcoins do well, one includes the Nasdaq, which is pushing back towards its all-time high. Altcoins do well when the Nasdaq is rising.”

The U.S. tech-heavy Nasdaq index has increased 38% since the start of 2023. It is now at 14,063 points — pushing closer to its April 2021 all-time high of 15,498 points.

“Bitcoin has had a good Q2, so people want to rotate around the credit and risk curve,” Grant noted, adding: “They made good gains in Bitcoin, and now they’ll move some into ether, then into risker altcoins. This is a pattern that we see.”

Bitcoin dominance in decline

Bitcoin’s dominance dropped under 50% after Ripple’s partial legal victory against the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission. Judge Analisa Torres, who presided over the case, ruled XRP is not a security when sold on exchanges. However, the federal judge approved the SEC’s motion concerning institutional sales of XRP.

According to TradingView data, Bitcoin dominance is currently 49.83% — down from a high of 52% on June 29 and taking a sheer drop on charts immediately after the Ripple ruling on July 12.

The world’s largest digital asset by market cap had marched over the 50% dominance line amid several applications for spot Bitcoin ETFs from major financial firms. The digital asset’s dominance hovered around 52% for weeks until the latest ruling in the Ripple vs. SEC case knocked it off its perch. After the ruling, XRP jumped 73% to become the fourth-largest crypto asset. Other altcoins — like Ethereum, Cardano, Solana, Polygon, and Stellar — also saw double-digit growth.

‘Altcoin season may have started’

A recent CryptoQuant report shared with The Block claimed this dip in Bitcoin’s market dominance signals a potential onset of altcoin season. However, despite XRP’s favorable ruling, the derivative markets still reflect a negative sentiment among traders.

“The decline in Bitcoin’s market capitalization dominance suggests that altcoin season may have started,” the report claims, adding: “However, from the perspective of derivative markets, it appears that traders still have a negative sentiment in spite of XRP’s ruling.

‘This can only be positive for true community memecoins’

A quarterly report from cryptocurrency data aggregator CoinGecko highlighted the gains made by various memecoins in May 2023. Pepe came out on top, with 1813x peak returns. It then reached a $1.8 billion market cap after its Binance listing. However, since then, the memecoin is down 65% from its early-May high.

One analyst suggested the XRP ruling could instigate another memecoin rally. “If the sale of XRP, a token issued by a centralized entity on an open market, does not constitute the sale of a security, then this can only be positive for true community memecoins.” Hugh Eggar, web3 consultant at The Egg Consultancy, told The Block. Eggar believes memecoin value is chiefly determined by the strength of the communities that rally behind them rather than the efforts of a centralized team.

As altcoin trading volumes rise, he expects memecoins to see some of that capital flow, despite their high-risk nature. “If volume in alts really does begin picking up, it is likely — as always — that those taking profit will roll some of their capital gains into assets further down the risk curve,” he stated.

Gordon Grant suggested a memecoin rally could follow a rise in altcoins but that there would be a lag. “As long as there is liquidity in the crypto ecosystem, memes always have that potential, but they take time to manifest those gains,” Grant added.

Eggar isn’t optimistic about a sudden resurgence of once-popular memecoins, citing lingering negative sentiment and burdened investors as deterrents. “The vast majority of these coins will fail before getting above even $1 million market cap as the sector is rife with a lack of transparency, greedy devs, and traders with bear market PTSD,” he cautioned.

© 2023 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 long-awaited Nasdaq-style national bourse for crypto has been operational since July 17, according to an official announcement from Thursday.

Blockchain interoperability project Wormhole has announced the release of the Wormhole Gateway, an application-specific blockchain (appchain) developed within the Cosmos ecosystem. The blockchain aims to connect multiple Cosmos chains and applications through a single cross-chain liquidity router.

The initial phase of the Gateway will link 23 Cosmos-based chains, including prominent chains like Osmosis, Evmos, Neutron and Sei. Plans are already underway to integrate more chains, all of which will utilize the Cosmos’ native messaging protocol, the inter-blockchain communication protocol (IBC). With this, Gateway would serve as a competitor to interoperability protocols like Axelar that already connect Cosmos-based chains.

According to the Wormhole Foundation, the Gateway network will serve as a verification layer for Wormhole messages, offering an added layer of verification alongside Wormhole’s existing ‘Guardian’ consensus mechanism.

“Gateway acts as a sovereign verification layer for Wormhole messages, adding a second means of protection to Wormhole’s own Guardian consensus mechanism on a verifiably transparent public ledger,” the foundation highlighted in a statement.

Wormhole’s evolution

Gateway is not the first product from the Wormhole team. The Wormhole bridge, a prior decentralized protocol it launched, is known for its capacity to connect multiple blockchains, enabling both token and data transfers across Layer 1 chains outside the Cosmos ecosystem. Gateway, the team’s foray into Cosmos, represents a significant advancement from the bridge’s original design.

In that framework, when an Ethereum token is moved to Solana, it is typically “wrapped” as a representation on the destination chain. For example, an Ethereum token transferred to Solana would appear on Solana as a wrapped version of the original token. In February 2022, a hacker exploited the Wormhole bridge with Solana, spoofing specific security signatures on the bridge and minting 120,000 wETH valued at $325 million. The hacker then exchanged the fraudulently minted wETH for genuine ETH on the Ethereum network, depleting all assets held by Wormhole.

Jump Crypto, a trading and venture capital firm that incubated Wormhole, stepped in by replenishing the stolen 120,000 ETH from its reserves to support the bridge. The team later successfully retrieved the funds from Oasis, a decentralized finance protocol where the hacker had deposited the proceeds from the hack.

For security enhancements on Gateway, the foundation introduced the “Governor,” a software module integrated into the network to address risks associated with cross-chain hacks. 

© 2023 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.

Paradigm-backed Utopia Labs has launched USDC stablecoin bank transfers for businesses aiming to accelerate crypto payments adoption.

The new offering enables entities from almost all over the world to send USDC to any U.S. bank account, Utopia said Thursday. The move aims to bridge the gap between fiat and crypto and improve the speed and convenience of transactions by avoiding the need to go through centralized exchanges.

Utopia said the U.S. banking system has failed to support crypto organizations, and its solution addresses this shortfall head-on. Businesses that make, raise or send money in crypto can pay service providers, office rent or “literally anyone who has a U.S. bank account” via USDC, the firm said.

Venture capital funds sending USDC wires to portfolio companies and crypto projects off-ramping their on-chain revenue were further examples of potential use cases, Utopia added.

“USDC for B2B payments == goodness!,” CEO of USDC issuer Circle Jeremy Allaire said, responding to the news. 

“Will need to try this out. Would solve a lot of our problems and remove the need for banks,” UMA treasurer Kevin Chan added.

How it works

Businesses can apply by submitting their know-your-business (KYB) and know-your-customer (KYC) verification details to Utopia Labs, which says it can approve applications in under two business days.

Once approved, businesses can start offramping USDC at a guaranteed 1:1 conversion rate with the U.S. dollar, for a 0.3% fee, according to its website. The USDC transfers are exclusive to the Ethereum blockchain with no limits and are compliant with ACH (automated clearing house) transfers — received in less than three business days, the firm said.

While the service is available to most countries worldwide, companies in Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Belarus and Russia are not supported, Utopia added.

Utopia’s roadmap includes providing offramping for any token, not just USDC, expanding to other blockchain networks and introducing onramps to get fiat into crypto.

Beyond crypto payments, Utopia Labs also offers treasury management for Safe (formerly Gnosis Safe) users, enabling token swaps with liquidity across more than 100 decentralized exchanges through its integration with 0x Protocol.

We’re ‘so back’

Utopia Labs raised $23 million in a 2022 Series A funding round led by Paradigm, with participation from Circle Ventures and Coinbase Ventures.

Paradigm caused confusion in May when the crypto-focussed VC firm removed references to crypto investment from its website in favor of a pivot to artificial intelligence. The firm has previously backed projects ranging from the decentralized exchange protocol builder Uniswap to the now-bankrupt FTX exchange.

Earlier this month, Paradigm suddenly returned crypto references to the site, with co-founder Matt Huang saying, “It was kind of ridiculous.” Now it is “so back.”

© 2023 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 Wormhole Gateway is designed to make it easier for developers and users to on-ramp liquidity into the Cosmos ecosystem.

Interest on the ETF’s cash balances helps offset the cost of rolling from one set of futures to the next, ensuring a low tracking error, the firm said.

The lawsuit alleges that fraudulent transfers of cash and shares were used to finance political donations, real estate buys, Sam Bankman-Fried’s criminal defense, and even potentially an island.

The United States Department of Justice has accused Sam Bankman-Fried, former CEO of failed crypto exchange FTX, of leaking the private diary of former colleague Caroline Ellison to the New York Times.

The NYT yesterday published an article examining the private writings of Ellison, who it describes as a “star witness” in the forthcoming trial of Bankman-Fried. Prior to FTX’s collapse, Ellison ran sister trading firm Alameda Research and was at times romantically involved with Bankman-Fried.

The DOJ filing, which came late yesterday, accuses Bankman-Fried of leaking Ellison’s diary to NYT reporters in an attempt to discredit her.

“The defendant’s purpose in sharing these materials is plain. Ellison has pleaded guilty to a cooperation agreement and is expected to testify at trial that she agreed with the defendant to defraud FTX’s customers and investors, and Alameda’s lenders,” the DOJ wrote. Ellison pleaded guilty to federal charges in December, a little over a month after FTX’s collapse. 

The DOJ continued, “By selectively sharing certain private documents with the New York Times, the defendant is attempting to discredit a witness, cast Ellison in a poor light, and advance his defense through the press and outside the constraints of the courtroom and rules of evidence: that Ellison was a jilted lover who perpetrated these crimes alone.”

DOJ asks judge to limit extrajudicial statements

In response, the DOJ has asked Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to enforce an order “that limits extrajudicial statements by parties and witnesses likely to interfere with a fair trial by an impartial jury.”

The DOJ pointed out that leaks aimed at discrediting witnesses, besides potentially tainting the jury pool, also have the potential to deter other witnesses from testifying.

Bankman-Fried faces over 100 years in prison if convicted on an array of charges brought against him by U.S. authorities, including fraud-related charges regarding allegations that he and other FTX executives misappropriated billions in customer assets. He is currently under house arrest, with his trial scheduled for October.

© 2023 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.

A bunch of actual hamsters are racing on a new platform, and returns-starved traders are placing BUSD-based bets on who wins.