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Digital asset technology company Marathon Digital Holdings mined a company-record 825 bitcoins in March. It also mined a company-record 2,195 bitcoins in the first quarter.

The increase in bitcoins mined stems from Marathon’s 64% increase in operational hash rate. Since Jan. 1, the company increased its mining power to 11.5 EH/s from 7.0 EH/s.

Marathon also energized 13,000 previously installed bitcoin miners at Applied Digital’s North Dakota facility last month.

As of the start of April, Marathon reports an operating fleet of roughly 105,200 bitcoin miners, with a theoretical production capacity of 11.5 EH/s. It expects to report a mid-year mining capacity of 23 EH/s.

“In addition to our operational progress, we also improved our financial position during the quarter,” Marathon Chairman and CEO Fred Thiel said. “We reduced our debt by $50 million and increased our unrestricted bitcoin holdings by 3,132 bitcoin after we prepaid our term loan and terminated our credit facilities with Silvergate Bank.”

Marathon previously noted that it had access to $142 million in cash deposits held by now-closed Signature Bank, and confirmed it had no direct business relationship with shuttered Silicon Valley Bank.

Thiel also noted that Marathon “exited the quarter with approximately $124.9 million in unrestricted cash and cash equivalents and 11,466 bitcoin, the market value of which was approximately $326.5 million on March 31.”

Marathon’s Q4 2022 revenue declined 58% year-over-year to $28.4 million. Its full-year revenue for 2022 also declined 26% to $117.8 million. It recorded a net loss of $686.7 million last year — significantly worse than 2021’s loss of $38.1 million.

© 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 individual who hacked and pilfered Euler Finance, a decentralized lending project, has returned the remaining sum of $31 million. This has brought the project’s recovery endeavors to a close.

At approximately 6:55 pm EST on Monday, the attacker sent back $31 million — comprising 10,580 ETH ($19 million) and $12 million in DAI — through three transactions. This brought the total value of the returned funds to over $177 million, which accounts for 90% of the expected recoverable funds from the hack after adjusting for the 10% bounty previously offered by the project, according to the Euler Finance team.

Euler Labs, the developer behind the affected project, confirmed the successful recovery in a recent Twitter post, stating: “Following successful negotiations, all of the recoverable funds taken from the Euler protocol on March 13th have now been successfully returned by the exploiter.”

The return of these funds marks a rare instance of positive resolution in the DeFi space, where large-scale hacks have become increasingly common.

On March 13, Euler Finance was subject to a complex attack that leveraged flash loans, causing a loss of $197 million worth of crypto assets. To retrieve the stolen funds, Euler Finance offered the attacker a 10% bounty worth $19.7 million, with a warning to initiate a $1 million reward for information on the attacker if the remaining 90% of the funds were not returned.

Despite initial doubts when the hacker laundered $1.8 million through the crypto mixer Tornado Cash three days after the attack, the recovery process began on March 18 with the return of $5.4 million to Euler. 

Over the following days, the hacker continued to return funds at variable intervals. They returned the most-significant tranche of $102 million in ETH.

On 28 March, the hacker sent a series of on-chain messages to their address, using the input data to share messages with the public. In these messages, the attacker said they were “sorry” and promised to return the remaining funds as soon as possible.

© 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.

Decentralized finance’s dominance — or DeFi’s market capitalization as a percentage of the global cryptocurrency market cap — hit fresh lows not seen since last July.

The Block’s DeFi Dominance data dashboard illustrates a wider trend by summing the market capitalizations of DeFi tokens for Uniswap, Aave, PancakeSwap, Maker, The Graph, Thorchain, SushiSwap, Compound, Yearn.finance, Synthetix, Bancor, 0x, UMA, Curve, Nexus Mutual, 1inch, Balancer, Serum, Alchemix and Perpetual Protocol.

The metric currently shows a dominance of 4.1% after hitting as low as 4.05%. The last time DeFi dominance was that low was on July 12, 2022 — when its cryptocurrency market share was around 4.02%.

Bitcoin in a western banking crisis

DeFi’s most recent declines in dominance coincide with increased market-share gains for bitcoin this year. Over the past 90 days, the first and foremost cryptocurrency has increased its dominance from 37.93% to 44.41%.

Primary drivers for bitcoin’s retaking market share include worries about a purported western banking crisis — promoting the idea for some that crypto’s gold standard is, like physical gold, a potential safe-haven asset. 

“There is nothing like a banking crisis in the United States… to remind you that our systems are fragile,” Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz said during his firm’s recent fourth-quarter earnings call, adding: “We have been on a debt orgy, literally gorging ourselves with cheap money for years.”

“Crypto was, in lots of ways, created for this point,” Novogratz said.

XRP rising from Ripple’s legal battle

Outperforming bitcoin, even, has been XRP — a potential signal of how investors feel regarding a pending lawsuit brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission against associated payments firm Ripple.

“Google Trends data confirms that users searching for ‘XRP’ are highly interested in the case’s outcome,” said Strahinja Savic, head of data and analytics at FRNT Financial, adding: “It’s unclear what specifically is causing the optimism around XRP right now. However, there is significant focus on crypto regulation. The SEC’s case against Ripple may be gaining increased attention as a result, amplifying optimism from [Ripple CEO Brad] Garlingouse and figures close to the case.”

The price of XRP has increased substantially in recent weeks.

© 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.