FreeCryptoCurrency.Me

Following days of inactivity, the address associated with the theft of $323 million worth of ETH from the cross-chain protocol Wormhole began shuffling assets, Etherscan records show.

News of the activity was first noted by Twitter user @Spreekaway earlier Monday.

The series of swaps began as the exploiter address consolidated ETH prior to initiating a swap for 95,630 ether ($157.2 million) into staked ether (stETH) via the DEX aggregator OpenOcean.

After that the stETH was swapped for 86,473 wrapped staked ETH (wstETH), Lido’s form of liquid staked ether, which is compatible with DeFi trading platforms.

With the wstETH as collateral, the hacker took out a $13 million DAI loan that was used to buy roughly 7,989.5 ETH via KyberNetwork, according to blockchain data. The hacker repeated the process to continue leveraging up.

“Either this guy is just having fun on-chain with exploited assets or has some long position on stETH when he decided to make the trade,” said Steven Zheng, The Block’s director of research.

The magnitude of the trade was felt in markets, causing stETH to repeg, according to Dune Analytics. 

Wormhole responded to the exploiter reiterating its offer to capitulate with a $10 million bounty award “for the return of all stolen funds” in an on-chain message.

© 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.

Crypto prices were in the green as the market continued to rally on Monday. Equities related to blockchain and cryptocurrencies were also higher.

Bitcoin traded up about 0.5% during the day, flirting with the $23,000 barrier, according to TradingView data. Ether rose marginally, trading at $1,635. 

BTCUSD chart by TradingView

As bitcoin prices continue to increase, $25,000 is the next crucial resistance level for the leading crypto by market cap, said B2C2’s Chief Risk Officer Adam Farthing.

The rally coincided with a depreciation of the U.S. dollar. The DXY has traded down year-to-date to 102.05 from highs above 114 last year. Bitcoin’s price in dollars tends to move higher when the dollar weakens.

DXY chart by TradingView

Crypto stocks

Silvergate closed up 16.8%, trading around $16 at 4 p.m. EST, according to Nasdaq data. Shares in the crypto-friendly bank had soared 11% by 11:30 a.m. EST. 

SI chart by TradingView

Coinbase shares increased by 1.5%. On Friday, Moody’s downgraded the exchange’s corporate family rating and guaranteed senior unsecured notes. Moody’s stated that the firm’s corporate outlook was stable.

MicroStrategy traded up 4.2%, climbing to $250.22. Jack Dorsey’s Block also rose, climbing 7.2% by market close.

Bitcoin mining stocks tracked by The Block mostly increased on Monday, with 18 gaining and only one declining. SAI.TECH Global rose by 29%, while Core Scientific gained 26.7%.

© 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.

Bitcoin mining stocks tracked by The Block were higher on Monday, with 18 gaining and only one declining.

Bitcoin rose 2.2% to $22,956 by market close.

Here is a look at how the individual miners performed today:

© 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.

Ark Invest Chief Futurist Brett Winton said that crypto assets could see an upside as artificial intelligence advances accelerate and foster technological convergence across multiple sectors of the economy.

“Public blockchains, cryptocurrencies and crypto assets, which are going through a bumpy period now, are going to become even more differentiated for their scarcity in an age of abundance,” he said in a 2023 outlook video. “The opportunity for expansion and for value realization within the venture and public market space is even larger than it was two years ago.”

Ark founder and CEO Cathie Wood said that many of the coming technological advancements will be deflationary, albeit of the good kind. 

“It will feed the lower inflation outlook and cause a boom in the products and services that are associated with this innovation,” she said. “Inflation has been a short term deterrent to the performance of innovation-based strategies.” 

Wood said the firm’s position on the Federal Reserve’s policy was the most important part of its 2023 outlook.

“We believe there are all kinds of signals pointing to lower inflation, which suggests that the Fed should pivot soon,” she said, adding that it could occur in the first half of the year.

© 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.

Grayscale Investments CEO Michael Sonnenshein bashed the Securities and Exchange Commission’s “one-dimensional approach of regulation by enforcement” in a letter to the Wall Street Journal. 

“The SEC should certainly try to eliminate bad actors, but that shouldn’t come at the expense of efforts to develop appropriate regulation,” Sonnenshein wrote, responding to an opinion piece by the two members of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation about why the regulator did not prevent the implosion of crypto exchange FTX. 

“The SEC’s inaction has prevented bitcoin’s advancement into the U.S. regulatory perimeter, often forcing U.S investors offshore with less protection and oversight,” Sonnenshein added. 

The original WSJ opinion piece argued that securities regulators seem to be “more interested in protecting their turf than protecting investors.”

Grayscale filed a lawsuit against the SEC in July after the commission rejected the firm’s application for a spot bitcoin ETF. Digital Currency Group is the parent company of Grayscale and Genesis, the troubled crypto lender that recently filed for bankruptcy protection. 

“We are seeing the consequences of the SEC’s priorities play out in real time — at the expense of U.S. investors,” Sonnenshein wrote. 

© 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.

Crypto exchange Gemini laid off 10% of its staff, The Information reported, citing a message that was sent to employees on Monday.

Poor macroeconomic conditions and “unprecedented fraud” in the crypto industry forced the company to reduce headcount, co-founder and President Cameron Winklevoss said in the message. The layoffs are the third round of job cuts the company has carried out within the last eight months. 

Gemini, founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, has been feuding with parent company DCG after it was forced to suspend and then terminate its Earn program, which it did after sister lending firm Genesis paused withdrawals before filing for bankruptcy earlier this month. Gemini told customers that the bankruptcy process will be “crucial step towards us being able to recover your assets” and formed an adviser committee to help coordinate and advocate for a resolution 

Gemini declined to comment about the layoffs when contacted by The Block.

© 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.

Silvergate shares soared after the open, and Coinbase traded down as the Nasdaq 100 was higher. 

Shares in the crypto-friendly bank were up 11% to $15.25 by 11:30 a.m. EST, according to Nasdaq data. Silvergate revealed after the close on Friday that the bank’s deposit relationship with recently bankrupt crypto lender Genesis was less than $2.5 million. 

SI chart by TradingView

Last week, Silvergate shared its fourth-quarter earnings, showing a $1 billion loss. Despite the loss, some analysts remain firm on the stock.

“No other bank could survive a 70% reduction in deposits and still have positive book value, more cash than core customer deposits, and be well-capitalized,” KBW analysts wrote in a recent report.

Overall, KBW still maintains Silvergate is stabilizing and has updated its price target to $25 from $38. The investment bank’s outlook is based on several assumptions, including a continuation of the “moderate crypto winter.”

The downturn in prices should normalize from current levels as the regulatory landscape and the backlash surrounding FTX and other crypto-focused insolvencies continue to unfold, analysts said.

Elsewhere, MicroStrategy was flat, trading around $240. Jack Dorsey’s Block was trading above $79, up 3.8%, and shares in Coinbase dipped 1.3%, to trade around $54.40.

© 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.

Lawmakers — and not the European Central Bank — will need to decide how much personal information the bank will have access to if it adopts a digital euro. 

But the ECB’s leadership isn’t clamoring to have direct knowledge of individual transactions, one of its board members told MEPs. 

“We propose that we do not have access to any personal data,” executive board member Fabio Panetta told the EU Parliament’s economic committee on Monday in a regular dialogue on the digital euro. 

“It will be for you as co-legislators to decide on the balance between privacy and other important public policy objectives,” he added, naming anti-money laundering, counter-terrorism financing, preventing tax evasion and ensuring sanctions compliance.

The digital euro will likely rely on intermediaries like private banks to hold digital euro accounts for users. Those intermediaries would “not have more access than they have already now,” Panetta added.

Lawmakers can also expect to decide whether the digital euro could be used as legal tender, and whether intermediaries would be required to distribute it. Panetta noted that the digital euro “would never be programmable money” that would put constraints on users. “Central banks issue money, not vouchers,” he said.

The central bank may not opt for blockchain technology as the underlying technology, as its leadership worries it may not be efficient for supporting a scale of 400 million people, Panetta said.  

The ECB is halfway through its investigation phase on the digital euro.

In October, the central bank will decide whether to move forward with a realization phase, where it will develop and test technical solutions and business strategies for the CBDC. However, it will be up to European institutions to decide whether the digital euro will become a reality.

The European Commission is expected to come out with a proposal on the digital euro in the second quarter of 2023. This will kick off the legislative process, as the European Parliament and Council will need to come to an agreement on digital euro policy.

© 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.

Bitcoin was little changed Monday after reaching its highest point above $23,000 since August over the weekend. While the recent rally has outpaced traditional equities, some are wondering how long the rally can last.

The biggest cryptocurrency by market cap fell slightly over the past day, trading around $22,874 by 10:50 a.m. EST, according to TradingView. 

“The bulls are asking whether this momentum could lead us into a new cycle,” B2C2’s Adam Farthing said. “BTC resistance at $25,000 is probably key. It would be a tough nut to crack, but prices above there would likely create a lot more interest from outsiders to get involved once again.”

BTCUSD chart by TradingView

Ether was down 0.4% since Sunday, although the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap was still trading above $1,600. Ripple’s XRP jumped 4.2%, Binance’s BNB fell 0.2% and Cardano’s ADA slipped 1.2%.

Bernstein analysts Gautam Chhugani and Manas Agrawal were cautious, saying the likelihood of the rally continuing is slim with no signs of “any new capital allocations to sustain this rally.”

“As we interact with multiple institutional players, we do believe institutional capital will start positioning themselves in crypto in 2023, as crypto heads towards a more regulated asset class,” the analysts wrote in a note.

The crypto market is “firmly split between those who believe this is a bear market rally driven by short covering and those who feel that current prices simply represent a normalization after the chaos of late 2022,” according to Farthing.

© 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.

Developers successfully launched a “shadow fork” of the Shanghai upgrade to test it on a version of the main Ethereum network. 

A shadow fork is a test version of the actual mainnet, allowing developers to see if a piece of code from the proposed upgrade will work correctly on the real blockchain. The test for the Shanghai upgrade took place around 5:30 am ET.

There were a few minor technical issues, with Ethereum’s nodes using Geth clients after the fork, as reported by Marius Van Der Wijden, a Geth developer. But developers were able to fix the issues, and now all nodes are in agreement. They will be testing more to ensure everything works properly, Van Der Wijden added.

With Shanghai, withdrawals will be launched on the mainnet in March, enabling users to access their staked coins that were made temporarily inaccessible during the transition known as “The Merge” in September. While the main feature will be withdrawals, developers have finalized three other improvements aimed at optimizing gas costs for certain activities.

Developers are considering a public test network before the end of February, which would onboard staking firms to test the Shanghai upgrade. Additional shadow forks are planned in the coming 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.