FreeCryptoCurrency.Me

Crypto market making firm Wintermute has been hacked for $160 million but the firm remains solvent, according to founder and CEO Evgeny Gaevoy.

Gaevoy said today on Twitter that the money was related to its DeFi operations and that it’s centralized exchange and over-the-counter offerings were not affected.

“We are solvent with twice over that amount in equity left,” Gaevoy said. “If you have a MM agreement with Wintermute, your funds are safe. There will be a disruption in our services today and potentially for next few days and will get back to normal after.”

Gaevoy said that 90 assets were stolen. Two amounts of tokens were worth between $1 million and $2.5 million, with the remaining below $1 million.

He added that the firm was open to treating this as a white hat hack.

Via Telegram, Gaevoy confirmed that the tweets were accurate but had no further comment.

© 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.

Trading firm Alameda Research will repay some $200 million in loans to Voyager Digital, the bankrupt crypto lender.

Alameda will repay 6,553 in bitcoin (roughly $128 million) and 51,204 in ether (roughly $70 million) in principal and loan fees, as well as smaller amounts in seven other tokens, according to a court filing last night. The loans are due to be repaid by September 30, per the filing.

If all goes smoothly, Voyager will then send Alameda back tokens that the trading firm had stumped up as collateral for the loans — comprised of 4,650,000 in FTX’s token FTT (roughly $112 million) and 63,750,000 in SRM (roughly $49 million), the utility token of decentralized exchange Serum.  

The news comes as Voyager auctions off its assets after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New York in June. Bidders are kept private as part of the process but FTX and Alameda had publicized an offer of liquidity to Voyager creditors in July, prompting criticism from Voyager, which accused Bankman-Fried’s businesses of making “misleading or outright false” claims.

FTX, the exchange with close ties to Alameda, has been connected to multiple potential bailouts following a succession of collapses in the crypto lending sector. 

The firm gave BlockFi a $250 million credit facility after the lender shut down withdrawals in June, and may yet acquire the business outright.

© 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.

Coinbase announced on Monday that it will release a new fee schedule around 5 p.m EST on Sept. 20, adjusting tiers and changing the taker and maker fee structure for transaction tiers above $100,000-$1 million.

The new structure accounts “for changes in global crypto trading volumes and asset prices, lowering the monthly trading volume required to qualify for the mid and upper tiers of our fee schedule,” Coinbase said, adding that it would be implemented on Coinbase Exchange, Pro and Advanced Trade.

The new fee schedule is as follows:

While tiers below $100,000-$1million remain unchanged — in contrast to Coinbase’s current exchange fee structure shown below — the new fees offer better incentives for higher-volume traders.

Coinbase said it will continue to base calculations for volume tiers on trailing 30-day volume.

© 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.

Most bitcoin mining stock prices were down Monday, as the cryptocurrency fell below $18,500 before rising back to $19,500 at the time the markets closed, according to data from TradingView.

Crypto markets in general traded lower over the weekend and into Monday ahead of Wednesday’s Federal Open Market Committee rate-hike decision.

Iris Energy’s stock fell 14.43%, followed by Northern Data (-12.88%) and Mawson Infrastructure Group (-12.58%).

Marathon’s stock fell 0.46% after Applied Blockchain announced that it extended its hosting contract with the miner by 70 megawatts.

TeraWulf announced the energization of 3,000 miners at its New York facility, and Bitfarms started production at its first warehouse in Argentina. The companies’ stocks fell 4.27% and 3.51% (on the Toronto Stock Exchange), respectively.

Here’s how crypto mining companies performed on Monday, Sept. 19:

© 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.

More than half of voters in Senate battleground states oppose a digital currency issued by the Federal Reserve, according to a new poll commissioned by a conservative group. 

The new survey comes as the Federal Reserve explores issuing a central bank digital currency sometime in the future, and days after the Biden administration released a series of high-profile reports examining digital assets. 

The prominent Republican group Club for Growth commissioned the poll through its political action committee. The conservative organization has taken a recent interest in crypto — The Club for Growth has given more than $1 million to Crypto Freedom PAC, a super PAC that has spent serious cash in midterm races in support of pro-crypto candidates. 

According to the new poll, 53% of voters said they oppose a Federal Reserve digital currency, while 11 percent said they support it. More than one-third of voters — 36% — said they were unsure. 

Voters became more doubtful of digital currency when they learned more details from the pollster. Fifty-nine percent of voters said they were less likely to support a digital currency when they were told “the government could monitor all purchases that you make using the digital currency” and prevent it from being used for particular purposes. Plus, 51% said they were less likely to support the currency after they were told “the government could tax transactions made with the digital currency if the person making the transaction haven’t paid their taxes.”

The poll also surveyed voters’ opinions on the environmental impact of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Forty-two percent of voters said they were not sure if cryptocurrencies hurt the environment, while 31% of voters said they hurt the environment and 27% said they do not hurt the environment. Democrats were slightly more likely to say cryptocurrencies hurt the environment compared to Republicans. 

WPA Intelligence, a firm that often works with conservative candidates and causes, polled 1,102 likely voters in an online survey from Sept. 6-11. Voters were polled in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin.

© 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 firm Sparkster and its CEO Sajjad Daya agreed to pay more than $35 million in a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over an “unregistered crypto asset offering” in 2018.

The SEC issued a cease-and-desist order Monday against the two, claiming that they raised $30 million from 4,000 investors by offering them “crypto asset securities called SPRK tokens.”

The money will be put in a fund to be distributed to harmed investors.

“The resolution with Sparkster and Daya allows the SEC to return a significant amount of money to investors and requires additional measures to protect investors, including the disabling of tokens to prevent their future sale,” said Carolyn M. Welshhans, associate director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement.

“Without admitting or denying the SEC’s findings, Sparkster agreed to destroy its remaining tokens, request the removal of its tokens from trading platforms, and publish the SEC’s order on its website and social media channels,” the SEC said in a press release.

Daya also agreed to not participate in offerings of crypto asset securities for five years.

In relation to this case, the SEC also charged crypto investor and YouTuber Ian Balina over his involvement.

Balina promoted SPRK on social media without disclosing that he would get a 30% bonus on the $5 million in tokens he bought, the SEC said.

Sparkster and Daya were found in violation of the offering registration provisions of the Securities Act of 1933.

© 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.

PGA Tour, a major organizer for professional men’s golf tournaments, and the Tom Brady co-founded sports memorabilia platform Autograph announced Monday that it will launch a new platform for golf digital collectibles. 

This new platform will launch in 2023 and mint snippets of notable golf history, as well as the current 2021-2022 FedExCup Season, as NFTs for golf fans to collect. 

“The PGA Tour is excited to work with Autograph to offer digital collectibles that highlight the most talented golfers in the world and their role in the sport’s history,” said PGA Tour Chief Legal Officer Len Brown in a statement.

This is not the first time the PGA Tour got into NFTs, nor its first collaboration with Autograph. In April of this year, PGA Tours picked Autograph to mint Tour-licensed media as NFTs, Golf.com previously reported.

The FedExCup is a golf competition in which the winner can receive $18 million. 

Launched in July of 2021, the NFT-based sports memorabilia platform Autograph not only sells sports moments but collections from athletes such as gymnast Simone Biles, golfer Tiger Woods, and football player Tom Brady, its co-founder.

Autograph raised $170 million in Series B funding in January.

© 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.

WazirX halted deposits of USDC, USDP, and TUSD stablecoin as of today.

Withdrawal support for USDC, USDP, and TUSD will discontinue at 5 p.m, IST on September 23rd, after which point existing balances of the coins will be auto-converted into BUSD at a 1:1 ratio, the Indian crypto exchange announced. The conversion will be complete on or before October 5th.

Following the auto-conversion deadline, users may withdraw USDC, USDP, or TUSD at a ratio of 1:1 from BUSD balances and view the balances of those coins under a BUSD-denominated account balance, said WazirX adding that it “may amend the list of stablecoins eligible for auto-conversion.”

The decision to transition to greater BUSD support comes after WazirX and Binance last month got into a public spat over the Indian firm’s ownership. The dispute, which was precipitated by a money-laundering investigation into WazirX by Indian authorities that saw up to $8 million in funds frozen.

A 2019 blog post from Binance indicated it had purchased the Indian firm, but Binance co-founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao said after the Indian probe news that his firm never completed the acquisition. WazirX founder Nischal Shetty refuted the claim.

© 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.

GMI PAC—a political action committee backed by some of the crypto market’s biggest participants—is setting its sights on 2024 after spending more than $10 million in this cycle’s congressional primary races.

The super PAC is claiming success in across several House and Senate seats, though other factors, like endorsements from party leaders or incumbency, were also at play. A representative for the PAC told The Block that it has backed 15 successful candidates, including most recently Democrat Seth Magaziner who won a primary in Rhode Island last week.

GMI PAC launched at the beginning of the year to help elect politicians who support innovation in technology, specifically in the crypto sector. GMI—a common mantra in crypto circles—stands for “gonna make it.”

Other notable candidates that GMI supported include Sen. John Boozman, the top Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee and a cosponsor of legislation to broaden the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s power to directly regulate digital assets, and Democrat Jonathan Jackson, son of famed political activist Jesse Jackson, and the strong favorite to win a congressional seat representing parts of Chicago. The PAC also backed Democrat Glenn Ivey in a hotly contested Maryland primary. 

“I oppose efforts to ban cryptocurrency,” Ivey wrote on his campaign website, as reported by The Block’s Stephanie Murray. “This innovation should not be stifled before it has a chance to mature and add value to the U.S. economy.

Chris Lehane, a former Clinton White House official who works for Katie Haun’s crypto fund Haun Ventures, credited the PAC’s work. “GMI has been as smart as they have been sophisticated in focusing on Democratic and Republican primaries where there was a clear pro crypto candidate running,” said Lehane.

The PAC’s founding donors and board of directors include CMS Holdings co-founder Dan Matuszewski, Framework Ventures co-founder Vance Spencer, and FTX Digital Markets CEO Ryan Salame. Donors include crypto exchange giant FTX, investment firm Paradigm, Multicoin, and venture firm a16z.

Salame himself has donated more than $13 million on backing Republican candidates, including his partner Michelle Bond, a digital asset trade association director who ran for New York’s first congressional district, but did not receive the Republican nomination. Salame’s contributions sometimes overlap with GMI. 

The PAC plans to continue supporting the candidates it’s backed who have competitive general elections, though most have easy general elections.

© 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.

Applied Blockchain will host an additional 70 megawatts worth of bitcoin miners for Marathon, extending the deal from the previously announced 200 megawatts.

The company also announced Monday the groundbreaking of its 180-megawatt facility in North Dakota. It expects to begin operating in the first half of 2023.

The company closed a five-year power deal with a local utility partner in September. Available transmission capacity and excess wind generation were key to the choice of location, the company said.

In total, Applied Blockchain now has 500 megawatts of contracted hosting.

This will be the company’s second facility in that state, adding to a 100-megawatt site that opened earlier this year. It is also building a “next-generation datacenter” 200-megawatt site in Texas, which is currently ahead of schedule.

© 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.