Quotes of the first cryptocurrency crossed the $27,000 mark, US regulators rescued depositors of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank, the Arbitrum team announced an airdrop of ARB tokens and other events of the outgoing week.
Bitcoin Rises Above $27,000 Amid US Banking Trouble
On the night of Monday, March 13, the quotes of the first cryptocurrency rose sharply from $20,200 to levels above $22,500.
After the opening of trading in the US, there was a significant sale of shares of the banking sector. The price of bitcoin reacted by rising above $24,000.
On Tuesday, March 14, digital gold continued its recovery, breaking the $26,000 mark. On Friday, March 17, Bitcoin exceeded $27,000.
At the time of writing, the asset is trading at $27,200, up 33.4% in a week.
Following bitcoin, all cryptocurrencies from the top 10 by capitalization went into the green zone. According to CoinGecko, BNB (+23.6%) and Ethereum (+21.6%) went up the most during the week.
The total capitalization of the cryptocurrency market has surpassed $1.2 trillion.
In the US, saved depositors SVB and Signature Bank. Stablecoins have reduced depeg
On March 10, the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation closed the SVB and appointed FDIC manager. Regulators justified the decision by the need to strengthen confidence in the banking system against the backdrop of a sharp decline in the capitalization of regional credit institutions.
March 12 US Treasury, Fed and the FDIC announced the reorganization of SVB and Signature Bank. Depositors have been able to access their funds at the expense of shareholders and certain unsecured bond holders since March 13.
The measures also affected Signature Bank. The latter, along with Silvergate, is a pivotal financial institution for participants in the crypto industry, which has raised fears in the community of a cascade effect on digital asset-friendly banks and liquidity problems.
Tron founder Justin Sun announced his readiness to support the initiative to create a bank for the industry. US-based OKCoin has temporarily stopped accepting dollar deposits.
Circle gains access to $3.3 billion in SVB deposits
USDC issuer Circle has gained access to $3.3 billion in SVB deposits, CEO Jeremy Allaire said. He pointed to the irony of the situation in which a traditional bank harms the crypto economy, and not vice versa, as regulators have pointed out. Allair also said that the company has moved its reserve funds to a “safe vault” – Bank of New York Mellon.
The measures brought USDC to the target level of $1. Since March 10, Circle has redeemed roughly 6.2 billion coins and issued about 1.66 billion USDC, according to Arkham data. Therefore, the supply of stablecoin decreased by 4.5 billion USDC. Against this backdrop, USDT has twice surpassed USDC in terms of capitalization.
Arbitrum Team Announces Airdrop of ARB Tokens
The developers of the Ethereum-network of the second level Arbitrum have planned an airdrop for March 23, followed by a transition to a decentralized governance model. The first stage includes the distribution of 12.75% of the total number of coins.
Ethereum developers have activated the Shapella hard fork on the Goerli testnet and set the update date on the main network
The Ethereum team conducted the Shanghai-Capella (Shapella) hard fork on the Goerli testnet. According to the developers, it will be the last one before the update is activated on the main network. Its main goal is to open access to the withdrawal of ETH from staking.
The long-awaited mainnet update is scheduled for April 12 (epoch 620.9536). Liquid staking platform Lido Finance plans to open stETH redemption for the “original” cryptocurrency in mid-May 2023.
Euler Finance hacked for $196 million
On March 13, Euler Finance’s DeFi protocol was hacked. The damage amounted to more than $ 196 million. The hacker used an exploit in the “instant loans” mechanism on the platform, despite many audits. The Euler developers have blocked the vulnerable module.
The team offered a reward for the return of assets, and then set a reward of $ 1 million for the disclosure of information about the attacker. At the end of the week, it turned out that one of the wallets was connected to another hack – Ronin Finance for $ 625 million. The North Korean group Lazarus was involved in it.
It is noteworthy that out of 1800 ETH ($2.5 million) sent to the Tornado Cash mixer, 100 ETH went to the address of one of the victims, who signed a transaction addressed to the hacker with a request to return “all his savings” – 78 ETH.
What to discuss with friends?
- PeopleDAO was robbed of $120,000 in Ethereum via Google Spreadsheet.
- The NFT community will raffle off a trip to Japan to meet the Dogecoin symbol.
- OpenAI introduced the GPT-4 multimodal model. The algorithm revealed a vulnerability in an Ethereum-based smart contract.
- Playboy posted a $4.9 million loss on Ethereum NFT collection.
The authorities of the USA and Germany seized the servers of the cryptocurrency mixer ChipMixer
The German and US authorities, with the support of Belgium, Poland and Switzerland, have shut down the infrastructure of the ChipMixer cryptocurrency mixer, Europol said. As part of the investigation, law enforcement officers confiscated 1909.4 BTC, which was valued at €44.2 million ($46.3 million), and also seized four servers and 7 TB of data.
Sam Bankman-Fried asked FTX to pay his lawyers bills
Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) wanted to use management liability insurance to pay legal bills. Satisfying the request of the lawyers of the co-founder of the bankrupt exchange will give him an advantage in payments over other users.
At the same time, FTX released a new report to the court, according to which the so-called inner circle of the ex-CEO of FTX received $3.2 billion in payments and loans. Most of this amount came from the bankrupt sister exchange Alameda Research. Its former head, Caroline Ellison, received only $6 million, while SBF received $2.2 billion.
This week, several YouTube bloggers are facing a $1 billion class action lawsuit for “actively promoting” a collapsed crypto exchange.
Binance will suspend the purchase of hryvnia through Settlepay and Advcash and the pound through Paysafe
Starting March 21, Binance will restrict hryvnia transactions through the fiat gateways Settlepay and Advcash. The decision is related to the fight against the gambling industry, which also affected crypto exchanges, the company noted. They added that users can use the P2P service.
Binance has also suspended GBP deposits and withdrawals for new users as of March 13th. Paysafe’s financial partner cited the complex UK regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies.
Report: Exchangers from Moscow City help cash out USDT in the UK
Several cryptocurrency platforms operating in the Moscow City office center provide anonymous transfer services abroad, including to the UK, according to a report by Transparency International Russia.
According to experts, Moscow City hosts 21 cryptocurrency companies. 14 of them are OTC brokers that exchange cash rubles for USDT. Eight platforms exchange stablecoin for pounds sterling with the possibility of receiving cash in London.
Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Reaches All-Time High
As a result of the next recalculation, the difficulty of mining the first cryptocurrency increased by 1.16%. The indicator has updated its historical maximum at around 43.55 T. The average hash rate of the network is at around 315 EH/s.
Read also
- The Uniswap team has deployed the third version of the protocol on the BNB Chain network.
- Halborn announced a serious vulnerability in Dogecoin and 280 other projects.
- Unstoppable Domains has launched a domain name service on the Polygon network.
- Meta will stop working on NFT projects and cut 10,000 jobs.
MetaMask fixes privacy issue related to account merging
MetaMask developers in the latest update excluded the automatic merging of all accounts when a non-custodial wallet interacts with dapps. Now, when connecting to decentralized applications, accounts will be separated – they will be maintained in separate browser tabs.
The update provided options to limit the amount of data sent to third-party services, as well as change the RPC provider from the default Infura. The latter is related to ConsenSys, which also owns MetaMask.
What else to read?
The Cryplogger AI editors figured out why AI tokens are needed and what are the risks of investing in HYIP projects.
Traditional digests collected the main events of the week in the fields of cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.
The cryptocurrency industry is attracting an increasing number of institutional players. This is evidenced by new investments in infrastructure, and the increasing attention that companies are showing to bitcoin as an asset class. The most important events of recent weeks are in the Cryplogger review.
Found a mistake in the text? Select it and press CTRL+ENTER
Cryplogger Newsletters: Keep your finger on the pulse of the bitcoin industry!
Quotes of the first cryptocurrency crossed the $27,000 mark, US regulators rescued depositors of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank, the Arbitrum team announced an airdrop of ARB tokens and other events of the outgoing week.
Bitcoin Rises Above $27,000 Amid US Banking Trouble
On the night of Monday, March 13, the quotes of the first cryptocurrency rose sharply from $20,200 to levels above $22,500.
After the opening of trading in the US, there was a significant sale of shares of the banking sector. The price of bitcoin reacted by rising above $24,000.
On Tuesday, March 14, digital gold continued its recovery, breaking the $26,000 mark. On Friday, March 17, Bitcoin exceeded $27,000.
At the time of writing, the asset is trading at $27,200, up 33.4% in a week.
Following bitcoin, all cryptocurrencies from the top 10 by capitalization went into the green zone. According to CoinGecko, BNB (+23.6%) and Ethereum (+21.6%) went up the most during the week.
The total capitalization of the cryptocurrency market has surpassed $1.2 trillion.
In the US, saved depositors SVB and Signature Bank. Stablecoins have reduced depeg
On March 10, the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation closed the SVB and appointed FDIC manager. Regulators justified the decision by the need to strengthen confidence in the banking system against the backdrop of a sharp decline in the capitalization of regional credit institutions.
March 12 US Treasury, Fed and the FDIC announced the reorganization of SVB and Signature Bank. Depositors have been able to access their funds at the expense of shareholders and certain unsecured bond holders since March 13.
The measures also affected Signature Bank. The latter, along with Silvergate, is a pivotal financial institution for participants in the crypto industry, which has raised fears in the community of a cascade effect on digital asset-friendly banks and liquidity problems.
Tron founder Justin Sun announced his readiness to support the initiative to create a bank for the industry. US-based OKCoin has temporarily stopped accepting dollar deposits.
Circle gains access to $3.3 billion in SVB deposits
USDC issuer Circle has gained access to $3.3 billion in SVB deposits, CEO Jeremy Allaire said. He pointed to the irony of the situation in which a traditional bank harms the crypto economy, and not vice versa, as regulators have pointed out. Allair also said that the company has moved its reserve funds to a “safe vault” – Bank of New York Mellon.
The measures brought USDC to the target level of $1. Since March 10, Circle has redeemed roughly 6.2 billion coins and issued about 1.66 billion USDC, according to Arkham data. Therefore, the supply of stablecoin decreased by 4.5 billion USDC. Against this backdrop, USDT has twice surpassed USDC in terms of capitalization.
Arbitrum Team Announces Airdrop of ARB Tokens
The developers of the Ethereum-network of the second level Arbitrum have planned an airdrop for March 23, followed by a transition to a decentralized governance model. The first stage includes the distribution of 12.75% of the total number of coins.
Ethereum developers have activated the Shapella hard fork on the Goerli testnet and set the update date on the main network
The Ethereum team conducted the Shanghai-Capella (Shapella) hard fork on the Goerli testnet. According to the developers, it will be the last one before the update is activated on the main network. Its main goal is to open access to the withdrawal of ETH from staking.
The long-awaited mainnet update is scheduled for April 12 (epoch 620.9536). Liquid staking platform Lido Finance plans to open stETH redemption for the “original” cryptocurrency in mid-May 2023.
Euler Finance hacked for $196 million
On March 13, Euler Finance’s DeFi protocol was hacked. The damage amounted to more than $ 196 million. The hacker used an exploit in the “instant loans” mechanism on the platform, despite many audits. The Euler developers have blocked the vulnerable module.
The team offered a reward for the return of assets, and then set a reward of $ 1 million for the disclosure of information about the attacker. At the end of the week, it turned out that one of the wallets was connected to another hack – Ronin Finance for $ 625 million. The North Korean group Lazarus was involved in it.
It is noteworthy that out of 1800 ETH ($2.5 million) sent to the Tornado Cash mixer, 100 ETH went to the address of one of the victims, who signed a transaction addressed to the hacker with a request to return “all his savings” – 78 ETH.
What to discuss with friends?
- PeopleDAO was robbed of $120,000 in Ethereum via Google Spreadsheet.
- The NFT community will raffle off a trip to Japan to meet the Dogecoin symbol.
- OpenAI introduced the GPT-4 multimodal model. The algorithm revealed a vulnerability in an Ethereum-based smart contract.
- Playboy posted a $4.9 million loss on Ethereum NFT collection.
The authorities of the USA and Germany seized the servers of the cryptocurrency mixer ChipMixer
The German and US authorities, with the support of Belgium, Poland and Switzerland, have shut down the infrastructure of the ChipMixer cryptocurrency mixer, Europol said. As part of the investigation, law enforcement officers confiscated 1909.4 BTC, which was valued at €44.2 million ($46.3 million), and also seized four servers and 7 TB of data.
Sam Bankman-Fried asked FTX to pay his lawyers bills
Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) wanted to use management liability insurance to pay legal bills. Satisfying the request of the lawyers of the co-founder of the bankrupt exchange will give him an advantage in payments over other users.
At the same time, FTX released a new report to the court, according to which the so-called inner circle of the ex-CEO of FTX received $3.2 billion in payments and loans. Most of this amount came from the bankrupt sister exchange Alameda Research. Its former head, Caroline Ellison, received only $6 million, while SBF received $2.2 billion.
This week, several YouTube bloggers are facing a $1 billion class action lawsuit for “actively promoting” a collapsed crypto exchange.
Binance will suspend the purchase of hryvnia through Settlepay and Advcash and the pound through Paysafe
Starting March 21, Binance will restrict hryvnia transactions through the fiat gateways Settlepay and Advcash. The decision is related to the fight against the gambling industry, which also affected crypto exchanges, the company noted. They added that users can use the P2P service.
Binance has also suspended GBP deposits and withdrawals for new users as of March 13th. Paysafe’s financial partner cited the complex UK regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies.
Report: Exchangers from Moscow City help cash out USDT in the UK
Several cryptocurrency platforms operating in the Moscow City office center provide anonymous transfer services abroad, including to the UK, according to a report by Transparency International Russia.
According to experts, Moscow City hosts 21 cryptocurrency companies. 14 of them are OTC brokers that exchange cash rubles for USDT. Eight platforms exchange stablecoin for pounds sterling with the possibility of receiving cash in London.
Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Reaches All-Time High
As a result of the next recalculation, the difficulty of mining the first cryptocurrency increased by 1.16%. The indicator has updated its historical maximum at around 43.55 T. The average hash rate of the network is at around 315 EH/s.
Read also
- The Uniswap team has deployed the third version of the protocol on the BNB Chain network.
- Halborn announced a serious vulnerability in Dogecoin and 280 other projects.
- Unstoppable Domains has launched a domain name service on the Polygon network.
- Meta will stop working on NFT projects and cut 10,000 jobs.
MetaMask fixes privacy issue related to account merging
MetaMask developers in the latest update excluded the automatic merging of all accounts when a non-custodial wallet interacts with dapps. Now, when connecting to decentralized applications, accounts will be separated – they will be maintained in separate browser tabs.
The update provided options to limit the amount of data sent to third-party services, as well as change the RPC provider from the default Infura. The latter is related to ConsenSys, which also owns MetaMask.
What else to read?
The Cryplogger AI editors figured out why AI tokens are needed and what are the risks of investing in HYIP projects.
Traditional digests collected the main events of the week in the fields of cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.
The cryptocurrency industry is attracting an increasing number of institutional players. This is evidenced by new investments in infrastructure, and the increasing attention that companies are showing to bitcoin as an asset class. The most important events of recent weeks are in the Cryplogger review.
Found a mistake in the text? Select it and press CTRL+ENTER
Cryplogger Newsletters: Keep your finger on the pulse of the bitcoin industry!
