CryptoBeaver

 The Federal Reserve may have to keep rate hikes going for longer than previously expected.  Jerome Powell – Chairman of the Federal Reserve – recently spoke about the future of macroeconomic policy and U.S. inflation at the Brooking Institution. As is typical, Bitcoin’s price was affected by his comments, rising by 1% just as his speech began.  As of 18:13 UDT on Wednesday, Bitcoin traded for $16,780. The price then shot up to $16,850 at 18:30, when he began to speak. By 18:40, the leading crypto asset traded for $16,960. Over the past 3 months, the Federal Reserve has raised its benchmark interest rate in intervals of 75 basis points at a time. The current rate, according to Federal Reserve data, is 3.83%.  Before the speech, Powell was expected to reinforce his message supporting continued interest rate hikes, which would slow to 50 basis points starting in December. On Wednesday, his message was even more hawkish: “We anticipate that ongoing increases will be app...

The FTX hacker appears to have moved some of the stolen bridged assets to OKX.  On-chain sleuth ZackXBT has tracked down some of the mixed Bitcoin funds stolen by the mysterious FTX hacker this month.  The analyst found that $4.1 million worth of Bitcoin (255 BTC) has ended up on OKX, a cryptocurrency exchange.  As explained on Twitter, the hacker initially deposited the stolen funds to CoinMixer – an anonymous Bitcoin mixing service designed to make on-chain Bitcoin transfers harder to track.  The first CoinMixer deposit was made on November 20th after the attacker used Ren Bridge to move assets from Ethereum’s blockchain to Bitcoin’s. As of Tuesday, there is $7 million in ETH remaining on the address.  After examining the deposits, ZackXBT said that the hacker had likely transferred those funds to OKX, after withdrawing from the mixer.  “So far we’ve accounted for at least $4.1m (255 BTC) sent to OKX,” he said.  The analyst further elaborated that 50...

 Bitcoin-backed Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) tokens have been trading at a discount compared to their Bitcoin backing ever since the fall of major crypto exchange FTX. Market data provided by Done shows that Wrapped Bitcoin has been consistently trading at a discount compared to the value of the underlying Bitcoin ever since the fall of major crypto exchange FTX. WBTC’s price broke under the full value of a Bitcoin on Nov. 12 and its value compared to Bitcoin has seen a sharp increase in volatility ever since. WBTC has reached its peak discount compared to Bitcoin on Nov. 26, when it was worth nearly 1% less than Bitcoin despite its supposed one-to-one BTC backing. As of press time, WBTC is trading at a 0.19% discount compared to the underlying Bitcoin. One possible reason for this discount is that the fall of FTX generated a significant — and healthy — degree of distrust towards custodial solutions that resulted in a significant increase in the WBTC selling pressure. This idea is furthe...

Mitsubishi Logistics has harnessed the power of blockchain to allow its clients to track their shipments to ensure that outsourced pharmaceutical shipments are kept in proper conditions throughout.  Mitsubishi launches ML Chain System to streamline pharmaceutical drugs distribution Mitsubishi has developed the ML Chain blockchain system to help streamline the transport of drugs.  Through this technology, its clients can even view the temperature of shipments when they change hands and other crucial details. The new ML Chain can track shipments from pharmaceutical manufacturing plants and logistics centers to distributors. Takeda Pharmaceutical is already utilizing it in Japan for some of its goods. The motors company has seen that via blockchain technology can help in the transmission of tamper-proof data globally and decided to leverage it. Its new distributed ledger technology foreshadows more applications of blockchain technology to expect in the near future. More to the st...

 The Tezos Foundation has announced a professional services agreement with game engine developer, Unity. The strategic partnership with Unity’s Accelerate Solutions will see to the development of a Web3 Blockchain SDK for games and dApps, according to a press release on November 25, 2022. Tezos (XTZ) x Unity join forces  While the crypto winter of 2022 has continued to hit Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies hard, Web3 gaming has continued to see increased adoption, and now, the Tezos Foundation is joining forces with Unity, a leading game engine developer, to bring the next wave of users into Web3 gaming and more. Per a press release by the team, the energy-efficient Tezos blockchain signed professional services deal with Unity’s Accelerate Solutions group earlier in May 2022, for the creation of a new Web3 blockchain software development kit (SDK). If approved, the Tezos Foundation and Tezos Ecosystem teams plan to offer the Web3 Blockchain SDK as a Verified Solution an...

 It almost seemed inevitable following everything that happened with FTX. Another former cryptocurrency giant has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States. Thus, BlockFi has followed the example of companies like Celsius and Three Arrows Capital. The cryptocurrency lender’s troubles began as the bear market intensified earlier this year, especially after the Terra collapse. There seemed to be a lifeboat thrown by FTX a few months down the road as the exchange provided a $400 million loan to BlockFi and had the option to purchase the company for up to $240 later on. However, the once SBF-led giant crashed spectacularly earlier this month, which led to a new wave of problems. Some reports emerged claiming that BlockFi was exploring filing for bankruptcy, but company reps refuted them at first. Yet, the crypto lender has indeed filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in a New Jersey court, as reported by CNBC. The filing reads that BlockFi had over 100,000 cr...

  Fantom was forced to become extremely frugal during the 2018 bear market, but later recovered using decentralized finance.  Andre Cronje – the so-called “Vice President of Memes” for the Fantom Foundation – provided an insider’s view into how the company has remained cash-flow positive across the past 4 years.  The developer noted that the foundation would “likely not be operational today” without decentralized finance (DeFi), and suspects the same is true for other firms.  Scaling Over One Cycle As  explained  in a blog post from Cronje on Sunday, Fantom ended 2018 with a fairly unprofitable ETH trade. After raising $40,000,000 worth of the cryptocurrency in June, it sold those holding after a major price correction leading up to December. At this point, the firm had less than $5 million remaining.  This forced the company to become extremely frugal over the following year, while periodically selling some of its native FTM tokens to fund unplanned e...

 The “specialized administrative unit” ONBTC will coordinate and consult all bitcoin projects in El Salvador. El Salvador’s government doubled down on its crypto initiatives by creating a National Bitcoin Office (ONBTC) that will oversee all local projects related to the asset. The new agency will also be able to cooperate with other countries in matters associated with BTC. Enter ONBTC Despite the prolonged bear market, El Salvador’s authorities seem determined to advance their bitcoin strategy. According to a recent LinkedIn post, the government created a National Bitcoin Office that will function as a “specialized administrative unit, with functional and technical autonomy within the Presidency of the Republic.” The agency will have all the freedom to manage and consult domestic bitcoin projects and join forces with other countries’ organizations on initiatives linked to the leading digital currency: “The objective of the ONBTC will be to design, diagnose, plan, program, coordin...

 The creators are about to deliver the bizarre statue to Musk’s house in Texas on Saturday (November 26) The cryptocurrency company EGT (which stands for Elon GOAT Token) built an interesting monument of Elon Musk. The statue represents a creature with a goat’s body and the entrepreneur’s head stuck on it that is about to shoot into space on a rocket. The firm plans to deliver the item to Musk’s home in Austin, Texas, on November 26 and invited people to attend the claim of this “historical gift.” Musk Put on a Pedestal Twitter’s new owner and the world’s richest man – Elon Musk – is one of the most influential figures of our time, and people often pay attention to his words, even when he talks about crypto. The digital asset firm – EGT – took that affection to another level by creating a bizarre statue of the South African. His 6-foot-tall head is placed upon a 30-foot-long body of a goat while the creature sits on a rocket that is about to head to “the moon.” The developers spent...

  The Alameda-linked tokenized Bitcoin asset will no longer be used to back DAI.  MakerDAO – the issuer of the decentralized stablecoin DAI – unanimously passed a proposal this week to remove renBTC as a form of reserve collateral.  The Bitcoin-pegged token was deemed too risky to hold exposure to in light of its connections to the now-bankrupt trading desk Alameda Research.  Alameda and Ren As  announced  by MakerDAO over Twitter on Thursday, Maker’s governance voted to offboard the RENBTC-A Vault type in a  governance poll  that opened on Monday. Nearly 75,000 votes were in favor of the motion, with 0 abstaining or objecting.  “Considering the acquisition of the Ren project by Alameda Research and the recent bankruptcy of the latter, the Ren development team disabled the Ren network mints,” said Maker. Ren 1.0 network, it said, will shut down within 30 days after November 18th.  Ren is a bridge protocol for transferring digital assets ...

Hodlnaut’s directors might have defrauded clients, the Singaporean police claimed. Law enforcement agents in Singapore have reportedly opened an investigation against the troubled crypto lender Hodlnaut.  The police suspect the company’s executives might have cheated users over the years and committed other crimes. According to a Bloomberg coverage, Singapore’s police force started probing Hodlnaut for its alleged involvement in cheating and fraud offenses. This comes as a result of numerous reports which blamed the firm’s directors for having made “false representations relating to the company’s exposure to a certain digital token.” “If you have deposited digital tokens with Hodlnaut and believe that you may have been defrauded through, among others, false representations made by Hodlnaut, you may wish to lodge a police report at the nearest Neighbourhood Police Centre or online,” the police outlined. The Singaporean-based cryptocurrency lender halted withdrawals, deposits, and to...

 It is worth noting that funds have not moved from the now-defunct Mt.Gox exchange’s cold wallets since 2018. A crypto wallet attributed to the failed BTC-e linked to the 2014 Mt. Gox hack moved 10,000 Bitcoin, now worth over $165 million, to a group of personal wallets, exchanges, and other services on November 23rd. A report by Chainalysis suggested that the funds’ movement marks the largest withdrawal by the Russia-focused cryptocurrency exchange – BTC-e’s controllers. The US authorities ceased its operations in 2017 due to its role in laundering funds associated with other forms of cybercrime, including crypto stolen in the 2014 Mt. Gox exchange hack. BTC-e and another exchange called WEX, believed to be the successor entity, sent small amounts of Bitcoin to a Russian electronic payments platform – Webmoney – on October 26th. Over two weeks later, BTC-e conducted a test payment out of its wallet before moving nearly 100 Bitcoin indirectly to an exchange on November 21. Accordin...

 Bitcoin miner Core Scientific will need extra liquidity to keep operations going past November 2023 — and it's facing a steep uphill battle to do so. The miner also posted revenue of $162.6 million in the third quarter, down 0.9% from the previous period.  The company had already warned that it might run out of cash by the end of the year and that it would not make payments in late October. Core's woes reflect the struggles of the industry, which has faced rising power costs combined with decreased bitcoin prices and higher mining difficulty. Compute North has already filed for bankruptcy, while Argo said it was facing negative cash flow.

FTX Group, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Nov. 11, has a combined cash balance of $1.24 billion, according to a new court filing. The latest figures are "substantially higher cash balances than the Debtors were in a position to substantiate as of Wednesday, Nov. 16," it reads. The cash balances are divided among four silos — the Alameda silo, dotcom silo, ventures silo and West Realm Shires (WRS) silo — and include amounts of both their debtor and no-debtor entities. About $751 million is held in debtor entities and the rest, $488 million, is in non-debtor entities, per the filing. FTX Group collapsed amid a sudden liquidity crisis.

According to data shared by WhaleStats platform that track the largest wallets on Ethereum and several other chains, over the past two days, the amount of SHIB holders has become several thousand bigger. The price of the meme coin has remained unaffected, though. On average, the 100 largest wallets on Ethereum chain hold slightly more than 2 billion SHIB coins. In the meantime, SHIB adoption continues to expand. As reported by U.Today earlier, an Australia-based Shiba Wings diner I expected to open “really soon”. The restaurant is fully crypto integrated thanks to NowPayments crypto gateway and is ready to integrate Shibarium when this long-expected upgrade is ready and gets rolled out.

Back in January 2021, when Solana was a relatively new blockchain network and Sam Bankman-Fried wasn’t quite the mythical crypto figure he’d soon become, the FTX founder publicly antagonized a trader who was bearish on Solana’s prospects. The tweet became legendary in crypto. But now, following the collapse of FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried's bankruptcy, the tables have turned. On November 11, when Bloomberg estimated SBF’s post-FTX-bankruptcy net worth at just $3, CoinMamba tweeted, “I'll buy everything you have, right now, at $3. Sell me all you want. Then go fuck off.”

 The Singaporean regulator explains the difference between Binance and FTX. The Monetary Authority of Singapore stated that there was no reason to caution investors against FTX crypto exchange as it did with Binance because the former did not actively solicit users in Singapore. This comes amid earlier speculations stating that the regulator’s action against Binance caused Singaporean users to shift to FTX thereby causing them to be caught in the exchange’s collapse. FTX Did Not Solicit Singapore Users In a statement published on Monday (November 21, 2022), MAS responded to “questions and misconceptions” following FTX’s downfall. The Singaporean financial regulator said it was not possible to protect locals who used the Bahamas-based FTX as the crypto exchange was not licensed by the agency and operated offshore. MAS also addressed concerns about its treatment of the world’s largest crypto exchange Binance, and FTX. The regulatory watchdog said that while both crypto exchanges were...

 The report comes as possible bankruptcy looms over Genesis as it struggles to raise fresh capital. Crypto exchange Gemini revealed working closely with Genesis Trading and its parent company Digital Currency Group, Inc, to find a solution for Earn users to redeem their funds. In a seris of tweets, the Winklevoss-led platform noted that it is working to provide a material informational update soon. “This remains our highest priority and we understand Genesis and DCG remain committed to exploring every possible option to fulfill their obligations to Earn users.” Gemini assured that the turmoil had not impacted any other products and services on its platform and that rest of its operations are working normally. The Unraveling The on-chain activity revealed that Genesis had significant interactions with Alameda, Gemini, and BlockFi via their OTC trading desk. FTT was also a top token received and sent in those transactions. However, Genesis is yet to share more information to bring cl...

  The stablecoin will be backed and overcollateralized using solely cryptocurrency, including ADA and SHEN – the smart contract’s reserve token.  Shahaf Bar-Geffen – CEO of COTI, a stablecoin development company – revealed the launch date for Cardano’s new algorithmic stablecoin at Cardano Summit on Monday.  After a successful audit, the over-collateralized DJED token will go live in January 2023. What is DJED? DJED is Cardano’s attempt to create a price-stable digital asset backed by ADA – the network’s native cryptocurrency.  By sending ADA to a given smart contract address on Cardano, users will receive the same dollar value worth of DJED in return. Likewise, by sending 1 DJED back to the smart contract, the sender will receive $1 worth of ADA.  This model could theoretically collapse if ADA were to experience major downside volatility, causing circulating DJED tokens to no longer be fully backed. As such, the smart contract will also include a reserve curren...

  Draper recently shared why he still sees Bitcoin at $250,000 and probably beyond despite the intense crypto winter.  American billionaire venture capitalist Tim Draper has reiterated his bullish support for Bitcoin despite the crypto winter intensified by the sudden crash of the FTX exchange.   Draper  predicted  last June, during the bull market, that the leading crypto asset would reach $250,000 by the end of 2022. However, his prediction is less likely to happen this year since the largest cryptocurrency is now trading below $17,000 following the FTX fiasco.   Women and Retailers Can Push Bitcoin to $250k Nonetheless, the billionaire still  believes  Bitcoin will hit the $250,000 target and probably go beyond once the market recovers and people, especially women, start using the cryptocurrency for daily shopping.   According to Draper, women control 80% of the total retail spending, which includes clothing, shelter, and food.   He a...

  The FTX account drainer swapped around $6M worth of ETH for wrapped Bitcoin. Ethereum’s price is trading below $1,200 on Sunday, charting a decrease of around 3.5% in the past 24 hours. This happens as the FTX account drainer is swapping ETH for wrapped Bitcoin. Data from the popular security resource, PeckShield,  revealed  that the address that drained funds from FTX is swapping ether for BTC. The “FTX Account Drainer” dumped around $6 million worth of ETH (around 5K ETH) and bought 357 renBTC. Source: Twitter   This is causing pressure on ETH’s spot price, which is currently down some 3.5% (on Binance) for the past 24 hours. As to who the drainer may be,  CryptoPotato  recently  reported  that the Securities Commission of the Bahamas assumed control of associated assets. Per a media release shared by authorities: On 12 November 2022, the Securities Commission of The Bahamas, in the exercise of its powers as regulator acting under the authorit...

  Grayscale said it will not follow the trend and perform a proof of reserves because it would no be the safest thing to do. The cryptocurrency industry was built on top of one slogan: “don’t trust, verify.” But Grayscale is different from the rest of the cryptocurrency-related businesses. In a recent Twitter thread pondering the need for transparency in the industry after the collapse of FTX, Grayscale attempted to calm its investors’ fears, assuring them that the regulations that apply to its various entities make an FTX-like scenario nearly impossible. Grayscale Says: Funds Are Safe, Trust Us Grayscale assures that each of its products is duly registered as a separate entity with its own regulations. They explain that the laws and regulations governing each of its crypto trusts prevent underlying assets from being sold, loaned, or otherwise transferred. In a subsequent tweet, Grayscale assures that its cryptocurrencies are held by the custody service provided by Coinbase, the on...

  The Prime Minister Terrance said Saint Kitts and Nevis will engage with Bitcoin Cash mining and make BCH legal tender by March 2023. The island country located in the Caribbean region – Saint Kitts and Nevis – plans to turn Bitcoin Cash (BCH) into an official payment method inside its borders by March next year. The announcement positively affected the asset’s price, which jumped above $100. The Prime Minister of Saint Kitts and Nevis – Terrance Micheal Drew – disclosed that the government is willing to engage with Bitcoin Cash mining and make the asset legal tender on local soil by March 2023. The leader opined that the cryptocurrency represents “future opportunities” and said the initiative will go live once regulators guarantee consumers will have maximum protection. BCH jumped to around $103 immediately following the speech and still trades above $100. Still, this is far away from the 2021 price levels when it surpassed $1,500. The all-time high occurred in 2017 when it trade...

  Early this month, the Binance CEO said at Singapore Fintech Festival that high taxes can kill the crypto industry in India. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) has all but given up on India. Pointing out the 1% transaction tax that came into force on 1 July 2022, CZ said it makes crypto trading unviable in India. Speaking at the TechCrunch Session: Crypto 2022 on November 17 in Miami, CZ further pointed out that Binance is engaged with blockchain associations and influential persons in India to present the industry’s stance before the policymakers, a TechCrunch  report  said. CZ Red Flags 1% Transaction Tax “If you are going to tax 1% on each transaction, there is not going to be that many transactions… To be honest, I don’t think India is a very crypto-friendly environment,” he said. While CZ maintained his negative outlook on India, first publicly expressed during the  Singapore Fintech Festival  early this month, Binance is available to Indian users. “A user co...

  Several crypto firms have been affected by the fiasco and many of them are now revealing their exposure to it. After Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire imploded last week, exchanges are rushing to soothe the nerves of infuriated investors. Digital banking firm, Revolut is the latest one to distance itself from FTX. In an emailed statement, Revolut told users that it did not have “material exposure” to the bankrupt crypto exchange. Revolut Monitoring the Situation The London-based company  said  it is still monitoring the situation while reminding the volatility associated with digital assets. “This is a good reminder that crypto is very volatile: the value does go down, as well as up. So, remember to only invest what you can afford to lose.” It is important to note that the FTX chief  tweeted  that users could transfer money in fiat currencies between his exchange and Revolut in June last year. Despite this, the latter’s spokesperson has confirmed that the comp...