The biggest news in the Cryptoverse for Jan. 19 was that FTX CEO John Ray II suggested the failed exchange could be revived. Meanwhile, US regulator FinCEN accused Binance of acting as a counterparty to Bitzlato, which itself faced enforcement action yesterday.
Elsewhere, the attacker who exploited Raydium has moved $2.7 million in funds via Tornado Cash, the Ethereum Name Service is considering selling some of its ETH, and Yuga Labs is blacklisting certain NFT marketplaces that do not support royalties. Also, you research on the bottom of the bitcoin market.
CryptoSlate Top Stories
FTX CEO John Ray is creating a task force to investigate resuming exchanges
FTX CEO John Ray III is exploring the possibility of relaunching the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange, the Wall Street Journal reported Jan. 19.
The CEO told the Journal that he had set up a task force to investigate the relaunch of FTX.com, the company’s main international exchange. He said: “Everything is on the table. If there is a way forward for that, then not only will we explore it, we will do it.”
While FTX officials have been accused of criminal activity, several customers have praised the company’s technology, suggesting it could warrant a restart, according to Ray.
Binance named among Bitzlato’s top 3 receiving counterparties
Binance has been named as one of Bitzlato’s top three counterparties, according to an order from the US Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).
US authorities launched enforcement action against the little-known exchange on January 18, accusing it of facilitating $700 million in money laundering. The exchange’s Russian founder, Anatoly Legkodymov, was arrested in Miami.
Around two-thirds of Bitzlato’s key receiving and sending counterparties were associated with darknet markets or fraud, FinCEN-Order reported. Authorities pointed out that alongside Binance, Bitzlato’s other top receiving counterparties included Russia’s darknet Hydra and Ponzi scheme TheFiniko.
Raydium exploit moves $2.7 million to Tornado Cash
A wallet address linked to the Raydium DEX exploiter has moved about $1.75 million worth of ETH via the sanctioned Tornado Cash merging protocol.
On December 16, the exploiter took ownership of Raydium, draining the protocol’s liquidity pools of $2.2 million in assets, including $1.6 million in SOL tokens.
After the exploit, the Raydium team suggested compensating the affected users with funds from its DAO treasury.
ENS DAO is considering the proposal to auction 10,000 ETH for USDC
The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) DAO is considering a proposal to sell 10,000 ETH for USDC via a Gnosis auction.
The governance proposal presented on January 18 aims to diversify the ENS DAO Treasury. Currently, the DAO holds about 40,746 ETH and 2.46 million USDC.
However, due to the ongoing bear market, the DAO may be in a vulnerable position due to overexposure to a single volatile asset. For comparison, ETH has lost around 52% of its value year-over-year.
As a result, the DAO is considering converting around 25% of its ETH holdings to USDC.
The number of ETH holders increased by 3.6 times to 87 million in 2022
The number of Ethereum (ETH) holders increased by 263% between January and December 2022, according to a research report by Crypto.com.
The number of ETH investors increased from 27 million in January to 87 million by the end of December.
In comparison, Bitcoin (BTC) holders grew just 20%, from 183 million in January to 219 million in December, according to the report.
Despite the drastic fall in crypto prices by 2022, crypto adoption continued to grow. The total number of crypto investors increased to 425 million in December from 306 million in January, a 39% growth.
Yuga Labs blacklists NFT marketplaces that do not support royalty payments
Yuga Labs, the creator of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), has blacklisted addresses related to LookRare, SudoSwap, Blur, and NFTX for not supporting royalty payments on their Sewer Pass NFT.
Royalties are payments made to NFT creators when their assets are sold on a marketplace. OpenSea mandates creator royalty rates of up to 10% – while others like LooksRare and SudoSwap have made the royalty model optional.
Given the ongoing debate over NFT royalty payments, Yuga Labs has moved to ban transactions from marketplaces that do not support NFT royalty payments such as Sewer Pass.
research highlight
Research: On-chain metrics continue to signal a Bitcoin bottom
Previous on-chain research suggested that the bitcoin market had bottomed. CryptoSlate reviewed multiple Glassnode metrics that continue to point to a bottoming out.
However, macro factors that may not have been present in previous cycles remain in play and may potentially impact the current cycle.
Bitcoin Supply P/L Bands show the circulating supply making either profit or loss based on the price of the token being higher or lower than the current price at the time of the last movement.
The bottoms of the market cycle coincide with the convergence of the Supply in Profit (SP) and Supply in Loss (SL) lines, which last happened around Q4 2022.
Currently, the SP band has moved sharply higher to diverge from the SL band, suggesting that a macro price bounce could be on the way if the pattern holds.
crypto market
Over the past 24 hours, Bitcoin (BTC) is up 1.01% to $21,109.33, while Ethereum (ETH) is up 0.67% to $1,552.61.
Biggest Winners (24h)
- FTX Token (FTT): 38.07%
- TNC Coin (TNC): 23.15%
- Serum (SRM): 15.71%
Biggest Losers (24h)
- Neutrino USD (USDN): -7.84%
- HEX (HEX): -6.57%
- Helium (HNT): -5.04%
Learn Crypto Trading, Yield Farms, Income strategies and more at CrytoAnswers
https://nov.link/cryptoanswers
Comments are closed.