Author: Ibiam Wayas

Ibiam is an optimistic crypto journalist. He loves to associate with like-minded individuals and collaborate with them on similar projects. He spends much of his time honing his writing and critical thinking skills.

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Banking Bitcoin Crypto News Cryptocurrencies Institutions

Morgan Stanley CEO Admits Crypto ‘Isn’t a Fad’

Cryptocurrencies may not constitute a significant part of the business demand for Morgan Stanley, a top US investment financial institution, but chairman and CEO James Gorman believes they are not going away.

There are people who still argue in some way that bitcoin and digital currencies are “bubble”, not mindful of the fact that the sector has developed for over 10 years with a current market capitalisation of US$2.5 trillion.

Last week, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon reiterated his view that bitcoin is “worthless” – he has in the past also referred to the asset as “a fraud”, and “fool’s gold”.

Taking a somewhat contrary view, Gorman said this week that cryptocurrencies are not a fad.

I don’t think crypto’s a fad, I don’t think it’s going away […] I don’t know what the value of bitcoin should or shouldn’t be, but these things aren’t going away and the blockchain technology supporting it is obviously very real and powerful.

James Gorman, CEO and chairman, Morgan Stanley

Crypto ‘Will Evolve’ and ‘We’ll Evolve With It’

Morgan Stanley is one of the few major financial institutions to have launched crypto-related investment products, just as global investors are shifting away from gold to emerging crypto assets. In April, the bank filed notice to offer a bitcoin investment product to its wealth management clients. 

Although its crypto offering isn’t pivotal to the bank just yet, Gorman said it “may evolve”. 

For us, honestly it’s just not a huge part of the business demand for our clients. That may evolve and we’ll evolve with it, but certainly it’s not what’s driving our economics one way or the other.

James Gorman, CEO and chairman, Morgan Stanley

Despite Gorman’s comments, Morgan Stanley – which reported net earnings of US$14.8 billion for the third quarter – has showed particular interest in crypto this year. Its US$150 billion investment unit Counterpoint Global explored bitcoin in February, and the firm purchased more than 28,000 shares in Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust in June.

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Australia Crypto News Ransomware

Australia Moves to Permit Seizure of Crypto Amid 15% Increase In Ransomware Attacks

The Australian government has mapped out plans to tighten the screws on ransomware attacks on local businesses and individuals. 

In a 16-page document titled the “Ransomware Action Plan”, the Department of Home Affairs has outlined several measures to deter and punish cybercriminals. Part of the strategy includes the confiscation of illicit cryptocurrencies. 

Mooted Powers to ‘Seize and Freeze’

The department is seeking authorisation to seize and freeze cryptocurrency transactions that are linked to cyberattacks in Australia, irrespective of where the transaction originates from. It also seeks to modify the existing law on how law enforcement agencies can track and recover stolen funds. 

In addition to this, the government wants to criminalise the buying and selling of malware or stolen data in ransomware attacks. It also flagged plans to set up a task force within the Australian Federal Police to focus on ransomware, and legislation that requires ransomware incident reporting. 

Our tough new laws will target this online criminality and hit cybercrooks where it hurts most – their bank balances […] We need to ensure that Australia remains an unattractive target for criminals and a hostile place for them to operate.

Karen Andrews, Minister of Home Affairs

Australia Records 15% Increase in Ransomware Attacks in 2020-21

The new plan comes in response to a surge in ransomware attacks in Australia. The country has been a major target for cyber attackers. Australia reportedly recorded about a 15 percent increase in ransomware attacks in the 2020-21 financial year, at a total cost of A$1.4 billion (about US$1 billion).

Last year, Australian media market research company Nielsen was disrupted in a suspected ransomware attack. And as recently as July 2021, a number of Australian businesses were also affected by a REvil ransomware attack on their software provider, Kaseya.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Markets

Whales and HODLers Dominate as 70% of Bitcoin Hasn’t Moved in Five Months

Since Bitcoin’s correction from April’s all-time high, most investors have turned strong hands. According to Glassnode, about 70 percent of Bitcoin’s total supply hasn’t moved in the past 155 days (or five months), meaning the majority of BTC supply is held by long-term holders. 

On this note, there should be less selling pressure on bitcoin, given most inventors are positive about the future price. 

HODLers Are Accumulating 12.7x More BTC Than Mined

What’s more interesting is the rate at which long-term holders have been accumulating BTC in recent months. HODLers’ supply reportedly grew from 10.91 million BTC to about 13.3 million BTC within a space of seven months. That is a differential of 2.37 million BTC, which is greater than the 186,000 new Bitcoin mined within that period. 

This signifies that, on average, long-term holders are accumulating 13x BTC than the total amount of BTC mined in a day, hence the drop in BTC balance on all exchanges. Recent data from Glassnode shows all Bitcoin exchange balances at 2,450,952.419 BTC, the lowest level in three years.

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What’s Next for Bitcoin?

On-chain metrics are painting a bullish picture for Bitcoin. At the time of writing, BTC was trading at US$57,001 with a market capitalisation of US$1.19 trillion. Judging by the metrics, it’s easy to forecast BTC could break out anytime to US$60,000 and higher as the accumulation wave gets stronger.

Already, there are traces of whales in the market. In two weeks, BTC addresses with 100 to 1,000 BTC accumulated over 85.7k bitcoin, equivalent to US$4.8 billion at today’s price. The appetite for bitcoin is getting stronger, and it’s creating a supply squeeze that is bullish in the long term. 

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Blockchain Crypto News DeFi

Fantom Token Up 64% in a Week After Announcing Aave Support

Fantom blockchain is continually gaining ground in the decentralised finance (DeFi) space, given more projects are launching on the network on account of its cheap and fast transaction processing time. This has sustained the market price of the native cryptocurrency FTM on the upside, even when the altcoin market seems to be in a lull. 

FTM Soared Over 64% After ATH

While Ether (ETH) and major altcoins lost out on Bitcoin price movements this past week, FTM soared over 64 percent to an all-time high of US$2.45 on October 8, a day after the announcement that analytics platform Nansen would include Fantom on its blockchain coverage.

After a brief correction from the ATH, FTM began soaring again as Fantom disclosed that one of the biggest Ethereum-based DeFi lending protocols, Aave, could launch on the network if it passes the governance proposal. The voting ended on October 11 and an overwhelming majority of voters (99.73 percent) supported the proposal.

Aave v2 will launch on Fantom Opera blockchain. In doing so, it extends its lending services to Fantom’s DeFi ecosystem and will, in turn, tap more TVL growth from the Fantom community.  

Fantom DeFi Now Worth +$5.7 Billion

In April, Fantom passed a milestone of three million transactions, with the daily record around 200,000. However, the numbers have grown to over 800,000 daily by dint of its inherent scalability property, which is drawing in more project launches on the network. Popular Ethereum protocols such as C.R.E.A.M., Curve, Yearn and SushiSwap have also launched on Fantom. 

As of October 13, the Fantom DeFi ecosystem had a combined TVL of US$5.06 billion. 

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Bitcoin Blockchain NFTs Tokens

Bitcoin NFTs Are Growing Fast, STX Token Up 57% in 24 Hours

The native cryptocurrency of Bitcoin-based smart contract blockchain Stacks (STX) exploded in market value this past week, following the growth in demand amid a booming NFT ecosystem. 

Giving the growing traction on the network, more from its NFTs marketplace, STX soared over 57 percent to $2.30 on October 10. At the time of writing, however, STX was down trading at $1.91 on CoinMarketCap, as Bitcoin (BTC) maintained its domination over major altcoins. Currently, the Stacks token is ranked the 58th-largest digital currency with a market capitalisation of around US$2.3 billion. 

LunarCRUSH had also confirmed STX as the top cryptocurrency with the highest social and market activity. 

Bitcoin NFTs Ecosystem is Booming 

The Bitcoin blockchain is mainly for facilitating transactions and doesn’t inherently support NFTs or smart contracts like Ethereum. While it is often criticised and downplayed for this, Stacks is looking to change the narrative. 

Based on Bitcoin, Stacks is poised to enable smart contracts on the BTC network, more like a “Layer 1.5” according to founder Muneeb Ali. More NFTs are now launching on the Bitcoin network through Stacks, which contributed to the demand in STX and overall traction on the network.

Bitcoin Birds was the latest Bitcoin NFT collection launched last week by 12-year-old Abraham Finley. The collection sold out within one hour, netting about US$8,000. Prior to the Bitcoin Birds, other NFTs have been released on the Stack marketplace, including Stacks Pops, Punks, Monks, and many others. Satoshibles NFTs are also planning on debuting on Bitcoin “where they truly belong”.

The NFT market has had a wide rally in the past few months and is starting to look lulled. SynFutures, a Singaporean decentralised derivatives exchange, is set to launch an NFT platform that will enable investors to short or bet against the price movements of NFTs. As the NFT world continues to advance, Twitter plans to integrate a verification tool for NFTs used as profile pictures.

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Coinbase Crypto News Hackers

Hackers Exploit Coinbase Vulnerability to Steal Crypto from 6,000 Users

US crypto exchange Coinbase recently disclosed that funds from at least 6,000 customers were removed from their accounts by hackers who took advantage of a bug in its SMS multi-factor authentication (MFA). 

SMS MFA is a security feature that allows users to authenticate and log in to their accounts by entering a security token sent to them via SMS. This adds an extra layer of security to users and helps prevent unauthorised logins. 

Coinbase Says Hacker Exploited a Bug in its MFA

A letter posted by Coinbase on the Attorney General of California’s website shows the incident took place between March and May this year.

For customers who use SMS texts for two-factor authentication, the third party took advantage of a flaw in Coinbase’s SMS Account Recovery process in order to receive an SMS two-factor authentication token and gain access to your account.

Coinbase letter to users

The success of the attack means the hackers already knew victims’ personal information such as their email, phone number and password. The exchange says it’s unclear how the attackers were able to gain access to the information. However, chances are the information was gleaned from social engineering tricks or phishing attacks, which are not unknown to Coinbase and the crypto market in general. 

The total value of cryptocurrency lost in the SMS multi-factor authentication breach wasn’t disclosed, but the exchange said it had repaid the funds to affected users. 

We immediately fixed the flaw and have worked with these customers to regain control of their accounts and reimburse them for the funds they lost.

Coinbase

Lax Security, Poor Customer Service

Inarguably the leading cryptocurrency exchange in the US, Coinbase has approximately 68 million users from more than 100 countries, yet the exchange is often criticised for its lax security and poor customer service. 

In August, the exchange erroneously sent a message to about 125,000 customers, informing them that their 2FA settings had been changed. It subsequently had to compensate affected users for the impact of the incident on their trust in Coinbase.

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Bitcoin CBDCs Crypto News Regulation Stablecoins

Crypto Market Fear Subsides Following Fed Announcement that ‘It Will Not Ban Crypto’

During the US House Financial Services Committee meeting on September 30, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, confirmed that he doesn’t have any intention to ban private cryptocurrency. 

For months now, many US crypto investors have been concerned that the government could ban bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on the issuance of a central bank digital currency, as seen with China. This was based on Powell’s comment in July, where he precisely said: “You wouldn’t need stablecoins, you wouldn’t need cryptocurrencies if you had a digital US currency.”

However, in the recent meeting, Powell claimed he had “misspoken”. In his words, there is “no intention to ban” cryptocurrencies in the US; however, stablecoins need to be regulated. 

Stablecoins are like money market funds, they’re like bank deposits, but they’re to some extent outside the regulatory perimeter, and it’s appropriate that they be regulated.

Jerome Powell, US Federal Reserve chairman

China Took a Different Approach to Crypto

Evidently, the Chinese government’s approach to crypto is similar to the previous statement made by the US FED chairman. While China is in the pilot phase of testing its long-planned central bank digital currency, it has prohibited the trading, investing, and use of private cryptos in the country. Several mining pools and exchanges have ceased supporting users from China following the latest announcement by the central bank.

Nevertheless, the crypto market was pleased with Powell’s clarification, as bitcoin and other crypto began to spike thereafter. Just a day after the FED chairman clarified his previous statement, the price of bitcoin spiked to nearly US$48,000, resulting in the liquidation of over US$47 million short positions within an hour.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Markets

Probability of Bitcoin Hitting $100k by the End of the Year is 3.2%

At the current price, bitcoin (BTC) is less likely to exceed the long-sought US$100,000 price mark this year than it was about seven months ago. 

According to options-based data from Skew, the probability of bitcoin reaching the mark in December has declined to 3.2 percent, while for October, the likelihood is around 0 to 1 percent. There is a slightly higher probability of bitcoin exceeding that price level by next year. 

This decline, as per the data, is a result of poor pricing in the bitcoin options market. Many options traders seem to be uncertain about the current market condition, probably because of the sudden correction in price to the lows of US$40,000 amid the crackdown in China. During the bull market earlier this year, traders were seen betting big on the rally, which raised the probability to over 20 percent. Back then, in March, bitcoin was priced around US$55,000.

Crypto Twitter Still Anticipates $100k Bitcoin Price in 2021 

Regardless of the odds, many still believe bitcoin could reach US$100,000 later this year. A fortnight ago, analyst Benjamin Cowen conducted a poll to that effect and about 52 percent of the 12,343 respondents agreed. 

In Australia, many investors have predicted that bitcoin will cross A$100,000 (US$72,310) by the end of the year. 

Former hedge fund manager and economist Raoul Pal recently stated that bitcoin could reach as high as US$300,000 given it “usually goes 5x to 10x within three months”. Pal added that the rally could be driven by the introduction of a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the US or more dollar printing by the FEDs.

Categories
China Crypto News DeFi

UNI Token Leads DEX Gains Amid China Exchange Ban, Up Nearly 50% in 24 Hours

Huge interest is flowing into the decentralised market, much of it from local investors following the intense crackdown on the Chinese crypto market. Led by Uniswap (UNI), tokens from decentralised exchanges (DEX) gained an uptick in the past few days, while centralised exchange tokens barely increased. 

UNI is the native and governance token of the Ethereum-based decentralised exchange, Uniswap. The price of UNI rebounded from a low of US$17.77 on September 26 to over US$45, making a quick return of about 47 percent within 24 hours. At the current price of US$24.40, UNI is still up by over 20 percent in the past seven days: 

A few other DEX tokens, including the SushiSwap token, also noted an increase. SUSHI posted a 37+ percent increase within the same period as UNI, although the price had retraced back to US$9.80 at the time of writing. An index from Messari showed that 60 DEX tokens gained 10.27 percent combined, while 13 CEX tokens gained 0.77 percent at the same time. 

How China Crackdown is Benefiting DeFi 

The Chinese government took heated measures to crack down on the local crypto market following the recent pronouncement by the People’s Bank of China that cryptocurrency trading is illegal. Consequently, many exchanges that operated in the country have either closed or migrated to other regions. Major exchanges Binance and Huobi have also said they will prohibit users from Mainland China.

Many argue that Chinese traders can still find their way around via the decentralised market, which constitutes crypto protocols operated without any central body. This could be the reason behind the uptick in the price of DEX tokens, and more DeFi tokens may again outperform Bitcoin and other major altcoins if more traders continue to flood into the DeFi market.

The great rotation into everything decentralised is upon us and all thanks to the latest and undoubtedly most aggressive crypto ban by China.

Denis Vinokourov, head of research, Synergia Capital
Categories
Crypto News DeFi NFTs Trading

New Decentralised NFT Platform Artion Launched in Response to NFT Insider Trading

The renowned creator of Yearn.Finance, Andre Cronje, has launched a rival non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace to OpenSea, which earlier this month came under criticism amid accusations of insider trading. 

Although OpenSea claims to be a decentralised marketplace, it actually operates under a centralised manner of authority, which consequently enabled an employee, Nate Chastain, to trade some NFTs based on insider information, according to reports. This meant that Chastain knew which NFTs would list on OpenSea and bought them ahead of listing for quick profits – making up to US$65,000. 

The development rattled NFT traders, causing many to seek decentralised alternatives. 

Decentraland NFT Marketplace Artion Debuts on Fantom

Just in time, Cronje unveiled Artion, which is similar to OpenSea but fundamentally different. Based on Fantom, Artion is an open-source and decentralised marketplace for NFT trading. It currently supports four Fantom-based ERC20 tokens, which include fUSDT, USDC, DAI, and wFTM. It will also support the ERC721 NFT token standard in the beta release.

Artion runs with Chainlink price feeds to source for real-time exchange rates.

Yearn Finance Creator Launches Vampire Attack on OpenSea

While commenting on a tweet about Artion, Cronje shared a GIF saying, “It’s not about the money, it’s about sending a message”. However, there are people who believe Artion marks the beginning of rip-offs for OpenSea.

Firstly, NFT minting fees at Artion have been reduced to 1 FTM (currently at US$1.30), which is cheaper compared to OpenSea. Additionally, the decentralised platform will charge no commission fees on sales. The fact that Artion is open-source means anyone can replicate the protocol, resulting in more rivals to OpenSea, which holds a significant trading volume in the NFT marketplace. 

SushiSwap is a typical example of a successful “vampire attack” on the DeFi space, and many people speculate this will repeat with OpenSea in the NFT market.

Earlier this month, an OpenSea bug destroyed US$130,000 worth of NFTs, as reported in Crypto News Australia. OpenSea users have also been victims of phishing attacks from scammers posing as support staff on the Discord server.