Gnosis, one of Ethereum’s earliest ICOs, is spinning up a DAO that uses a novel mode of governance you’ve probably never heard of.
The newly launched GnosisDAO will allow Gnosis users to vote on platform governance and development.
Gnosis CEO Martin Köppelmann told CoinDesk the DAO’s voting proposals “can be really wide-reaching: product roadmap decisions, treasury management, starting new ventures, funding public goods. DAOs open up a large space for collaboration and experimentation.”
Related: NFT Painting of Buterin in Harlequin Garb Sets Record in Weekend Crypto Art Sale
One of GnosisDAO’s key marketing points is its integration with the Gnosis prediction markets. Because any protocol change will have an associated prediction market where traders are betting on its impact, Gnosis users can judge a proposal based on the market’s attitude (whether traders overall think it’s good or bad for Gnosis).
Read more: Ethereum Gas Fees Drive Gnosis-Powered Prediction Market to xDai’s Layer 2
Futarchy: Testing governance with prediction marketsThis governance model, called futarchy, was formulated by George Mason University economist Robin Hanson. Futarchy proposes the efficacy of democratically elected officials or policies should be tested by prediction markets; in other words, prediction markets create a barometer for success or failure of policies, which voters can then consult to augment their decision-making.
“People can influence [a vote] with their trading decision. As a new proposal is on the table, people can already signal whether they would buy or sell the token (GNO) if the proposal was implemented. It is basically the most direct way to ask ‘the market’ for feedback on a proposal,” Köppelmann told CoinDesk.
Related: First Mover: Bitcoin ‘Rich List’ Grows as Whales HODL and Price Retakes $18K
Gnosis will bootstrap these markets using funding from Gnosis’ treasury of 150K ETH and 8 million Gnosis tokens (GNO). At launch, the Gnosis treasury will allocate 1,000 ETH and 20,000 GNO into the GnosisDAO’s prediction markets.
The DAO will launch with three proposals: one that creates a template for Gnosis Improvement Proposals (GIPs), one that establishes a governance token for the DAO called SAFE and one that distributes a one-time reward to early DAO participants.
Köppelmann told CoinDesk the votes are indeed weighted by “how many [GNO] tokens you have.” But voters can also ignore the prediction markets and vote however they want on a proposal.
Given that voters can go against the direction of the markets, GnosisDAO will be launching with a softer futarchy bent that may harden as the DAO grows.
“We are not going all in on futarchy on day 1,” Köppelmann said.
Related StoriesThe U.S. government is using Circle’s USDC to bypass Venezuelan blockades. Chainalaysis is looking to raise $100 million in fresh capital at a $1 billion valuation. Billions of dollars from institutional players are flowing into Coinbase. And VanEck found that bitcoin is less volatile than a quarter of S&P500 stocks, reigniting the case for a bitcoin ETF.
Top shelfInjecting “stability”
An unnamed U.S. government agency has enlisted dollar-backed stablecoin provider Circle and P2P payments startup Airtm to support Venezuelan politician Juan Guaidó’s bid for office. The plan is to distribute relief funds to medical workers and other Venezuelan locals, bypassing restrictions set up by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who was re-elected in a 2018 election, by converting U.S. seized funds into Circle’s USDC product and dispersed via Airtm’s mobile phone network. “This is, in a sense, a way to bypass the state-controlled banking system and just directly distribute to people,” Circle’s Jeremy Allaire said, adding this is likely the first U.S. foreign policy objective utilizing a cryptographic stablecoin.
Private eyes
Chainalysis expects to raise $100 million venture capital at a $1 billion valuation in a fast-approaching Series C. Led by VC newcomer Addition with participation expected from Accel, Benchmark and Ribbit, the round could propel the blockchain analysis startup to unicorn status (a rarity for crypto). Several governments, banks, regulators and crypto firms rely on Chainalysis technology, seen in the company’s financial status: The firm increased its customer base 65% from Q3 2019 to Q3 2020. In other blockchain sleuthing news, analytics firm Coinfirm found government agents frequently leave behind “substantial” amounts of forked cryptos in seized wallets. Finally, CipherTrace has filed for two patents related to sniffing out privacy-preserving monero (XMR) transactions.
Related: Crypto Long & Short: 4 Metrics That Show How the Current Bitcoin Rally Is Different From 2017
Open banking
The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a national bank regulator led by former Coinbase counsel Brian Books, has proposed a rule that would forbid banks to blacklist legal, but unsavory businesses – potentially including crypto firms. Under the proposed rule, banks could deny financial services to customers only on the basis of “quantitative, risk-based standards established in advance,” not in response to political pressures. Crypto firms have long struggled to obtain or keep bank accounts in the U.S., with only a handful of friendly providers – namely, Silvergate Bank, Signature Bank, and Metropolitan Commercial Bank. The proposal is open for public comment through Jan. 4.
$20B BTC
Coinbase now custodies $20 billion in institutional assets, an exchange executive claims. Brett Tejpaul said the institutional assets business was under $6 billion when he joined the firm in April and has grown by $14 billion under his watch. Notably, Tejpaul pointed to Coinbase’s Tagomi acquisition in May as a boost. “It radically transformed our ability to cater to institutional clients that want to use smart order routing and algorithmic execution,” he said. The veteran banker also said that adding JPMorgan Chase as its banking partner and Deloitte as its auditor has given Coinbase more compliance credibility. The firm is now measuring new capital coming in for bitcoin in the billions, Tejpaul said.
CBDCs not crypto?
China Construction Bank (CCB), the world’s second-largest bank, has suspended the upcoming listing of a $3 billion bond issuance that was intended to be tradable for bitcoin and U.S. dollars. The bank was sponsoring the issuance of the Longbond debt securities, set to be traded via the Fusang digital asset exchange. Now the program is being re-evaluated. In other news out of China, the city of Suzhou will hold the second lottery of the country’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) next month (this time with additional features like smart touch payments.) This follows on China’s President Xi Jinping comments at the G20 that CBDCs are to be embraced by developed nations.
Leveraged buyers
Some BTC traders may have become overleveraged during the recent rally above $18,000, according to one key metric. The average level of the “funding rate” across major exchanges has risen sharply from 0.023% to a five-month high of 0.087% in the past 48 hours, according to data source Glassnode. The funding rate reflects the cost of holding long positions – measured by the premium derivative plays pay over spot prices. A higher number indicates excessively bullish, and therefore overbought, conditions. In such situations, a pullback or consolidation can trigger an unwinding of longs, leading to a deeper drop and a pick up in price volatility.
Related: Blockchain Bites: BlockRock Exec Says Bitcoin Is ‘Here to Stay,’ Investors Load Into BTC Puts
XRP pumps
XRP, the native asset of the XRP ledger, is riding 16-month highs. On Saturday the third-largest crypto by market cap climbed to $0.437564, the highest price since July 2019, according to the CoinDesk 20. It has continued to rise, with minor contractions, since. Now above the $0.50 level, XRP has appreciated over 120% since the start of the year.
Volatility, market data and ETFs
A new analysis from VanEck, a major investment management firm, found that bitcoin is less volatile than the S&P’s benchmark stock index.
The report, published Nov. 20, compared BTC to the companies listed on the S&P 500, finding the cryptocurrency was less volatile than 22% of these stocks over the past three months.
“Historically, bitcoin has been discussed in the news and among investors as a nascent and volatile asset outside of the traditional stock and capital markets,” the report reads. VanEck attributed this volatility to bitcoin’s relatively small total market size, regulatory blockers and limited participation from traditional asset managers.
But bitcoin’s volatility is not an aberration, as over the 90-day period measured ending Nov. 13 some 112 stocks experienced as much or more price volatility. Further, over the past year, 29% of S&P stocks were more volatile than bitcoin.
As CoinDesk Director of Research Noelle Acheson noted in a September newsletter, volatility is frequently and erroneously conflated with risk.
“Volatility is a metric, a number, a measurement. Risk is an ambiguous concept,” she writes, adding that volatility can be an attractive attribute for a well-weighted portfolio.
In Acheson’s analysis, she found bitcoin volatility is often correlated with the asset’s price direction: That is, when the price comes down, so usually does the volatility.
In comparison, the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX), which measures the S&P 500 implied volatility, tends to move inversely to the S&P 500. “The average 60-day correlation between the two for the month of August was -0.84, an almost perfect negative association. Using bitcoin’s 30-day realized volatility as a proxy for a bitcoin VIX, we get an average 60-day correlation for August of 0.45. A very different scenario,” she found.
What’s more, bitcoin’s volatility is more measurable than traditional markets, as the crypto trades 24/7 freely across the world. More data points means more data to analyze.
It’s for these reasons, bitcoin’s similar volatility and market information, that many feel comfortable for agitating for a BTC exchange-traded fund. As reported, U.S. regulators have been hesitant to accept crypto ETF products, often citing a lack of cohesive market data.
But a sober look at the real market conditions may point the other way.
VanEck ends its report saying: “While there are no U.S. bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) available today, we believe such products may show similar volatility characteristics – based on the comparison above – as many stocks in well-known indices and ETFs, such as the S&P 500 and related products.”
Food for thought Related StoriesBitcoin is trading above $18,500, having charted a minor pullback to $17,800 over the weekend. The cryptocurrency’s one-month implied volatility metric has jumped to four-month highs, suggesting increased expectations for price turbulence over the next four weeks.
“It’s likely the week ahead is filled with volatility with the possibility of a trading range between $19,000 and $17,000 the likely outcome. However, if the bulls take charge, then we could be discussing new all-time highs for BTC,” noted crypto exchange EQUOS in its daily bitcoin analysis email.
In traditional markets, safe havens such as the U.S. dollar and gold are trading heavily alongside stock market gains. Risk appetite has been boosted by more positive news on the coronavirus vaccine front, this time from AstraZeneca and Moncef Slaoui, head of the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed. “Vaccinations against COVID-19 will ‘hopefully’ start in less than three weeks,” Slaoui said on Sunday.
Market movesRelated: Bitcoin Faces Volatility Rise as Futures Market Shows Signs of Overheating
Hindsight is 20/20.
That said, when it comes to bitcoin this year, some of the biggest names in global finance were WRONG and LOSERS, as (lame duck?) U.S. President Donald Trump might put it.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, Bridgewater Associates CEO Ray Dalio, Goldman Sachs. All of these Wall Street titans steered investors away from the largest cryptocurrency this year as its price soared more than 150%.
They were on the wrong side of the market while just-as-big traditional-finance names including Fidelity Investments, Paul Tudor Jones II, Stanley Druckenmiller, Bloomberg Intelligence and now the $7 trillion money manager BlackRock touted bitcoin’s potential as the future of money, a hedge against inflation, a peer-to-payment system, an alternative to the U.S. dollar or merely a speculative investment.
Related: John Lennon’s Son Says Bitcoin ‘Empowers’ People Like Never Before
Even if bitcoin’s price once again plunged 39%, as it did in March when the deep economic toll of the coronavirus became clear to global investors (before the Federal Reserve bailed out financial markets), the price would still be roughly $11,370, up some 59% from the Dec. 31, 2019, price of $7,168. For comparison, the Standard & Poor’s 500 is up 11% this year and gold has gained 24%.
Few of the biggest banks and brokerage firms even had bitcoin on their radar at the start of this calamitous year. Some investors came around to the concept sooner than others.
In just 11 years, bitcoin has gone from nothing to an awe-inspiring creator of wealth. At this point, whether prices go to the moon or stagnate or correct, the cryptocurrency is becoming impossible to ignore in an increasingly dysfunctional global financial and monetary system.
– Bradley Keoun
Bitcoin watchThere seems to be no stopping the bitcoin freight train.
The cryptocurrency jumped over 15% in the seven days leading up to Nov. 22 to register its biggest weekly gain since October 2019. That was also the seventh straight weekly rise.
What’s more, prices ended last week (Sunday, UTC) above $18,400 – the second-highest weekly close on record. Bitcoin is now just 6.5% short of challenging the record high of $19,783 reached in December 2017.
A move to record highs could easily happen in a matter of a few hours, given the recent strong momentum.
That said, a metric from bitcoin’s perpetual futures market now suggests the market is getting excessively skewed to the bullish side and could experience a rise in volatility.
The average level of the “funding rate” across major exchanges has risen sharply from 0.023% to a five-month high of 0.087% in the past 48 hours, according to data source Glassnode.
“Rising funding rates have in the past been associated with a larger portion of the market utilizing leverage via perpetuals,” Matthew Dibb, CEO of Stack Funds, told CoinDesk. “The high funding rate can cause somewhat of a ‘shakeout’ due to increasing margin liquidations.”
So far, pullbacks have been shallow and restricted near the ascending 10-day simple moving average (SMA), currently at $17,640. As such, the SMA line is a key support to watch out for in the short-term. Bitcoin has immediate resistance at $19,000, followed by the record high of $19,783.
– Omkar Godbole
What’s hotPayPal (PYPL) CEO Dan Schulman said bitcoin’s usefulness as a currency will ultimately prevail over the buy-and-hold ethos, in an interview with CNBC Squawk Box on Monday.
Read more: PayPal Removes Waitlist for New Crypto Service, Boosts Weekly Purchase Limit to $20K
Related StoriesPayPal (PYPL) CEO Dan Schulman said bitcoin’s usefulness as a currency will ultimately prevail over the buy-and-hold ethos, in an interview with CNBC Squawk Box on Monday.
Read more: PayPal Removes Waitlist for New Crypto Service, Boosts Weekly Purchase Limit to $20K
Related StoriesAuthorities are “ignoring” sizable stashes of “forked” cryptocurrencies when they make bitcoin seizures from criminals, according to research from blockchain analytics and RegTech company Coinfirm.
See also: US Government Darknet Drug Raids Seize $6.5M in Cash and Crypto
Related StoriesA metric from bitcoin’s perpetual futures market suggests some traders may have become overleveraged during the recent rally to above $18,000.
The average level of the “funding rate” across major exchanges has risen sharply from 0.023% to a five-month high of 0.087% in the past 48 hours, according to data source Glassnode.
“Rising funding rates have in the past been associated with a larger portion of the market utilizing leverage via perpetuals,” Matthew Dibb, CEO of Stack Funds, told CoinDesk. “If we see continued overleveraging in the derivatives market, bitcoin will be increasingly volatile in the short-term.”
Related: John Lennon’s Son Says Bitcoin ‘Empowers’ People Like Never Before
Calculated every eight hours, the funding rate in effect reflects the cost of holding long positions. The metric is used by exchanges offering perpetuals (futures contracts with no expiry) as a mechanism to balance the market and guide perpetual prices toward the spot price.
The funding rate is positive (or longs pay shorts) when perpetuals trade at a premium to the spot price. As such, a very high funding rate is widely considered a sign of leverage being excessively skewed to the bullish side, or overbought conditions, as noted on Twitter by market analyst Joseph Young.
In such situations, a pullback or consolidation can trigger an unwinding of longs, leading to a deeper drop and a pick up in price volatility. “The high funding rate can cause somewhat of a ‘shakeout’ due to increasing margin liquidations,” Dibb said. Holding longs at elevated costs is attractive only if a bull run continues without pauses.
Historical data validates Dibb’s analysis of the market.
Related: Bitcoin Shortage? Pantera Thinks Market Rally Driven by PayPal Buys
Bitcoin’s rally from July lows near $9,000 ran out of steam near $12,400 on Aug. 17 as the average funding rate surged from 0.008% to 0.078%. The cryptocurrency fell back to $10,000 in early September.
Similarly, the recovery rally from March lows below $4,000 ran out of steam near $10,000 in early June with a sudden rise of the funding rate to 0.123%.
While the funding rate has risen in the past 48 hours, it’s still short of the peak seen in June.
Further, the uptick may have been partly fueled by liquidity providers hedging sell positions in the spot market by buying long positions in the futures/perpetuals, according to Patrick Heusser, a senior cryptocurrency trader at Zurich-based Crypto Broker AG. In other words, the latest rise in funding rates may not be entirely retail-driven.
Nevertheless, the metric’s rise calls for caution on the part of the bulls, as it represents overleveraged or overbought conditions. “It’s a first indication that leveraged [traders] are starting to shoot over the target,” Heusser told CoinDesk.
Bitcoin’s implied volatility is already rising with the one-month gauge currently hovering at 77%, the highest level since July 8, according to data source Skew. That means the options market is pricing in a rise in volatility over the next four weeks and looks to be preparing for a temporary disruption to the steep rally.
The top cryptocurrency by market value is currently trading close to $18,650, having tested dip demand with a drop to levels below $18,000 over the weekend.
Disclosure: The author holds small positions in bitcoin, litecoin, XRP, cardano and tron.
Also read: Crypto Long & Short: 4 Metrics That Show How the Current Bitcoin Rally Is Different From 2017
Related StoriesBlockchain analytics firm CipherTrace has filed two patent applications for tech it claims will assist authorities in tracking transactions made with the monero (XMR) cryptocurrency.
According to an announcement on Friday, the firm most recently filed a document titled “Techniques and Probabilistic Methods for Tracing Monero” as a follow up to the earlier “Systems and Methods for Investigating Monero” patent application – both arising from the firm’s work with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that began in 2019.
The filings provide technical concepts for forensic tools allowing exploration of XMR transaction flows in financial investigations.
Related: Duality Technologies Launches Platform for Analyzing Big Data While Keeping It Private
While monero, the 16th largest cryptocurrency on CoinMarketCap, sets out to offer users more anonymous and private transactions, it is supported by 45% of darknet markets and is favored by criminals for the same properties, the company said.
See also: Inside Chainalysis’ Multimillion-Dollar Relationship With the US Government
According to the firm, the patents will lay the “groundwork for future implementation” of entity transaction clustering. Additionally, they provide wallet identification and exchange attribution that would give law enforcement “even more tools” for investigating criminal activity using XMR.
“Built-in obfuscation techniques are what draw in privacy advocates and criminals alike,” according to the announcement.
CipherTrace said its filings also provide concepts for visual tools and ways to trace stolen XMR, methodologies for gaining intelligence about transactions made via third-party nodes and probabilistic approaches to risk-based monero money-laundering controls.
With some regulators eyeing privacy coins like monero, dash and zcash as a money-laundering risk, some exchanges have opted to delist them, including Colorado-based cryptocurrency exchange Shapeshift earlier in the month.
See also: Cryptographers Are Always Going to Be ‘One Step Ahead’ of Regulators: Monero’s Spagni
Related StoriesA top Chinese bank has suspended the upcoming listing of a $3 billion bond issuance that was intended to be tradable for bitcoin and U.S. dollars.
See also: World’s Second-Biggest Bank to Issue $3B in Bonds Tradable for Bitcoin
Related StoriesThe son of Beatles legend John Lennon has praised bitcoin for its ability to help individuals transcend politics and world events.
Sean Ono Lennon, speaking on the Orange Pill Podcast on Sunday, said bitcoin “empowers people in a way they’ve never been empowered before.” He noted that, the world’s first cryptocurrency is “one of the only things” that gives him more optimism about “the future and humanity in general” amid the tribulations of 2020.
Sean Lennon is the son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and is himself a musician, having been a member of bands such as Cibo Matto, the Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger and the Claypool Lennon Delirium.
Related: Bitcoin Shortage? Pantera Thinks Market Rally Driven by PayPal Buys
“If they [people] had gold they would have to carry it in a sack and someone could steal that from them,” Lennon said.
Bitcoin “transcends the physical world,” he continued. “It means that you have total agency, you have total self-sovereignty and as long as you can remember your key phrase then you are good to go.”
Interest in bitcoin this year has continued to soar as individuals seek alternative methods of investing untethered from political strife and fuelled by uncertainty around the global pandemic.
“In an ocean of destruction that was this year, I find bitcoin to give me a kind of optimism, to be honest,” said Lennon.
Related: What Do Mexico’s Second Wealthiest Billionaire and Arya Stark Have in Common?
See also: What Do Mexico’s Second Wealthiest Billionaire and Arya Stark Have in Common?
Related StoriesA city in China will hold the second lottery of the country’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) next month.
See also: How Ant’s Suspended IPO Is Related to China’s Digital Yuan
Related StoriesEthereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, dressed like a medieval harlequin leaning against a velvet chair, stares past the viewer into the distance – that is until he’s rocketed into the sky while ether’s price flashes on the screen. Ethereum is rallying, the image suggests.
A programmable version of the scene just described made records this weekend, when a non-fungible representation sold for 260 ETH, or approximately $141,536.20. That’s the most paid, in dollar terms, for a work of crypto art to date, according to one of the painting’s co-creators, Trevor Jones.
Not your average NFT. A collaboration between crypto artists Jones and Alotta Money, the digital painting EthBoy, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Ethereum co-founder Buterin, uses new programmable technology called “layering” to remake itself daily.
Related: First Mover: Bitcoin ‘Rich List’ Grows as Whales HODL and Price Retakes $18K
More than ownership. Twitter user Maxstealth is now the owner of the unique painting, following a day-long auction. The sale can be observed here. But it’s more than a collector’s item, as the painting’s unique characteristics continue to yield revenue for its owner and creators.
Jones’ year. Jones made headlines earlier this year for his record-setting (at the time) release of Picasso’s Bull. Last month, his Batman-themed Genesis drop on MakersPlace sold for 302 ETH. While EthBoy only brought in 260 ETH, below Async’s largest sale of 263 to date, it is likely the most paid for a digital painting, price wise.
PayPal’s recent leap into the crypto market is helping to drive the current bitcoin rally, according to Pantera Capital, a prominent cryptocurrency and blockchain investment firm.
In an investor letter published Nov. 20, the venture firm compared the ongoing bull market to the last time BTC rose above $18,000, three years ago.
“Previously the friction to buy bitcoin was pretty onerous,” the letter notes, contrasting that difficulty with how e-commerce giant PayPal has now made it easy for millions of users to become potential bitcoin, ether, bitcoin cash and litecoin buyers.
Related: Market Wrap: Bitcoin Hits $18.8K as Total Crypto Locked in DeFi Passes $14B
Indeed, all eligible PayPal account holders in the U.S. can now buy, hold and sell those cryptocurrencies – sooner than the payments firm anticipated, due to steep customer interest. Additionally, the firm recently upped its weekly crypto purchase limits to $20,000 from an initial $10,000.
“BOOM! The results are already apparent,” Dan Morehead, chief executive and founder of Pantera, wrote in the November letter. “When PayPal went live, volume started exploding.”
Pantera claims that PayPal is already buying almost 70% of the new supply of bitcoins. Together with Square’s Cash App routine bitcoin buying, more than 100% of all newly minted bitcoins is accounted for, Pantera alleges.
The Bitcoin network issues new BTC on a fixed and predetermined schedule. Only 6.25 new BTCs are mined every 10 minutes, following this year’s “halving,” an amount that will continue to decrease every four years until all 21 million BTC enter circulation.
Related: 10 Metrics Where Bitcoin Has Already Hit New All-Time Highs
Pantera’s thesis centers around a supply-side understanding of the bitcoin market. The idea is that as the supply of BTC decreases, due to lower mining rewards, the demand naturally increases – leading to an appreciation in price.
“When other, larger financial institutions follow [PayPal’s] lead, the supply scarcity will become even more imbalanced. The only way supply and demand equilibrates is at a higher price,” Pantera wrote.
See also: Bitcoin’s Rally Could Be Caused by a Supply Crunch in China
Related StoriesPopular decentralized finance protocol Pickle Finance was hacked on Saturday, draining $19.7 million in DAI, a decentralized stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar, from a Pickle wallet.
Pickle came on the scene Sept. 11 as one of many food-themed DeFi projects. The fully automated system rewards users with interest payments and token disbursements in PICKLE, ether and stablecoin pairings for providing liquidity to several stablecoin pools.
On Friday, the team introduced the cDAI jar, a “new strategy” aimed at maximizing returns from DAI deposited on the decentralized lending protocol Compound. The Pickle team, and a group of “white hat hackers” have traced the 19,759,355 DAI weekend exploit to this smart contract, according to a blog post.
Related: Market Wrap: Bitcoin Hits $18.8K as Total Crypto Locked in DeFi Passes $14B
“We’re encouraging all LPs to withdraw their funds from the Jars until the issues have been resolved,” the Pickle team tweeted.
Related StoriesKuCoin, the Singapore-headquartered digital asset exchange that was hacked to the tune of $281 million in September, said it’s restored the deposit and withdrawal services of all tokens as of Sunday.
KuCoin’s $281 million security breach is among the largest in cryptocurrency history. One or more hackers obtained the private keys to the centralized exchange’s hot wallets, gaining control over vast quantities of bitcoin, ether, tron, XRP, stellar lumens and various ERC-20 tokens, among others. KuCoin immediately moved to freeze all wallets and disable services.
As of Oct. 7, the exchange has recovered some $204 million of the stolen crypto, and has made headway into identifying a suspect.
Related StoriesCryptocurrency trading platform liquid.com and crypto mining firm NiceHash were two of at least six firms that had control of their domains briefly transferred to malicious actors last week after employees at GoDaddy, the world’s largest domain registrar, were again tricked by fraudsters, KrebsOnSecurity reported.
Cryptocurrency firm Pantera Capital has raised another $5 million for its bitcoin fund, bringing the total to $134 million, according to a form D filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Formed in 2013, the Pantera Bitcoin Fund Ltd. was the first U.S.-based bitcoin fund. In an investor letter at the end of 2017, Pantera boasted a 25,004% return on the fund, mainly due to the bitcoin bull run of that year.
Recently, CoinDesk discovered that Pantera’s venture funds hadn’t fared well in comparison to the S&P 500.
The venture funds Pantera Capital raised in August 2013 and August 2014 have returned 46.5% and 15.9% from their inception to September 2019, respectively.
Of course, that performance may have improved as of late due to bitcoin’s recent bull run. As of press time, the price of bitcoin has risen around 159% year to date.
CORRECTION (Nov. 21, 2020, 01:41 UTC): Pantera reported raising an additional $5 million in its most recent filing, not $134 million as this article originally stated..
China’s President Xi Jinping told G20 meeting attendees this week that the group of the world’s largest developed economies should be open to central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) when developing standards for them.
In a wide-ranging speech that addressed the future of the global economy in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Xi said that the G20 “needs to discuss developing standards and principles for central bank digital currencies with an open and accommodating attitude.”
This month, some analysts noted that a drop in bitcoin supply from Chinese miners was caused by a government crackdown on local exchanges. A recent Goldman Sachs report predicts that China’s planned digital yuan will account for 15% of total consumption payments in 10 years.
