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CoinDesk Crypto

First Mover: SushiSwap’s Billion-Dollar ‘Rug Pull’ Is Thriller to Crypto Geeks

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years ago

You’re reading First Mover, CoinDesk’s daily markets newsletter. Assembled by the CoinDesk Markets Team and edited by Bradley Keoun, First Mover starts your day with the most up-to-date sentiment around crypto markets, which of course never close, putting in context every wild swing in bitcoin and more. We follow the money so you don’t have to.

Price Point

Bitcoin was down early Tuesday, barely holding above the important psychological threshold of $10,000. 

Prices for the cryptocurrency, up 40% year to date, have held above $10,000 for more than six weeks. The digital-asset firm Diginex wrote in a newsletter post that “prices will need to regain $10,550 to settle the nerves of traders.” 

Related: Bitcoin Options Suggest Investors Hedging but Still Long-Term Bullish

On Wall Street, U.S. stock futures were lower, pulled by tech shares as traders returned from a long holiday weekend. The dollar strengthened in foreign-exchange markets and Treasury bond yields fell, indicating a reduced risk appetite, though gold was off. The British pound slipped on speculation that a “no-deal” Brexit looms.  

Market Moves

In a 2020 during which the fast-growing arena of decentralized finance, or DeFi, has produced a seemingly unending series of jaw-dropping, billion-dollar twists, the past few days’ saga of the market-making protocol SushiSwap is drawing comparisons to a thrilling caper flick.

The Bankless newsletter called it “the SushiSwap rug pull.” It was “one of “the most dramatic moments in DeFi this year,” according to The Defiant newsletter. Jay Hao, CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange OKEx, called it “one of those action-packed high-drama movies the likes of which crypto hasn’t witnessed in recent times.” 

Of course, all this is from the perspective of crypto geekdom, and it’s really just the latest tech-gone-wild iteration of the reliable human themes of invention, fear, greed, mania and panic. 

Related: DeFi Is Hot but Retail Interest Nowhere Close to ICO Frenzy

As reported Monday by CoinDesk’s Will Foxley, a pseudonymous developer who goes by “Chef Nomi” launched the SushiSwap protocol in late August, and it was quickly cast as a “vampire protocol” because its inherent design intended to siphon away liquidity from a competing trading platform, Uniswap.   

The project quickly attracted more than $1 billion of collateral with a technique known as “zombie mining,” The market value of the associated SUSHI tokens surged roughly 500-fold in a matter of days to more than $300 million.

And then on Saturday, SUSHI investors learned that Chef Nomi had unexpectedly cashed out of tokens in exchange for 37,400 ether (ETH) worth about $13 million. SUSHI prices crashed before recovering somewhat after Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, reportedly took control of the project. 

Bankman-Fried tweeted early Monday that “the great Sushi experiment” of migrating markets over from Uniswap will take place “one at a time, starting in 48 hours,” potentially setting up something of a sequel.

“If you’re in it for the wild gains, if you’re chasing clearly unsustainable percentage leaps, you have to be able to stomach the losses as well,” Hao wrote.

Read More: Fishy Business: What Happened to $1.2B DeFi Protocol SushiSwap Over the Weekend

The episode is one of several prompting comparisons of DeFi to the 2017-18 initial coin offering (ICO) bubble, when little-known and barely-tested developers took advantage of surging prices for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to raise the equivalent of at least $12 billion.    

According to the website DeFi Market Cap, decentralized-finance applications, mainly focused on lending and trading businesses, now have a combined market value of about $14 billion.  

One key difference so far is DeFi does not appear to have penetrated the consciousness of individual investors, as happened during ICO boom. Amateur traders also have flocked recently in the stock market, embodied in the success of platforms like Robinhood.  

CoinDesk’s Omkar Godbole reported Tuesday that Google searches on the keyword “DeFi” register nowhere near the scale of “ICO” searches a couple years ago. 

“DeFi is an incrementally accretive and sustainable trend while ICOs were not,” according to Su Zhu, CEO of the Singapore-based fund management firm Three Arrows Capital. 

The SUSHI saga? Sustainable? Just don’t tell the Robinhood crowd about it.

Read More: DeFi Is Hot but Retail Interest Nowhere Close to ICO Frenzy

Bitcoin Watch

Bitcoin’s recent drop from $12,400 to $10,000 has revived interest in short-term put options or bearish bets. 

  • The one-month put-call skew has crossed above zero, a sign of put options drawing higher demand than call options. 
  • In other words, investors are adding bets to position for a deeper price pullback, which could be seen if risk aversion grips traditional markets.
  • “Investors should be cognizant of movements in the stock market as a supplement to on-chain fundamentals in determining the expected behavior of BTC and crypto markets in general,” according to the blockchain intelligence firm Glassnode. 
  • The six-month skew continues to hover below zero. It shows investors remain confident about the cryptocurrency’s long-term price prospects.

Read More: Bitcoin Options Suggest Investors Hedging but Still Long-Term Bullish

– Omkar Godbole

Token Watch

Ether (ETH): Until next phase of Ethereum 2.0 development, “one-way-trip ” means traders can transfer ether onto the new network but can’t transfer it back out. 

Bitcoin (BTC): LedgerX announces launch of bitcoin mini futures representing 1/100th bitcoin, listing two months and two quarters, fully collateralized with cash or bitcoin and physically settled. 

Chainlink (LINK): At least nine node operators suffered attack Sunday, draining about 700 ETH from wallets, The Block reports. 

Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC): One trading firm, Alameda Research, associated with the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, has accumulated more than 14,000 of wrapped bitcoin, roughly 70% of the supply minted in August. 

What’s Hot

Bitumb exchange’s offices raided again by Korean authorities, newspaper reports (CoinDesk)

Bitfinex invests in derivatives platform LN Markets, based on Lightning Network (CoinDesk)

Binance unveils new product for ‘yield farming’ crypto assets (CoinDesk)

August bitcoin rally pushed crypto derivative volumes up 54% to record of more than $710 million, report shows. (CoinDesk)

Crypto-to-fiat convertibility holds key to next leap in payments (Hacker Noon)

Using your next stimulus check to buy bitcoin could prove disastrous (Forbes)

TradeBlock analysis shows fees on decentralized exchanges only competitive with centralized exchanges on large transactions (Trade Block):

Analogs The latest on the economy and traditional finance

Shares of Japan’s SoftBank tumble after $4B “Nasdaq whale” mystery revealed (Financial Times)

Gold-price rally stretches limits of insurance against vault heists (Bloomberg)

Lawmakers tackle spending deadline, look to revive coronavirus aid talks (WSJ)

Former Fed Governor Warsh expects U.S. central bank to “expand significantly the scale, scope and duration of its asset purchases” if economy improves (WSJ)

As Chinese tourists stay home amid coronavirus, demand dries up for currency to travel abroad, helping to strengthen yuan (Pantheon):

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CoinDesk

European Crypto Tax Companies Announce Merger to Power US Expansion

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years ago

Two of Europe’s largest crypto tax reporting firms are to merge in an effort to turbocharge a planned expansion into the U.S. market.

  • Austria-based Blockpit and Germany’s Crypto Tax announced the merger Tuesday, saying they would start offering a range of compliance and tax services, all under one roof.
  • Crypto Tax provides tax reporting frameworks, for crypto and non-crypto assets such as traditional securities, that can be adjusted to different countries; Blockpit offers tax reporting and know-your-transaction (KYT) compliance tools.
  • Klaus Himmer, co-founder and managing director of CryptoTax, and Florian Wimmer, founder, and CEO of Blockpit, told CoinDesk the merger will make them a full-scale regtech company.
  • The new company will trade under the “Blockpit” brand, but will retain the “Crypto Tax” name for the taxation services.
  • Structured by Austrian M&A specialist Venionaire, Wimmer said the merger was close to a 50:50 deal.
  • Blockpit’s existing offices in Linz will become the new headquarters for the newly merged company, with Crypto Tax’s offices in Munich to be retained.
  • A tax solution had already been developed by Crypto Tax but has yet to be rolled out.
  • The new company, already prevalent in the German-speaking world, will now turn its attention to rolling out specialized regtech products in the much-larger U.S. market.
  • The new Blockpit plans to raise €1.6 million (~$1.9 million) from both companies’ existing investors and get the ball rolling on an extended Series C to fund the U.S. move.
  • A prospective expansion to other English-speaking countries, as well as the Asian markets, is in the works for 2021.
  • Wimmer said the merger has likely saved both companies a year or so building out products the other company already had.

Edit (12:57 UTC, Sept. 8, 2020): Clarifies details of the business offerings of Blockpit.

See also: Swiss Canton Zug to Accept Taxes in Bitcoin, Ether From Next Year

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CoinDesk

Bithumb Exchange’s Offices Raided Again by Korean Authorities: Report

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years ago

South Korean officials are said to have raided the offices of cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb for a second time in a week.

  • The Seoul Newspaper reported Tuesday that the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency’s Intelligent Crime Investigation Unit had entered Bithumb’s Seoul headquarters and seized evidence relating to a fraud investigation.
  • The raid was again linked to a $25 million token sale hosted on Bithumb and a proposed acquisition by a Singapore platform, BTHMB, that never materialized.
  • Some investors have reportedly lost millions and Bithumb’s chairman, Lee Jung-hoon, has been accused of fraud and illicitly sending funds overseas.
  • Bithumb, one of the largest exchanges in South Korea by trading volume, was raided for the first time last Wednesday.
  • Authorities this time targeted the offices relating to Bithumb Holdings, the parent of Bithumb Korea, which operates the Bithumb exchange.
  • “Everything is going fine,” Bithumb told CoinDesk when contacted for comment.

See also: South Korean Crypto Exchange Coinbit Seized Over Allegations of Massive Wash Trading

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CoinDesk

Bitcoin Options Suggest Investors Hedging but Still Long-Term Bullish

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years ago

Bitcoin’s options market retains long-term bullish bias despite the recent price pullback.

  • According to data source Skew, the six-month put-call skew, which measures the value of puts, or bearish bets, relative to that of calls, bullish bets, is currently seen at -10%.
  • The negative number indicates the call options expiring six months from now are drawing higher prices or demand than puts.
  • The six-month skew shows bitcoin’s pullback from $12,400 to $10,000 seen in the past three weeks has failed to weaken investor confidence in the cryptocurrency’s long-term prospects.
  • However, the one-month skew has crossed above zero, a sign of investors adding put options to position for a deeper short-term price decline.
  • Bitcoin has developed a sensitivity to traditional markets over the past six months.
  • Hence, a notable drop in the global equity markets could yield a stronger pullback in bitcoin, as noted by blockchain intelligence firm Glassnode.
  • Major European stocks are nursing losses on Tuesday, with U.S. equity index futures pointing to a risk aversion on Wall Street. Futures tied to the Nasdaq index are down over 200 points at press time.
  • Bitcoin is currently trading near $10,030, having faced rejection above $10,400 during the Asian trading hours.
  • On a month-to-date basis, the cryptocurrency is down over 13%.
  • Still, sellers have failed to establish a foothold below $10,000 in four of the past five trading days.
  • “Overall local daily fluctuations look typical to non-directional movement. Lots of liquidity hunting, long-wicked [daily] candles prints the overall idea of a bottom-forming process,” said Adrian Zdunczyk, a chartered market technician and CEO of trading community The BIRB Nest.

Also read: Investors Buying Bitcoin Amid Price Slump to Near $10K, Data Shows

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CoinDesk

DeFi Is Hot but Retail Interest Nowhere Close to ICO Frenzy

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years ago

Decentralized finance (DeFi) has exploded in 2020, but retail interest in the space remains quite low, if measured by Google search queries.

These suggest it may still be too early to draw parallels between DeFi’s growth and the initial coin offering (ICO) bubble of the final months of 2017 and early 2018. 

Indexed to the peak of searches for “ICO,” searches on Google Trends for the word “DeFi” currently return a value of 18, indicating the retail crowd is as interested in open-source finance as they were in ICOs during the latter’s boom. 

Related: Binance Unveils New Product for ‘Yield Farming’ Crypto Assets

The DeFi movement seeks to transform old financial products into trustless and transparent protocols by leveraging decentralized networks. 

See also: For DeFi to Grow, CeFi Must Embrace It

Google Trends provides access to a mostly unfiltered sample of actual search requests made to Google.  It displays an interest in a particular topic from around the globe and scales searches 0 to 100, though it does not give out raw totals.

Some investors have started comparing the DeFi explosion to the ICO bubble, which left millions of investors holding worthless alternative cryptocurrencies. An initial coin offering is the crypto market’s equivalent of an initial public offering for stocks.  

Related: Fishy Business: What Happened to $1.2B DeFi Protocol SushiSwap Over the Weekend

Why the comparison? The total value locked into the decentralized finance applications has increased by a staggering 1,300% to above $9 billion this year, according to data source defipulse.com. That number is 66% higher than the $5.4 billion raised by initial coin offerings in 2017 and nearly double the $4.6 billion raised by ICOs in the first quarter of 2018, just before the cold days of “crypto winter”.

The trading volumes at major decentralized exchanges are now challenging centralized exchanges. For instance, Uniswap, a decentralized exchange facilitating peer-to-peer trading without a central authority, overtook the largest U.S.-based centralized exchange, Coinbase Pro, in terms of 24-hour trading volumes earlier this week.  

See also: DeFi Degens Are Crypto’s Suicide Squad

Some of the DeFi-associated tokens like Aave’s LEND have rallied by over 3,000% this year, leaving bitcoin far behind. The top cryptocurrency by market value is currently up 43% on a year-to-date basis. 

One interpretation for why DeFi isn’t receiving the same retail attention as ICO is its growth is being fueled by fewer but more sophisticated investors than those involved with ICOs.

In other words, Defi is not even close to the ICO hype bubble level yet, as noted by cryptocurrency derivatives trader Cantering Clark. Bubbles are usually the result of a euphoric retail crowd running ahead of itself. 

“DeFi is an incrementally accretive and sustainable trend while ICOs were not,” according to Su Zhu, co-founder, and CEO of the Singapore-based fund management firm Three Arrows Capital.

Experience with what DeFi actually does may also be a factor. Denis Vinokourov, head of research at London-based prime brokerage Bequant, says firms that trade on centralized exchanges aren’t taking decentralized exchanges seriously. However, firms trading on both have realized that the long-term growth potential of decentralized exchanges.

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CoinDesk

Bitfinex Invests in Derivatives Exchange Built With Bitcoin’s Lightning Network

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years ago

Lightning Network-based derivatives platform LN Markets closed a pre-seed funding round joined by Bitfinex and other early-stage Bitcoin startup investors.

  • Launched in March 2020, LN Markets has reached nearly $10 million in aggregate traded volume and has over 100 channels connected to its exchange.
  • The platform is designed to avoid slow and costly on-chain transactions by connecting traders to a bitcoin derivatives market by “streaming” their funds through the Lightning Network, according to the project’s founders.
  • When asked, the LN Markets team declined to disclose the amount raised.
  • The exchange offers up to 50x leverage, according to a presentation shared with CoinDesk, and users can trade directly from any Lightning Network wallet.
  • Bitfinex’s CTO Paolo Ardoino said, “This is one of our first public investments and underlines our support for the Lightning Network.”
  • Because the Lightning Network is a technology that Bitfinex “loves,” it is “important for us to provide funding and to participate in such an innovative venture,” he added.
  • Directly linking users’ wallets to the derivatives exchange “sets an example of how exchanges should let users operate with their funds,” said Tobias Hoffmann, bitcoin developer and trader on LN Markets.
  • Bitcoin’s Lightning Network has enjoyed steady growth over the past few years, adding its largest number of new nodes in a single month in August, as CoinDesk previously reported.
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CoinDesk

QuadrigaCX Users’ Law Firm Launches Blockchain Analytics Investigation

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years ago

Canadian law firm Miller Thomson has hired consultancy firm Kroll to perform blockchain analytics work in relation to the ongoing dissolution of QuadrigaCX, the exchange which failed last year after its CEO Gerald Cotten was reported to have died. 

The firm, which represents the now-former users of Quadriga pursuant to a court order, announced the move in a notice to creditors Friday, adding that Kroll would work “with its strategic partner Coinfirm” to analyze a subset of transaction data. Miller Thomson began looking for an analytics firm at the beginning of the year.

“Since being founded in early 2016, Coinfirm has created a powerful analytics engine for blockchain tracing exercises,” the update said. “The Kroll/Coinfirm partnership will use a combination of professionals as needed with experience in cryptocurrency, asset tracing/searching, asset recovery, fraud investigations, and data analytics.”

Related: Coinberry Crypto Exchange Gets Lloyd’s Cover as Canada’s Post-Quadriga Rules Tighten

The law firm will not share further details “due to confidentiality,” the document said, though it said Miller Thomson arrived at the decision in conjunction with the Official Committee, a group of users appointed by a Canadian court to act as a sort of liaison between the law firm and the broader group of former customers.

Miller Thomson was likewise appointed to represent Quadriga’s former customers last year, alongside Ernst and Young (EY), which is acting as a bankruptcy trustee and has been tasked with identifying and securing any of Quadriga’s funds to disburse back to its former customers. So far, about $46 million CAD (around $35 million U.S.) has been recovered, according to the Ontario Securities Commission, far short of the nearly $200 million customers are supposedly owed.

Kroll will receive a fee of $50,000 CAD ($38,000 U.S.) and is indemnified against any potential lawsuit up to $150,000 CAD ($114,000 U.S.).

Crypto Capital

Miller Thomson did not provide any other information about what users could expect in terms of fund distributions. The law firm did update Quadriga’s users about its research into Crypto Capital however, announcing it had “forwarded the information” it received from individuals to EY and found that Crypto Capital does not currently possess any of Quadriga’s holdings.

Related: US Files Suit Against Crypto Accounts Tied to North Korea

“Representative Counsel understands that based on the Trustee’s review of the information  provided by Affected Users and information in its possession, there is currently insufficient  evidence to establish that Crypto Capital owed any funds to Quadriga as of the date of  bankruptcy,” the update said.

The update caps a brief investigation which began in January of this year, when Miller Thomson asked Quadriga’s users to share any information they had about the Panama-registered “shadow bank,” whose operators currently face a host of charges in the U.S. (one, Reginald Fowler, was arrested and is now awaiting trial).

Read more: 17,000 People Have Filed Claims for Refunds From QuadrigaCX, Auditor EY Says

At the time, Miller Thomson said it was looking into whether the payment processor held any of Quadriga’s funds due to the fact that Quadriga apparently maintained no corporate or accounting records, and therefore EY could not determine which companies held its funds.

While Quadriga’s customers may be hoping for a prompt payout of funds, it does not appear the legal process, which has stretched out 18 months so far, will end anytime soon. Miller Thomson noted it could not begin the process of disbursing funds until EY has finalized its record of who is owed what and the Canada Revenue Agency has completed its audit of the exchange.

“The most material impact on the speed of distribution will be the CRA’s audit of Quadriga’s tax liabilities,” Friday’s update said.

It does not currently have a timeline for when this audit might be completed.

Also read:

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CoinDesk

Crypto Firm Bitsonar Had Signs of a ‘Deliberate Fraud’, Ex-Employee Claims in FBI Report

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years ago

Yaroslav Shtadchenko, former project manager at now defunct crypto fund Bitsonar, has formally accused his former employer of fraud.

As previously reported, Bitsonar is an investment firm that managed to raise up to $2.5 million dollars in crypto from investors worldwide and went bust this summer. Investors from the U.S., U.K., Canada, Ukraine and other countries currently cannot access their funds after Bitsonar froze withdrawals in February and the website went offline in August. Shtadchenko quit the company and publicly accused its founder of conducting an exit scam.

Now he is asking the U.S. law enforcement to take action against Alexander Tovstenko, Bitsonar’s founder and former clerk at the Ukrainian government.

Related: Bitsonar Whistleblower Says Law Enforcement Faked His Murder in Attempt to Protect Him

Shtadchenko said he filed his notice of criminal offence with the FBI through the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, where he is based, and shared the document with CoinDesk. According to the notice, Shtadchenko was hired by Tovstenko in mid-2018 “to provide consulting services” on marketing strategy and website development.

In the spring of 2020, however, Shtadchenko “became aware that Bitsonar was actually a financial pyramid and all its activities were aimed at attracting investments with no intention of returning it,” the notice reads.

Read more: Whistleblower Kidnapped in Ukraine After Accusing Crypto Firm of Exit Scam

He also figured out that the trading bot that was supposed to earn money for Bistonar’s investors was, in fact, “operated manually, which is a clear sign of a deliberate fraud,” he wrote.

Related: Whistleblower Kidnapped in Ukraine After Accusing Crypto Firm of Exit Scam

In his notice, Shtadchenko accused Tovstenko of six criminal offences, including bank fraud, securities fraud and major fraud against the United States. He told CoinDesk he was also planning to find complains with the Europol (Interpol’s Eropean branch) and Ukrainian law enforcement.

In July, Shtadchenko gave an interview to the Russian-language crypto publication Forklog under the pseudonym Jan Novak, accusing Tovstenko of exit scamming. He also published his accusations against Tovstenko on Bitsonar’s old website, providing Tovstenko’s contact information and accounts in social networks.

On Aug. 27, Shtadchenko went missing in Kyiv but resurfaced four days later, saying that an apparent kidnapping was actually a special operation by Ukrainian law enforcement. The same day, the Security Service of Ukraine announced that it prevented the contract killing of “an IT businessman” working for a cryptocurrency company and arrested his “partner,” who put a bounty of $5,000 on his head. The SSU still hasn’t named either the victim or the alleged criminal.

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CoinDesk

Tech Mahindra to Offer Blockchain Solutions on AWS

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years ago

Indian tech giant, Tech Mahindra, announced Monday it will offer blockchain solutions built on Amazon-managed blockchain to global customers using Amazon Web Services (AWS).

  • According to Economic Times, the company will provide solutions for the aviation, telecom, and healthcare supply chain and is planning to roll out support for multiple industries, including oil and gas and manufacturing, over the next 12 months.
  • Ensuring supply chain continuity has become the focal point with businesses struggling to facilitate continuity in the current COVID world, according to Rajesh Dhuddu, blockchain and cybersecurity practice leader, Tech Mahindra.
  • “Our collaboration with AWS will support future pandemic preparedness and accelerate an economic rebound post-COVID-19 for organizations operating global supply chains and eliminate siloes,” Dhuddu said.
  • Tech Mahindra’s move is a part of a macro trend. According to a Forrester report, the development of blockchain-based projects related to supply chain and logistics has accelerated due to the coronavirus pandemic.
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CoinDesk

August’s Bitcoin Rally Led to Record Crypto Derivatives Volumes: Report

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years ago

Trading volumes for crypto derivatives rebounded to record levels as bitcoin’s rally to $12,000 spurred on speculation, according to a newly released report.

  • CryptoCompare said crypto derivative volumes rose 54% to more than $710 billion in August in its monthly Exchange Review.
  • That’s a new all-time high, with August’s figures now far exceeding the $602 billion monthly volumes reported in May.
  • Spot markets also experienced a surge in activity, with August trading volumes coming to $820 billion – nearly $400 billion up from July’s numbers.
  • Constantine Tsavliris, CryptoCompare’s head of research, told CoinDesk that the surge in crypto derivative volumes was likely a result of last month's rally, which brought bitcoin from $9,200 to near $12,400 at its peak.
  • Spot price movement and volatility were higher in August than July, said Tsavliris.
  • As a rule, this generally leads to greater trading activity for cryptocurrencies and their derivatives.
  • Derivative volumes soared to then-record highs in May due to speculation surrounding the bitcoin halving event.
  • Volumes in March were also high, primarily as a result of the pandemic and the ensuing global sell-off in both crypto and traditional markets.
  • Derivative volumes in June and July were lower, at $445 billion and $393 billion respectively, when volatility was stuck in the doldrums.

See also: Crypto Exchanges See Big Drop in Volumes as Bitcoin Volatility Approaches 2020 Low

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CoinDesk

Bitcoin Should Be Regulated Like Stocks in India, Says Think Tank Founder

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years ago

India should legitimize bitcoin by regulating it like a corporate stock and define cryptocurrency crimes to deter misuse of the technology, according to think-tank founder Deepak Kapoor.

  • Since it is similar to other financial assets, “Bitcoin should be traded like a stock. That is the only legal status that it can get, and it should get this status,” Kapoor, who created the BEGIN India think tank, told BusinessWorld on Monday.
  • Kapoor was against the idea of legalizing bitcoin as currency, though.
  • “You make it legal and you might put the entire economy of the country at stake,” he argued, describing bitcoin as a “private currency.”
  • Nischal Shetty, CEO of Mumbai-based crypto exchange WazirX, opposed the idea of regulating bitcoin like stocks.
  • “Bitcoin is not a slice of a company that you can buy or invest in. Rather, it is seen as an asset, like gold for example. Hence, it can’t be seen a stock,” Shetty told CoinDesk.
  • Kapoor’s call for regulation came as part of an interview about fears around the use of cryptocurrencies in terrorism financing schemes. 
  • The U.S. recently seized millions of dollars in bitcoin and more than 300 cryptocurrency wallets controlled by the terrorist organizations al-Qaeda and Hamas.
  • Kapoor pointed out India is yet to officially recognize cryptocurrency-based crimes.
  • “I would want senior people from investigative and law enforcement agencies to first at least know about it and to know what is the world moving towards,” he said.
  • At present, the regulatory environment in India remains uncertain, with the government said to have been considering an outright ban.
  • As per a Nikkei article retweeted by Syed Akbaruddin, India’s former UN envoy, the government is now preparing to debate the possible cryptocurrency options.
  • Ratan Sharda, author, editor and TV panelist told BusinessWorld for the same article that banning would not work, and the ideal way is to make cryptocurrencies legal and ensure everything is tracked.
  • “Just like you cannot ban porn, you cannot ban cryptocurrency,” Sharda said.
  • The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) is currently developing a code of conduct for cryptocurrency firms in the nation that would include .
  • “This will also curb illegal activities as well as scams,” said Shetty, whose exchange is a member of the association.
  • Despite the regulatory uncertainty, cryptocurrency exchanges servicing Indian clients have been witnessing solid growth since the March overturning of a central bank ban on banking services for crypto companies.

Also read: India’s Rumored Crypto Ban May Be Overblown, Say Industry Pros

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CoinDesk

Ethereum Developers Weigh Gas Rule Change to Ease Fee Pressure

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years ago

An Ethereum smart contract feature that offers rebates for fees has developers scratching their heads, wondering if they should toss the old code in light of an exponential rise in transaction costs.

Called gas tokens, these smart contract loopholes are a way to send transactions on the cheap by “tokenzing” gas, the fees paid for running computations on-chain. The feature allows an Ethereum user to buy up transaction fees when they are low, store them and then spend them when the fee price inevitably rises again. 

While the matter is still under discussion, some developers worry tokenized gas could one day act as a “price floor” for transaction fees and keep them permanently high.

Related: First Mover: Buying Bitcoin’s Dip, Betting Against Tether and Weighing the Jobs Report

As fees hit record highs twice in the same week, developer Alexey Akhunov’s June Ethereum Improvement Proposal to get rid of gas tokens, (EIP) 2751, is getting renewed attention. 

Akhunov’s napkin math in the Ethereum Research and Developers messaging app shows that about 1.5% to 2% of Ethereum transactions over the summer used a prepaid gas token. Moreover, many algorithmic traders have similar setups that Akhunov’s analysis does not capture, developer Ali Atiia added.

See also: BitGo Weighs Building a Sidechain for WBTC as Ethereum Fees Climb

“Transaction pools are basically like a one-sided order book where you bid for the gas prices. Those orders placed in a particular place are to make sure you buy the dips, like in the traditional two-way order book,” Akhunov said on Friday’s biweekly developer call, adding that he is still conducting analysis on the magnitude of gas token usage. 

Paid to prune

Related: 3 Reasons Bitcoin Just Tanked Below $11K for First Time in a Month

Blockchains, at their very core, are data settlement layers. Some data is more valuable than other data and maintaining data on-chain is a cost node runners have to bear.

Ethereum tries to mitigate this problem by offering ether (ETH) back for deleting old contracts or information from contracts. This, some claim, is now being gamed to nab lower transaction fees.

Originally concocted by a handful of academics and developers out of crypto commodities study group Project Chicago in 2017, tokenized gas is, at its core, a small script you run when you send a transaction. That script deletes previous data stored on a gas token smart contract when fees were lower. 

The network rewards you for deleting the old data. If the price of sending an Ethereum transaction is high enough, the tokenized gas (which deletes the data) can subsidize up to 50% of it. That comes in handy at a time when the decentralized finance (DeFi) craze is pushing Ethereum fees to new records.

See also: Ethereum Developers Consider New Fee Model as Gas Costs Climb 

“In principle, GasToken can thus be used to reduce that gas cost of any transaction, in DeFi or other applications,” GasToken co-creator Florian Tramèr told CoinDesk in an email.

Some, such as Akhunov, warn the result could be a permanently high fee market. Developer Philippe Castonguay, on the other hand, says it merely smooths out the fee market. Indeed, there are secondary markets for gas tokens such as aggregator 1.Inch’s chi (CHI) token, which launched in May.

Of course, gas tokens are merely one issue in the fee market right now. DeFi applications such as Uniswap or Chainlink remain among the top gas-guzzlers, according to Ethgasstation. And then there are stablecoins such as tether (USDT) or USD coin (USDC), which continue to rise in popularity.

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Bitcoin Banking App Mode Eyes £40M UK Listing

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years ago

A new app that allows users to buy bitcoin, as well as earn interest on holdings, is reportedly looking at going public in the U.K.

  • The Daily Telegraph reported Sunday that Mode Banking is expected to announce plans for a £40 million stock market listing sometime in the next month.
  • The firm, which was officially incorporated as Mode Global Holdings PLC in August, is also looking to raise £7.5 million ($9.87 million) from investors ahead of the flotation, according to the report.
  • CoinDesk understands that Mode has already raised £4 million ($5.26 million) and is hoping to list on the London Stock Exchange.
  • An announcement of the final venue may be on the cards in as little as a month.
  • Mode‘s founder is Jonathan Rowland, who founded online investment company Jellyworks at the height of the dotcom boom in 2000.
  • Jellyworks’ value soared to over £300 million on its first day of trading on the London Stock Exchange, but had fallen back down to roughly $67 million at the time it was acquired by Shore Capital.
  • In August, Mode announced it had hired former Alipay exec Rita Liu to lead company strategy and commercial partnerships.
  • Customer assets are held with custodial provider BitGo, which has insurance coverage “for up to $100 million” through Lloyds of London.

See also: NYSE Can Allow Firms to Raise Funding Through Direct Listings, Says SEC

UPDATE (Sept. 7, 13:50 UTC): This article has been updated to clarify that Mode Banking uses custodial provider BitGo to hold customer assets.

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CoinDesk

Investors Buying Bitcoin Amid Price Slump to Near $10K, Data Shows

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years ago

Despite significant losses for bitcoin since mid-August, the “buy the dip” mentality in the crypto markets is still strong, blockchain data suggests.

  • While the cryptocurrency has declined from $12,400 to $10,000 in the past three weeks, the number of “accumulation addresses” has increased by 2% to 513,000, according to data source Glassnode.
  • “Lots of new daily buyers are coming in to absorb supply,” Su Zhu, CEO of Singapore-based Three Arrows Capital, told CoinDesk in a Telegram chat.
  • Accumulation addresses are those that have at least two incoming non-dust transfers (representing minuscule amounts of bitcoin) and have never spent funds.
  • The metric excludes addresses belonging to miners and exchanges, and addresses active more than seven years ago to exclude lost coins.
  • The divergence between prices and accumulation addresses suggests that investors view the recent price drop as a typical bull market pullback and expect prices to rise once more.
  • “Markets typically retrace one third or more in a bull market after local euphoria,” Zhu tweeted on Friday, suggesting prices could drop to as low as $8,800 and still be a “healthy target.”
  • Bitcoin fell by over 10% on Thursday, confirming a head-and-shoulders breakdown – a bearish reversal pattern – and a violation of the six-month-long bull market trendline.
  • Usually, such patterns invite more substantial chart-driven selling, yielding deeper price declines.
  • So far, bitcoin has managed to defend the $10,000 support – possibly a sign of an underlying bullish tone in the market.
  • “I am flabbergasted by the strength shown at $10,000, and it probably means $100,000 is more likely than $5,000 at this stage,” Zhu said in another tweet.
  • At press time, bitcoin is changing hands near $10,117, representing a 1.59% decline on the day.

Also read: Crypto Long & Short: What Investors Get Wrong About Volatility (and Not Just for Crypto)

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CoinDesk

Starling Bank Co-Founder’s New UK-Licensed App Adds P2P Crypto Payments

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years ago

A payment app from a co-founder of Starling Bank has added peer-to-peer support for cryptocurrencies a week after receiving an Electronic Money Institution (EMI) license from a U.K. regulator.

  • Ziglu announced Monday it had launched peer-to-peer payments for supported cryptocurrencies as well as pound sterling.
  • This means users can send and receive assets to and from any other Ziglu user instantly, according to a press release.
  • The news comes a week after the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) approved the payments platform as an EMI – which authorizes it to store and facilitate the transaction of digital forms of money.
  • While an EMI license authorizes Ziglu to perform some of the functions associated with traditional banks, it isn’t the same as a full banking license and doesn’t give the platform the ability to issue loans or to offer interest on balances.
  • Ziglu was founded by Mark Hipperson, the co-founder and former CTO of London-based challenger bank Starling.
  • The app launched in mid-June and announced a £5.25 million (roughly $6.9 million) seed round just two weeks later.
  • Ziglu currently supports bitcoin, ether, litecoin and bitcoin cash, with XRP due to be added later this month.
  • The platform says it will list other digital assets based on customer demand.
  • Cryptocurrencies held on Ziglu are insured up to £50,000 (around $66,000).

See also: Digital Bank Revolut Expands Crypto Buying and Selling Service to Australia

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CoinDesk

Binance Unveils New Product for ‘Yield Farming’ Crypto Assets

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years ago

Popular cryptocurrency exchange Binance has released Launchpool, a way for users to make income by staking tokens for so-called yield farming.

  • According to a Binance announcement on Sunday, users of Launchpool will be able to stake Binance’s BNB token and BUSD stablecoin, as well as the ARPA token, for interest-bearing rewards.
  • The first project to be hosted on Launchpool is Bella Protocol (BEL), which recently raised $4M in a seed funding round led by Arrington XRP Capital.
  • The BEL project aims to fix the complex user experience issues related to DeFi assets, such as the need to hop among different protocols and platforms in search of higher yields.
  • Users will be able to stake their tokens in three separate pools to farm – earn profits by providing staked liquidity – BEL tokens over a 30 day period starting Wednesday.
  • A week later, on Sept. 16, Binance will list BEL for trading and open trading pairs on its exchange for BEL/BTC, BEL/BNB, BEL/BUSD and BEL/USDT (tether).
  • The news comes on the heels of Binance’s recent mainnet launch of its smart contract-enabled blockchain and introduction of staking for its BNB token.
  • It also launched a new DeFi-like platform last week, allowing trades via an automated market maker exchange.
  • Staking involves committing funds as collateral onto an existing protocol in order to increase the liquidity of a project and brings voting rights to help decide on governance issues.
  • Stakers in such decentralized finance projects earn rewards in the form of interest ranging generally up to 10%, though it can be much higher, according to DeFi Rate.
  • For Launchpool, Binance is offering BEL rewards at 1% for users staking ARPA, 9% for staking BUSD and, it claims, 90% for staking BNB.

See also: What Is Yield Farming? The Rocket Fuel of DeFi, Explained

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CoinDesk

Australian Financial Watchdog Bans Local BitConnect Promoter for 7 Years

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years ago

An Australian man has received a seven-year ban by the country’s financial watchdog for his involvement with BitConnect, an alleged Ponzi scheme.

  • As reported by the Financial Standard, the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC), New South Wales resident John Bigatton may not work in financial services for the multi-year period.
  • An investigation is still ongoing, per the report.
  • ASIC made the ruling after it was discovered Bigatton had engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct in promoting BitConnect.
  • Bigatton was an Australian national representative of cryptocurrency platform BitConnect, as well as its investment scheme BitConnect Lending Platform, between 2017 and 2018.
  • Over that time, the watchdog alleges Bigatton provided unlicensed financial product advice that was deceptive, misleading or likely to mislead investors, regarding the BitConnect scheme.
  • ASIC found Bigatton not to be a “fit and proper person to provide financial services,” “not adequately trained” and was “likely to contravene a financial services law.”
  • Bigatton now has the right to appeal ASIC’s decision at Australia’s Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
  • BitConnect was a cryptocurrency investment scheme that encouraged investors to exchange bitcoin for its own BitConnect Coin (BCC) promising high-interest returns.
  • It has been alleged to be a fraud in various lawsuits.
  • In January 2018, the Texas State Securities Board ordered BitConnect to cancel another planned token sale, ruling the proposed token qualified as an unregistered security.
  • Weeks later, BCC's price collapsed amid news BitConnect’s lending and exchange operation was shutting down.
  • That came after state regulators issued cease and desist orders over the scheme’s failure to register its services and offerings under securities rules.

See also: Australian Woman Charged With Unlawfully Exchanging Over $3M in Crypto

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CoinDesk

Fishy Business: What Happened to $1.2B DeFi Protocol SushiSwap Over the Weekend

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years ago

SushiSwap investors were handed a raw deal over the weekend after the pseudonymous founder of the $1.27 billion, 1.5-week-old decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol cashed out.

A fork of DeFi darling Uniswap, SushiSwap is the brainchild of a pseudonymous founder, Chef Nomi, who took the former project an extra yard by adding rewards for providing liquidity to the exchange through a liquidity provider token (LP), called sushi (SUSHI), that earns a portion of the AMM’s revenue.

In essence, AMM’s provide the infrastructure to match lightly traded tokens with liquidity. A variant of other decentralized exchange (DEX) experiments, Uniswap has grown to be the largest AMM with volumes nearing those of centralized exchanges such as Coinbase Pro.

Related: Binance Unveils New Product for ‘Yield Farming’ Crypto Assets

The episode underscores the complexity, creativity and unpredictability of the white-hot DeFi space, where more than $8 billion worth of cryptocurrency is currently locked up in smart contracts, according to DefiPulse. 

But, as sushi investors discovered Saturday, putting money into an unaudited contract controlled by an unknown founder was not a great idea after Chef Nomi unexpectedly sold his share of LP tokens Saturday. 

As reported by The Block, Chef Nomi swapped his Sushi LP tokens for some 37,400 ether (ETH) worth about $13 million in what bears strong resemblance to an “exit scam.”

The sushi token immediately fell 73% in price, dropping from $4.44 to $1.20 over the subsequent 18 hours, according to CoinGecko. The token is now trading hands at $3.16 as of publishing time.

Control-C, Control-V

Related: SushiSwap Moved Up Its Massive Liquidity Withdrawal From Uniswap to This Weekend

Long story short, adding a native token to an AMM was a good idea, or at the very least one that sparked digital bread and circuses.

Chef Nomi launched the Uniswap rival Aug. 28. 

Eleven days later on Sept. 6,  $1.27 billion is “locked” in Sushi contracts. That’s equivalent to 77.4% of Uniswap’s tradable assets, according to Sushiboard. 

Read more: Uniswap Rises to Top of DeFi Charts Thanks to Rival Looking to Unseat It

SushiSwap’s transcendence to DeFi unicorn was made possible through an innovative leaching of its rival, Uniswap. Chef Nomi bootstrapped SushiSwap by leaning on Uniswap’s popularity within DeFi circles. 

In a technique called “Zombie mining,” SushiSwap gave extra LP tokens for users providing liquidity to the ether (ETH)/sushi pool on Uniswap. LP rewards, moreover, were ten times higher than they would normally run up to a certain time. That created a mad rush to earn LP tokens through farming Sushi on Uniswap as shown by an exponential rise in Uniswap volume late last week.

Zombie mining has an end game. Chef Nomi planned on “migrating” the liquidity created on Uniswap through token dispersals to SushiSwap once enough volume was created. As CoinDesk reported Friday, that day moved to Sunday as the AMM continued to attract outsized demand.

‘Chef Nomi sucks’

But then everything changed when Chef Nomi attacked. 

The founder, who ostensibly became a multi-millionaire by merely copying and pasting Uniswap’s code, shortly became the center of a Twitter doxxing campaign. His identity has yet to be confirmed.

Meanwhile, Chef Nomi, DeFi founders and sushi investors became engaged in verbal sparring.

Chef Nomi declared his intention to stick with the Sushi protocol and that his Sushi sale was well within his rights as a founder.

Others, such as FTX CEO and sushi investor Sam Bankman-Fried, were not enthused about that decision: “First of all, Chef Nomi sucks,” he tweeted Sept. 5.

Read more: Yearn, YAM and the Rise of Crypto’s ‘Weird DeFi’ Moment

Yet the clock kept ticking on the planned migration from Uniswap to SushiSwap. And, at this point, virtually no one trusted Chef Nomi to undertake the transfer in an honest fashion.

Through push and pull, Chef Nomi decided to give up his keys to the SushiSwap contract he and he alone held. To boot, the contract to the $1.25 billion protocol was given to none other than Bankman-Fried, who canceled the migration.

The entire exchange took place on Twitter Sunday with Chef Nomi lamenting his position. “Again I did not intend to do any harm. I’m sorry if my decision did not follow what you expected,” he tweeted.

As of now, Bankman-Fried controls the SushiSwap contract. In a Discord message, he said he plans to move the contract to a multi-signature contract until the project can be fully decentralized into the hands of SushiSwap LP token holders, similarly to other DeFi protocols.

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CoinDesk

SushiSwap Moved Up Its Massive Liquidity Withdrawal From Uniswap to This Weekend

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

SushiSwap, the automated market maker aiming to unseat market leader Uniswap, has moved up its launch by five days.

Because of SushiSwap, total value in assets locked on Uniswap have gone up by just under $1.5 billion since the SushiSwap contract went into effect at block 10750000 on Aug. 28, according to DeFi Pulse, making Uniswap the largest holder of Ethereum assets in DeFi right now. 

Both Uniswap and Sushiswap are designed to always have a price at which they will swap any two tokens they have in liquidity pools.

Related: Binance Eyes Uniswap’s Lunch With Launch of Centralized ‘Swaps’ Platform

One app is able to drive liquidity into another because of SushiSwap’s liquidity mining scheme. SushiSwap promises to reward those who help it compete on liquidity with both a fee on trades and fresh governance tokens, which will also earn a portion of trading fees.

Read more: What Is Yield Farming? The Rocket Fuel of DeFi, Explained

Uniswap is built without a governance token; it is instead a venture backed company. Liquidity providers (LPs) are rewarded by sharing the 0.3% fee on all trades within pools they have submitted liquidity too. 

Explaining how this works requires getting into the weeds of DeFi composability.

Related: Jump Trading Invests in Decentralized Exchange Serum, Signs On as Market Maker

Under the original design for the SushiSwap launch, Ethereum users would get an extra-large share of SUSHI if they deposited Uniswap V2 LP tokens pre SushiSwap launch, over the two weeks following block 10750000. 

Read more: Uniswap Rises to Top of DeFi Charts Thanks to Rival Looking to Unseat It

Uniswap runs on a series of pools of two tokens each. It uses these pools to allow users to make exchanges between any two ERC-20 tokens. Each of these pools has its own unique LP token that users get if they deposit liquidity.

These LP tokens can be withdrawn at any time for the users’ share of that pool. SushiSwap is giving users an incentive to deposit large amounts into Uniswap and then turn the LP tokens they receive for doing so over to SushiSwap. Then, at the appointed time, SushiSwap will redeem all those LP tokens, moving a large amount of Uniswap’s liquidity onto SushiSwap.

This is why some have referred to it as “vampire mining.” 

Obviously, depositors of Uniswap’s LP tokens have been promised exactly the same amount of SushiSwap LP tokens, so everyone will be made whole. 

According to one tool tracking SushiSwap’s expected token share, the upstart has 79.9% of Uniswap’s liquidity in LP tokens.

That liquidity withdrawal was originally scheduled to occur at the end of that two week bonus period, or on roughly September 11.

With a new proposal submitted by NomiChef, SushiSwap’s creator, on Thursday, that timeline has been moved up to 48 hours from the “timelock,” which is presumably sometime shortly following the end of the vote.

The vote ended at 14:00 UTC Friday, with just under 87% of SUSHI holdings voting in favor, which should mean the liquidity shift should happen sometime on Sunday.

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CoinDesk

Market Wrap: Bitcoin Tumbles to $9.8K; Investors Continue Plowing Crypto Into DeFi

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

Bitcoin is in bear territory for the third straight day and investors are still looking to DeFi to capture gains during the dump.

  • Bitcoin (BTC) trading around $10,606 as of 20:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET). Slipping 0.90% over the previous 24 hours.
  • Bitcoin’s 24-hour range: $9,894-$10,081
  • BTC below its 10-day and 50-day moving averages, a bearish signal for market technicians.

Bitcoin’s price dropped below $10,000 Friday, sliding as low as $9,894 on spot exchanges such as Coinbase. 

“It’s not the best look for BTC from a momentum and positive volume standpoint, to be honest,” said Constantine Kogan, partner at crypto fund of funds BitBull Capital. 

Related: First Mover: Buying Bitcoin’s Dip, Betting Against Tether and Weighing the Jobs Report

Read More: V-Shaped Recovery From Bitcoin’s Biggest Drop Since March Unlikely

David Lifchitz, chief investment officer for crypto quantitative firm ExoAlpha, says traders are taking profit after bitcoin could not get past $12,100. It may seem like a long time ago but the price went as high as $12,058 only Tuesday. 

“It looks like some bitcoin holders decided that this last failed breakout was one too many,” he told CoinDesk. “A full move could potentially bring the price back toward $9,500.

Lifchitz added that a few more fundamental factors that might be influencing the bearish bitcoin run. 

Related: Binance Eyes Uniswap’s Lunch With Launch of Centralized ‘Swaps’ Platform

“We observed that the market started to fade as South Korea’s largest exchange, Bithumb, had been raided by police,” he noted. 

Read More: Police Reportedly Raid Headquarters of Bithumb

“It could also be miners deciding to monetize their rewards,” Lifchitz added. Indeed, bitcoin holders, which could include larger holders such as miners, are pushing more inflows into exchanges to its highest levels since late July.

“In my opinion, this is a classic case of an overstretched market, which had advanced too much too quickly, and so was in dire need of consolidation,” said Jean-Marc Bonnefous, managing partner of multi-asset manager Tellurian Capital. “Crypto is dropping in sympathy with other traditional risk assets,” he added. 

Equities indexes were in the red Friday:

Alessandro Andreotti, an Italy-based crypto over-the-counter trader, is optimistic despite the currency cryptocurrency market environment. “Bitcoin has been extremely oversold. It actually reminds me of the March crash,” he said. “But, honestly, I think it can bounce back after this drop.”

Read More: Wasabi Wallet Patches Flaw That Could Have Thwarted Bitcoin Privacy 

More crypto locked in DeFi

Ether (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, was down Friday, trading around $392 and slipping 2.5% in 24 hours as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET). 

Read More: Binance Eyes Uniswap’s Lunch With Launch of Centralized ‘Swaps’ Platform

Yields in DeFi may become important to crypto traders should the market continue to show bearish signals: Ether locked in DeFi is up, from 5 million to 6.9 million in the past week, a 35% increase.

Investors also continue to lock bitcoin into decentralized finance. There are now over 74,000 BTC in use on Ethereum as those who lock in bitcoin gain a yield or profit in the DeFi ecosystem. In the past week, the amount of bitcoin in DeFi has increased 33%. 

“An amazing amount of BTC is locked into DeFi, earning hodlers ‘dividends’ for simply owning the asset,” noted Henrik Kugelberg, a Swedish crypto over-the-counter trader. 

Read More: Tether, Bitfinex File Motion to Dismiss Market Manipulation Lawsuit

Other markets

Digital assets on the CoinDesk 20 are almost all in the red Friday. Notable winners as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET): 

  • eos (EOS) + 4.5%
  • neo (NEO) + 0.22%

Read More: Stacks Foundation to Spend ‘Majority’ of STX Token Fortune on Ecosystem 

Notable losers as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET): 

  • tron (TRX) – 23.9%
  • nem (XEM) – 12.3%
  • zcash (ZEC) – 8.9%

Read More: BitMEX to List Futures for New Crypto Coins for First Time in Over 2 Years

Commodities: 

  • Oil is down 4.2%. Price per barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude: $39.50.
  • Gold is in the green 0.25% and at $1,935 as of press time.

Read More: Craig Wright Trial Over a Fortune in Bitcoin Moved to 2021

Treasurys:

  • U.S. Treasury bonds yields all climbed Friday. Yields, which move in the opposite direction as price, were up most on the 10-year, in the green 11.2%.

Read More: BitClub Promoter Pleads Guilty for Role in $722M Fraudulent Mining Scheme

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