BTC miner Rhodium faces lawsuit 🔎, Primordial NFT? 💡, SEC revises $22M punishment against LBRY 🖌
Daily Crypto, Blockchain & Web3 Update 2023-05-15
CRYPTOCURRENCY
Bitcoin price hits $27.2K, but new analysis warns more losses ‘likely’ (4 min read)
Bitcoin sought to recover $27,000 into the May 14 weekly close as volatility picked up out of hours. Its highest in several days, the performance reflected gains of around 7.5% versus local lows from the week’s final Wall Street trading session.
Popular trader Daan Crypto Trades noted that there was now potential for a “gap” in CME Bitcoin futures markets to appear at the May 15 open.
“If BTC holds at current prices, it will open up with a CME gap tomorrow. These gaps to tend to get filled, especially during a ranging environment,” he told Twitter followers.
BTC miner Rhodium faces lawsuit over alleged $26M in unpaid fees: Report (2 min read)
Riot Platforms, previously known as Riot Blockchain, is suing Rhodium Enterprises, a Bitcoin miner in Texas, for over $26 million in unpaid mining facility fees.
According to Riot Platform’s Q1 2023 financial report published on May 10, Rhodium allegedly breached its contract with Riot by failing to pay hosting and service fees associated with using Whinstone’s Bitcoin mining facilities, a wholly owned subsidiary of Riot.
A petition was filed against Rhodium Enterprises on May 2 in the Milam County Court in Texas, seeking to recover “more than $26 million” and be reimbursed for any legal fees incurred.
Bitcoin addresses holding 1 BTC or more reach one million: Glassnode (3 min read)
The number of Bitcoin wallet addresses holding one whole BTC or more has surpassed the one million mark. The one million wholecoiner milestone was reached on May 13, according to data from Glassnode.
As the price of Bitcoin fell more than 65% over the course of last year, the number of wallet addresses holding one Bitcoin or more spiked, with the most notable surges occurring during an acute market crash in June and from November 11, the date that FTX collapsed and subsequently filed for bankruptcy.
Bitcoin’s recovery may trigger buying in these 4 altcoins (9 min read)
While most coins are reeling under pressure, Bitcoin and select altcoins such as ADA, ATOM, LDO, and ARB are showing promise.
Cardano’s solid rebound off the uptrend line on May 11 suggests that lower levels continue to attract strong buying.
Cosmos snapped back from the $10.20 support on May 10, indicating that the bulls are buying the dips to this level.
Lido Dao (LDO) rebounded off the $1.60 support and has reached the overhead resistance at the 20-day EMA ($1.95).
Arbitrum (ARB) has been finding support near the psychologically important level of $1, indicating that the bulls are aggressively buying the dips.
4 alarming charts for Bitcoin bulls as $27K becomes formidable hurdle (6 min read)
Bitcoin has rallied nearly 60% to around $27,000 in 2023 amid anticipations that the Federal Reserve would pause itsquantitative tightening amid the U.S. banking crisis. Still, BTC price has failed to movebeyond $30,000decisively.
Buying exhaustion at this key psychological level led to a price correction toward $25,000 over the past week. Interestingly, the decline has strengthened Bitcoin's correlation with several traditional financial metrics.
U.S. dollar index's double bottom
Gold price near key reversal point
M2 money supply declines
Bitcoin price “rising wedge”
Primordial NFT? Someone tried to sell a JPEG for BTC months before Bitcoin Pizza Day (3 min read)
The seller even got help from Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto, though it's still up in the air whether the artist actually made the "sale."
Crypto Twitter was briefly set ablaze on May 14 with a suggestion that the world’s first real-world purchase made by Bitcoin may have been for a JPEG, not pizza.
In a tweet from independent developer Udi Wertheimer, the Bitcoin advocate shared a screenshot showing what could have been the first-ever purchase using Bitcoin — even predating the infamous Bitcoin Pizza.
BUSINESS
SEC revises $22M punishment against LBRY, seeks $111K instead (2 min read)
The United States securities regulator is seeking to revise its $22 million punishment against decentralized content platform LBRY, acknowledging it is unlikely to be able to cough up the funds to be able to pay it.
In a May 12 filing in a New Hampshire District Court, the Securities and Exchange Commission sought an amendment to its request for remedies in its successful case against LBRY.
Instead of seeking the original $22 million — the amount it claims LBRY gained from the sale of its token LBRY Credits (LBC), the SEC has asked the court to impose a fine of $111,614, citing LBRY’s “lack of funds and near-defunct status.”
OpenAI CEO in ‘advanced talks’ for $100M Worldcoin funding: Report (2 min read)
“Existing and new investors” will contribute to the $100 million, according to someone familiar with the situation.
OpenAI boss Sam Altman is reportedly in “advanced talks” of securing $100 million funding for Worldcoin, a project aimed at creating a collectively owned and globally distributed cryptocurrency.
A Financial Times report published on May 15, which cited sources with knowledge of Worldcoin’s funding talks, stated that the $100 million will be sourced from a mix of “existing and new investors.”
Zimbabwe sells millions of gold-backed crypto tokens despite IMF warning (2 min read)
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has sold 14 billion Zimbabwean dollars’ worth of gold-backed digital tokens — worth around $39 million — despite a warning from the International Monetary Fund.
On May 12, the central bank of Zimbabwe announced that it had received 135 applications for a total of 14.07 billion Zimbabwean dollars to buy the gold-backed cryptocurrency.
The Zimbabwean dollar is officially trading at 362 Zimbabwean dollars to one United States, according to XE.com — but much higher on the street — making the stash nominally worth around $38.9 million.
Jump Trading faces lawsuit over alleged $1.3B profit from TerraUSD (3 min read)
A lawsuit filed in an Illinois district court details Jump Trading’s alleged involvement with Terraform Labs in manipulating the price of failed algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD (UST). According to court documents from May 9, the firm purchased millions of UST tokens in 2021, hoping to manipulate its value to reach $1.
Plaintiff Taewoo Kim is accusing Jump and its CEO, Kanav Kariya, of violating the Commodity Exchange Act, Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) regulations, and of common law unjust enrichment.