Tether stops Bitcoin stablecoin 🛑, BNB hacker lost $53M 🐱💻, Shibarium denies bridge issues 🐾
Daily Crypto, Blockchain & Web3 Update 2023-08-18
CRYPTOCURRENCY
Bitcoin, Ether price slump leads to crypto bloodbath with $1B in liquidations (2 min read)
On August 18, the prices of Bitcoin and Ether dropped to their lowest point in two months. This caused many derivative traders to experience liquidations.
The liquidation event saw one trader lose $55.9 million, while another saw $10 million worth of hedged positions get liquidated.
Tether discontinues Bitcoin stablecoin, citing lack of usage (3 min read)
The issuer of stablecoin Tether will discontinue its Bitcoin Omni Layer version, citing a lack of interest from users. This Bitcoin version of Tether was one of the first stablecoins ever created. The Bitcoin Cash and Kusama versions will also be discontinued, according to an Aug. 17 announcement from the team.
BNB hacker loses over $53M after getting liquidated in market crash (2 min read)
The sudden market pullback in the crypto space liquidated many traders and, according to data shown on the blockchain, the attackers responsible for the infamous BNB Smart Chain exploit, which led to the theft of almost $600 million worth of BNB tokens.
North Korean hackers have stolen $2B of crypto since 2018: Report (2 min read)
North Korean hackers continue to threaten the broader cryptocurrency ecosystem, having stolen an estimated $2 billion of crypto over the past five years.
TRM Labs estimates that North Korean hackers will have stolen $200 million of cryptocurrency in 2023 alone.
BUSINESS
SpaceX Bitcoin write-down sparks confusion, Bitcoiners quiz Elon Musk (4 min read)
SpaceX’s Bitcoin write-down report on Aug. 18 sparked confusion among the crypto community. The Wall Street Journal published a report that confused many people. They wondered if SpaceX owned $373 million worth of Bitcoin and sold it between 2021 and 2022, or if they simply reduced their Bitcoin investment by that amount.
Ether whale dumps $41M days before the market crashed (2 min read)
A big crypto investor sold $41 million worth of Ether before the market crashed, avoiding a possible $5 million loss.
The trade was flagged by the blockchain analysis platform Lookonchain, which follows and shares what it considers to be smart trades. On Aug. 18, the crypto whale deposited 22,341 ETH on the Binance exchange and withdrew around $41 million in Tether.
Shibarium denies bridge issues, calls it FUD (2 min read)
The team behind the newly released Shibarium mainnet has denied reports of bridge problems and asset losses, saying screenshots floating around the crypto community are false.
Shytoshi Kusama, co-founder of the Shiba Inu ecosystem, blamed a massive influx of transactions and user activity for technical difficulties on Shibarium.
Securitize acquires $40B crypto fund manager Onramp (2 min read)
Securitize, a tokenized asset firm, has acquired Onramp Invest, a cryptocurrency fund manager. Onramp Invest manages over $40 billion in assets. This acquisition will help Securitize broaden investor access to private market alternative assets.
QUICK LINKS
Shiba Inu’s Shibarium Network resumes block production after brief pause (3 min read)
Shiba Inu's layer-2 Shibarium network has restarted block production after a pause of almost a day.
The Shiba Inu project has opted to secure insurance coverage amounting to $2 million to address potential fund retrieval challenges upon the restart of Shibarium.
Mantle pauses token migration to stop FTX converting $43M in BIT tokens to MNT (2 min read)
A community member started a discussion among participants in the Mantle decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), proposing to restrict the collapsed FTX exchange and Alameda Research from converting their BitDAO (BIT) tokens worth $43 million to Mantle (MNT) amid the ongoing token migration process.
IBM Watson developer raises $60M for AI startup Elemental Cognition (2 min read)
David Ferrucci, the artificial intelligence (AI) researcher who led the team behind IBM Watson’s development, the question-answering supercomputer developed by IBM, has raised nearly $60 million for his Elemental Cognition AI startup.
SEC seeks to question Terraform Labs co-founder Daniel Shin in Korea (2 min read)
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission has been granted a motion to seek assistance from South Korea to question Terraform Labs co-founder Daniel Shin as it builds a case against the firm and its co-founder, Do Kwon.
BlockFi opens crypto withdrawals for eligible US users following court order (3 min read)
Many customers at defunct crypto lending firm BlockFi have reported being able to withdraw funds for the first time in months following an order from a United States bankruptcy court.
ChatGPT politically biased toward left in the US and beyond: Research (3 min read)
ChatGPT, a major large language model (LLM)-based chatbot, allegedly lacks objectivity when it comes to political issues, according to a new study.
Researchers from the United Kingdom and Brazil have discovered compelling evidence that ChatGPT shows a significant political bias towards the left side of the political spectrum.
UK crypto businesses to comply with FATF Travel Rule beginning in September (3 min read)
Starting September 1, crypto asset businesses in the United Kingdom must follow the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing rules, also known as the Travel Rule. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) emphasized this in a statement on August 17. This will bring the U.K. into conformity with FATF standards set in 2019.
Federal Reserve issues enforcement action against FTX-linked US bank (3 min read)
The Federal Reserve Board and the Washington State Department of Financial Institutions took action against Farmington State Bank. This bank's parent company received over $11 million from Alameda Research.