Crypto Highlights Week #29 – 5 Crazy Theories About Satoshi Nakamoto & Bitcoin creation
Crypto Highlights: Find more about Twitter’s biggest hack in a Bitcoin scam, Drop in Bitcoin’s whale’s addresses, Fall in DeFi earnings, Regulatory concerns trolls DeFi, High-frequency trading trails Bitcoin and more in this week’s crypto highlights.
- In what could be termed as the largest Twitter hack, top personalities in the United States and the crypto space were the target as hackers seek to defraud people of their Bitcoin.
- The U.S SEC & CFTC double down on Abra, this could be building a lot of regulatory concerns for the DeFi space.
- Bitcoin’s volatility falls to 3 years low, studies show that high-frequency trading might be the reason why bitcoin trading has become so boring.
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Top Stories Of The Week
Drop in Bitcoin ‘Whale’ Addresses Suggests Market May Be Decentralizing
Due to a 14 month low, the number of whale addresses has declined. Not to worry, the decline in numbers is not necessarily a price-bearish development. Closer observation may show that ownership is being transferred from relatively few whales to a large number of smaller investors.
Richard Rosenblum, the co-founder of trading at crypto liquidity provider, GSR, has come out to calm the doubting Thomases. He iterated that the decline in the whale addresses does not indicate a weaker buying pressure, but more of Bitcoin flowing to newer hands.
Another Crypto Analyst, Simon Peters, has a different view of the development. He held that an increase or decrease in the number of bitcoin addresses may not fully represent the entry or exit of investors. In fact, Whales may not be having all of their holdings in a single address and may deliberately be moving crypto for risk management purposes.
DeFi Earnings Fell 42% in Q2 Even as Token Prices Surged
It may appear that the DeFi industry may be booming this year, but it has been disclosed that earnings have taken a downward plunge despite a huge surge in token prices.
A DeFi concentrated newsletter, Bankless, from Mythos Capital founder, Ryan Sean Adams, has exposed that earnings fell by 42% in the second quarter, from $5.5 million in Q1 down to $3.9 million in Q2. This is in stark contrast with the fact that most DeFi related tokens have been on fire lately.
One major reason for this was MakerDAO shifting the stability fee (SF) down to 0% following the mid-March crypto crash. Another reason for this downward turn of events is that Synthetix disproportionately reported earnings in Q1. Regardless of this downward plunge, token performance has been impressive and even DeFi users have multiplied.
As The SEC & CFTC Double Down On Abra, Worries In The DeFi Space Start To Heat Up
Recently, it was announced that the United States’ SEC and the CFTC had issued fines against Abra. Abra is a company that allows users to trade tokenized versions of stocks.
In the case of Abra, The SEC highlighted that though the tokenized version of stocks wasn’t fully backed by the stocks themselves, they were similar enough to be legitimate so they constituted securities. The effect of this was to make Abra liable for infringing laws that allow them to participate in offering securities.
With the understanding that the government is getting more interested in technology, most DeFi protocols are operating in the idea of progressive decentralization. The world awaits what becomes of the government’s growing interruption of the nascent technology.
More crypto highlights from last week…
5 Crazy Theories About Satoshi Nakamoto & Bitcoin creation
Blockchain technology is one of the most disruptive technologies in the world. It is redefining the way things are done in different industries and the world over. For example, the finance industry has taken a great turn since the advent of bitcoin. What remains at large is the identity of the inventor of the infamous bitcoin.
The ID of the creator of the bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, is yet to be ascertained. A number of speculative theories have sprung up attempting to unmask the real identity of Satoshi, a few of them include:
- Bitcoin is AI code
- It was created by the Illuminati
- The Bitcoin is a U.S government project
- Bitcoin was created by the Chinese government
- It was created by an Asian company
Although these theories seem implausible, as long as we are yet to find the missing links, the conspiracy continues. More detailed stories on click.
A Brazen Online Attack Targets V.I.P. Twitter Users in a Bitcoin Scam
About 4 pm on Wednesday on the East Coast, chaos struck online as dozens of high profile Twitter accounts like: @KimKardashian, @JeffBezos, @kanyewest, @BarackObama, @JoeBiden, @ElonMusk and most crypto exchanges like Binance, Coinbase, etc. were hacked. Hackers posted similar tweets on Twitter: Send Bitcoin and the prominent figures would send back double your money.
Efforts were made to remove many of the messages, but in some cases similar tweets were sent again from the same accounts, suggesting that Twitter was powerless to regain control. This seems to be the biggest hack in Twitter’s history,
The hackers may have wrecked worse havoc but it appears that although effective they were amateurish. Bitcoin seemed like the best bet for this type of scam because once a victim sends money, the design of Bitcoin, being largely unregulated, makes it impossible to recover the funds. Cybersecurity experts said this attack shows how vulnerable social media remains to attacks, while blockchain evangelists have seized this opportunity to preach about decentralized social media platforms.
Mainstream Adoption Of The Week
China to Test Digital Yuan on Tencent-backed Food Delivery Platform
One of the world’s largest food delivery platforms has laid itself down to be used as an experiential outlet for the new China’s digital yuan.
The online food seller- Meituan-Dianping, as well as another two Tencent-backed companies, are set to be used by the Chinese government.
Bloomberg revealed that the Beijing-based company has held talks with the research wing at the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) over trialing the digital yuan on their platform, according to sources speaking to Bloomberg. The world is yet to know the exact details of the yuan collaboration. The digital yuan is also known as the Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DCEP)
From the look of things, the WeChat owner Tencent and two other Tencent-backed companies have subscribed to this collaboration. They are set to be the primary commercial issuers for the digital yuan when it becomes available for use.
This Week’s Crypto Market Sentiment
Is High-Frequency Trading the Reason Bitcoin Has Become Boring?
A recent fall in Bitcoin volatility has made investors troop to altcoins trading. As of Tuesday, Bitcoin’s volatility levels plunged down south, in a way that has not been witnessed since 2017. Paolo Ardoino, CTO of Bitfinex explained to Cointelegraph that a plausible reason for this may be an increased presence of high-frequency trading firms (HFT) in the crypto space.
According to Bitfinex, HFT firms generated between 80% – 90% of volume on Bitfinex. The crypto exchange had explained that the growing use of HFT indicates “maturity in the digital asset space”. It is then ironic that the rate of Bitcoin volatility is not encouraging at all.
Adriano explained that the increasing presence of HFT firms in crypto spaces seems to have added more liquidity to crypto exchanges. In the end, what we have is a prolonged low volatility price consolidation in Bitcoin.
Crypto Meme Of The Week
We hope you enjoyed the latest crypto highlights from last week. For a peek at the our last edition of crypto highlights & blockchain news, click here.
