Crypto Highlights Week #5 – Ripple announces stock buyback, nabs $15 billion valuation

Crypto Highlights: Crypto Highlights: BTC nears 38k, Qubit Finance hack, NFT trading volume at ATH, Ripples stock buyback, SaTT integrates Simplex: these and more in this weeks’ Crypto Highlights

Top Headlines Of The Week

• Hacks on the Binance Smart Chain network isn’t slowing down as Qubit Finance suffers $80 million loss
• Despite the crypto market downturn, Monthly NFT trading volume reached an all-time high of $6 billion in January
• All eyes on Bitcoin as it struggles to stay near $38K with RSI breakout challenging the ‘boring’ weekend

Top Stories Of The Week

Qubit Finance suffers $80 million loss following hack

High-profile hacks have grown more common in the bitcoin sector, and Qubit Finance is one of the most recent decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols to be hacked.

Hackers gained access to and stole more than $80 million from Qubit Finance, which is built on the Binance Smart Chain, according to a tweet from the protocol on Friday. The addresses associated with the attack stole 206,809 Binance Coin (BNB) from the QBridge protocol of Qubit. At the time of writing, the assets are worth more than $80 million.

According to PeckShield, which examined Qubit’s smart contracts, QBridge was hacked to generate “a huge amount of xETH collateral,” which was then used to drain the whole amount of BNB kept on Q Bridge.

According to CertiK, the attacker used a deposit option in the QBridge contract to fraudulently create 77,162 qXETH, which is an asset representing Ether bridged over Qubit. The protocol was fooled into assuming that the attackers had made a deposit when they had not.

According to CertiK, the hacker repeated these steps, converting all of the assets to Binance Coin as a consequence. According to DeFiYield Rekt statistics, this makes the exploit the seventh-largest in DeFi.

The Qubit team issued a statement informing clients that the hacker and their compromised assets are currently being monitored. The site also mentions that we contacted the attacker and offered the maximum price allowed by their program. Since then, the Supply, Redeem, Borrow, Repay, Bridge, and Bridge Redemption functions have been blocked until further notice. They did, however, hint that claiming is possible.

Ripple announces stock buyback, nabs $15 billion valuation

Ripple, a distributed ledger technology startup, announced a $15 billion value following a private stock buy-back on Monday. The firm is repurchasing equity shares from Series C investors, including Tetragon, who unsuccessfully sued Ripple last year. Ripple’s valuation was $10 billion at the time of the last financing.

“The buyback establishes Ripple’s new value at $15 billion and reflects Ripple’s strong market position and global corporate momentum – Ripple’s global business has grown tremendously, and 2021 was the firm’s strongest year to date,” the company stated. According to the firm, transactions on its RippleNet network doubled in 2021. Bhutan and Palau were also added as CBDC customers.

The action comes in the midst of Ripple’s continuing legal battle with the SEC, which began in December 2020. Ripple was accused by the SEC of creating and selling unregistered securities in the form of the digital currency XRP.

This Week’s Market Sentiment

Monthly NFT trading volume reaches all-time high of $6 billion in January

According to The Block Data Dashboard, the monthly non-fungible token (NFT) trade volume in January has already reached a record high of $6.13 billion. Monthly NFT volume increased by 129% in January compared to December. The latest entrant in the NFT marketplace landscape, LookRare, gathered approximately $2 billion in volume following its January 10 launch, accounting for a large portion of the increase.

As a result of the LOOKS token, LooksRare offers a threat to OpenSea, the major NFT marketplace with over 90% of volume. Users gain LOOKS when they purchase or trade NFTs on the site and can earn further rewards by staking the token on the network.

LooksRare, on the other hand, is not without flaws. According to Block Research, a large portion of LooksRare’s trading volume is attributable to wash trading, in which individuals trade products between themselves to artificially push up volume and prices.

Aside from Ethereum-based NFT platforms, overall NFT sales on Solana reached $1 billion in all-time volume in January.

Mainstream Adoption Of The Week

Bitcoin stays near $38K as RSI breakout challenges ‘boring’ weekend

BTC/USD reclaimed the $38,000 level, according to data from TradingView, after reaching a local high of $38,740 on Bitstamp the day before. Despite its excellent “out of hours” performance, few experts see BTC as a solid bullish option in the absence of traditional market guidance.

“Still choppy waters for Bitcoin,” Cointelegraph writer Michal van de Poppe stated in his most recent Twitter post.

“Looking at $37K to see whether that sustains. If not -> I’m assuming we’ll test lows for daily bullish divergence to create. If we hold, we might see a breaker above $38.5K happening. Weekend times -> boring/trappy.”

Nonetheless, the highs continued what seems to be a steady return to form for BTC/USD on daily timescales following its sub-$33,000 lows earlier in the week. Bob Loukas, a trader, investor, and entrepreneur, saw strength in the pair’s numerous closes above the 10-day moving average (MA).

Meanwhile, turning to on-chain data, popular analyst Matthew Hyland uncovered even more positive signs from BTC’s relative strength indicator (RSI). RSI recently reached its greatest “oversold” levels since the March 2020 Coronavirus crash across various chart periods.

The statistic is used to estimate how “overbought” or “oversold” BTC is at a certain price, and hence how probable a given trend is to continue. RSI looks to be in the midst of challenging a multi-month downtrend that has been in place since November, due to a slight rebound off the lows.

“The two previous breakouts during the past year have to lead to massive bullish moves,” Hyland added as part of Twitter comments alongside a chart showing the action.

Exclusive From SaTT

With Simplex, buying SaTT has never been easier!

How can we make SaTT the advertising token if it is only freely available to crypto insiders? By making it easier to buy! We incorporated Simplex into our website with this goal in mind, and the results are clear: purchasing SaTT has never been easier!

Simplex is a payment solution that allows you to easily buy your favorite cryptocurrencies directly by credit card. Today, SaTT joins the long list of tokens supported by Simplex, allowing everyone to buy it via credit card directly from our website or Simplex website. 

To ensure the best pricing, the liquidity utilized for the purchase is the SATT/USDT pair of the Bittrex exchange, where we have been listed since November 4th.

SaTT continues to determine the course of blockchain advertising with the integration of Simplex and the recent launch of its new smart contracts. As 2021 drew to a conclusion with a slew of achievements, 2022 is already shaping up to be jam-packed with fresh breakthroughs.

This Week’s Crypto Meme

We hope you enjoyed this week’s edition of crypto highlights. For a peek at our last edition of crypto highlights & blockchain news, click here.