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Despite the successful completion of Ethereum’s long-awaited upgrade, the Merge, ether, the blockchain’s native token, hit a two-month low of $1,280 Monday. The token slid further, reaching $1,220 Wednesday, when the Federal Reserve announced a third consecutive interest hike of 0.75%. Analysts are pointing to a record dumping and profit-taking from miners, approximately $20 million in just one week. As of Friday afternoon, ETH is trading at $1,298, down 9% over the past seven days.
ETHW, Ethereum’s proof-of-work offshoot created by a cohort of miners who are validating transactions under the old proof-of-work system, plummeted by about 37%. The project, dubbed EthereumPoW, went live shortly after the Merge, but the rollout was troubled by glitches and the emergence of a competing chain called EthereumFair, backed by crypto exchange Poloniex. |
WINTERMUTE’S $160 MILLION HACK
Wintermute, a London-based cryptocurrency firm that trades billions of dollars’ worth of digital assets daily, lost $160 million in a hack early on Tuesday. The hacker stole about $120 million worth of Wintermute’s stablecoins, including USDC and USDT, $20 million of its bitcoin and ether holdings and another $20 million worth of lesser-known cryptocurrencies.
Founder and CEO Evgeny Gaevoy explained to Forbes that, although the investigation is ongoing, the hack likely originated with a service called Profanity, which generates what are called vanity addresses for digital cryptocurrency accounts to make them easier to work with. Despite the $160 million hit to its balance sheet, Gaevoy says Wintermute is on sound financial footing. |
Source: Forbes Digital Assets, powered by Nomics. Prices as of 4:00 p.m. on September 23, 2022. |
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CRYPTO’S C-SUITE SHAKEOUT
Jesse Powell, the founder and CEO of Kraken, is stepping down, the cryptocurrency exchange announced Wednesday. He will be replaced by Chief Operating Officer David Ripley. Powell will become the company’s first chairman of the board and plans to remain active at the firm.
An influential figure in the industry since bitcoin’s early days, Powell expanded Kraken from a small startup into a crypto trading powerhouse. However, he has also been embroiled in conflicts with employees after the New York Times reported earlier this year that he had posted controversial messages about race and gender on the company’s Slack communications system.
The shakeup comes shortly after chief executives of Genesis, MicroStrategy and Alameda Research announced their exits last month. |
NASDAQ ENTERS CRYPTO WITH FOCUS ON SECURITY
The stock exchange operator is taking its first steps into crypto services with an emphasis on security, entering the business with a custody product for bitcoin and ether aimed at institutional investors. “We feel that custody is foundational to any other service that we build,” Ira Auerbach, the newly named head of Nasdaq Digital Assets, told Forbes. In parallel with the custody service, Nasdaq is expanding its anti-financial crime technology to weed out money laundering, fraud and market abuse in digital assets.
Nasdaq’s entry into digital assets comes as other players, including BlackRrock and Fidelity, are building crypto support. In August, BlackRock partnered with Coinbase to offer a private trust offering bitcoin exposure for institutional clients. Earlier this month, EDX Markets—backed by Charles Schwab, Fidelity Digital Assets and Citadel Securities—launched with plans to trade select tokens this year. |
CARDANO’S LONG-AWAITED UPGRADE GOES LIVE
Cardano blockchain deployed its Vasil hard fork Thursday. The blockchain’s developer company Input Output Global (IOG) has called the upgrade, named after the late Bulgarian mathematician and prominent Cardano supporter Vasil St. Dabov, its most ambitious to date. IOG had previously stated that Vasil would increase the network’s capacity and trim transaction costs as well as deliver the second version of Plutus, Cardano’s smart-contract language, which will help developers create faster and more complex decentralized applications on the chain. |
BLOCKCHAIN 50 SPOTLIGHT
WeBank: One of WeBank’s latest blockchain apps encourages sustainable living by rewarding users for doing things like walking, taking the bus or recycling clothing. The Chinese digital bank, which is 30% owned by Tencent, creates Green Bud Points via a mini-app on WeChat that can later be exchanged for vouchers and gifts. All records are stored on its blockchain to ensure transparency and traceability. The platform already has 1 million daily active users and reports that it recorded a reduction of more than 2,500 tons of carbon emissions over 2021. |
ELSEWHERE Pentagon Launches Effort To Assess Crypto’s Threat To National Security [The Washington Post]
Coinbase Tested Group To Speculate On Crypto [The Wall Street Journal]
Celsius Network Might Be Planning to Turn Its Debt Into Crypto ‘IOU’ Tokens [CoinDesk] |
Nina Bambysheva
Reporter
Forbes Money & Markets |
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