Breaking Crypto Daily News
Yuga Labs’ BAYC, OtherSide Discord groups breached, over 145 ETH stolen
Yuga Labs, the creator of two of the most popular ape-themed nonfungible token (NFT) offerings — Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and OtherSide — witnessed yet another orchestrated phishing attack, with investors losing over 145 Ether (ETH) or nearly $260,000 at the time of writing.
OKHotshot, a blockchain detective and a member of the Crypto Twitter community, alerted crypto investors about the compromise of two official Discord groups linked to BAYC and OtherSide NFTs.
According to OKHotshot’s investigations, the attack was conducted by hacking into the Discord account of Boris Vagner, community and social manager at Yuga Labs.
After gaining unrestricted access to the employee’s account, scammers shared various phishing links from Vagner’s Discord account into the official BAYC, Mutant Ape Yacht Club and Otherside groups.
Many users in the Discord groups, unwary about the ongoing scam, fell for the phishing messages that promised limited-quantity giveaways made available for existing NFT holders — as evidenced by the above screenshot. (cointelegraph.com)
Finance Redefined: Uniswap breaches $1T volume, WEF 2022 discussion on Terra, and more
The decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem continues to struggle with the ongoing market volatility and after-effects of the Terra ecosystem collapse. Over the past week, major DeFi protocols showed signs of increased trading activity, with Uniswap breaching the $1 trillion trading volume mark.
Terra remained the focus of most of the discussions around blockchain and crypto at the World Economic Forum (WEF), with analysts suggesting Terra was offering unsustainable yields. DeFi insurance protocol to pay out millions after Terra collapse, while interest in Ethereum Name Services (ENS) shattered new records.
Top DeFi tokens by market cap had a mixed week of price action, with several tokens in the top 100 registering double-digit gains over the past week, while many others continue to trade in the red.
WEF 2022: Terra was offering unsustainable yields and DeFi can support financial inclusion
Reporting from the inaugural day of the Blockchain Hub Davos 2022 conference, Cointelegraph’s editor-in-chief, Kristina Lucrezia Cornèr, hosted a panel discussion centered around DeFi titled “Programmable Money is Here — and It’s Changing the World as We Know It.”
Coral Capital’s Horsman shared that the Terra crisis partly occurred because “they were essentially offering yields that were unsustainable, and [that] there were venture capital firms that were bootstrapping those yields in order to bootstrap an ecosystem.” He noted that his firm decided to withdraw funds from the project in November–December 2021 after their reserve modeling data predicted worrying calculations for the future. (cointelegraph.com)
Bitcoin ATM installations record low in May, biggest drop since 2019
Bitcoin (BTC) ATM installations across the globe have seen a steep decline throughout the year 2022, with May recording just 202 new BTC ATMs, a range last seen three ago in 2019.
Over the past five months since January, Bitcoin ATM installations saw a gradual slowdown, eventually falling down 89.75% from December 2021’s 1971 new installations. However, data from Coin ATM Radar reveal an evident comeback in the installation numbers as the world saw 817 Bitcoin ATMs getting installed in June — in just the first five days.
Some of the key factors contributing to the slowdown of crypto ATM installations include geopolitical tensions across the world, unclear or anti-crypto regulations, market saturation and business impact due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Coin ATM Radar’s data confirms that the United States is home to 87.9% of the total 37,826 crypto ATMs worldwide. Europe, as a continent, houses a network of 1,419 ATMs — representing 3.8% of the global ATM installations.
Crypto ATM manufacturer Genesis Coin maintains its position as the leader in terms of the market share, representing 41% of the total operational crypto ATMs across the globe. Other manufacturers with prominent market share include General Bytes (21.6%), BitAccess (16%), Coinsource (5.4%) and Bitstop (4.7%) (cryptoslate.com)
Luna governance in disarray as Do Kwon jokes about Terra ecosystem
The Dark Knight of Terra is back, and this time FatManTerra has some of the most reprehensible examples of an ecosystem in freefall ever seen in crypto. FatManTerra started his thread by saying, “tensions are high, and the big sharks smell blood,” He revealed a thread detailing recent conversations between validators and TerraformLabs.
ThorchainMaximalist recently leaked chat records from May 12 when the Luna blockchain was offline. FatManTerra has now released further conversations from TFL that showcase an increased disdain for the community that has supported it. Below is a screenshot including Do Kwon, which shows him cracking jokes while a multi-billion ecosystem collapses, causing people to commit suicide around the world.
The mechanism of suggesting a concept as a “semi-joke idea” is something often used as a tool to propose ideas without risking a hit to one’s ego. If validators simply laugh at the proposal, the proposer has achieved their goal; further, if the submission is received well, then the proper can claim “it was only half a joke.” An article by the American Psychology Association states, “Humans have a fundamental need to belong… This need is deeply rooted in our evolutionary history and has all sorts of consequences for modern psychological processes.” (cryptoslate.com)
First Mover Asia: Bitcoin and Other Cryptos Tick Up in Weekend Trading
Prices: Bitcoin and other major cryptos trade rise slightly.
Insights: Stablecoins face increasing scrutiny.
Technician's take: Bitcoin is weighed down by resistance at $34,000 and support at $20,000-$25,000.
Bitcoin Ticks Up in Weekend Trading
Bitcoin spent another weekend well inside the same neighborhood it's been inhabiting for much of the past month.
The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization was recently trading just above $30,000, up slightly from Friday but still in the doldrums. Bitcoin has been ticking a little above and below this threshold since early May, depending on the day's events as investors nervously await clear signs about the direction of inflation and the global economy.
"BTC remains weak until it conclusively breaches the $31k to $32k range," Joe DiPasquale, the CEO of crypto fund manager BitBull, wrote to CoinDesk. "However, we continue to see some buying below $30K that is keeping the price afloat."
Ether, the second largest crypto by market cap, was recently changing hands just above $1,800, up slightly over the same period and well within the range it's held over the last two two weeks under $2,000. Other major cryptos were about flat, although mostly on the green side with LINK and ADA among the biggest winners, rising 5% and 3%, respectively. Trading was light as is typical on most weekends.
Cryptos' weekend holding pattern veered slightly away from equity indices, which closed down on Friday with the tech-focused Nasdaq plunging 2.4% and the S&P 500 falling 1.6%. Digital assets and stocks have correlated increasingly in recent months.
On a more upbeat note, a better-than-expected U.S. jobs report on Friday, showing that nonfarm payrolls added about 390,000 jobs in May, suggested that the economy was far from ready to fold. Analysts have been concerned that the U.S. central bank's interest rate hikes will throw the U.S. economy into recession. And in a sliver of possible good news for crypto, shares of investor savant Cathie Wood's ARK Innovation ETF, which includes crypto exchange Coinbase, have risen over 15% since the second week in May. Wood's as been a noted Bitcoin advocate. (Coindesk.com)
Middle East Oil Producers Move Into Bitcoin Mining With Crusoe Energy Stakes
Crusoe Energy, the privately held U.S. company that pioneered bitcoin (BTC) mining by using wasted natural gas as a power source, is expanding in the Middle Eastern region with investments from Mubadala – the sovereign wealth fund (SWF) of Abu Dhabi – and the Oman Investment Authority (OIA).
Crusoe this week announced the OIA and Mubadala were each part of a $350 million funding round that closed in April. “This investment will power Crusoe’s efforts to expand internationally as it works to align the future of computing with the future of the climate,” according to a statement sent to CoinDesk by the company.
As part of the expansion, the Denver-based miner will initially open an office in Oman’s capital city of Muscat and in Abu Dhabi shortly thereafter. Crusoe will start with hiring two or three people for the offices and about eight field personnel, CEO and co-founder Chase Lochmiller told CoinDesk. Lochmiller expects to have pilot-level technologies deployed at one site in each country in the first quarter of 2023.
While not commenting on the size of the investments by the two nations, Lochmiller did allow that the stakes were “meaningful.” The expansion of Crusoe’s patented digital flare mitigation systems establishes the company as the first flare gas bitcoin miner in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, he added. (www.coindesk.com)
