Strengths
- Of the cryptocurrencies tracked by CoinMarketCap, the best performer for the week was Huobi Token, rising 81%.
- Coinbase Global entered into a partnership with Alphabet Inc.'s Google over cloud services, its latest corporate pact after prior accords with BlackRock and Meta platforms. Google cloud will enable some customers, starting with those in the web3 industry, to pay using cryptocurrencies through Coinbase. Google will also use Coinbase Prime for institutional crypto services, writes Bloomberg.
- Tron founder Justin Sun said he owns "tens of millions" of Huobi Tokens and that he intends to try and boost the latter now that he's an adviser to its linked crypto exchange. "I would see myself as one of the biggest holders," of Huobi Tokens in the world, Sun said in a Bloomberg television interview with Emily Chang.
Weaknesses
- Of the cryptocurrencies tracked by CoinMarketCap, the worst performer for the week was Klaytn, down 19.50%.
- The latest C-suite departure in the crypto sector comes from NFT marketplace OpenSea, where Brian Roberts has exited the role of chief financial officer after less than a year on the job. Roberts, who joined the NFT platform in December after seven years at ride-sharing firm Lyft, said in a LinkedIn post he'll now be an adviser to OpenSea, according to an article published by Bloomberg.
- An attacker spirited away about $100 million from decentralized finance provider Mango by manipulating the price of its token in an exploit that wiped out depositors on the crypto platform. The heist began with two accounts funded with the stablecoin USD coin. The account took large positions in Mango perpetual futures, causing the price of the Mango token to spike. The price jump stoked an unrealized profit from the futures. The attacker used that to borrow and withdraw roughly a net $100 million from the protocol in a range of tokens leaving depositors with nothing, according to Mango.
Opportunities
- The head of New York's financial regulator is looking to use the state's role as a financial services hub to help set the regulatory agenda nationwide, with a particular focus on bringing order to the cryptocurrency industry. Superintendent Adrienne Harris said she intends to accomplish her goals partly by offering clearer guidance to banks and other financial institutions and by bolstering the resources her agency needs to do its job, writes Bloomberg.
- Uniswap Labs has secured more funding even as the crypto market struggles and investors start to lose confidence in decentralized finance. The exchange said it secured $165 million through a Series B funding round, reports Bloomberg, valuing the company at $1.66 billion. Uniswap said this is one of the largest funding rounds for a crypto firm since the market downturn this year.
- Binance has launched a $500 million fund to provide loans to Bitcoin miners struggling to cope with difficult crypto-market conditions. Binance pool, the company's mining service, will provide loans for both private and publicly listed miners, writes Bloomberg.
Threats
- The Bollinger Bandwidth for Bitcoin has shrunk to the narrowest since 2020. The bandwidth is the gap between the upper and lower band in a Bollinger study, a popular way of gauging volatility. The Bandwidth has been similarly narrow five other times over the past two years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. On four of those occasions Bitcoin subsequently shed almost 16% over 20 days.
- The U.S. SEC is probing Yuga Labs, the creator of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection, over whether sales of its digital assets violate federal law, according to a report from Bloomberg. The issue is whether some of Yuga's NFTs are closer to stocks, and thus should follow the same disclosure rules. The key legal question at the center of the probe, according to Bloomberg, is whether NFTs are securities, writes CoinDesk.
- The U.S. Treasury Department faces a second lawsuit over its August decision to sanction Tornado Cash, a crypto-mixing service that obscures sources of coin transactions. The lawsuit filed Wednesday claims the Treasury's sanctions overstepped its authority and punished U.S. cryptocurrency investors, writes Bloomberg.
