Strengths
- Of the cryptocurrencies tracked by CoinMarketCap, the best performer for the week was Lido DAO, rising 51.77%.
- BlackRock has given bankrupt bitcoin miner Core Scientific a new $17 million loan. BlackRock, which already was Core’s largest shareholder, previously held $37.9 million of the miner’s secured convertible notes. The latest $17 million is part of the new $75 million convertible notes, which are part of Core’s pre-arranged bankruptcy process, writes CoinDesk.
- An investment firm tied to two of Singapore’s most well-known families is taking steps to bet on the future of digital assets, writes Bloomberg, despite the chill in the industry. Whampoa Group, a multi-family office anchored by principals from the Lee family that founded Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp and Amy Lee (the niece of the city-state’s founding prime minister), aims to deploy about $100 million in Web3 start-ups, through a new venture investment arm, the article continues.
Weaknesses
- Of the cryptocurrencies tracked by CoinMarketCap, the worst performing for the week was Huobi Token, down 9.97%.
- The U.S. SEC is pushing back on Binance.US’s plan to buy bankrupt crypto lender Voyager Digital in a deal valued at about $1 billion, according to a bankruptcy court filing. The SEC has communicated the concerns to Voyager’s lawyers and has been advised that revised documents will be filed, according to the objection. The agency added that it reserves the right to amend its objection later, writes Bloomberg.
- Silvergate Capital slumped in early trading after the bank said it sold assets at a steep loss and fired 40% of its staff. Customers withdrew about $8.1 billion of digital asset deposits from the bank during the fourth quarter, which forced it to sell assets at a loss of $718 million, writes Bloomberg.
Opportunities
- Animoca Brands is looking to raise about $1 billion this quarter for its new Web3 metaverse investment fund, sharply scaling back its ambitions during the current crypto industry meltdown. Animoca Capital is in talks with potential investors and would use the money to support blockchain and metaverse startups, writes Bloomberg.
- Singapore’s main crypto lobby group has pushed back on the central bank’s proposals to bar crypto firms from lending out retail customers’ digital tokens, saying such a measure is overly restrictive. The Blockchain association of Singapore said such a blanket ban could instead push people to seek out unregulated offshore firms to lend their tokens to writes Bloomberg.
- During their first virtual meeting of the year, Ethereum developers said they are pushing ahead with a key software upgrade that would let people withdraw Ether tokens used to operate the blockchain network, writes Bloomberg.
Threats
- DeFi users fell victim to a phishing attack and lost $3.4 million in gmx, the native token of decentralized trading protocol GMX, reports Bloomberg. The tokens were then sold on the open market. On-chain data shows that the attacker started taking out funds from the victim’s wallet at 7 pm UTC on January 3. The attacker sent out gmx worth about $3.4 million to another address and swapped them for ether, security analysts PeckShield estimated.
- The top U.S. bank regulators issued a fresh warning to lenders about the risks associated with delving into crypto. The Fed, FDIC, and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on Tuesday detailed concerns with the volatile asset class. Officials said in a statement that it was important that risks that can’t be controlled aren’t allowed to migrate to the banking system, writes Bloomberg.
- Coinbase shares slumped as much as 6.8% in premarket trading Thursday after the cryptocurrency exchange was downgraded to market perform from outperform at Cowen. This says that retail trading volumes have yet to show signs of stabilizing, according to an article published by Bloomberg.
