All Been Crypto — Week 19 July 2024
People are saying it’s a quiet summer well we quietly climbed back to 2.5tn market cap BTC +12% WoW briefly touching 65k again ETH +10% as we are looking for spot ETFs listed as soon as next week and some altcoins had a feast, WIF +55% PEPE +32% and WLD +44% after extending lock up period.. What caused this well multiple arguments the most convincing one I found is the same thing that caused our dump sentiment. We slumped because of fear of large unlocks and BTC dumping by indiscretional sellers i.e. governments and now learned that Germany has depleted at least one tranch already. And then of course US election odds are shifting and another 4 years of Trump seem more likely with some hoping that his VP pick who disclosed BTC holdings means his campaign promises will be more than just lip service. Although I’m quite sure that all remaining BTC will not be mined in the US. But the community will likely welcome him with open arms next week at BTC Nashville where himself and R.F.K. Jr will be speaking next to Saylor, Cathy Woods and Snowden. In the news he had a 230mm hack at an Indian exchange, FTX settling with CFTC for 12.7bn, new stablecoin rules from Hong Kong and State Street mulling interest in stablecoins too. Enjoy reading!
Bat Tai Chi — btc21@mail.com
HEADLINES:
Crypto is getting political (in the US)
As we are heading closer to elections the question for US citizens about which presidential candidate to vote for and why are becoming more pressing. Many in our industry have started to support Trump campaign because of his shift in stance towards crypto friendly regulation. But there’s critiques as well and despite Trump filling his warchest with donations from wealthy crypto folks some of the most radical outspoken ones are now receiving backlash. Ryan Selkis, founder and CEO of Messari has been running hot with republican agenda items and been a strong outspoken supporter of Trump to the extend that he has now alianted others and was asked to dial things back a notch by his investors. One can see that the stakes are getting higher as we are getting closer to election and some want themselves being seen as more aligned with future power holders.
WazirX Hack akin Lazarus fingerprints
ZachXBT been tracking the $230 million back from WazirX.. The main theft address is 0x04…1a88. And looks very likely to be from North Korean hackers. Looks there is a private key leakage in WazirX exchange. The leaked private keys are used to upgrade a safe multi-sig wallet, which holds a large number of assets, to a malicious contract. Then the malicious contract is used to drain most of the assets in the Safe Wallet,” Yajin (Andy) Zhou, co-founder of Blocksec told The Block. WazirX has since paused all withdrawals, acknowledging the security breach while calling the incident a “force majeure event” beyond its control. Elliptic also saying that on-chain data suggests that the exploit was conducted by North Korea-linked hackers.
Hong Kong Regulator Plans Licensing Regime for Stablecoin Firms
Hong Kong regulators have decided to keep many tough requirements set out last year in a proposal for regulating stablecoins, but made some concessions following public feedback, just ahead of launching stablecoin sandbox trials in pursuit of becoming a hub for cryptocurrency business. HKMA also announced the first batch of stablecoin issuers admitted into a sandbox, first announced in March, for trialling these tokens in different scenarios. Jingdong Coinlink Technology, RD InnoTech, and a joint venture from Standard Chartered Bank, Animoca Brands, and Hong Kong Telecommunications will conduct limited scale tests of stablecoins in e-commerce payments, cross-border trade settlements, and tokenised assets trading. Small steps but in the right direction. Given Hong Kong’s status as global financial hub stablecoins could help the city to become a more attractive Web3 hub too.
QUOTES:
Fascinating #Bitcoin
Michael Dell — Dell CEO
My hot take re “too much investment in infra”: there’s too much investment in *some kinds of infra* and not enough in others, and what’s actually going on is, people want to invest in “the casino” but still feel good about themselves, so they invest in the subset of infra that gets spillover profits from the casino.
Vitalik Buterin
The Orange Man Trump, suddenly cares about crypto. A few thousand voters will decide the US presidential election in key swing states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Courting the young, politically active, and nouveau riche crypto cohort could hand Trump the election. As a result, Trump is burnishing his pro-crypto credentials by saying all the right things. […] I am dismayed that many crypto pundits who should know better are now blindly throwing fancy fundraisers for the Trump campaign. They erroneously believe that Trump is sincere and that if they just donate enough money, Operation Chokehold Crypto will vanish. That is poppycock. Trump is an astute politician. He will say whatever to whoever is to be re-elected. Once in office, anything related to crypto will be a distant memory.
Arthur Hayes
