Krystal Newsflash (29th July 2022)
Welcome to our recap of the major stories in the crypto world! Here’s what has happened over the past week:
Interest Rates have risen AGAIN ☹️
The Federal Reserve has hiked up interest rates by yet another 0.75%.
Interestingly, the markets anticipated that the Federal Reserve would have increased interest rates by 100 basis points, so this ‘lower than expected’ rate increase led to greens in the markets.
However, inflation is still running high, and the US has officially announced that their economy is in a recession.
It may still be a while before we go back to a bull market!
Voyager ⛔️ FTX
FTX’s CEO, Samuel Bankman-Fried, looked to have given a lifeline to Voyager customers.
FTX was offering to provide users with early liquidity, as their funds were locked up amidst Voyager filing for bankruptcy.
These users would receive a cash balance if they opened a new account on FTX, and are given the choice to either withdraw it or “purchase digital assets on the FTX platform”.
However, Voyager has shot back on the proposal, claiming that it will not benefit their customers.
Rather, it seemed to be a ‘low ball’ bid by FTX to acquire more customers.
You can find out more about what happened to Voyager and other centralised lending platforms here, as well as some of the key lessons we can learn from this debacle.
Crypto hacks 🥷
Over this past week, there have been news regarding hacks on 2 crypto protocols:
Audius is one of the music platforms that aims to help musicians receive more equitable revenue for their content.
We featured Audius as one of the top DApps on the Solana network here.
However, there was an exploit on the network, which drained 18 million AUDIO tokens from the treasury.
This led to Audius halting all smart contracts on the Ethereum network,
before they resumed the functionality again.
However, some of the tokens have already been dumped for about $1.08 million.
The Horizon Bridge that allows you to bridge between Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain and Harmony.
However, it was hacked in June, where $100 million worth of ETH was stolen.
Harmony aimed to reimburse the victims of this hack by minting up to 4.97 billion worth of ONE tokens.
However, this has led to a lot of protests by the community,
As it will result in inflationary pressure on the token’s value with a sudden increase in the number of tokens.
Ultimately, the Harmony ONE team withdrew their proposal, and will be heading back to the drawing board to think of another solution.
New Layer 1? 👀
While Ethereum is the undisputed king of DeFi right now, many blockchains are fighting to claim the throne of the best Layer 1 blockchain.
Aptos could be their latest competitor, as they announced a $150 million fund round led by FTX Ventures.
Aptos was founded by former Meta employees who worked on the Diem blockchain, before it was shut down.
We can look forward to a transaction processing speed of up to 160,000 transactions per second (tps), which is much faster than other Layer 1s like Solana (65,000 tps).
Meanwhile, Ethereum has been continuously innovating, and you can read more about their latest upgrade, The Merge, here.
Exchanges being scrutinised 🔎
Coinbase and Kraken are facing trouble from regulators yet again.
The SEC is investigating whether Coinbase was allowing investors to trade cryptocurrencies that they defined to be securities.
However, Coinbase has refuted this, and has appealed to the SEC to regulate cryptocurrencies separately, and not based on the current laws.
This still caused Cathie Wood, CEO of ARK Invest, to sell off 1.41 million Coinbase shares.
Meanwhile, Kraken is being investigated after allowing Iranian customers to use the platform, despite sanctions against Iran by the US.
When will we be able to reach a bull market again? Do you think that Aptos has the potential to overthrow Ethereum? Tweet us or send us a message on Telegram to let us know!
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