“reHash” — Your Weekly Summary of Everything Important in the Crypto World — issue no. 22

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Wanchain

6 min readFeb 17, 2021

reHash issued for February 11th to February 17th

There will not be a word about Elon Musk in this reHash (even if his tweet did pump a random Marscoin). A lot of big names did announce something related to cryptocurrency this week — Mastercard, BNY Mellon, Amazon, Uber. That’s why we are not even mentioning Elon Musk, but concentrate on other news. It was a bit of a strange week, since the quantity of the news was low, but quality-wise we are up there. Hope you enjoy!

NOTE:
reHash is not intended to be original journalism. It is intended to be a brief summary of significant articles and events from the past week with links to the original sources. Sources will always be linked and credited. If you know any good newsletters or Twitter accounts which provide news we have been missing, please mention them in the comments!

ADOPTION

Mastercard will add support for “select cryptocurrencies” in 2021; cryptocurrencies will be supported directly on the Mastercard network; this “will allow many more merchants to accept crypto”; per Raj Dhamodharan, an executive VP at Mastercard — “Our philosophy on cryptocurrencies is straightforward: It’s about choice, Mastercard isn’t here to recommend you start using cryptocurrencies. But we are here to enable customers, merchants and businesses to move digital value — traditional or crypto — however they want.”;
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
BNY Mellon, the oldest bank in USA, will provide services involving cryptocurrencies; they have approximately $2 trillion in AUM, $41 trillion assets under custody and/or administration, they are the biggest custodian bank in the world; “There’s an overall sentiment shift with respect to digital assets, digital assets are the future.”-says Mike Demissie an executive heading the BNY Mellon’s digital assets unit; “Growing client demand for digital assets, maturity of advanced solutions, and improved regulatory clarity present a tremendous opportunity for us to extend our current service offerings to this emerging field,"; “Pending further evaluations and approvals, we expect to begin offering these innovative and industry-shaping capabilities later this year.”
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Amazon has posted a job offer for developers hiring for a Digital Currency Project; the posting has fueled a lot of speculation; “We are looking for a leader to help us launch a new payment product stating with Mexico as our initial launch country,”; “This product will enable customers to convert their cash in to digital currency using which [sic] customers can enjoy online services including shopping for goods and/or services like Prime Video.”
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has said that they will accept Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies if the need arises; they are not planning to invest their money into BTC, though — “It’s a conversation that’s happened that has been quickly dismissed,” he said. “We’re going to keep our cash safe. We’re not in the speculation business,”; as for accepting cryptocurrency: “Just like we accept all kinds of local currency, we are going to look at cryptocurrency and/or bitcoin in terms of currency to transact,”; “That’s good for business. That’s good for our riders and our eaters. That we’ll certainly look at and if there’s a benefit there, if there’s a need there, we’ll do it. We’re just not going to do it as part of a promotion.”
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4
It is now possible to use Bitcoin with Apple Pay; “US cardholders of the Bitpay prepaid Mastercard can add their card to Apple Wallet and spend with Apple Pay. With Apple Pay, Bitpay cardholders can make secure purchases in stores, in apps, and online.”; according to Bitpay CEO Google Pay and Samsung Pay are in the plans: “Adding Apple Pay and soon Google and Samsung Pay makes it easy and convenient to use the Bitpay card in more places from day-to-day items to luxury purchases.”
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

REGULATION

First and second ETF were approved in Canada; in just one week two cryptocurrency ETFs were accepted; first one to be approved was Purpose Bitcoin ETF on February 11th; second one is EBIT; “Canada has a long history of approving new types of ETFs before the U.S. And the U.S. has a history of following. Thus, we think this is net net good news for Bitcoin hopes in the U.S.,”; “By using the regulated Bitcoin Reference Rate from CF Benchmarks, the ETF tracks the value of the Bitcoin and because its structure allows daily creation and redemption of ETF shares investors aren’t forced to pay soaring premiums in the secondary market.”
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Ten hackers were arrested by Europol for sim-swapping attacks that stole a total of over $100 million; “The attacks orchestrated by this criminal gang targeted thousands of victims throughout 2020, including famous internet influencers, sport stars, musicians and their families. The criminals are believed to have stolen from them over USD 100 million in cryptocurrencies after illegally gaining access to their phones.”
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4

DEVELOPMENT

ETH 2.0 beacon chain has now more than 3.1 million ETH staked; that translates to over $5.5 billion as of writing with new transactions coming in;
SOURCE: 1, 2
Verge (Pornhub payment option probably comes to mind) has suffered a 560,000-block reorganization; over 6 months of transaction data have disappeared in what is “likely the deepest reorg that has ever taken place in a ‘top 100’ cryptocurrency,”; “The past 200 days worth of $XVG transaction history just vanished.”; per Verge: “The official block explorer has been restarted and syncing now, the [database] was corrupted, and it looks like some malicious nodes attempted some [transaction] spam and failed at their goal of causing a fork, this is all the information I have currently, an official update will be coming soon, stay calm and be assured your coins are safe, and yes we will be communicating with the exchanges as soon as we have all the details, No there was not a 51% attack.”
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4

GENERAL UPDATES

Alpha Homora was exploited; exploit took place on Cream Finance; attacker has drained over $37 million from the Iron Bank; “On Feb 13 5:37AM UTC, an attacker exploited Alpha Homora V2 using a series of complex transactions, which involved flashloans.”; “The debt is not between users and Alpha Homora v2, but between Alpha Homora V2 and Cream V2. This is because Alpha Homora V2 is integrated with Cream V2 (Iron Bank)”; “Alpha team will work with Andre and Cream team to find remedial action to resolve the debt.”
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
BTC.com Bitcoin Mining Pool has been acquired by the sports gambilng website 500.com; 500.com offers an array of online lottery services; purchase was executed as part of a share exchange agreement; as part of the deal 500.com will acquire the entire mining pool, including domain name and cryptocurrency wallet;
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4
Uniswap has hit a total of $100 billion in trading volume; it is the first DEX to accomplish this feat; Uniswap started on May 2020; Uniswap has over $3.9 billion locked in their smart contract
SOURCE: 1, 2
According to a report by Chainalysis just five services and 270 deposit addresses are responsible for laundering half of all illicit cryptocurrency transactions; “a group of just 1,867 deposit addresses received 75% of all cryptocurrency value sent from illicit addresses in 2020. A smaller group of 270 deposit addresses received 55%. Thinking in terms of raw value rather than percentages, those 270 addresses collectively received $1.3 billion worth of illicit cryptocurrency in 2020, and a smaller group of just 24 received over $500 million worth of illicit cryptocurrency in 2020.”
SOURCE: 1, 2

Thank you, as always, for reading and hope to see you next week! We will have news next week too!

About Wanchain

Wanchain is the infrastructure connecting the decentralized financial world. Wanchain’s live cross-blockchain solution is EVM-based, includes optional private transactions, and provides a decentralized, permissionless, and secure approach for interoperability. Wanchain has employees globally with teams in China, the USA, and other team members around the world in Asia, Africa, and Europe.