Do Kwon faces legal troubles in Korea, China remains a top contributor to Bitcoin mining, and Ethereum eyes ‘huge testing milestone’ ahead of merge: Hodler’s Digest, May 15–21

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Com­ing every Sat­ur­day, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every sin­gle impor­tant news sto­ry that hap­pened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adop­tion and reg­u­la­tion high­lights, lead­ing coins, pre­dic­tions and much more — a week on Coin­tele­graph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

Court documents reveal Do Kwon dissolved Terraform Labs Korea days before LUNA crash

Ter­raform Labs co-founder dis­solved two of the entity’s loca­tions in South Korea, as well as Ter­raform Labs Korea, just pri­or to the LUNA and UST col­lapse, accord­ing to legal doc­u­ments. Although the deci­sion to dis­solve the offices was made dur­ing an April 30 share­hold­er meet­ing, the tim­ing raised eye­brows with­in the cryp­tocur­ren­cy community. 

As one might expect, the after­math of Terra’s implo­sion con­tin­ued to rever­ber­ate across the mar­ket this week. South Korea’s gov­ern­ment is look­ing into the sit­u­a­tion and Do Kwon him­self could be sum­moned to a par­lia­men­tary hear­ing.

 

 

 

Huge testing milestone for Ethereum: Ropsten testnet Merge set for June 8

In the first half of June, Ethereum’s Rop­sten test­net merge is sched­uled to com­mence. Put sim­ply, the event will sim­u­late the Ethereum proof-of-work (PoW) main­net and Ethereum proof-of-stake (PoS) Bea­con Chain merge.

“Rop­sten test­net is get­ting merged on June 8!” said Prys­mat­ic Labs Ethereum core devel­op­er Pre­ston Van Loon. “Merg­ing Rop­sten is a huge test­ing mile­stone towards Ethereum’s main­net merge lat­er this year.”

Fur­ther report­ing indi­cates an August tar­get for the actu­al merge.

 

China returns as 2nd top Bitcoin mining hub despite the crypto ban

Although Chi­na banned cryp­to in 2021, the coun­try still accounts for about 21% of Bitcoin’s min­ing pow­er as of Jan­u­ary 2022, accord­ing to data from the Cam­bridge Bit­coin Elec­tric­i­ty Con­sump­tion Index (CBECI). 

Back in 2019, Chi­na held over 75% of the world’s Bit­coin hash rate. Although 21% is a step down from its for­mer glo­ry, the num­ber puts Chi­na in sec­ond place in terms of BTC’s glob­al hash rate, with the Unit­ed States in first. The CBECI also includ­ed data on oth­er coun­tries, reveal­ing that the states of Ken­tucky, Geor­gia and Texas cur­rent­ly lead BTC hash rate pro­duc­tion in the U.S.

 

 

 

Crypto giants co-launch Chainabuse platform to water down rising scams

The cryp­to com­mu­ni­ty now has a free plat­form for rais­ing aware­ness about scams and oth­er nefar­i­ous activ­i­ty, thanks to com­bined efforts from Cir­cle, Aave, TRM Labs, Civic, Hed­era, The Solana Foun­da­tion and Binance.US. 

The online plat­form, called Chainabuse, offers both indi­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es a place to pro­vide aware­ness about fraud in cryp­to and finance. Addi­tion­al­ly, the plat­form includes a data­base of hacks and scams.

 

Goldman Sachs and Barclays invest in UK crypto trading platform Elwood

Elwood Tech­nolo­gies, an insti­tu­tion­al cryp­to trad­ing plat­form, has secured invest­ment from two main­stream giants: Bar­clays and Gold­man Sachs. Part of a Series A fund­ing round, the invest­ments from the mega banks came along­side oth­er play­ers, such as Galaxy Digital. 

Gold­man sees increas­ing insti­tu­tion­al cryp­to inter­est, accord­ing to glob­al head of dig­i­tal assets Matthew McDer­mott. “As insti­tu­tion­al demand for cryp­tocur­ren­cy ris­es, we have been active­ly broad­en­ing our mar­ket pres­ence and capa­bil­i­ties to cater for client demand,” he said.

 

 

 

 

 

Winners and Losers

 

At the end of the week, Bit­coin (BTC) is at $29,037, Ether (ETH) at $1,943 and XRP at $0.40. The total mar­ket cap is at $1.24 tril­lion, accord­ing to CoinMarketCap.

Among the biggest 100 cryp­tocur­ren­cies, the top three alt­coin gain­ers of the week are Kyber Net­work Crys­tal v2 (KNC) at 46.16%, KuCoin Token (KCS) at 19.99% and Kade­na (KDA) at 17.37%. 

The top three alt­coin losers of the week are Ter­raUSD (UST) at ‑62.18%, Con­vex Finance (CVX) at ‑23.47% and Heli­um (HNT) at ‑21.56%.

For more info on cryp­to prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s mar­ket analy­sis.

 

 

 

 

Most Memorable Quotations

 

“When the mar­ket is hot, it’s hard to focus because there is so much noise.”

Alek­san­dra Arta­monovska­ja, part­ner­ships lead at Joyn

 

“Focus­ing on and invest­ing in user expe­ri­ence is the road to mass adop­tion and to the new world of Web3.”

Dominik Schiener, co-founder and chair­man of the Iota Foundation

 

“Ethereum’s over­whelm­ing mind­share helps explain why its users have been will­ing to pay more than $15 mil­lion in fees per day on aver­age just to use the blockchain.”

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)

 

“If you cre­ate an algo­rith­mic sta­ble­coin and you don’t expect spec­u­la­tive attacks, wel­come to the real world.”

Mike McGlone, senior com­mod­i­ty strate­gist for Bloomberg

 

“ESG is a scam. It has been weaponized by pho­ny social jus­tice warriors.”

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla

 

“Cryp­to as a tech­nol­o­gy and asset class intro­duces val­ue and inno­va­tion that are unique and irre­place­able, and we believe that one bad apple in the short run will not affect long-term demand for cryp­to assets and the indus­try as a whole.”

Jun Du, co-founder of Huo­bi Global

 

Prediction of the Week 

 

Bitcoin price predictions abound as traders focus on the next BTC halving cycle

Bit­coin remained in the dol­drums this week, reflect­ing uncer­tain­ty and sub­dued demand across the dig­i­tal asset space. Spec­u­la­tion on where BTC might head next revolves around the tim­ing of the asset’s four-year halv­ing cycle, as well as Bitcoin’s pre­vi­ous price action. One pos­si­ble out­come, based on the halv­ing cycle, sees BTC’s price poten­tial­ly bot­tom­ing in the final two months of 2022. Some spec­u­la­tors, how­ev­er, remain hope­ful for an upcom­ing $100,000 blow-off top for BTC. 

 

 

FUD of the Week 

Deus Finance’s dollar-pegged stablecoin DEI falls below 60 cents

DEI, an algo­rith­mic sta­ble­coin of the Deus Finance project, declined to $0.52 ear­li­er this week. The asset was meant to hold val­ue on par with $1. How­ev­er, DEUS, the project’s gov­er­nance token, increased sig­nif­i­cant­ly in price, reach­ing $327.28 at one point, up from $163.40. The DEI price col­lapse came after the pro­to­col expe­ri­enced two flash loan attacks in recent months. Fears of a UST-style bank run on the asset also com­pelled Deus Finance devel­op­ers to pause DEI redemptions.

 

South Korean watchdog reportedly fines Terraform Labs $78M for tax evasion

Ter­raform Labs and Do Kwon report­ed­ly must pay $78 mil­lion due to tax eva­sion, accord­ing to news out­let Naver. The tax eva­sion charges come from South Korea’s tax authority. 

This is not the first time Ter­raform Labs has raised red flags on tax eva­sion. The com­pa­ny first appeared on tax author­i­ties’ radar in June 2021 on sus­pi­cions of cor­po­rate and income tax evasion.

 

Axie Infinity’s Discord bot compromised, hackers issue fake minting message

The Dis­cord chan­nel for Game­Fi NFT project Axie Infin­i­ty saw its MEE6 bot (a com­mon­ly-used tool on Dis­cord for chan­nel man­age­ment) com­pro­mised this week. Among its wrong­ful actions, the appre­hend­ed bot put out an untrue mint­ing announce­ment. MEE6 bot takeovers are report­ed­ly noth­ing new. The sit­u­a­tion was fixed, although users may have to restart Dis­cord for the changes to take effect. The MEE6 Dis­cord sup­port chan­nel did not acknowl­edge the sus­pi­cious activity.

 

 

Best Cointelegraph Features

What really goes on at a crypto OTC desk?

“Odds are that a sin­gle sell­er in the order book is not able to trans­act such a large amount as 100 BTC. Hence, you will need to buy from mul­ti­ple sell­ers at high­er prices.”

Life-changing money: The 10 most expensive NFTs sold to date

With non­fun­gi­ble tokens rak­ing in incred­i­ble prices, have a look at the 10 most expen­sive NFTs sold to date.

Indian government’s ‘blockchain not crypto’ stance highlights lack of understanding

India’s “blockchain, not cryp­to” stance has led to dis­as­trous cryp­to poli­cies, forc­ing sev­er­al thriv­ing cryp­to firms to relocate.

 

 

 

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