By Christopher Hamman
Last week, the cryptocurrency space continued to spin from multiple institutional failures.
The Senate Committee on Agriculture will hold a hearing to investigate FTX. The Chairman of the CFTC will testify.
Binance and Bybit continued their support of the crypto ecosystem with recovery and support programs.
Bitcoin continued to struggle as prices closed at $16,500 while the Altcoins followed suit.
Here’s the lineup of events.
Bitcoin Remains in the Doldrums, DeFi Token Prices Struggle
Investor confidence in the cryptospace continued to wane as contagion affected token prices. Bitcoin prices dipped to as low as $15,663 on Monday, November 21st, 2022, but range around $16,500.
The DeFi space followed similar patterns as regulators deepen their push into industry activities.
Coinbase Added Nine Ethereum Altcoins
Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase revealed it added nine Ethereum altcoins to its custodial platform, Coinbase Custody. The Altcoins included Elastos (ELA), Loom Network (LOOM), Gnosis (GNO), Lattice (LTX), Mango (MNGO), Mina Protocol (MINA), Automata (ATA), Lido (wstETH), and Shpng.
Access to the assets is based on the custodian entity and customer jurisdiction.
US Senate Committee to Hold Hearing on FTX Collapse
The United States Senate Committee on Agriculture will be holding a hearing investigating the failure of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange on December 1st, 2022.
The Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Rostin Benham, is expected to testify.
New York State Bans Carbon-Based Proof-of-Work Mining Citing Environmental Concerns
The Governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, signed into law measures that suspend Proof-of-Work mining activities that use carbon-based power sources within the state for two years.
Mining operators with 100% renewable energy sources are exempt from the legislation.
Binance, Bybit Introduce Industry Support Initiatives
Cryptocurrency trading platform Bybit revealed in a blog post it had launched a $100 million fund to aid institutional traders.
The fund comes at a 0% P.A., with a maximum $10 million quota in USDT spot and perpetual trading on the platform.
Market makers and high-frequency traders are included. Bybit will review access to the fund on a case-by-case basis.
The cryptocurrency space continues to reel from the FTX and Voyager Digital failures.
In a related development, Binance revealed the launch of a $1 billion Web3 Industry Recovery Initiative (IRI). Cryptocurrency heavyweights support the initiative with an initial $50 million contribution, including Jump Crypto, Polygon Ventures, and Animoca Brands.
An additional $1 Billion will be made available to the program further down the line.
Ethereum Proposal that May Crash Transaction Fees Considered for Inclusion
Following the successful implementation of the Ethereum merge, EIP 4844 (Ethereum Improvement Proposal) and the All Core Devs (ACD) team of the Ethereum Foundation has upgraded four others to “Considered for Inclusion” (CFI) status.
The proposal is aimed at reducing the high gas fees users currently pay on the blockchain by accepting discrete amounts of data known as “shards” rather than the full shards, which take a while to get added to the Ethereum blockchain.
Also known as “proto-danksharding”, the core development team indicated that the proposal will be given consideration and added to the blockchain’s development roadmap following further team calls.
The team also announced the shutdown of the Ropsten testnet, a development sandbox for the Ethereum blockchain.
Polkadot’s Anti-Scam Bounty Program Identified 5524 Potentially Fraudulent Websites
The Polkadot anti-scam bounty program has identified 5,524 possible fraudulent projects with over 14,000 entries.
The program, initiated in March and ended in October, was successful in sanitizing the Polkadot ecosystem. Over 125,000 tokens got lost to fraudulent schemes.
Efforts to shut down Telegram messenger-based scams haven’t yielded meaningful results.
Genesis Faces Liquidity Issues, Denied Bankruptcy Rumors
Digital Currency Group subsidiary Genesis has downplayed media reports that it will be filing for bankruptcy. Other media reports indicate that the crypto lending firm is in “constructive conversations with creditors”.
The firm previously suspended its cryptocurrency lending business and was in talks with Binance for a possible bailout which didn’t work out.
Genesis has $175 million in assets stuck in FTX.
State Regulators Set to Investigate Genesis, Others
Following the FTX fallout, several state regulators are looking into cryptocurrency firms for possible securities laws violations. Joseph Borg, the Director of the Alabama Securities Commission, indicated that the State Regulator and others across the country are looking at Genesis links with retail investors as part of inquiries into cryptocurrency firms.
Borg did not identify the other cryptocurrency firms.
Stick with us for more industry highlights as cryptocurrency adoption continues to grow!
