Cross-chain bridge protocol Nomad was hacked for over $190M back in August and is now set to reopen and partially reimburse customers.
The catch? Users must go through KYC verification. Crypto natives hate KYC.
Things are looking grim for SBF - he's broke, unsure how he's going to pay his fancy new celebrity lawyer, he's being investigated for whether he manipulated the prices of UST and Luna and The U.S. Senate Banking Committee asked him to present himself on Dec. 14 to testify.
The question on everyone's mind is whether he will eventually face actual repercussions for his fraud.
In related news, the chief technology officer and co-founder of Blockparty was arrested for stealing over $1M so there is hope of justice in due time - which could be years.
Daily Bullets:
- Nomad to relaunch and partially reimburse users from $190M hack in August. Users must go through KYC
- The U.S. Senate Banking Committee wants SBF to testify
- U.S. prosecutors are probing into whether SBF could have manipulated the prices of TerraUSD and Luna
- GBTC, hit a record high discount rate of nearly 50% relative to the price of bitcoin
- Celsius Network must return around $44M worth of crypto back to customers
- Ethereum next hard fork, Shanghai, coming March 2023 - will allow Beacon Chain staked ETH withdrawals
- Ren 1.0 network is shutting down, holders of Ren assets should bridge back to native chains or risk losing them
- Blur offers some NFT traders 50% refund after ETH losses from UI bug
- Cosmos-based DEX Osmosis launched a stableswap
- Polygon-based Starbucks NFTs are now available to beta testers
- Bitmex added a derivative tied to Ethereum staking yield (ETHYLD) with up to 2x leverage
- Bybit integrated decentralized exchange ApeX to achieve 2-in-1 platform
- ImmutableX and MoonPay FT Checkout. Enables users to mint and own an asset using a credit or debit card
- Nouns DAO will donate 100 ETH ($123,000) to ZachXBT
- Lawsuit against EthereumMax founders, Kim Kardashian and boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr dismissed
- Coinbase’s revenue this year will likely be cut in half
Now for a more expanded and detailed look at the day for those who want sources:
Crypto News:
- Cross-chain bridge protocol Nomad is set to relaunch and partially reimburse those that lost funds in its $190M hack in August. Users must go through KYC verification to let them bridge back assets to Ethereum
- Plaid, a firm that connects banks and fintech firms, laid off about 260 employees as it grapples with the slowing economy
- Crypto lender Celsius Network must return around $44M worth of crypto back to customers, even if it didn't enter Celsius's interest-bearing accounts. The possibility existed that Celsius could have claimed ownership of those funds
- Nouns DAO will donate 100 ETH ($123,000) to ZachXBT to fund his investigative journalism
- PayPal will expand its crypto service to Luxembourg in what may open the door for the service to become available across the European Union
- Ren 1.0 network is shutting down due to the events surrounding Alameda. As compatibility between Ren 1.0 and 2.0 cannot be guaranteed, holders of Ren assets should bridge back to native chains ASAP, or risk losing them
- American fintech company ZELF introduced an anonymous Visa debit card to be accepted at any of Visa’s 80 million locations worldwide - will allow users to open up a U.S. dollar checking account with only their name, email, and phone number
- Japanese bank Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group is planning a trial of soulbound tokens for identity verification via a business partnership with HashPort Group
- Signature Bank (SBNY) will shrink its deposits tied to crypto by $8B to $10B, signaling a move away from the digital asset industry for the bank that until recently had been one of the most crypto-friendly companies on Wall Street
Economic/Government/Regulatory:
- The U.S. Senate Banking Committee wants SBF to testify on the collapse of his crypto exchange, FTX and linked trading firm, Alameda Research
- U.S. prosecutors are probing into whether FTX founder and former CEO SBF could have manipulated the prices of TerraUSD and Luna cryptocurrencies earlier this year to benefit his businesses
- U.S. authorities arrested the former chief technology officer and co-founder of Blockparty, a blockchain events startup, for allegedly stealing over $1M of crypto and fiat from the firm
- Crypto hedge fund BKCoin fired co-founder Kevin Kang in October for allegedly misappropriating $12M in assets from three multi-strategy funds
- A federal judge dismissed a proposed class-action lawsuit against EthereumMax founders and celebrity promoters, including Kim Kardashian and boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr
- The Bank of Spain plans to start a wholesale CBDC project, asking financial institutions and tech providers to submit proposals for the initiative by Jan. 31
Exchange News:
- Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said the crypto exchange's revenue this year will likely be cut in half or more from 2021's sales number, blaming the state of the industry and shaken investor confidence
- Crypto derivatives exchange Bitmex added a derivative tied to Ethereum staking yield. Traders can long or short the asset at up to 2x leverage with ETH staking yield swap (ETHYLD)
- Bybit integrated decentralized exchange ApeX Pro into its offering in an effort to give customers the opportunity to trade on both types of exchanges on one platform
- Oasys (OAS) will be listed on KuCoin, OKX, Bybit, Gate, and Huobi on December 12th
- A court in South Korea has supported the decision of local exchanges to delist Wemade’s Wemix tokens, dismissing Wemade’s request to cancel the delisting
- Binance will remove and cease trading on the following margin trading pairs: Cross Margin Pairs: BNX/BTC, BNX/BUSD, BNX/USDT, DREP/BUSD, DREP/USDT, LOKA/BUSD, LOKA/USDT, MOB/BUSD, MOB/USDT. Isolated Margin Pairs: TORN/BTC, TORN/BUSD, TORN/USDT
DeFi News:
- Ethereum devs determined the network’s next hard fork, called “Shanghai,” will have a target release timeframe of March 2023 - will allow Beacon Chain staked ether (ETH) withdrawals
- Cosmos-based DEX Osmosis launched a stableswap
- Staking on Euler Finance has been deployed. You can earn $EUL by lending ETH, USDC and USDT. APRs range from 9-45%
- Tranchess, a liquid staking provider for the BNB ecosystem, will expand liquid staking on Ethereum with the launch of a non-custodial staking service and the qETH token
NFT/Gaming/Metaverse News:
- ImmutableX and MoonPay announce NFT Checkout. The Moonpay primary NFT sale checkout feature enables users to mint and own an asset using a credit or debit card
- Blur offers some NFT traders 50% refund after ETH losses from UI bug - we will query for collection bids that were accepted over 25% of the non-flagged floor and refund them automatically
- Polygon-based Starbucks NFTs are now available to beta testers with a marketplace powered by Nifty Gateway coming in 2023
- Author and podcast host Tim Ferriss launched an NFT-driven fiction project called The Legend of Cockpunch. The initial mint sold out, with secondary sales since topping $3.3M worth of ETH
Fundraises:
- Binance Labs is leading a private round II for GoPlus Security who is working on the “security infrastructure” for Web3 by providing open, permissionless, user-driven security services
- Bitcoin․com completes VERSE $50M token sale and launches token on Verse DEX
- Shibuya, a decentralized video platform co-founded by Emily Yang of pplpleasr fame, raised $6.9M in seed funding led by a16z and Variant with additional participation from Joe Tsai, GMJP, Kevin Durant and Paris Hilton
Early Stage Projects:
- SUI Community Access Program - how Sui community members gain access to the SUI token on Mainnet
- GammaSwap, the first protocol enabling users to turn their impermanent loss into impermanent gain, is launching on Arbitrum
- Introducing Reth - a free, open-source Ethereum execution layer client built by Paradigm
- Introducing MUX V2 - Leveraged Trading Aggregator. First integrate with GMX
- Hooked Airdrop Announcement - total 6 batches of HOOK airdrop events for existing Hooked Party Pass NFT holders
Data:
TL;DR: We can see that before being completely drained of TVL back in August, Nomad Bridge had done 37,200 total transactions, $912M in all time volume and was used by 21,398 unique users. Now they are partially refunding users who lost funds. Looking at bridge volume over the past month: Binance-peg tokens, Multichain, Arbitrum Bridge, Stargate and Polygon PoS Bridge saw the highest volume. Also, Osmosis is debuting a stableswap so checking out their TVL, we can see it’s fallen pretty hard from its $1.8B peak.
Nomad:
Bridges:
Osmosis:
Research/Reads:
- Life After FTX: How Solana DeFi Is Starting Over—Without SBF’s Serum - source
- Huobi Research - Global Crypto Industry Overview and Trends - source
- Towards Digital Self-Sovereignty: The Web3 Identity Stack - source
- What Web3 could learn from Twitter’s timeline architecture - source
- Rethinking "Governance Token" and Advancing "Non-Token Governance" - source
- Ethereum Foundation - Allocation Update Q3 2022 - source
- Nansen - An On-Chain Look at Ethereum's Liquid Staking Landscape - source
- EigenLayer: The Restaking Collective - source
- Metaverse Report - source
- Account Abstraction Will Evolve Wallets - source
Crypto Twitterverse:
Despite Blockfi filing for bankruptcy on November 29th, mystery still surrounds the remaining assets.
Time for a Part 2, DEEP dive into some previously unlabelled wallets, and suspicious movements of the FTT token over the Summer of 2022.
🧵 👇 twitter.com/ArkhamIntel/st…
— Arkham (@ArkhamIntel)
Dec 8, 2022
Are #crypto whales accumulating post-FTX collapse? 🐋
Our research shows that the number of #BTC and #ETH whale addresses has reached all-year highs, reflecting a combination of whales retreating into self-custody & buying the dip.
Here's a short thread on what we found 🧵
— CoinGecko (@coingecko)
Dec 8, 2022
ChatGPT has crossed 1M+ users in just 5 days.
To compare, it took Netflix 41 months, FB - 10 months, and Instagram - 2.5 months.
But many haven’t yet realized its full potential.
Here are the 10 mindblowing things you can do using it right now:
— Aleksandr Volodarsky 🇺🇦 (@volodarik)
Dec 8, 2022
Did we miss anything or is there anything you want to discuss? We’d Love to hear your feedback and engage with the community! Feel free to leave a comment and let us know your thoughts on the Crypto market!
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