FED Raises Interest Rate By 0.25%, BTC Fluctuates Around $29,300

The Fed is expected to raise rates by another 25bps at its meeting later today as inflation remains well above the central banks target.  At future meetings, a decision can not be made on whether to stop raising interest rates, continuing to rely on data.  Bitcoins (BTC) price was little changed at $29,300 shortly after the announcement.  On July 27, the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points to a range of 5.25%-5.50%, reaching its highest level since 2001, in line with market expectations.  The Federal Reserve FOMC said members are unanimous on the interest rate decision and will continue evaluating further information. The full impact of the tightening is yet to be felt. High-interest rates have affected the areas most sensitive to interest rates but have not had a complete impact on the economy.  The labor market is still tight, but the balance of supply and demand is more balanced. Although challenging, the number of jobs available and the number of job seekers gradually became proportional. Inflation has eased but still needs a long way to return to 2%. The Fed has cooled down inflation without significantly weakening the economy/labor market, which is a good thing.  In the face of rising

2023-07-27Deep Dive

Dogecoin Rises 8% After Elon Musk’s Promotion Of DogeDesigner Video

The price of Dogecoin (DOGE) surged more than 8% in the past 24 hours after receiving momentum from avid fan Elon Musk.  Musk retweeted a video tweet related to the new Logo X on Twitter shared by DogeDesigner.  Earlier, the Twitter boss said he wanted to remove the bird icon on Twitter and replace it with an “X”.  Dogecoin (DOGE) received great motivation from Twitter boss Elon Musk to increase sharply by 8% while the whole market was quiet.  DOGE at the time of writing is up 8.12% over the past 24 hours, trading for $0.081. And in the past week, it has gained almost 17%, making it one of the best performing coins.  24h DOGE price chart. Source: CoinMarketCap  The impetus for DOGE to surge while the significant tokens of the market were sleeping came from familiar fan Elon Musk when he tweeted an ad for the social networking sites new logo, originally shared by DogeDesigner.  A few days earlier, Twitter owner Elon Musk said he wanted to get rid of the bird icon on Twitter and replace it with an “X” while emphasizing that this should have been done long ago. Since Musk bought Twitter in October 2022, the company has changed its business name

2023-07-26Deep Dive

CFTC Charges Tennessee Couple For Defrauding Investors In Crypto Scam Scheme

Tennessee couple charged with defrauding over 100 investors in the “Blessings of God Thru Crypto” scheme by the CFTC.  They raised $6 million, promising high returns through crypto futures trading.  CFTC seeks restitution, but recovery difficult as funds were transferred to untraceable digital wallets.  The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed a complaint on July 25 against Michael and Amanda Griffis, owners of a real estate company in Clarksville, Tennessee, for allegedly defrauding over 100 people in a digital assets commodity pool scheme. The couple raised more than $6 million by persuading colleagues and customers to pool funds for trading digital assets.  Operating under the name “Blessings of God Thru Crypto,” the defendants promised high returns to participants by claiming to trade “crypto futures” on the “Apex Trading Platform” with guidance from an individual named “Coach Wendy.” Their personal and professional connections were leveraged to lend credibility to the scheme.  A commodity pool is an investment vehicle that combines funds from multiple investors for trading in futures contracts or other commodity interests, typically managed by a pool operator.  The CFTC is seeking restitution, civil monetary penalties, permanent trading and registration bans, as well as a permanent injunction against further violations of the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA)

2023-07-26Deep Dive

KuCoin Faces Profit Woes Surround, But No Layoffs Confirmed

KuCoin, a cryptocurrency exchange, denies rumors of laying off 30% of its workforce amid declining profits and legal challenges from the New York State Attorney General.  The exchange introduced strict KYC policies in response to the lawsuit, impacting its profits.  Binance has also faced reports of workforce reductions as both exchanges reevaluate talent and adapt to regulatory pressures.  Cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin has been grappling with rumors of potential workforce reductions as it contends with legal challenges and declining profits.  Twitter news account Wu Blockchain cited three anonymous internal sources in a tweet, claiming that KuCoin plans to lay off up to 30% of its employees, amounting to nearly 1,000 staff members. The decline in profits was attributed to the implementation of strict Know Your Customer (KYC) policies, a move made in response to the legal challenges posed by the United States.  However, a spokesperson for KuCoin refuted the claims, stating that the company has not initiated any layoff plans, CoinDesk reported. Instead, the spokesperson asserted that any personnel adjustments would be part of routine business development and semi-annual employee performance reviews—a normal process in organizational development.  The legal troubles faced by the exchange are not unique, as the cryptocurrency industry faces increasing scrutiny from regulators worldwide.

2023-07-26Deep Dive

EraLend, a zkSync DeFi Protocol, Suffers Malicious Attack, Incurs Losses of Millions of Dollars

On July 25th, Twitter user Spreek revealed that the zkSync DeFi protocol, EraLend, suffered an attack resulting in a loss of at least 1.7 million USDC. Spreek pointed out that the attack on EraLend may be related to pricing issues with high-risk tokens, but the scale of the hacker attack has not been confirmed yet.  Subsequently, EraLend team members confirmed the attack. The official announcement was made on Discord stating that a security event was detected on July 25th at 9:27:21 UTC, confirming that their platform was attacked. Only USDC was affected by this incident. All other assets remain safe and unaffected, and users are strongly advised not to deposit USDC at this time.  Furthermore, the attack has been brought under control, and the attacker is no longer able to continue their actions.  Afterward, the blockchain security firm BlockSec issued an announcement stating that they are assisting EraLend in resolving the issue. The attack was identified as a read-only reentrancy attack, with estimated losses of approximately 3.4 million USD. Additionally, the attackers address was disclosed as 0xf1D076c9Be4533086f967e14EE6aFf204D5ECE7a.  On July 26th, EraLend revealed the cause of the attack: the attacker manipulated the oracle price to withdraw approximately 2.76 million USD from the USDC pool. EraLend

2023-07-26Deep Dive

Paradigm's Article on 10 Key Cryptocurrency Focus Areas

Paradigms official website releases an article titled “Collaborate with Paradigm,” stating the desire to collaborate with outstanding talents in the cryptocurrency space. Currently, they have the capacity to pursue 3 to 5 new in-depth collaborations. Paradigm unveils several cryptocurrency focus areas they have been exploring:  Intent-centric protocols and infra  Hooks on top of Uniswap v4 (especially ones that focus on LP profitability and loss-vs-rebalancing)  Infra for a rollup-centric, multi-chain world  Shared sequencers  Onchain games (something we would enjoy playing)  Crypto-native social apps  Prediction markets (creating markets with real liquidity)  Stablecoin payments/fintech (as stablecoins mature and banking becomes more troublesome)  Onchain treasuries (a natural step after stablecoins and before other real world assets)  ZKP apps (there is a ZKP capability overhang: science is ahead of applied research, which is ahead of applications)  According to previous reports, on June 28th, Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang tweeted that Paradigm has never been more focused on cryptocurrencies. The company will continue to invest at various stages, publish original research, actively support the development of invested companies like Uniswap v2, v3, v4, release open-source projects like Foundry and Reth, and advocate for progressive policies.  On July 2nd, Matt Huang tweeted, “We previously removed all content about cryptocurrencies from our website landing page, which was a bit absurd. That

2023-07-26Deep Dive

PGN Officially Launches Mainnet on OP Stack Based L2 Network

Based on the OP Stack-based Layer2 network, Public Goods Network (PGN) announces the official launch of its mainnet. After six months of network operation, PGN will evaluate and allocate fees based on accumulated data.  It is reported that PGN is a highly composable EVM-compatible Rollup, with plans to allocate a significant portion of the sequencers net income to support the Ethereum ecosystem and other public goods. Portions of Gitcoins next grants round, GG18, will also run on PGN through Gitcoin Grants Stack.  According to previous reports, on July 7th, Gitcoin published an article introducing the OP Stack-based Layer2 network, Public Goods Network (PGN).  After 6 months of mainnet launch, PGN will evaluate and allocate fees based on accumulated impact data. Participants can join the network alliance and collaborate to determine the distribution of sequencer fees. PGN commits to conducting at least a two-year experiment, allowing partners to run DApps on PGN to support public goods funding. PGN governance alliance members, including Protocol Guild, Public Nouns, Clr.fund, Giveth, Hypercerts, Protocol Labs, Octant, Eco, Hedgey, Gitcoin, will oversee the distribution of sequencer fees, ensuring the growth and sustainability of public goods funding.  OP Stack is a standardized set of open-source modules that can be assembled into

2023-07-26Deep Dive

Palmswap Loses Over $900,000 Due to Issues with Liquidity Addition and Removal Calculation Methods

Palmswap has fallen victim to a hacker attack, resulting in a loss of 901,400 USDT funds. The official response includes suspending the PLP contract and related contracts.  It is reported that Palmswap is a decentralized perpetual leverage trading platform built on the BNB Chain, and it has forked the code from GMX. Prior to the hack, its Total Value Locked (TVL) was 1.07 million USD.  According to the security team Beosin Alert, Palmswap was attacked due to a problem with the calculation method for adding and removing liquidity. When the attacker added liquidity, the exchange rate between USDP and PLP was 1:1. However, when the same amount of PLP was removed, the attacker was able to exchange it for 1.9 times the amount of USDP, resulting in a profit.  

2023-07-25Deep Dive

SyncSwap: Total Trading Volume Surpasses $2 Billion

On July 24th, the decentralized exchange platform SyncSwap, based on zkSync, officially announced that its total trading volume has surpassed $2 billion.  Furthermore, SyncSwap has launched on the Ethereum Layer2 network, Linea mainnet.  SyncSwap is a decentralized exchange (DEX) built on zero-knowledge technology, inheriting the security of Ethereum, and providing a user-friendly, fast, and low-cost DeFi experience. SyncSwap supports features such as custom fee structures, advanced routers, delegated voting token model, and governance.  According to Defillama, the total value locked (TVL) in zkSync is $189.74 million. Among them, SyncSwaps TVL is $82.3 million, accounting for approximately 43.3% of zkSyncs total TVL, making it the leading DeFi protocol on zkSync.  Currently, SyncSwap has not issued any tokens. On April 10th, the Chinese Twitter account of SyncSwap made statements related to airdrops, which led to the project team abandoning the idea. However, from the statements, it was revealed that 15% of the SyncSwap tokens will be distributed as airdrops to users, while the tokens obtained through trading incentives do not belong to the airdrop allocation.  If you want to interact with zkSync and receive airdrops, using SyncSwap for transactions is still worth considering.  

2023-07-25Deep Dive

Twitter Rebrands to X, Triggering a Dramatic Surge in the Price of X Token

On July 13th, a team led by Elon Musk announced the establishment of xAI, an artificial intelligence company aimed at understanding the “true nature of the universe.”  xAI stated on its website that the team will be led by Musk himself, and its executives have previously worked in leading positions at various cutting-edge AI companies, including DeepMind under Google, Microsoft, Tesla, and academic institutions like the University of Toronto.  10 days later, Musk tweeted that he plans to replace the Twitter bluebird image and is open to using an excellent X Logo design. Over the following days, Musk took a series of actions, including announcing that X.com is now linked to Twitter, introducing a temporary X Logo, and changing his personal Twitter accounts profile picture to the X Logo. Additionally, the official Twitter account also changed its profile picture to the X Logo.  As a result of Musks series of statements and actions related to “X” on Twitter, the price of a token named “X” experienced a remarkable increase in the short term. However, it is important to note that currently, there is no association between the token named “X” available on Dextool and Musk. Furthermore, Musk has not announced any plans to

2023-07-25Deep Dive
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