● MicroStrategy bought another 12,333 bitcoins at an average price of $28,136
MicroStrategy founder Michael Saylor posted on Twitter that MicroStrategy bought another 12,333 bitcoins at an average price of $28,136, spending about $347 million. As of June 27, 2023, MicroStrategy has purchased a total of 152,333 bitcoins at an average price of $4.52 billion, with an average price of $29,668.
● Over the past month, the daily trading volume of crypto exchanges has rebounded to $19.5 billion, an increase of nearly 80%.
According to The Block, Devin Ryan, an analyst at JMP, an equity research institution, said that trading volumes on cryptocurrency exchanges are picking up, driven by institutions.
Data shows that daily exchange trading volume (seven-day moving average) has risen sharply over the past month, climbing from $11 billion on May 26 to nearly $19.5 billion on June 26, but is still a long way from the peak of more than $150 billion in the previous crypto bull cycle.
Devin Ryan attributes the recent increase in trading volume to institutional entry. He said: "We believe that the increase in (cryptocurrency exchange) trading volume in the week ended June 24, accompanied by a 12% increase in total cryptocurrency market capitalization, may be attributed to BlackRock's filing with the U.S. SEC Some momentum after the spot Bitcoin ETF application." After BlackRock, many giants such as Invesco and Fidelity also followed suit. Additionally, LMAX Digital, which caters to institutional clients, saw total notional trading volume of $415 million on Monday, 15% above its 30-day average.
● Fireblocks CEO: It is retail investors, not institutions, that are driving the sharp rise in Bitcoin prices
According to Cointelegraph, Michael Shaulov, CEO and co-founder of institutional custody platform Fireblocks, said that spot Bitcoin ETFs will deliver new institutional funds to Bitcoin, and it will be retail investors who will ultimately drive a sharp rise in Bitcoin prices. When institutions participate in the market in a quiet way, they are almost able to do so without affecting prices. Mid-2020 was another period of massive inflows of institutional funds. But prices did not really rise until later this year when retail investors went crazy about crypto assets.
Shaulov explained, “Despite the large inflows, these institutions are mature enough to buy BTC slowly and use algorithms that do not drive the market higher. 50% of the growth comes from retail investors because their participation methods are less complex and The price has fluctuated significantly. For some institutions that are not currently participating in the market, it will definitely be easier to add Bitcoin to their allocation.” In addition, Shaulov said that he personally believes that Bitcoin is the “ultimate insurance asset.”
● Matrixport: Bitcoin price is expected to rebound to $35,000 in July and may rise to $45,000 by the end of the year
According to CoinDesk, crypto service provider Matrixport said in a report on Wednesday that bullish Bitcoin investors are preparing for a "seasonal rebound" as Bitcoin prices tend to rebound in July. Over the past decade, Bitcoin prices have gained an average of more than 11% in July, with positive returns in seven of 10 months. July returns over the past three years have been around 27%, 20% and 24% respectively.
Research director Markus Thielen said that although the summer is often a period of Bitcoin price consolidation, July is often strong, mediocre in August, and September is a selling period. Matrixport expects Bitcoin prices to rebound to $35,000 before selling off and falling back to $30,000. In addition, it predicts that Bitcoin’s year-end target price is $45,000.
● Miners transferred more than $1 billion in Bitcoin to exchanges in the past two weeks
According to CoinDesk, Bitcoin miners sent more than $1 billion worth of Bitcoin to cryptocurrency exchanges in the past two weeks.
On-chain analytics firm CryptoQuant said on Tuesday that more than 33,860 BTC were sent to derivatives exchanges, although most have since been transferred back to the original wallet. Miners also reduced their reserves by around 8,000 BTC, only a small portion of which was sent to spot trading exchanges. Analysts at CryptoQuant said that miners are likely to conduct hedging transactions by using newly minted Bitcoin as collateral for derivatives trading activities.
Meanwhile, $128 million worth of Bitcoin rewards have been sent to cryptocurrency exchanges over the past few days, an amount estimated to be 315% of daily mining revenue, according to on-chain analytics firm Glassnode. By that standard, it was the largest amount ever sent.
● Hootie Rashidifard launches $29 million crypto fund Hash3
According to the Daily Planet, Hootie Rashidifard announced the launch of a $29 million seed-stage crypto fund, Hash3, which will invest $250,000 to $1 million in some aspiring founders, aiming to promote the establishment of an open and permissionless future.
So far, Hash3 Fund has made 10 investments, including EigenLayer, Ajna.finance and Crossmint. Hash3 consultants include Surojit Chatterjee, former chief product officer of Coinbase, Yuga Cohler, senior software engineer of Coinbase, Corey Miller, senior product manager of dYdX, Gokul Rajaram, member of the board of directors of Coinbase, and Ramani Ramachandran, founder of Router Protocol.
It is understood that Hootie Rashidifard worked for five years at Canaan Partners, a venture capital firm with a capital management of US$7 billion, and began investing in cryptocurrency and financial technology in 2017.
● Azuki Lianchuang: Elementals casting was mishandled and the pre-sale window should have been extended
Azuki co-founder location tba posted on Twitter that the Azuki Elementals casting process was flawed and seriously underestimated the time required for the first and second phases of the pre-sale for Azuki and BEANZ holders. The duration should have been extended to more than 10 minutes. , so that there is enough buffering if anything goes wrong (and there are problems). Additionally, despite being subject to capacity constraints, subsequent Azuki Elementals websites will be hosted by Vercel to ensure that expected loads can be handled.
Location TBA said, "The entire team and I are saddened by what happened. We wanted to prepare a wonderful experience for everyone. I take personal responsibility for what happened and the pre-sale window should have been extended."
According to previous reports, a community member pointed out that the same image appeared in the Elementals map. Azuki co-founder 2PMFLOW responded that this was a technical glitch because the event log of the data provider was outdated due to the reorganization of the Ethereum block, resulting in the loss of a small number of Tokens. Metadata was mishandled. The team is working hard to restore the correct images and metadata.
● Christian: Azuki’s approach is unwise and willing to buy his company for US$40 million
Christian, co-founder of crypto fund NDV and a major Azuki owner, commented on Twitter, "It is unwise for Azuki to destroy a $1 billion project (and the most loyal community on earth) in order to gain $38 million in profits. I am willing to bid. Buy the entire company for $40 million." Boba Epicure, a former researcher at Dragonfly, was willing to pay a higher price to acquire the project, and Christian replied that the project could be split and turned into a real DAO.
● Paradigm Lianchuang: We have never been so focused on cryptocurrency and will continue to invest at all stages and publish original research.
Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang tweeted that Paradigm has never been so focused on cryptocurrency. Five years ago, when Fred and I founded Paradigm, there was no complete plan. We were just curious about the future, firm believers in cryptocurrency, and eager to push the frontier of possibility. Our smartest decision was to create the role of "Research Partner" early on. Five years later, we are still learning a lot from the research-driven approach we stumbled upon. Investing makes us better researchers, and research makes us better investors. We hire curious people and push them to follow their intuition.
Matt Huang said that we have never been so excited about cryptocurrency, and we will continue to invest at all stages, publish original research, actively promote the development mechanisms of invested companies (such as Uniswap v2, v3, v4), release open source projects (Foundry , Reth) and advocating enlightened policies, etc. The development of artificial intelligence is too interesting to ignore. Cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence are both interesting, and there will be a lot of overlap. We are excited to continue exploring.
As previously reported, in May this year, Paradigm was expanding its cryptocurrency-only focus to include “cutting-edge” technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), according to people familiar with the matter. The company removed mentions of cryptocurrency/Web3 from its homepage earlier that month and now calls itself a “research-driven technology investment firm,” according to its official page. This signals that the company is repositioning itself to deal with some of the storms in the crypto space and regulatory uncertainty in the United States.
● Nevada regulators request bankruptcy receivership of Prime Trust, saying it can’t meet customer withdrawal requests
According to The Block, the U.S. Department of Financial Institutions (FID) of Nevada has filed a petition with the Eighth Judicial District Court of Nevada requesting the appointment of a receiver to take over the day-to-day operations of cryptocurrency custodian Prime Trust and examine all of its financial status.” Either restore the company and place it into private administration, or liquidate the company to protect Prime Trust customers." Prime Trust's governing board agreed to take over, according to an attachment to its filing.
The FID said Prime operated in an unsafe and unsound manner and had no funds to pay customer deposits and to continue cryptocurrency custody services. FID’s documents show that Prime Trust lost access to old wallets as early as 2021 and used customers’ assets to buy back cryptocurrencies.
Data shows that Prime Trust owes customers US$85.67 million in legal currency assets, but Prime Trust only holds US$2.904 million. Prime Trust owes customers $69.509 million in digital assets but only holds $68.648 million.
● Report: DeFi hacking and scam-related losses exceeded $204 million in the second quarter
According to Cointelegraph, according to a report released by Web3 portfolio application De.Fi, in the second quarter of 2023, decentralized finance (DeFi) hacking and fraud-related losses exceeded US$204 million.
It is reported that the "Second Quarter De.Fi Rekt Report" is partly based on data from De.Fi's "Rekt Database". Initial DeFi hacker and fraud-related losses in the second quarter exceeded US$208.5 million, but US$4.5 million was recovered through prosecution, transactions with hackers and other methods. According to the report, the number of DeFi hacker attacks in the second quarter increased "nearly 7 times" year-on-year to 117, compared with only 17 in the same period of 2022. The total losses in the first half of 2023 exceeded US$665 million.
The top five hacker attacks in the second quarter were Atomic Wallet, Fintoch, MEV-Boost, Bitrue, and GDAC. The Atomic Wallet vulnerability on June 3rd caused a loss of $35 million, accounting for about 17% of the total. Fintoch users lost $30.6 million due to Rug Pull, and the MEV-Boost attack caused a loss of $26.1 million. The combined losses caused by these three attacks accounted for more than 45% of the total losses in the second quarter.
De.Fi reports that the most common cause of losses is "access control issues," where attackers gain unauthorized control of wallets. This resulted in a loss of US$75.8 million, accounting for a quarter of the total loss amount. The second most common cause was breaches, resulting in a total loss of $55.3 million. Users also lost $47.3 million to rug pull or exit scams in the second quarter.
Losses from DeFi hacks and scams were actually smaller in the second quarter than in the first, with CertiK reporting in April that such losses exceeded $320 million from January to March.
● ConsenSys survey: There are regional differences in people’s attitudes towards cryptocurrencies
ConsenSys teamed up with YouGov to release a survey on Tuesday focusing on cryptocurrencies and Web3, Blockworks reported. The findings indicate differences between countries with developed and emerging economies.
The survey was conducted between late April and May of this year among more than 15,000 people aged 18 to 65. Respondents were also spread across 15 different countries in Africa, America, Asia, and Europe. The vast majority (92%) are aware of cryptocurrencies, but the similarities end there. Respondents from developing countries are generally more optimistic about cryptocurrencies, while developed countries are clearly more skeptical. Nigerians are very keen on owning cryptocurrencies as a store of value, with 65% of Nigerians feeling this way. For cryptocurrency investors in the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom, the reasons for owning digital currencies are somewhat different.
A ConsenSys spokesperson said that Americans, Germans, and Britons surveyed all said that one of the main reasons they invested in cryptocurrency was because they were "curious" and wanted to learn about the industry through "experiments." For the same reason, 56% of Argentines are motivated to own cryptocurrency. They said they feel the "local currency is too unstable." According to The New York Times, the inflation rate of the Argentine peso has exceeded 114%.
● Law Commission of England and Wales: The UK should create a bespoke legal framework for the use of cryptocurrencies as collateral
According to CoinDesk, the Law Commission of England and Wales, funded by the UK Ministry of Justice, said in a report released on Wednesday that the UK should create a customized legal framework for the use of cryptocurrencies as collateral, which would go beyond the UK's existing traditional financial collateral arrangement regulations.
The committee also called on the UK to treat crypto assets as a new type of property and hoped that the government would set up a group of industry-specific technical experts, legal practitioners, academics and judges to provide advice to the courts on complex legal issues related to digital assets.
● The European Commission publishes a digital euro bill to ensure privacy controls and offline use
The European Commission on Wednesday unveiled legislative plans to support a digital euro, saying it would ensure Europeans can make digital payments free of charge across the eurozone, CoinDesk reported.
A version of the text two weeks ago included privacy and financial stability protections, but many stakeholders are already questioning the benefits that a potential new central bank digital currency (CBDC) could bring. In response, European Commission Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis said in an article published on the European Commission website on Wednesday that CBDC brings "strategic advantages."
The law does not make a digital euro a reality, as it would be up to the European Central Bank to decide whether to issue a CBDC. Officials believe the state-backed digital currency offers features not always available with private payment methods - allowing payments between friends and having higher data protection standards.
Yet despite years of technical work by the central bank, many remain confused, including some lawmakers and governments who need to approve the committee's new bill. The move has also been met with skepticism by commercial banks, for whom the state-backed currency represents competition for their own digital payment systems and a possible alternative to savings accounts. New legal proposals aim to ensure that the digital euro can be used offline, providing a level of privacy comparable to cash. It prohibits “programming” the CBDC to limit the goods it can be used to purchase, although officials say it could still be used to support conditional payments, such as monthly utility bills, or more complex smart contracts.
● Japan and Monetary Authority of Singapore reach cooperation on digital asset pilot program Project Guardian
According to Cointelegraph, Japan’s financial regulator, the Financial Services Agency (FSA), announced a partnership with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to conduct joint supervision and pilot testing under Singapore’s digital asset program “Project Guardian”.
At this stage, FSA's participation will be limited to observer status. “The project aims to test the feasibility of digital technology applications such as asset tokenization through pilots, while managing risks to financial stability and integrity. Current industry pilots include fixed income, foreign exchange and asset and wealth management.” Project Guardian by MAS Established in May 2022, it aims to test “the feasibility of asset tokenization and DeFi applications” in accordance with appropriate regulations. The plan has four focus areas, open and interoperable networks, trust anchors, asset tokenization and institutional-grade DeFi protocols. In one project of the initiative, “DBS, J.P. Morgan and SBI Digital Asset Holdings targeted liquidity consisting of tokenized Singapore Government Bonds, Japanese Government Bonds, Japanese Yen (JPY) and Singapore Dollar (SGD) Pool conducted foreign exchange and government bond transactions.”
● The Bank for International Settlements, the Monetary Authority of Singapore and others launched a new project, Mariana, which will use Curve HFMM to explore cross-border transactions of CBDC
According to Planet Daily, the official website of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) published an article today introducing a new project called Project Mariana.
Project Mariana is a cross-center cooperation project jointly launched by the Innovation Center of the Bank for International Settlements, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the Bank of France, the Swiss National Bank, etc., aiming to realize cross-border transactions of wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) through automated market makers. , to explore whether this solution can improve the efficiency, security and transparency of foreign exchange transactions and settlements, and eliminate some potential risks associated with the foreign exchange market. It is worth mentioning that in the introductory document of Project Mariana, it is mentioned that the project will use Curve V2’s hybrid function automatic market making model (HFMM).