Ankr confirms exploit, asks for immediate trading halt

The crypto bear market may be lasting longer than expected, but some Web3 startups see it as the perfect opportunity to build solutions and infrastructure that will welcome users and institutions when the next wave of adoption arrives. Cross-chain yield aggregator 88x Finance claims that the emergence of general message...

Stablecoins in the cryptocurrency market help provide U.S. dollar-pegged tokens within the volatile industry. In bull markets, the market capitalization of stablecoins tends to decrease as investors flock to more volatile assets; and in bear markets, investors seek shelter in low-volatility stablecoins, thus increasing their market caps. On Jan. 26,...

Sam Bankman-Fried's legal team is seeking to remove a bail condition that prevented him from accessing FTX's funds, according to court filings from Jan. 28. A letter from Bankman-Fried's lawyer, Mark Cohen, to United States District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan stated that Bankman-Fried should have access to assets held by FTX, claiming the client was not involved in previous unauthorized transactions.

A group calling itself “Victims of Ankr Exploit” have claimed that its members lost over 13,000 BNB liquid staking coins (over $4 million worth at the time of writing) as a result of the Dec. 2 Ankr exploit, but have not been adequately reimbursed by the Ankr company.

Bitcoin (BTC) price had a mixed reaction on Jan. 25 after the United States reported a 2.9% gross domestic product growth in the fourth quarter, slightly better than expected. Still, the sum of all goods and services commercialized between October and December grew less than 3.2% from the previous quarter.

Authorities in the United States might have discovered yet another possible component of Sam Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency empire. U.S. federal prosecutors have alleged that Bankman-Fried has used money from FTX exchange to invest in the venture capital (VC) firm Modulo Capital, according to The New York Times. As previously reported,...

According to a new post on Jan. 26, Marc Zeller, integrations lead at decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol Aave, stated that the firm purchased 2.7 million Curve (CRV) tokens, which would clear “excessive remaining bad debt” within the next 15 hours over a dozen transactions. The move follows the community approval of Aave Improvement Protocol (AIP) 144, which deployed a swap contract that acquires 2.7 million units of CRV, with a USD Coin (USDC) spend limit of $3,105,000 and a maximum unit value of $1.15 per CRV.

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) is working on two papers to address fundamental legal risks in the crypto markets, such as the insolvency of crypto exchange firms, according to a statement released on Jan. 26. The initiative was motivated by the collapse of crypto exchange FTX and previous...

Despite the plans to turn the region into a bustling crypto hub, the United Kingdom’s financial watchdog says it has given the all-clear to only 41 out of 300 crypto firm applications seeking regulatory approval to date. The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) implemented the new cryptocurrency-focused regulations on...

Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Commissioner Kristin Johnson has urged Congress to adopt legislation that “closes the current gap in the oversight of crypto spot markets.”. During a speech at a digital assets conference at Duke University on Jan. 21, Johnson proposed a number of amendments that would enable...

Monica Long has been named the new president of Ripple, moving up from general manager. Long joined the company in 2013 as director of communications and expanded her role last year from general manager of RippleX, the blockchain development side of the business, to general manager of the company as a whole, adding RippleNet, the company’s financial network, to her purview.

Crypto proponents would be wise to keep their eyes on nonfungible token (NFT) and metaverse trademark applications this year, which are “reliable signals” of future-use plans. Speaking to Cointelegraph, intellectual property lawyer Michael Kondoudis said while many people may think big corporations are just jumping onto the NFT...

The United States Federal Reserve Board announced on Jan. 27 that it was issuing a policy statement regardin limitations on banks. The policy seeks to create a level playing field and limit regulatory arbitrage for state banks with deposit insurance, state banks without deposit insurance and national banks, which are overseen by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), by allowing them the same scope of permissible activities.

Litecoin (LTC) has rebounded by 130% to almost $100 after bottoming out near $40.50 in June 2022. The primary reasons include broadly improving risk-on sentiment and euphoria around Litecoin’s upcoming halving in August 2023. However, technicals suggest that LTC may wipe out most of these gains in the coming...

An unknown group or individual has hacked the Twitter account behind crypto and stock trading platform Robinhood to push users to buy a “new” token. Many Crypto Twitter users reported on Jan. 25 that Robinhood had posted a tweet calling on its 1.1 million followers to each pay $0.0005 for a token called “RBH” on the BNB Smart Chain. Conor Grogan, the head of product business operations at Coinbase, reported that at least 10 people had purchased roughly $1,000 worth of the scam token before the tweet was removed.

Internet payment processor Stripe is reportedly eyeing a public offering and has set a 12-month timeline to explore the possibility. Stripe has hired Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase to advise on the feasibility and timing of a public-market debut, according to a Jan. 26 report by The Wall Street Journal. A source with knowledge of the matter told the Journal that Stripe's executives will either take the company public or allow employees to sell shares in a private transaction.

The administration of United States President Joe Biden is continuing to develop its National Digital Assets Research and Development Agenda. In a request for information (RFI) dated Jan. 26 and previewed by the Federal Register, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) invites comments to help it identify agenda priorities. Individuals and organizations may submit comments of no more than 10 pages in length by March 23.

The notorious failure of the Terra USD (UST) stablecoin affected the crypto market, but the algorithmic stablecoins took the harshest punch. Since its peak in April 2022, the market share of algorithmic stablecoins shrank almost tenfold. According to a new report from CryptoCompare, the current market share of algorithmic stablecoins...

For much of 2022, the crypto market focused on the United States Federal Reserve’s actions. The central bank created a bearish environment for risk-on assets like stocks and cryptocurrencies by increasing the interest rates on borrowing. Toward the end of 2022, positive economic data, healthy employment numbers and a...

The Carbon Web3 browser by Carbon X Labs is set to launch its native token, CSIX, across five different launchpads over the next two months. This presents a unique opportunity for crypto investors to capitalize on the launch of a new token before its underlying technology is adopted by the masses.