“We don’t have to be smarter than the rest. We have to be more disciplined than the rest.”
Hey Stackers,
Crypto markets fell again, along with broader markets. Though, prices appear to have held out well above their 6-month lows, for now.
As I’ve mentioned before, it seems likely that the Bitcoin bottom is going to take place around November 2022. That’s if history repeats itself.
FTX grew 1000% 🤯
In other news, FTX’s own Sam Bankman-Fried confirmed that leaked numbers, claiming that the company grew at over 1000% percent and making over $1BN in revenue, were correct.
Huge numbers.
Dev Spotlight 👨💻
Stack has currently identified 95 projects with a recent spike in activity. Here’s one free insight. Subscribe to view them all here.
Credmark is a financial modeling platform for DeFi, powered by verifiable on-chain data.
It connects model creators, validators, data consumers and protocol governors. Members are then incentivized to build and improve models.
The developers have been particular active recently, promoting us to take a closer look at the project:
Top News This Week
Acala’s aUSD Fell 99% After Hackers Issued 1.28B Tokens and Huobi Stablecoin HUSD De-pegged From the USD
There was a bug in the protocol’s newly deployed iBTC-aUSD liquidity pool, which essentially let hackers exploit it. This resulted in the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) platform Acala's native stablecoin, aUSD, becoming depegged after it fell 99% in value once hackers exploited it.
The hackers exploited a bug in the liquidity pool and minted 1.28 billion tokens.
HUSD is the stablecoin launched by the Huobi exchange in 2018 and is ERC-20 based. However, this stablecoin also experienced a crash, which led to its de-peg from the usual 1:1 ratio connected to the USD. Currently, its value sits at $0.9885, not $1.
Celsius Got Court Sign-off to Sell Bitcoin, but Not Stocks or Debt
The crypto lender known as Celsius Network LLC got sign off on Tuesday from a U.S. bankruptcy judge to mine as well as sell Bitcoin (BTC) during its bankruptcy.
At the hearing in Manhattan, Chief U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn expressed concerns, noting that BTC mining would not be immediately profitable. Celsius needs to make additional investments to get their mining facilities running at full capacity. However, he noted that he would respect the company's business judgment and ultimately allowed it to proceed.
Brazil’s Largest Investment Bank BTG Pactual Launches Mynt and Mercadolibre Announces Creation of Mercadocoin
On August 15, 2022, the largest investment bank in Latin America, known as BTC Pactual, launched its cryptocurrency exchange known as Mynt. Within the span of the same day, XP, which is one of the biggest investment brokers in Brazil that has over 3.6 million clients, began selling Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) on their application.
Myst was originally announced in September of 2021 and arrived as a separate product, while competitors include exchanges directly within their pre-existing applications.
Furthermore, the South American eCommerce giant known as MercadoLibre Inc. announced the creation of a new cryptocurrency called MercadoCoin, which will be implemented in Brazil as part of its loyalty program. Clients will earn MercadoCoins as cashback when buying products.
Genesis CEO Steps Down and Crypto lender Hodlnaut Cuts 80% of Jobs
Genesis Chief Executive Officer Michael Moro is stepping down as a part of a leadership shuffle after the crypto brokerage was exposed to a bankrupt hedge fund known as Three Arrows Capital and a broad market downturn. Furthermore, the company also said that it would begin eliminating 20% of its 260-person workforce as a means of reducing the overall cost.
Chief Operating Officer Derar Islim will take over as interim CEO as the company searches for a permanent replacement.
Cryptocurrency lender Hodlnaut says that there are pending proceedings between the firm as well as the Singapore authorities. Through a statement, the company said that the proceedings involve Attorney-General's Chambers and the Singapore Police Force and noted that it is unable to disclose any further information. Furthermore, Hodlnaut also said that it would lay off 40 people, which is 80% of the staff, whilst the remaining team is required to assist with key functions.
Largest Ethereum Mining Pool Known as Ethermine Will Not Offer a Dedicated Mining Pool for the Planned PoW Fork
The mining phase of Ethereum (ETH) will come to an end on September 15, 2022. After this date, it will no longer be a possibility to mine the ETH cryptocurrency on the network through the usage of Graphic Cards (GPUs) or ASICs.
According to an official announcement, the Ethermine Ethereum mining pool will switch to withdrawal-only mode once the Proof-of-Work mining phase has ended. All Ethermine stratum servers will be shut down, and users will no longer be able to connect their miners to the Ethermine Mining Pool. Bitfly has also decided not to offer a dedicated mining pool for any of the planned Proof-of-Work (PoW) forks.
Thanks for reading,
James