Top 10 News of the Week
1. Russian President Vladimir Putin signs a bill to legalize cryptocurrency mininglink
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a bill that officially legalizes cryptocurrency mining. The bill introduces new concepts, including digital currency mining, mining pools, mining pool infrastructure operators, address identifiers, and individuals who organize mining pool activities. Mining is considered part of the circulation, not the issuance of digital currency. Only registered Russian legal entities and individual operators are entitled to mine, but individuals who do not exceed the energy consumption limits set by the government can mine without registration. In addition, foreign digital financial assets can be traded on Russian blockchain platforms, and the Russian Central Bank has the right to ban individual issuances if a threat to financial stability is found. The bill will take effect ten days after its official release. Putin said this is a promising economic field, and Russia must seize the opportunity to quickly establish a legal framework and regulations, develop infrastructure, and create conditions for the circulation of digital assets.
2. On August 5, the global market crashed, and the crypto market liquidated $1.022 billionlink
On August 5, Binance market data showed that BTC briefly fell below $50,000, with a 24-hour drop of 17.58%. Ethereum plummeted to a minimum of $2,111. The total amount of liquidation on the entire network exceeded $382 million in one hour. Coinglass data showed that the total amount of liquidation on the entire network in nearly 24 hours that day was $1.022 billion, of which long orders were liquidated for $891 million and short orders were liquidated for $131 million. On that day, USDT on the C2C platforms of Binance and OKX both saw a substantial premium. The price of USDT on OKX reached about 7.6 yuan, a premium of 6.3%; the price of USDT on Binance reached about 7.5 yuan, a premium of 4.9%.
On the same day, global markets also fell sharply. The Nikkei 225 Index closed down 12.40% on Monday, and the Korean Composite Index KS11 closed down 8.75%. The three major US stock indexes opened sharply lower, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 1,070 points, the S&P 500 falling 4.2%, and the Nasdaq falling 6%. Star technology stocks fell sharply, Nvidia (NVDA.O) fell 13%, and its share price fell below the $100 mark; TSMC (TSM.N) fell 10%, Apple (AAPL.O) fell 9%, and Tesla (TSLA.O) fell about 11%. The Nasdaq China Golden Dragon Index fell 2.4%. The "Big Seven" US stocks fell across the board at the opening, with Apple falling 9.6%, Microsoft falling 4.8%, Nvidia falling 14.3%, Google falling 6.5%, Amazon falling more than 8%, and Tesla falling more than 10.85%. US stocks gradually narrowed their losses during the session, and the Nasdaq closed down 3.43%.
QCP Capital pointed out that on August 5, 2024, the crypto market was hit by a storm, with BTC and ETH falling to lows of 49,000 and 2,116 respectively. The massive ETH sell-off by Jump Trading and Paradigm VC, as well as the surge in the implied volatility of ETH to 120% on the front end, may be the direct cause of this decline. Due to the poor unemployment data in the United States last Friday, the deterioration of the macro economy and the intensification of global risk aversion, market volatility has increased sharply. Despite this, the forward basis and financing rates remain stable.
In addition, the number of new initial jobless claims in the United States for the week ending August 3 was 233,000, the lowest since the week of July 6. Analyst Adam Button said that the number of initial jobless claims decreased by 17,000 compared with the revised level of the previous week, indicating that the increase in the data was more due to the impact of the hurricane than the underlying trend.
Although most people believe that US economic data has been manipulated, these data can still affect the trend of risky assets. Bitcoin and Ethereum rebounded by more than 5% on Thursday. The impact of the yen rate hike has temporarily come to an end, but the market is still in a state of panic and the panic index is still high. From the options data, the IV of major maturities remains at a high level of more than 60%, and there is no room for a significant decline in the short term. Currently, the BTC 7D RV is as high as 100%, far exceeding the IV level. There is a clustering effect in volatility, and large fluctuations will bring long-term aftershocks. IV has strong support.
3. The White House and Harris advisers listened to the opinions of crypto industry executives, and the Democratic Party launched the "Crypto for Harris" campaign link
According to The Information, a group of cryptocurrency industry executives held a conference call with White House officials and advisers to Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday local time to provide their opinions as Democratic presidential candidates develop policy positions on cryptocurrency issues. Industry executives outlined their concerns about crypto policies. According to people familiar with the matter, neither White House representatives nor Harris' advisers made any commitments. Participants in the conference call included executives from Coinbase, Ripple, Kraken, Circle, and venture capitalists Mark Cuban, Chris Dixon and Ron Conway. Bruce Reed, deputy chief of staff of the White House, Lael Brainard, national economic adviser, Wally Adeyemo, deputy secretary of the Treasury, and Kristine Lucius, senior adviser to the vice president and director of legislative affairs, also participated in the conference call.
In addition, the US Democratic Party launched the "Crypto for Harris" campaign and plans to hold a virtual town hall meeting next week. The speaker lineup includes billionaire entrepreneur and cryptocurrency advocate Mark Cuban, SkyBridge Capital founder and Trump critic Anthony Scaramucci, and a few Democratic members of the House of Representatives. The meeting is open to the public to discuss ways to support Harris' campaign and raise funds. The "Crypto for Harris" event aims to attract 40 million American voters who own digital assets and show the Democratic Party's position on promoting the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry.
4. Bank of Japan Deputy Governor: Bank of Japan will not raise interest rates if the market is unstablelink
Shinichi Uchida, deputy governor of the Bank of Japan, said the central bank would not raise its policy rate amid instability in financial and capital markets. In his first public speech since the historic collapse of the Japanese stock market, Uchida said recent market trends were "extremely unstable" and the central bank needed to maintain an accommodative monetary policy for the time being. After Uchida's remarks, the yen fell more than 2% against the dollar, falling to the mid-147 yen level at one point, and the Nikkei index rose by more than 1,000 points at one point.
5. US judge fines Ripple $125 million in SEC caselink
Analisa Torres, a U.S. district judge in the Southern District of New York, found that Ripple's 1,278 institutional sales transactions violated securities laws and therefore fined it $125.035 million, which is far less than the $1 billion in disgorgement and prejudgment interest and $900 million in civil penalties required by the SEC. The ruling found that Ripple violated federal securities laws by selling XRP directly to institutional clients, but ruled that Ripple's programmatic sales of XRP to retail investors through exchanges did not violate any securities laws. Judge Torres also prohibited Ripple from violating federal securities laws in the future and issued an injunction requiring that if Ripple intends to sell any securities, it must file a registration statement. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse tweeted in response: "The SEC previously demanded $2 billion in damages, and the court believed that they had overacted, so they reduced their request by about 94%. We respect the court's decision and are determined to continue to grow our company. This is a victory for Ripple, the industry, and the rule of law. The SEC's resistance to the entire XRP community has disappeared."
6.A US judge has officially approved the $12.7 billion settlement agreement between FTX and the CFTClink
In a document dated August 7, U.S. District Judge Peter Castel formally approved a $12.7 billion settlement between FTX and Alameda to resolve the CFTC's 20-month-long lawsuit. Notably, the CFTC did not seek civil penalties, which means that the entire $12.7 billion will be used to directly repay FTX creditors. Previously, FTX and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) had reached a $12.7 billion settlement, pending approval by a Delaware judge. The settlement includes $8.7 billion in compensation and $4 billion in disgorgement.
7. Paris Olympic venues and dozens of museums and shops in France were attacked by hackers, and hackers demanded a ransom in cryptocurrencylink
The Grand Palais, the venue for the 2024 Paris Olympics, and dozens of museum shops in France have been hit by a cyberattack, with hackers demanding a ransom in cryptocurrency. Cybercriminals targeted the system used to centrally manage the financial data of these local shops. The French National Agency for the Security of Information Systems (ANSSI), which oversees the cybersecurity of the Olympics, has been alerted to the incident and said it did not affect any information systems related to the operation of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
8. Ponzi scheme Plustoken transfers over $450 million in ETH link
On Thursday, Arkham tweeted that more than $450 million in Plustoken funds were transferred. The Plustoken wallet linked dozens of wallets within 24 hours on Thursday and transferred $464.7 million worth of ETH. Plustoken was a Ponzi scheme in 2018-2019 that defrauded global investors of approximately $2 billion to $2.9 billion in cryptocurrency. In June 2020, the Plustoken wallet transferred 789,500 ETH and distributed it through hundreds of transit wallets. At today's prices, the ETH transferred from the Plustoken wallet in mid-2020 is now worth $1.9 billion.
9. Bitcoin ETF options may be launched in the fourth quarter of this year, and BlackRock has applied to launch Ethereum spot ETF optionslink
Bloomberg analyst James Seyffart tweeted that Bitcoin ETF options will be launched in the fourth quarter of this year. The deadline for the SEC's decision is around September 21, but further steps from the OCC and CFTC will still be required after that. CBOE just withdrew its application for spot Bitcoin ETF options. At first glance, this seems like a bad thing. But at the same time, they just resubmitted a brand new and updated application.
Exchange Nasdaq and the world's largest asset management company BlackRock plan to trade options for its spot Ethereum ETF. In a document posted on the U.S. SEC website on Tuesday, BlackRock and Nasdaq proposed to amend the rules to list and trade options on iShares Ethereum Trust to meet investors' investment needs in Ethereum products and positions. The U.S. SEC may make a final decision on the proposal in early April 2025.
10. Any OKX user who has direct financial interaction with Tornado Cash will face account liquidationlink
OKX CEO Star tweeted that sanctioned individuals cannot successfully open an account on OKX. In addition, if users who have already opened an account deposit from sanctioned entities (such as Garantex and Tornado Cash) to OKX, or withdraw money from OKX to these sanctioned entities, it will trigger compliance risk control and cause the account to be closed. Star emphasized that no matter who has financial interaction with Tornado Cash, they will face account closure, without exception.
Key financing events
- Binance Labs announces investment in Solana ecosystem restaking network Solayer link
- Vessel has successfully completed $10 million in seed round financinglink
- Andrena, the DePIN protocol on Solana, announced the completion of $18 million in financinglink
- Cartridge, a blockchain gaming infrastructure provider, completes $7.5 million Series A funding link
- Elmnts, a mineral rights tokenization platform, completes $2 million in Pre-Seed round of financinglink
- Web3 game studio Curio completes $5.7 million seed roundlink
- Khalani Network announces $2.5 million in seed funding led by Ethereal Ventureslink
- Open source blockchain data exploration tool Blockscout announces $3 million seed round of financinglink
- Moonveil announces completion of Pre-Series A financing, totaling $9 millionlink
For more industry funding events, please visit crypto-fundraising.info .
