Decentral Block Post

Minnesota Senator Tom Emmer has slammed United States Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler for his flawed “crypto information-gathering efforts” and insisted Gensler should appear before Congress to explain the cost of his “regulatory failures.”

Emmer’s comments came from a Dec. 10 tweet to his 67,500 Twitter followers, where he made reference to a bipartisan Blockchain Caucus letter he co-authored to the SEC Chairman on Mar. 16.

Emmer said, “we now know Gensler's crypto information-gathering efforts were ineffective” citing the collapses of the Terra ecosystem and bankrupt crypto platforms Celsius, Voyager and FTX.

“[Gensler] must testify before Congress and answer questions about the cost of his regulatory failures,” the Senator added.

He pointed out Gensler hasn’t made an appearance before the House Committee on Financial Services since Oct. 5. 2021 which left crypto media to fill the void for the SEC’s investigative failures according to Emmer.

Elon Musk's latest salvo in his war against crypto spam bots on Twitter appears to have made some real impact, with the crypto community reporting a vast reduction in the number of responses on their posts from bots. 

In a Dec. 11 post, the Twitter CEO hinted that “bots are in for a surprise tomorrow” and later explained that they've found a small number of people behind a large number of bot/troll accounts and that the platform will be shutting down IP addresses of “known bad actors.”

He then followed up by explaining that while scammers might try other methods to circumvent the IP address block, Twitter will also be “Shutting them down as soon as they show up.”

Shibetoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym of Billy Markus, co-creator of meme coin Dogecoin (DOGE), told Musk in a Dec. 11 post, “I made a test post and instead of seeing 50 bot replies I only saw one much progress, very hype.”

Other users also went to test Musk’s latest changes. PlanB, a Bitcoin (BTC) analyst and investor posted a chart to see how many bots would reply to the post. At the time of writing, no responses from bots have shown up in the comments. 

It is understood that Terraform Labs’ controversial founder and CEO Do Kwon is currently located in the Southeast European nation of Serbia after leaving Singapore in September. 

According to a Dec. 11 report from Chosun Media, South Korean authorities followed a tip-off concerning Do Kwon's whereabouts suggesting he is now in Serbia and has been able to confirm it. 

"Recently, we obtained intelligence that CEO Kwon was in Serbia, and it was found to be true," an official told the outlet. 

The report also states that South Korea’s Ministry of Finance “is in the process of requesting cooperation from the Serbian government” as part of the investigation.

South Korean authorities have been on the hunt for Do Kwon since Terra's collapse, but evidently haven't had much luck pinpointing his location.

The relief rally in the United States equities markets took a breather this week as all major averages closed in the red. Traders seem to have booked profits before the busy economic calendar next week.

The S&P 500 index dropped 3.37%, but a minor positive for the cryptocurrency markets is that Bitcoin (BTC) has not followed the equities markets lower. This suggests that crypto traders are not panicking and dumping their positions with every downtick in equities.

The range-bound action in Bitcoin suggests that traders are avoiding large bets before the Federal Reserve’s rate hike decision on Dec. 14. However, that has not stopped the action in select altcoins, which are showing promise in the near term.

Let’s look at the charts of Bitcoin and select altcoins and spot the critical levels to watch out for in the short term.

BTC/USDT

Bitcoin has been hovering around its 20-day exponential moving average (EMA) of $17,031 for the past few days. The flat 20-day EMA and the relative strength index (RSI) near 50 do not give a clear advantage either to the bulls or the bears.

The relief rally in the United States equities markets took a breather this week as all major averages closed in the red. Traders seem to have booked profits before the busy economic calendar next week.

The S&P 500 index dropped 3.37%, but a minor positive for the cryptocurrency markets is that Bitcoin (BTC) has not followed the equities markets lower. This suggests that crypto traders are not panicking and dumping their positions with every downtick in equities.

The range-bound action in Bitcoin suggests that traders are avoiding large bets before the Federal Reserve’s rate hike decision on Dec. 14. However, that has not stopped the action in select altcoins, which are showing promise in the near term.

Let’s look at the charts of Bitcoin and select altcoins and spot the critical levels to watch out for in the short term.

BTC/USDT

Bitcoin has been hovering around its 20-day exponential moving average (EMA) of $17,031 for the past few days. The flat 20-day EMA and the relative strength index (RSI) near 50 do not give a clear advantage either to the bulls or the bears.

Arbitrum-based lending protocol Lodestar Finance was exploited in a flash loan attack on Dec. 10. According to Lodestar, the attacker manipulated the price of the plvGLP token before borrowing all platform liquidity using the inflated token.

In a Twitter thread, Lodestar explained the attack flow. The attacker first manipulated the exchange rate of the plvGLP contract to 1.83 GLP per plvGLP, "an exploit that by itself would be unprofitable", said the company.

Then, the attacker supplied plvGLP collateral to Lodestar and borrowed all available liquidity, cashing out part of the funds "until the collateralization ratio mechanism prevented a full liquidation of the plvGLP."

Following the hack, "several plvGLP holders also took advantage of the opportunity and also cashed out at 1.83 glp per plvGLP." The hacker was able to burn a little over 3 million in GLP, making profit on the "stolen funds on Lodestar - minus the GLP they burned.", noted the DeFi platform.

The attacker made around $5.8 million in profit. Lodestar states that nearly 2.8 million of the GLP (about $2.4 million) was recoverable, which should be used to repay depositors. The company is trying to negotiate a bug bounty with its exploiter:

Bitcoin (BTC) is too “decentralized and transparent” for former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, says Cathie Wood.

In a tweet on Dec. 10, Wood, who is CEO of investment giant ARK Invest, delivered a fresh damning appraisal of the FTX saga.

Wood: SBF "couldn't control" Bitcoin

As the legal ramifications of FTX and Bankman-Fried, also known as SBF, continue, Bitcoin loyalists are giving him little sympathy.

ARK’s Wood is now firmly among them, not mincing her words as BTC price action continues to trade around 20% down over the month.

“The Bitcoin blockchain didn’t skip a beat during the crisis caused by opaque centralized players,” she wrote.

Crypto exchange Binance began investigating suspicious behavior on its platform after noticing abnormal price movements for certain trading pairs involving Sun Token (SUN), Ardor (ARDR), Osmosis (OSMO), FUNToken (FUN) and Golem (GLM) tokens. Nearly 40 minutes into the investigation, Binance CEO Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao revealed that the price movements “appears to be just market behavior.”

On Dec. 11 at 3:10 am ET, Binance issued a notice about abnormal price movements for some trading pairs. The exchange began an investigation to narrow down suspicious accounts responsible for the issue. To investors’ relief, Binance’s investigation did not point to the possibility of compromised accounts or stolen API keys.

In CZ’s words:

“One guy deposited funds and started buying. (Hackers don’t deposit). Other guys followed. Can’t see linkage between the accounts.”

However, the exchange took a proactive measure against possible manipulation. It temporarily blocked withdrawals for some accounts that made profits during the volatility, which according to CZ, sprouted complaints across social media.