Decentral Block Post

Bitcoin (BTC) withdrawals from largest crypto exchange Binance have passed $500 million in the past 24 hours as its CEO calls out “FUD.”

Data from on-chain monitoring resource Coinglass shows Binance’s BTC balance decreased by over 30,000 BTC into Dec. 13.

CZ: FUD is "thoroughly annoying"

The latest hotspot for fallout from the FTX debacle, Binance has joined exchanges seeing an exodus of user funds.

According to Coinglass, users withdrew 30,300 BTC ($515 million) in the 24 hours to the time of writing, this accounting for the majority of the week’s 40,150 BTC total.

The abnormal behavior comes as Binance battles what its CEO, Changpeng Zhao (also known as CZ) blanketed as “FUD” on social media.

The fundamental traits of blockchain technology, including decentralization, immutability, transparency and automation, have proven to be capable of several use cases for different businesses. However, due to the costs of creating and maintaining blockchain-powered applications, it can be difficult and expensive for enterprises to fully utilize its benefits.

With the adoption of distributed ledgers, many projects have put efforts to lower the barriers to entry. VeChain is one such blockchain platform built to improve widespread use of blockchain technology. One of the most significant issues facing supply chain organizations is a lack of transparency, which blockchain aims to resolve by enabling businesses to conduct transactions directly and without a third party. It also allows data sharing between stakeholders and supports increased integration of financial and logistical services.

This article will discuss what VeChain public blockchain is, the unique features of VeChain, how VeChain (VET) works, how to buy VeChain and how VeChain staking works.

What is VeChain (VET)?

A public blockchain called VeChainThor is intended for widespread use of blockchain technology by companies of all sizes by acting as the building block for a resilient and expandable enterprise blockchain ecosystem.

According to VeChain, Ethereum remains unsuited for running large-scale commercial decentralized applications (DApps) while being a significant technological milestone. It is because Ethereum does not have a robust governance framework to allow for quick and transparent protocol changes to address emerging issues or breakthroughs.

Crypto Twitter has blown up over the shocking news of Sam Bankman-Fried’s arrest in The Bahamas — many of whom weren’t expecting it to happen so soon. 

On Dec. 12, the disgraced FTX founder was arrested by the Royal Bahamas Police after receiving notification from the United States government that criminal charges has been filed against him.

Within hours, politicians, crypto executives and influencers all booted up their Twitter apps to comment on the arrest of the FTX’s former CEO.

New York Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who’s held a fairly neutral view on the crypto industry to date, told her 13.4 million Twitter followers that Bankman-Fried’s was a step in the right direction towards “justice being served,” but noted that the arrest would likely postpone Bankman-Fried’s testimony before the House Financial Services Committee, which was scheduled for Dec. 13.

U.S. Senator and sponsor of the Lummis-Gillibrand Crypto Bill, Cynthia Lummis was also pleased to hear the news, stating on Twitter that the prosecutors made the right decision to hold Bankman-Fried accountable for the “good, old-fashioned fraud” he allegedly committed.

Around 13% of the American population — or 43 million people — have held cryptocurrency at some point in their lives, new research from JPMorgan Chase has revealed.

According to a Dec. 13 report titled: "The Dynamics and Demographics of U.S. Household Crypto-Asset Use,” this number has risen dramatically since before 2020 when the figure was only around 3%.

The latest data from JPMorgan comes from analyzing checking account transfers from a sample of over 5 million customers. It found that 600,000 customers in this sample group transferred cash to crypto accounts at some point during the 2020-2022 time period.

The study also noted that cryptocurrency holders typically made their first crypto purchases during spikes in crypto prices. During this time, the amount of cash being sent into crypto exchange accounts typically far outweigh the cash being removed. In other words, most people were holding onto their crypto during this time period.

This changed in early 2022 as crypto prices fell according to JPMorgan. In recent months, cash transfers into crypto exchanges have only slightly exceeded cash transfers out of them.

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.

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:

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.

Crypto exchange Binance closed a trader account on Dec. 9 after a user complained about the exchange's response for alleged funds theft. Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said the firm does not want to service "unreasonable" clients.

A user by the name of CoinMamba on Twitter started complaining about the lost funds on Dec. 8, claiming that a leaked API key tied to crypto trading firm 3Commas was used "to make trades on low cap coins to push up the price to make profit."

The trader claims in a series of tweets that Binance was unable to provide him with appropriate support:

Binance CEO also took to Twitter on Dec. 9 to clarify the situation:

As the user continued to complain on the social media platform, CZ admitted in another tweet to be considering putting the user's account “in off boarding (withdrawal only) mode", claiming "we don’t want to service people who are unreasonable.” The tweet was later deleted, but is still available as a screenshot in the thread. The user's account was then closed, with three days to withdraw funds.

Crypto price action has been rough over the past few months, but a few green shoots are finally beginning to emerge.

While Bitcoin (BTC) remains in a downtrend, its price has recently found support at the $17,000 level, and ping-pong price action in the $16,700–$17,300 range appears to be allowing traders to pursue some interesting setups in a few altcoins.

Let’s take a quick peek at some enticing patterns showing up on the weekly time frame.

Time for Litecoin’s halving hopium?

As a fork of Bitcoin, Litecoin (LTC) tends to turn bullish several months before its reward halving takes place, as was the case in 2015 and 2019.

Litecoin’s next reward halving is 237 days away, and it appears that the altcoin is undergoing a little pre-halving hype. Since Nov. 6, LTC has gained 58.6%, and it is starting to mirror the triple price action that occurred in previous halvings.

The United States equities markets are headed for a down week as market participants remain cautious ahead of next week's key consumer price index data for November.

The CPI report will be followed by the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee meeting on Dec. 13-14 where the central bank is expected to hike rates by 50 basis points, according to the FedWatch Tool.

The outcome of the events next week could increase the volatility in Bitcoin (BTC) and result in a trending move.

After a terrible year that saw some high-profile cryptocurrency companies go bust, the bulls will expect 2022 to end on a strong note. Bears will also try to maintain their stronghold and extend the decline in the next year.

What is the path of least resistance in Bitcoin and altcoins? Let’s study the charts of the top-10 cryptocurrencies to find out.

The developers of bridging platform Ren protocol have warned users to unwrap their tokens and bridge them back to their native chains “ASAP,” or risk losing them, according to a Twitter thread from the team.

The team stated that mints on Ren will be disabled “shortly,” meaning that it will be impossible to deposit any assets onto the platform to bridge to other networks. In 30 days, “burns” or withdrawals will also be disabled.

The company behind the project, RenVM, had previously stated on Nov. 18 that they would be releasing a new version of the protocol, Ren 2.0, “in parallel” with the shutdown of the current one. This implied that the current bridged assets might still be usable after the shutdown of Ren 1.0.

However, this new announcement makes clear that current assets may not be usable in the newer version of the platform, so users may get these assets stuck in the platform if they don’t withdraw them soon.

Ren protocol users have relied on it to bridge assets since 2017. But in February, 2021, RenVM was acquired by Alameda Research. This led to a funding shortfall after Alameda filed for bankruptcy in November.

Algorithmic stablecoins have had a rough year, starting with UST de-pegging to zero and the subsequent blow-up of Terra’s LUNA token which was used for the asset’s backing. Algorithmic stablecoins are not fully collateralized and rely on different mechanisms to maintain the peg, making them inherently fragile to market conditions. 

The UST implosion created a domino effect that caused another stablecoin, Magic Internet Money (MIM) to de-peg. Despite the fragility of algorithmic stablecoins, new projects like Djed by Cardano (ADA) are still planning on launching, but that doesn’t mean that the concept has improved since the crises seen earlier in the year.

Let’s look at the latest de-peg event in the cryptocurrency space.

On Dec. 8, the Digital Asset eXchange Association (DAXA), which consists of the five major crypto exchanges in Korea issued a warning for Waves and its (WAVES) token.

The warning comes after the stablecoin, USDN which is backed by WAVES, de-pegged and has thus far failed to re-establish the $1 peg in more than 180 days. This means that the USDN protocol may liquidate WAVES through the automatic arbitrage process in an attempt to regain the peg. On Dec. 8, USDN was 16% below the peg.

A court in South Korea has supported the decision of local exchanges to delist Wemade’s Wemix (WEMIX) tokens, dismissing Wemade’s request to cancel the delisting.

The Seoul Central District Court ruled on Dec. 7 to justify the decision of the Digital Asset eXchange Alliance (DAXA) to delist WEMIX from major South Korean exchanges, The Korea Herald reported on Thursday.

The DAXA, a crypto exchange group representing South Korea’s largest firms like Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit and Gopax, said that Wemade has failed to properly disclose the number of tokens outstanding.

The court has reportedly supported the position of the DAXA, emphasizing the importance of transparent reporting of token’s distribution, stating:

“Crypto assets have no regulator or an absolute means of determining their price like the stock market [...] Therefore the distribution number is crucial because the price is decided as a result of the balance between supply and demand."

Bitcoin (BTC) and crypto are only used by 13.7% of Americans, but they generate more exchange volume than anyone else.

The latest data compiled by exchange Huobi confirms that in 2022, the United States is the most “mature” crypto market.

U.S., Vietnam lead the way on crypto

Despite the heavy drawdowns in price for Bitcoin and altcoins this year, interest throughout the world remains “extremely active,” and the leaders may come as a surprise.

In its latest annual report, Huobi Research, an affiliate of Huobi Global, revealed that the U.S. accounts for 9.2% of global centralized exchange (CEX) volume. When it comes to DeFi, the figure is even higher — 31.8% of global volumes.

At the same time, the percentage of the population using crypto is not as high as in some other jurisdictions. 13.7% of Americans use crypto, the report said, compared to 20.3% Vietnam, the leader out of the 15 countries examined.