This “Crypto City” guide looks at the San Francisco Bay Area’s crypto culture, its most notable projects and people, its financial infrastructure, which retailers accept crypto, and where you can find blockchain education courses. You really might leave your heart in San Francisco with all the projects in the Bay Area.
City: San Francisco
Country: United States
Population: 887,711
Founded: 1776
A sharp rebound in the Polygon (MATIC) market in the last four months has increased its price by 200% when measured from its June 2022 bottom of $0.31. And now, the token is showing signs of undergoing another major market rally.
Notably, the MATIC supply held by all crypto exchanges fell to 802.15 million on Oct. 26, its lowest level since January 2022. The plunge came as a part of a broader downtrend that has witnessed over 600 million MATIC leaving exchanges in the last four months, data on Santiment shows.
MATIC balance on exchanges versus price. Source: SantimentA declining crypto balance across exchanges is perceived as bullish by the market since traders typically withdraw their funds from trading platforms when they want to hold the tokens long term.
The MATIC chart above shows a similar albeit erratic negative correlation between its price and supply on exchanges. As a result, a period of decline in MATIC reserves at exchanges has historically coincided with an uptrend in price, and vice versa.
Therefore, the latest plunge in MATIC supply across exchanges hints at more upside for the token in the coming weeks.
Crypto staking platform Freeway pointed at the failure of one of its trading strategies, along with market conditions as the leading reason for halting user withdrawals earlier this week.
The crypto yield platform on Oct. 23 announced it was halting various transactions relating to its high-yield “Supercharger” product, citing “unprecedented volatility” at the time, without giving any more details at the time, which saw its token price plummet.
In a 22-part Twitter thread on Oct. 25, Freeway shed more light on the situation, revealing that it was “one of Freeway’s trading strategies” that “appears to have failed” and has “dramatically impacted Freeway’s portfolio” and caused a “substantial loss” to its investors.
Freeway explained that an unprecedented rally of the United States dollar, along with crypto volatility led to the failure of the trading strategy.
“The trading strategy was executed as it was programmed, but the market volatility caused a spike in margin utilization leading to the loss,” it explained.
Decentralized lending protocol Compound has paused the supply of four tokens as lending collateral on its platform, aiming to protect users against potential attacks involving price manipulation, similar to the recent $117 million exploit from Mango Market's, according to a proposal on Compound's governance forum.
With the pause, users will not be able to deposit yearn finance (YFI), 0x (ZRX), basic attention token (BAT) and maker (MKR) tokens as collateral to take loans.
The proposal passed on Oct. 25 with 99% of all voters in favor. It stated:
"An oracle manipulation-based attack analogous to the one that cost Mango Markets $117m is much less likely to occur on Compound due to collateral assets having much deeper liquidity than MNGO and Compound requiring loans to be over-collateralized. However, out of an abundance of caution, we propose pausing supply for the above assets, given their relative liquidity profiles."
In a security review of Compound v2 performed in September, the Volt Protocol team identified potential market manipulation risks related to low-liquidity tokens. The report explained:
Near Protocol’s in-house stablecoin, USN, recently became undercollateralized, forcing Near Foundation to recommend winding down USN to prevent a situation similar to the Terra (LUNA) and UST collapse. Supporting this move, the Near Foundation opened up a $40 million fund to protect investors and help them cash out of USN with equal amounts of wrapped Tether (USDT.e).
On Oct. 24, Near Foundation revealed setting up a $40 million fund, allowing eligible USN holders to redeem their USN tokens on a 1:1 basis with USDT.e. The program was launched after Decentral Bank (DCB), the issuer of NEAR-native stablecoin USN, raised concerns about the stablecoin depegging due to algorithmic failure.
The USN Protection Program aims to cover the collateral gap of $40 million, which the foundation confirmed was not linked to the NEAR token price. Taking proactive measures to protect investors from a possible collapse, Near stated:
“The NEAR Foundation is recommending that DCB wind down USN in an orderly manner. To assist with this process, the NEAR Foundation has provided a $40m USD grant to a subsidiary of Aurora Labs – one of the NEAR ecosystem’s most prominent contributors – to set up the USN Protection Programme.”
The grant was provided to an Aurora Labs subsidiary and was immediately made available for users to exchange their depegged stablecoin tokens. However, redemptions will begin only after DCB commences the winding down process.
Australia's financial regulator has issued a stark warning to Australian crypto asset providers amid launching civil proceedings against Australian firm BPS Financial Pty Ltd (BPS) over "misleading" representations concerning its Qoin crypto token.
In an Oct. 25 announcement, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) said it has commenced civil penalty proceedings against BPS Financial for making “false, misleading or deceptive representations” to its 79,000 users about its crypto token Qoin.
It alleges the company engaged in “unlicensed conduct” relating to Qoin, a digital currency launched in Oct. 2019 which allows participating merchants to accept as payment for goods and services.
ASIC Deputy Chair Sarah Court said this case should serve as a warning to all crypto issuers that ASIC is monitoring the crypto market for misconduct.
"Where it falls within our remit, ASIC will take targeted action against unlicensed conduct and misleading promotion of crypto-asset financial products that could harm consumers - this is a key priority for ASIC."
Hong Kong and Singapore’s wealthy elite appear to be looking at digital assets with fervor, after a new report from KPMG suggesting over 90% of family offices and high-net-worth individuals (HNWI) are interested in investing in the digital assets space or have already done so.
According to an Oct. 24 report from KPMG China and Aspen Digital titled “Investing in Digital Assets,” as much as 58% of family offices and HNWI of respondents in a recent survey are already investing in digital assets, and 34% “plan to do so.”
The survey took the pulse from 30 family offices and HNWIs in Hong Kong and Singapore with most respondents managing assets between $10 million to $500 million.
KPMG said the large crypto uptake among the ultra-wealthy has increased confidence in the sector, spurred by the increase in “mainstream institutional attention.”
It also noted institutions also have more accessibility to digital asset financial products, including regulated products.
Polygon (MATIC) price could double by the end of 2022 or early 2023 due to a mix of extremely bullish fundamental and technical indicators.
MATIC rose by nearly 6.5% four days after Nubank, a Brazilian fintech company backed by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and Softbank, confirmed that it selected Polygon's "Supernets technology" for its blockchain and digital token dubbed Nucoin.
"Nubank plans to airdrop the digital token to its customers in the first half of 2023," the official announcement read, adding:
"These tokens will be the basis for its customers' loyalty rewards program and will have benefits such as discounts and other advantages."
As a result of the rally, MATIC was changing hands for $0.90 on Oct. 24, its highest level in three weeks.
The crypto market downturn is proving a difficult storm to weather for both investors and businesses alike in the industry. However, according to new data, this hasn’t stopped women from being bullish on crypto.
A new survey conducted by BlockFi, a crypto trading and investment platform, asked women across the United States about their views of and participation in the crypto industry between Sept. 2021 and Mar. 2022.
According to the findings one in ten women chose crypto as their first investment, with 17% of that being Millennial women investors and 11% Gen Z. Findings even revealed that of the women surveyed 7% of Gen X, which includes individuals born between 1965-1980, reported crypto as their first investment.
However, as past data has revealed, more education and clarity surrounding the space is needed to make investors feel secure and confident in their investment.
The survey highlighted that while an overwhelming majority of surveyed women (81%) have heard of crypto, 77% still view it as a risky investment.
FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) said the rise of Binance stablecoin BUSD could spark the “Second Great Stablecoin War,” given how fast its market cap has surged over recent months.
Bankman-Fried's recent comments come a month after Binance pushed ahead with plans to auto-convert a host of stablecoins supported on its exchange into BUSD on Sept. 6, — which has seen BUSD's share of the total stablecoin market rise since.
BUSD’s share of the total stablecoin market has risen from 10.01% on Sept. 7 to 15.48% on Oct. 22, according to crypto data aggregator Coin Metrics.
Meanwhile, BUSD’s market cap has risen 3.3% over the last 30 days to $21.7 billion, with the stablecoin only trailing Tether USD (USDT) at $68.4 billion and USD Coin (USDC) at $43.9 billion.
Commenting on the asset’s growth following the move, the FTX CEO noted via Twitter on Oct. 23 that “Binance converts USDC --> BUSD, and we see the change in supplies,” adding “thus begins the second great stablecoin war.”
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Automated crypto trading bot provider 3Commas issued a security alert after identifying certain FTX API keys being used to perform unauthorized trades for DMG cryptocurrency trading pairs on the FTX exchange.
3Commas and FTX conducted a joint investigation in relation to reports from users of unauthorized trades on the DMG trading pairs on FTX. The duo identified that hackers used new 3Commas accounts to perform the DMG trades adding that “The API keys were not taken from 3Commas but from outside of the 3Commas platform.”
A subsequent investigation found fradulent websites posing as 3Commas were being used to phish API keys as users linked their FTX accounts. The FTX API keys were then used to perform the unauthorized DMG trades.
Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.
Banks will soon be equipped to offer clients crypto trading and custody thanks to a new program called “Crypto Source” from Mastercard and Paxos Trust Company. As part of the program, Mastercard will cover some of the compliance, security and interface details while Paxos handles crypto custody and trading. Expected in the final quarter of 2022, the Crypto Source program will essentially provide the underpinning that will let banks offer crypto trading and custody to their clients.
Under the supervision of former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, a new social media platform called “Bluesky Social” has entered its private beta phase after years of anticipation. Underpinning the platform is a protocol known as the Authenticated Transfer Protocol (formerly named ADX). The protocol essentially removes the walls around user data, letting users move their accounts from platform to platform rather than having their profiles and information locked on a single platform.
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Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.
Banks will soon be equipped to offer clients crypto trading and custody thanks to a new program called “Crypto Source” from Mastercard and Paxos Trust Company. As part of the program, Mastercard will cover some of the compliance, security and interface details while Paxos handles crypto custody and trading. Expected in the final quarter of 2022, the Crypto Source program will essentially provide the underpinning that will let banks offer crypto trading and custody to their clients.
Under the supervision of former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, a new social media platform called “Bluesky Social” has entered its private beta phase after years of anticipation. Underpinning the platform is a protocol known as the Authenticated Transfer Protocol (formerly named ADX). The protocol essentially removes the walls around user data, letting users move their accounts from platform to platform rather than having their profiles and information locked on a single platform.
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The European country of Spain is officially home to the third-largest network of Bitcoin (BTC) and cryptocurrency ATMs after the United States and Canada.
Spain currently hosts 215 crypto ATMs, pushing El Salvador — wi 212 crypto ATMs — down to the fourth position after surpassing the country by 3 crypto ATMs. Data from CoinATMRadar confirms that Spain represents 0.6% of the global crypto ATM installations.
Crypto ATM distribution by continents and countries. Source: CoinATMRadarMoreover, the revelation places Spain as the highest contributor to crypto ATMs in Europe, which represents 14.65% of total installations in the continent, followed by Switzerland (144 ATMs), Poland (142 ATMs) and Romania (135 ATMs).
Crypto ATM installation growth in Spain. Source: CoinATMRadarIn 2022 alone, Spain installed 43 crypto ATMs and has previously shared its intent to install a total of over 100 ATMs by the end of the year — taking up the total to nearly 300 crypto ATMs once completed.
MediaMarkt, a German electronics retailer, and Confinity, among others, are leading the drive to install crypto ATMs across Austria, Germany, Spain and Greece.
Hackers took over the official Twitter account of crypto exchange Gate.io, putting over 1 million users at risk of losing funds to an ongoing fraudulent Tether (USDT) giveaway.
Social media platform Twitter serves as the most effective medium to reach the crypto community. As a result, the trend of hacking into official Twitter handles of verified accounts to promote scams is on the rise.
Hackers of unknown origin took over Gate.io’s Twitter account and changed the website URL from Gate.io to gąte.com (https://xn--gte-ipa.com/) — a fraudulent website impersonating the exchange.
The fake website is actively promoting a fake giveaway of 500,000 USDT while asking users to connect their wallets (such as MetaMask) to claim the rewards. Once a user connects their wallet to the fake website, the hackers will gain access to their existing funds and end up draining the assets.
Blockchain investigator Peckshield also confirmed the ongoing attack as it detected the phishing website and alerted users about the risk of losing private keys.
Welcome readers, and thanks for subscribing! The Altcoin Roundup newsletter is now authored by Cointelegraph’s resident newsletter writer Big Smokey. In the next few weeks, this newsletter will be renamed Crypto Market Musings, a weekly newsletter that provides ahead-of-the-curve analysis and tracks emerging trends in the crypto market.
The publication date of the newsletter will remain the same, and the content will still place a heavy emphasis on the technical and fundamental analysis of cryptocurrencies from a more macro perspective in order to identify key shifts in investor sentiment and market structure. We hope you enjoy it!
When the bull market was in full swing, investing in decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens was like shooting fish in a barrel, but now that inflows to the sector pale in comparison to the market’s heyday, it’s much harder to identify good trades in the space.
During the DeFi summer, protocols were able to lure liquidity providers by offering three- to four-digit yields and mechanisms like liquid staking, lending via asset collateralization and token rewards for staking. The big issue was many of these reward offerings were unsustainable, and high emissions from some protocols led liquidity providers to auto-dump their rewards, creating constant sell pressure on a token’s price.
Total value locked (TVL) wars were another challenge faced by DeFi protocols, which had to constantly vie for investor capital in order to maintain the number of “users” willing to lock their funds within the protocol. This created a scenario where mercenary capital from whales and other cash-flush investors essentially airdropped funds to platforms offering the highest APY rewards for a short period of time, before eventually dumping rewards in the open market and shifting the investment funds to the greener pastures.
The 10-year Treasury yield in the United States rose to its highest level since 2008. Although this type of rally is usually negative for risky assets, the U.S. stock markets recovered ground after the Wall Street Journal reported that some officials of the Federal Reserve were concerned about the pace of the rate hikes and the risks of over-tightening.
While it is widely accepted that the U.S. will enter a recession, a debate rages on about how long it could last. On that, Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently said on Twitter that the recession could last “probably until spring of ‘24,” and added that it would be nice to spend “one year without a horrible global event.”
Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360Bitcoin’s (BTC) price has witnessed a massive drop from its all-time high but its hash rate remains strong. This has increased Bitcoin’s discount relative to its hash rate in October to its highest since the first quarter of 2020, according to Bloomberg Intelligence senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone. The previous instance of the huge discount was followed by a massive rally that lasted till 2021. McGlone believes the same could happen again this time and Bitcoin may outperform most major assets.
Let’s study the charts of the S&P 500 index (SPX), the U.S. dollar index (DXY) and the major cryptocurrencies to spot any reversals.
The S&P 500 index rose above the 20-day exponential moving average (EMA) (3,702) on Oct. 18 but the bulls could not build upon this strength and challenge the downtrend line. This suggests that the bears have not given up and are active at higher levels.
The current crypto bear market has induced panic, fear and uncertainty in investors. The dire situation started when the global crypto market capitalization dropped below the $2 trillion mark in January 2022. Since then, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) has decreased by over 70% from its all time-high of $69,044.77 it reached on November 10, 2021. Similarly, the values of other major cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum (ETH), Solana (SOL), Avalanche (AVAX), and Dogecoin (DOGE) have decreased by around 90%.
So does history tell us anything about when the bear market will end? Let’s start by examining the causes of the 2022 bear market.
There are several factors that caused the current bear run.
First off, the build up to the bear market started in 2021. During this period many regulatory authorities threatened to introduce stringent laws governing cryptocurrencies. This created fear and uncertainty in the market. For example, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a lawsuit against Ripple. China banned bitcoin mining resulting in most BTC miners to relocate to other countries.
A global increase in inflation and rising interest rates instilled fear and uncertainty in the market resulting in lower crypto investment than expected. Although there is much publicity pertaining to the United States inflation and interest rate, other countries such as India have experienced similar challenges.
The take-off of digital gold has the potential to disrupt the industry to an unprecedented degree. Historically, gold has been used as a global currency as a hedge against inflation. It has also been serving as an investment venue (commodities), often preferred over other asset classes like equities or foreign exchange, particularly in conventional markets.
However, there are certain disadvantages to owning physical gold, such as inconvenience in transport and storage, as well as the risk of theft. Gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs) might come across as an alternative option, but it cannot be forgotten that the traders don’t actually own the gold while paying the same taxes as gold bullion, or gold bars, and also investors have to pay an annual fee of around 0.4% to 1%. Gold contains all forms of metal, like coins and bars, whereas bullion includes all the exchangeable physical forms of other precious metals, like silver and platinum.
In contrast, digitized gold stored on blockchain comes across as a robust option. This is what Comtech Gold (CGO) comes in, combining the benefits of gold with the advantages of blockchain. CGO solves the prevailing problems in gold trading by rolling out a 100% gold-backed cryptocurrency.
CGO caters to the needs of individuals as well as corporate investors. It eliminates the need for retail investors to visit local markets to buy gold. Moreover, it makes things better for institutional investors by setting aside any need to store gold in physical form.
Comtech Gold has added another dimension to gold trading by issuing standardized digital gold backed by 100% physical gold. Built on XinFin XDC Network, an advanced blockchain, the project is also Shariah-compliant and certified by one of the renowned Shariah scholars group in the United Arab Emirates.
Decentralized finance is beginning to embrace a hot new phrase: “real yield.” It refers to DeFi projects that survive purely on distributing the actual revenue they generate rather than incentivizing stakeholders by handing out dilutionary free tokens.
Where does this real yield come from? Are “fees” really a sustainable model for growth at this early stage?
It depends on who you ask.
The DeFi ponzinomics problem is our natural starting point.
DeFi started to arrive as a concept in 2018, and 2020’s “DeFi summer” saw market entrants — DeGens — piling headfirst into DeFi to early mind-blowing returns of 1,000% a year for staking or using a protocol. Many attributed the real explosion of interest in DeFi to when Compound launched the COMP token to reward users for providing liquidity.
