One trader said ether’s sell-off on positive news is typical “buy the rumors, sell the facts” behavior.

Bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) prices fell in the past 24 hours even as several ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were approved for listing on U.S. exchanges.

Ether has dropped 4% since the approval, CoinGecko data shows. It had risen 20% over the course of a week amid indications of pending approval and updated odds of the ETFs getting approved. The broad-based CoinDesk 20, a liquid index that tracks the biggest tokens, fell 4.5% over 24 hours and the crypto market cap lost 2.9% to $2.5 trillion.

“Ethereum’s sell-off on positive news is a typical “buy the rumors, sell the facts” reaction of speculators,” Alex Kuptsikevich, a senior market analyst at FxPro, said in an email to CoinDesk. “We shouldn’t be surprised if the price pulls back to the $3000 area again, returning to an important consolidation area. From these levels, large institutional investors can start building a position in ETFs.

“We saw the same in January after the approval of the Bitcoin ETF, which took 19% off its price in the following two weeks before there was a spectacular reversal,” he said.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday approved key regulatory filings tied to ether ETFs, a historic milestone for the second-largest cryptocurrency. They are not, however, cleared to trade. Although the SEC approved the 19B-4 form that allows for the offering and listing of ETFs, it must still green light the funds’ S-1 filings before investors can buy them.

The regulator approved documents for eight ETFs – from VanEck, Fidelity, Franklin, Grayscale, Bitwise, ARK Invest 21Shares, Invesco Galaxy and BlackRock – for listing on the Nasdaq, NYSE Arca, and Cboe BZX exchanges.

If the ETFs are approved for trading, a significant influx of institutional capital is likely. Standard Chartered predicted inflows of as much as $45 billion in the first 12 months.

Some traders say they expect ether to rally over 60% in the coming months, with a marked increase in futures and spot buying demand for the token in the past week.

The post Bitcoin, Ether Rally Cools Following U.S. Ether ETF Listing Approval appeared first on Crypto Insider.

Ribbon said it expects trading volumes to reach over $100 million a day within the first six months.

SINGAPORE – Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Ribbon Finance, known for its on-chain structured products, said it is launching an options exchange to boost demand for its services among savvy crypto traders.

Announced at Token 2049 in Singapore, Aevo will allow users to initially trade ether (ETH) options, with plans to launch options for bitcoin (BTC) and other tokens in the coming months.

Ribbon founder Julian Koh said he expected the options exchange to see over $100 million in daily trading volume in the next few months, adding that the Ethereum ecosystem had “gained momentum” after the Merge event earlier this month.

“With the majority of TVL in our platform coming from the Ethereum ecosystem, we have always regarded it as our home ground, and have strategically launched Aevo while the Ethereum network continues to build momentum after the Merge,” Koh told CoinDesk, using an acronym for total value locked, or the amount of crypto tied up in DeFi projects.

Ribbon locked over $75 million worth of various cryptocurrencies as of Wednesday. At its peak, in May, It held over $300 million, though the value of assets held on its platform fell as the broader market declined.

Ribbon is known in crypto circles for its Decentralized Option Vaults (DOV) product, which allows users to generate yield through different strategies that involve financial instruments such as options, derivatives and other fixed-rate crypto products.

The DOV for USD Coin (USDC) on Ribbon pays some 25% in annual yields to users, compared with rates of less than 4% on lending protocols like Aave or Compound.

Crypto options trading has been a rare bright spot in the bear market, building momentum even as crypto prices have plunged, as previously reported. Some $10 billion worth of options products has been traded so far in September, data show.

Earlier this year, fund manager Darius Sit of QCP Capital called options trading the next growth driver in the crypto sector, explaining at the time that such products were much more familiar to institutional investors and that they were much more likely to use options rather than niche DeFi products to trade cryptocurrencies.

The post Ethereum Project Ribbon Finance Launches Crypto Options Exchange to Boost Growth appeared first on Crypto Insider.

The miner used almost 30 million gwei to pay for that transaction.

Crypto miner F2Pool mined the last-ever block of proof-of-work (PoW) ether (ETH) as the network shifted to a proof-of-stake (PoS) earlier this morning.

The last ether block before the Merge was 15537393, data shows. F2Pool paid some 29,991,429 gwei, the smallest unit of ether, as gas fees for that transaction.

The miner included a message in Mandarin in the block: “七彩神仙鱼F!,” it read, which translates to “Colorful Angelfish F!”

The miner, which was founded in 2013, was one of the earliest bitcoin (BTC) mining pools.

After the merge, new blocks on the Ethereum network continued to be produced as normal and without any hiccups. Ether traded flat after the Merge.

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Russia’s Gazprom announced an indefinite suspension of gas supply to Europe, bolstering inflation fears. The renewed risk aversion capped upside in ether.

Ether (ETH), the second largest cryptocurrency by market value, looked set for renewed price ahead of the Ethereum “Merge,” according to observers tracking chart patterns.

However, buyers remained on the sidelines early Monday, perhaps due to fears that inflation would worsen in the wake of Russian energy giant Gazprom’s indefinite suspension of gas supply to Europe and force central banks to stick to rapid liquidity withdrawal.

Last week, the native token of Ethereum’s blockchain broke out of a falling wedge pattern identified by two converging and descending trendlines connecting Aug. 14 and Aug. 25 highs and lows hit on Aug. 10, Aug. 20 and Aug. 28.

“The formation is solid confirmation that ETH could go up in September more than anybody thinks,” Bill Noble, chief technical analyst at cryptocurrency research company Token Metrics told CoinDesk when asked what the wedge breakout indicates.

Ether’s wedge breakout indicates the correction from the Aug. 14 high of $2,000 has ended and the uptrend from the June 13 low of $1,000 is likely to resume.

Prices doubled in the four weeks to Aug. 14 as equity markets regained poise and Ethereum developer Tim Beiko hinted at Sept. 19 as the deadline for the long-awaited Ethereum Merge – the technological upgrade that will transform the smart contract platform to a proof-of-stake network. The overhaul is likely to cause a drastic reduction in ETH supply and bring a store of value appeal to the cryptocurrency.

The Merge is slated to happen sometime around Sept. 15.

Traders often use technical analysis – a study of price patterns – to help make investment decisions.

The falling wedge begins wide at the top and contracts as prices move lower, causing the two descending trendlines to converge as the pattern matures. The converging nature of trend lines represents shallower lows, a sign of decreasing selling pressure. Therefore, a breakout is taken to mean a bullish revival.

Ether exited the falling wedge on Thursday, setting the stage for a pre-Merge rally.

“Ether has broken out of a falling wedge. A move above $1,700 would add conviction in the bullish momentum heading into the Merge,” Lewis Harland, a researcher at Decentral Park Capital, said.

Gazprom plays spoilsport

The cryptocurrency appeared on track to cross $1,700 on Friday after a supposed goldilocks U.S. nonfarm payrolls report revived hopes for slower Federal Reserve rate hikes after September.

However, the ascent stalled after Russian energy giant Gazprom scrapped a Saturday deadline to resume gas supply to Europe via the Nord Steam 1 pipeline, citing a technical fault.

The news bolstered inflation fears, zapping investor risk appetite. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, energy supply disruptions in Europe and other parts of the world have worsened, leading to sticky inflation. That has forced global central banks to suck out liquidity with rapid interest rate hikes and other tools.

According to Politico, Gazprom said on Saturday it would increase its shipments of gas to Europe via Ukraine. However, markets seemed skeptical that would help and remained weak at press time, with major European equity futures trading 2% lower while the dollar index topping 110.00 for the first in two decades.

Ether traded flat at around $1,565 while bitcoin was priced at $19,765, according to CoinDesk data.

The post Ether Eyes Price Rally After ‘Wedge’ Breakout, But Europe’s Energy Crisis Zaps Risk Appetite appeared first on Crypto Insider.

Crypto markets jumped after the U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision to hike rates by 75 basis points in a move that caught short traders offside.

Crypto markets jumped in the past 24 hours as the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) raised interest rates by 75 basis points as expected. Bitcoin jumped 10% at one point following the Fed announcement, while ether soared as much as 16%.

Total market capitalization increased 6.4%, one of the biggest gains in recent weeks as risk appetite returned among investors as they priced in lower rate hikes ahead. Ether led gains among majors, with Solana’s SOL, BNB, and Cardano’s ADA up 6.4% in the past 24 hours. Elsewhere, Uniswap’s UNI and bitcoin cash added as much as 21%.

The upward movement caused over $200 million in liquidations on short trades and some $175 million on long trades. Over 72% of all liquidated traders were short positions, meaning a short squeeze may have contributed to some of the price gains among major cryptos in the past 24 hours.

Short squeeze refers to a sharp rise in the price of an asset that forces traders who previously sold short to close out their positions, usually leading to an increase in prices.

Crypto exchange OKX saw over $128 million in liquidations, the most among counterparts, with over 88% of traders betting on lower prices on the exchange.

Shorts are positions betting on market declines, while longs refer to bets on rising prices. Liquidation refers to when an exchange forcefully closes a trader’s leveraged position due to a partial or total loss of the trader’s initial margin. It happens when a trader cannot meet the margin requirements for a leveraged position (fails to have sufficient funds to keep the trade open).

Ether futures saw over $165 million in liquidations across shorts and longs. Data from Coinalyze shows trading volumes on ether has risen in the past weeks and crossed those of bitcoin – which led futures markets volumes.

A catalyst for higher ether volumes is the network’s upcoming “merge” event in September, which will shift Ethereum away from its current validation mechanism to a proof-of-stake network.

The post Ether Dominates Futures Trading as Shorts See $200M in Liquidations appeared first on Crypto Insider.

The app developer had bought 940.89 BTC and 31,000 ETH in spring of 2021.

Hong Kong-listed software firm Meitu (1357) likely lost RMB 274.9 million to RMB 349.9 million ($41.1 million to $52.3 million) in the first half of 2022, mostly due to a fall in the value of its crypto holdings.

The firm’s losses almost doubled, a 99.6% to 154.1% increase, compared to the same period last year, it said in a filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on July 1.

The Cayman-islands incorporated firm Meitu is known in China for its synonymous AI-powered face beautification app.

The price of major cryptocurrencies has fallen dramatically in the past month, bitcoin (BTC) lost almost 38% in June, its second-biggest monthly loss since its launch in 2009.

Meitu bought 940.89 BTC and 31,000 ether (ETH) in the spring of 2021, but has not made any moves to sell or buy crypto since then, according to the filing.

The post Software Firm Meitu Lost Up to $52.3M in H1 Due to Slide in Crypto Prices appeared first on Crypto Insider.

The stash is worth over $65 million at the time of writing.

The entity behind Ronin’s unprecedented $655 million exploit in March has apparently moved tens of millions worth of stolen ether (ETH) through privacy protocol Tornado Cash in the past week, blockchain data from addresses connected to the exploiter show.

Activity over the past week from the exploiter’s main address – tagged Ronin Bridge Exploiter on tracking service Etherscan – apparently shows that over 21,000 ether was moved in several transactions to different wallets.

Data show these funds were then moved to privacy exchange Tornado Cash. The exploiter seemed to have made several trades of 100 ether each from all those wallets, data apparently shows.

Transfers to Tornado Cash were done in amounts of 100 ether, as this wallet show. (Etherscan)

The funds moved to Tornado Cash are worth upward of $65 million at current prices.

Tornado enhances the privacy of transactions by breaking the on-chain link between a source and a destination address. This allows exploiters and hackers to mask their addresses while withdrawing illicitly gained funds.

Transfer amounts out of the main wallet range from 1,000 ether to this morning’s 3,202 ether, the highest so far.

Some wallets, such as 0xdf225C84A0eAEAaAC20E6C1d369e94EE13B9dF2A, saw multiple ether deposits from the exploiter. Others like 0x429a66e7bD829F9453CEE5239Bfeaf5657A11A3e have seen just one deposit.

The main wallet continues to hold upwards of 151,055 ether, worth $461 million at current prices, at the time of writing.

Ronin Network was hit by a $625 million exploit in March that affected Ronin validator nodes for Sky Mavis, the publisher of the popular Axie Infinity game, and the Axie DAO.

The attacker “used hacked private keys in order to forge fake withdrawals” from the Ronin bridge across two transactions, as seen on Etherscan, Ronin said in a blog post on Substack.

The post Ronin Exploiter Moved 21,000 Ether to Tornado Cash in Past Week appeared first on Crypto Insider.

The lovechild of Ethereum programmability and Zcash privacy is getting a funding boost from SoftBank, Tiger Global and others.

Pledging to launch its private, programmable Aleo blockchain network “later this year,” crypto startup Aleo Systems Inc raised $200 million in a recent funding round.

SoftBank and Kora Management co-led the company’s Series B, with big-name venture capital firms such as Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Tiger Global, Samsung Ventures and others joining in.

The round comes as Aleo shifts into layer 1 launch mode. Its privacy-focused tech differs substantially from decentralized finance’s most popular programmable blockchains, like Ethereum with its built-in openness. That makes Aleo’s success hardly a guarantee, even in a frothy market.

The timing is perhaps more interesting given recent privacy-related developments in the wilds of DeFi. The Avalanche-based DeFi platform Wonderland was crippled following revelations that a pseudonymous executive was previously involved in the infamous QuadrigaCX collapse.

Nonetheless, Aleo’s backers believe there’s demand for scalable privacy networks. In an interview with CoinDesk, COO Alex Pruden, an a16z veteran, said regulators, consumers and businesses could all benefit from the system Aleo plans to deploy.

Privacy tech

Pruden said Aleo will promote privacy-focused DeFi programmability.

“The way to think about it is, Aleo is like if the Ethereum model and the Zcash model had a baby,” he said. (Ethereum is a dominant smart contracts blockchain and Zcash is a privacy-focused transaction platform.) An alternative analogy: “Zcash with smart contracts.”

Aleo’s privacy chops derive from the same privacy tech underpinning Zcash. Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) are a method of authenticating the validity of a crypto transaction without broadcasting its details; this allows users to keep their money matters private.

“Zero-knowledge execution,” or Zexe (pronouced “sexy” with a Z), is Aleo’s smart contracts-friendly evolution of ZKPs. It will see users execute off-chain transactions that pair with on-chain cryptographic proofs. Crunching often complex transactions off-chain promises more “scalability, efficiency and privacy” than doing it all on-chain, according to Pruden.

Ethereum’s on-chain computations slow down that network, he said. That on-chain, off-chain dichotomy is part of the reason why Aleo’s smart contracts will not be Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible.

A new smart contracts programming language called “Leo” takes the place of Solidity, Ethereum developers’ lingua coda.

A critical company

Aleo Systems Inc. is poised to wield an outsize role in its eponymous blockchain’s growth, according to Pruden’s account. Acting as a caretaker, core developer and hype man for the network, it plans to ultimately build a profitable business atop the open-source blockchain.

“What better team or company to build a business on top of an existing layer one than the team that built the layer one, right?” Pruden said. “It’s like a flywheel, a virtuous cycle.”

Pruden said the company hasn’t committed to decentralizing Aleo’s governance, but it hasn’t ruled it out, either.

Regardless, the $200 million will help Aleo Systems pump life into its pet project.

“That’s really what the Series B is all about: Raising additional capital for that purpose to build products and services on top of the Aleo Network,” Pruden said.

The post Aleo Blockchain Raises $200M for Privacy-Minded DeFi appeared first on Crypto Insider.

Reserves slumped 50% in four weeks owing to an imbalance between loan demand and deposits.

The reserves of Terra-based lending and borrowing protocol Anchor, which offers a supposedly industry-beating benchmark deposit rate of around 20%, are sliding fast as a result of the crypto market crash.

Data provided by Terra.Engineer show reserves have slumped by half to 35 million UST, the native Terra U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin, in four weeks, an average decline of about 1.25 million UST a day. The crypto community is worried that the reserves will be completely drained in three weeks or so in the absence of corrective measures.

“The Anchor Yield Reserve was created as a buffer to maintain the 20% interest stability,” pseudonymous market expert and Anchor user Duo Nine, who operates the Twitter handle @DU09BTC, told CoinDesk. “However, this reserve has been running a deficit for weeks due to more deposits than borrowers on Anchor Protocol. At this rate, it will hit zero in 20 days.”

While most DeFi protocols allow demand-supply forces to determine lending and borrowing rates, Anchor offers almost a fixed 20% annualized percentage yield (APY) to users depositing UST. The so-called anchor rate is set by holders of Anchor’s governance token ANC. At press time, other industry heavyweights were offering lending rates of less than 10%, according to data source defirate.com.

The protocol finances the super high deposit rate from three income sources: interest charged to borrowers, staking rewards earned from borrowers’ collateral – liquid staking proof of stake assets from major blockchains like bonded luna (bLUNA) or bonded ether (bETH) – and liquidation fees. Luna is the native token of Terra’s blockchain, while ether powers the Ethereum blockchain.

If the realized yield from the three income sources is greater than the anchor rate, the excess amount is kept aside as the UST-denominated Anchor Yield Reserve. The protocol taps into the reserve when the realized yield is less than the anchor rate, ensuring depositors are paid as promised.

The structure makes the protocol’s reserve vulnerable to market crashes and the resulting imbalance between demand for loans and supply of deposits. During bearish periods, traders are less likely to borrow UST to seek higher returns elsewhere, leading to a decline in loan demand. They are also more likely to supply UST tokens in a bid to make a relatively stable return, pushing deposits higher.

That’s what seems to have happened since December, forcing the protocol to persistently tap the reserve, as tweeted by Do Kwon, co-founder of Terraform Labs, the decentralized financial payment network behind Anchor.

Data from Anchor Protocol show total deposits stood at 5.71 billion UST at press time, while the amount borrowed was 1.37 billion UST. That’s a loan demand shortage of over 300%. The yield reserve was 34.13 million UST, and the anchor rate was 19.88%.

The situation perhaps indicates that fixed rates are unsustainable over the long run and yields are better determined by free interaction of demand and supply forces.

“The fixed yield of around 20% may not be sustainable,” Duo Nine said. “With the protocol facing deficit, it needs fresh money in the form of increased loan demand to keep the anchor rate at 20%.”

Terraform Labs’ Kwon is trying to soothe concerns about a depletion in reserves, saying the mechanism was created precisely to ensure stability during market downturns. Early today, Kwon assured crypto followers on Twitter that the protocol would function as a regular DeFi money market if the much-feared scenario of reserves dropping to zero occurred.

“If we were to get to this hypothetical situation, Anchor will *still* offer the highest return on stablecoins. By far. It will be fine,” Kwon tweeted.

It remains to be seen what corrective measures are implemented. Terraform Labs provided a cash injection of 70 million UST following the crypto crash of May-June 2021, which punctured the broader market bull run.

“The deployment is a one-off solution that will prevent the need for future intervention, allocating a significant runway for the protocol to introduce self-sustainable mechanics even during periods of low borrowing demand,” Terra Research Forum’s blogpost Bolstering Anchor’s Sustainability published in July said.

Experts say a cash injection could be a temporary solution. It will, after all, have little impact on loan demand.

“A capital injection will prolong the health of the system, but generally, they need to either reduce the deposit rate or increase the utility for ANC token, so it’s not viewed as a farming coin,” Hassan Bassiri, VP, Portfolio Management at Arca, said

Borrowers providing collateral are given ANC tokens proportional to the amount borrowed. “ANC is also used as incentives to bootstrap borrow demand and initial deposit rate stability. The protocol distributes ANC tokens every block to stablecoin borrowers, proportional to the amount borrowed,” the official explainer says.

An ANC token with increased utility might bring loan demand and greater income for the protocol, alleviating the pressure on the reserve. Kwon has assured that he is resolved to finding ways to subsidize the yield reserve.

The post Anchor Protocol Reserves Slide as Money Market’s Founder Talks Down Concerns appeared first on Crypto Insider.

Tokens of projects on the Avalanche and Ethereum networks started by Wonderland’s creator fell as much as 22% in the past 24 hours.

Prices of tokens created by Daniele Sestagalli, one of the developers of Avalanche-based money market Wonderland, fell as much as 22% in the past 24 hours amid drama around Wonderland’s cofounders.

In the past 24 hours, Popsicle Finance’s ICE fell 22%, Wonderland’s TIME fell 15%, and Abracadabra’s SPELL dropped 15% to lead losses among altcoins in an otherwise sideways crypto market, data showed.

All these tokens were part of projects created by Sestagalli, who gained a cult following in recent months thanks to his community-centric approach towards crypto projects. His protocols were worth billions of dollars at their peak, but the fortunes have since faded away.

Prices of TIME, one of the most popular Sestagalli projects, reached lows of $261 during U.S. hours on Thursday before recovering to $330 in European morning hours on Friday. Prices are down 96% since lower all-time highs of just over $10,000 in November 2021, when TIME reached a market capitalization of $2 billion.

SPELL, the governance token of Abracabadra, a protocol that allows investors to deposit collateral in the form of interest-bearing crypto, is down 86% since November 2021’s peak of $0.03, data from tracking tool CoinGecko show.

ICE, the token of Ethereum-based cross-chain exchange Popsicle Finance, fell from over $8 on Wednesday to $4 in European morning hours on Friday. Its market capitalization dropped to just over $50 million, a level last seen in September 2021.

Investors were also concerned about Magic Internet Money (MIM), a dollar-pegged stablecoin issued on the Abracabadra Money platform, losing its parity with the U.S. dollar. MIM is one of the largest algorithmic stablecoin with a circulating supply in excess of $4.6 billion at the time of writing.

The plunge came after Wonderland’s pseudonymous co-founder ‘Sifu’ was revealed to be Michael Patryn, one of the cofounders of failed crypto exchange QuadrigaCX, as reported.

Patryn launched the influential Canadian crypto exchange with Gerard Cotten in 2013, with the exchange processing over $2 billion in trading volume at its peak in 2018. But the success story turned awry after Cotten died during a trip to India, taking with him access codes to wallets that controlled over $190 million worth of cryptocurrencies belonging to clients.

Conspiracy theories around Cotten’s death sprung up soon after around the circumstances of his death. In addition, some investigations at the time revealed Patryn – who left Quadriga in 2016 – was actually one Omar Dhanani, a convicted felon who was involved in credit card scams and identity fraud.

On Thursday, the broader crypto community was furious as Patryn and Sestagalli decided to continue keeping a convicted scammer as one of the key holders to a treasury worth hundreds of millions of dollars. This led to a sell-off in TIME, and later, a sell-off in cryptocurrencies related to TIME and its developers.

Meanwhile, a governance post on Wonderland forum created by community members on Jan.27 sought to remove Sifu as treasury manager of the protocol.

Over 83% of the community voted to ‘replace Sifu’ at the time of writing, staking over 41,000 TIME tokens as votes towards the removal.

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