Bearly hanging on...
Bearly hanging on...
The Top 5 stories this week in crypto...and more!
Headline Roundup
A look at the numbers
Bitcoin: $31,403 → $23,412 (-21.7%)
Ethereum: $1,902 → $1,215 (-33.17%)
Biggest Winners
Leo Token: $5 → $5.41 (+5%)
Fei USD: $1→ $1.01 (+1%) This is a stablecoin
Biggest Losers
Elrond: $67.54 → $40.16 (-45.7%)
Aave: $107.63 →$57.73 (-44.5%)
ApeCoin: $6.30 → $3.49 (-44%)
Into the Headlines
1. Celsius Suspends all Customer Withdrawals
Celsius is a crypto lending firm that was popular among retail investors. They allowed you to borrow crypto, swap crypto, and lend any crypto that you already have.
Boasting up to 17% APR on lending.
Today the firm announced that they would be halting all withdrawals and transfers, citing market conditions as the reason. This means customers are not able to withdraw their funds, should they wish to.
Celsius is in a sticky spot, to provide users with 17% APR on their crypto holdings, they take the client’s funds and lend them out elsewhere. Whether that be on a DeFI platform or via another crypto lending venue.
With the market conditions being as bad as they are (see above), it is highly likely that Celsius is currently unable to make their customers whole and have lost money whilst lending client funds out.
2. Ethereum closes red for the 10th week in a row
It’s been nothing but pain for Ethereum, crypto’s second-largest coin. The last 10 weeks have been successive down weeks, as ETH has fallen from $3,500 in April to $1,200 today in June.
3. Optimism Hacker Returns 17 Million OP Tokens
Last week Optimism (OP) launched its token via an airdrop, coins were distributed to all those who have used the Optimism blockchain in the past.
Just briefly - Optimism is a layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum, it is essentially a blockchain that handles Ethereum transactions not on the Ethereum main chain but instead on an entirely separate chain. Once transactions are settled on this other chain, the data is then sent back to the Ethereum chain. It is intended to make Ethereum transactions quicker and more affordable, as Ethereum often suffers periods of high congestion and high fees.
The Optimism airdrop did not go to plan, however. Essentially, the Optimism team sent 20 million OP tokens (at the time around $20 million worth) to the wrong address.
Wallets on the Optimism blockchain are slightly different from those on the Ethereum main chain, and Optimism sent their tokens to the latter. Once they sent those tokens to the wrong address, they were stolen within 1 day as the wallet was not secured properly.
However, in a pleasant turn of events, the hacker sent 17 million of the 20 million tokens back to the Optimism team. Despite them being worth around $35 million at the time.
4. Dogecoin is Down 90% since Elon Musk went on SNL
In May 2021, DogeCoin was hitting all-time highs and Elon Musk went on Saturday Night Live pretending to be “The Dogefather”. It has been over a year since he went on the show and DogeCoin is down over 90% since…
5. Twitter’s Jack Dorsey is building Web5.0
Move over Web 3.0, Web 5.0 is here. The founder and ex-CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey announced last week a company called “TBD” whose main goal is to decentralize the web using the “right tools”.
Web 3.0 is the phrase used to describe the next version of the internet, the decentralized internet built using blockchain technology. Jack here, wants to make “Web 5.0” which does still use blockchain technology, but this time by using the technology behind Bitcoin.
Typically, Web 3.0 projects and companies use newer blockchains like Ethereum as the allow for smart contracts and more complex transactions, whereas bitcoin is just a digital currency.
Web 5.0 uses Bitcoin’s technology as the monetary network and a variety of other computing technologies to build a system of decentralized identities, storage, and applications where users own and control their own data. We still aren’t sure why we skipped Web 4.0
