The Federal Reserve just cut interest rates for the first time since March of 2020, fueling volatility in global markets. The move marks the central bank’s shift from fighting inflation to responding to signs of economic slowdown, weakness in the jobs market and other risks to growth. The move triggered major swings for the Dow […]
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An account used an unreadable function to remove 1.4 million BSC-USD without needing to burn the equivalent LP tokens.
An attacker drained over $1.4 million worth of Bows Coin Synthetic US Dollar (BSC-USD) from a liquidity pool holding CUT tokens on Sept. 10, according to a report from blockchain security platform CertiK.
The CUT token contract relied on a separate, unverified contract to set its “future yield” parameter, and this separate contract was used to drain the BSC-USD through an unknown method.
CertiK reported the event on X.
Goldman Sachs digital asset lead Mathew McDermott said the bank remains “hugely positive” on exploring blockchain applications.
Goldman Sachs’ digital assets unit is reportedly open to bolstering its 70-strong team, despite a massive cost-cutting exercise at the firm last month that will see 3,200 employees clear their desks.
Mathew McDermott, global head of digital assets for Goldman Sachs, said the bank remains “hugely supportive” of exploring blockchain applications and that the digital asset division will hire “as appropriate” this year.
The executive made the comments in Hong Kong to Bloomberg last week, noting that the digital assets team has grown from just four staff members in 2020 to around 70 today.
The firm’s supposed openness to beef up its crypto team comes despite the firm cutting up to 3,200 jobs last month, its largest round of layoffs since the global financial crisis of 2008-2009.
The cuts have reportedly impacted senior, middle and junior-level executives and concentrated on its core trading and banking units, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
In a presentation during Goldman Sachs' 2023 Investor Day in New York, CFO Denis Coleman reportedly said part of the payroll cuts will also involve holding off on replacing departing employees this year, so it can instead focus on “prioritizing strategic hires.”
#GoldmanSachs now smaller than #MorganStanley by almost $40B
— Susan Li (@SusanLiTV) February 28, 2023
CEO David Solomon being blamed for underperformance & wrong strategy
Holding 2nd ever Investor day
Targeting returns in mid-teens
May spin off or sell #consumer biz
Remember $GS IPO'd at 4XBook now worth 4 times LESS pic.twitter.com/v9pQ70aOFw
Related: Crypto layoffs decelerate, with layoffs falling to 570 in February
In December, McDermott said the firm was seeing opportunities to buy crypto companies that are “priced more sensibly” after the collapse of crypto exchange FTX, adding that they are already doing its due diligence on some crypto firms.
He noted that while FTX was a “poster child” of the space, ultimately, the underlying tech behind the industry “continues to perform.”
ConsenSys CEO Joseph Lubin confirmed the company would be cutting 96 of its staff to focus its resources on its core businesses.
ConsenSys, the parent company behind MetaMask, is letting go of 11% of its workforce, with CEO Joseph Lubin blaming “uncertain market conditions” brought on by recent collapses.
In a blog post from ConsenSys CEO Joseph Lubin on Jan. 18, the blockchain firm CEO said “poorly behaved” centralized finance (CeFi) actors have cast a “broad pall on our ecosystem that we will all need to work through.”
Lubin said the decision will impact 96 employees and is part of plans to focus its resources on its core businesses.
Today we need to make the extremely difficult decision to streamline some of ConsenSys’ teams to adjust to challenging and uncertain market conditions.https://t.co/Svuk9yYj6J
— Joseph Lubin (@ethereumJoseph) January 18, 2023
1/10
Speaking to Cointelegraph a few days before the layoffs were officially announced — though they had already been widely reported — Lex Sokolin, the chief cryptoeconomics officer of ConsenSys said that the industry was still far from mass adoption globally.
“We're still in a place where this is emerging technology. It’s not entirely well understood by the whole public,” he said.
According to Consensys, during the last bull run, over 30 million users each month were using MetaMask to access DeFi protocols, mint and trade NFTs and participate in DAOs. While promising, that’s a drop in the ocean globally.
“MetaMask has 30 million monthly users and in Web3, there are maybe 500 million addresses,” Sokolin said. “But that’s not five billion people.”
Asked when crypto will see mainstream adoption, Sokolin said it was all about having enough compelling use cases for crypto, as well as a thriving ecosystem to support it.
He also rejected the idea that it will come as a result of better user experience and clearer regulations.
“They're not the things that people say [such as] ‘when is UI going to be better’, or ‘when is regulation going to make it better.’ Those are important, but [...] they're not the catalyst,” said Sokolin adding:
“The catalyst of things is, one: Is there going to be enough stuff to buy on Web3 that I want to own?”
“If I live in Web3 and my avatar and my social media and my data and my status as a person, prestige, community belonging [...] is tied to me owning digital objects [...] you're gonna inevitably get to a place where everyone wants to be doing commercial transactions in Web3.”
“So for me, economic adoption is the most important thing. Because it's going to pull the rest of it into the ecosystem.”
Related: Crypto adoption in 2022: What events moved the industry forward?
In his latest post, Lubin said the company will be focused on streaming its workforce and focusing its business on core value drivers, including end-user custody solution MetaMask, developer platform Infura, and “new offerings” that grow Web3 commerce and decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) communities.
