New DeFi protocol Nudge aims to unlock hidden value in users’ wallets

August 15, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Nudge seeks to unleash a new DeFi primitive called Re: allocation Value.

Nudge is launching a new decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol on Ethereum designed to unlock the economic value hidden in users’ wallets, it told Cointelegraph on Aug. 15.

It aims to create a two-sided marketplace where Web3 protocols pay users incentives — or “Nudges” — to redirect onchain assets, liquidity and engagement.

Nudge will unleash a new DeFi primitive called “Re: allocation Value” that represents the economic value of users’ onchain activities, according to the company.

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Crypto ETFs will expand to new asset types, indexes — Grayscale executive

August 12, 2024 Coin Telegraph

bitcoin etf

The pace of adoption of crypto exchange-traded funds in the United States has been surprising even to Grayscale.

The market for cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds (ETFs) will expand to encompass new types of digital assets as well as diversified crypto indexes, according to an executive at asset manager Grayscale Investments.

“We're going to see a number of more single asset products, and then also certainly some index based and diversified products,” Dave Lavalle, Grayscale’s global head of ETFs, said during an Aug. 12 webinar.

Grayscale is among the largest issuers of crypto ETFs, with upward of $25 billion in assets under management (AUM) across its United States-listed crypto ETFs. Its US exchange-traded products currently comprise single-asset Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) funds.

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Bitrace warns of new crypto scam using QR codes

August 8, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

The scam starts with a small payment of Tether (USDT) to the user.

According to a social media post by blockchain analysis firm Bitrace, scanning the wrong QR code could drain users’ wallets.

Bitrace is warning of a new type of crypto scam “where theft is carried out through a payment QR code transfer test, essentially deceiving users into authorizing wallets.”

According to Bitrace, the scam follows a specific pattern. First, the scammer proposes that the user swap tokens over-the-counter (OTC) — through a wallet-to-wallet transfer rather than an exchange — and offers an exchange rate that beats the market.

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Nearly every token Binance listed in 2024 is now bleeding red — Coin98

August 6, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Airdrop

Part of the problem is the airdrop model for token distributions, which has grown in popularity in recent years.

Of the 30 tokens listed by cryptocurrency exchange Binance in 2024, all but one are in the red—and most are down badly, according to a post by crypto researcher Coin98 Analytics on the X social media platform.

The sole exception is Jupiter’s native token, JUP, which has risen 21.2% since listing on Jan. 31 and now has a fully diluted value (FDV) of some $8 billion. FDV is a measure of market capitalization assuming a token’s entire supply is circulating at current trading prices.

Launched in January, Jupiter is a Solana-based decentralized exchange that has attracted upward of $610 million in total value locked (TVL), according to DefiLlama. Its Jan. 31 airdrop was the largest in Solana’s history, with some $700 million worth of JUP tokens distributed to around 1 million wallets.

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Europe’s fourth largest hedge fund put nearly $500M in Bitcoin ETFs — Filing

August 5, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Europe’s fourth largest hedge fund put nearly 0M in Bitcoin ETFs — Filing

Banks

Other hedge funds are also reporting sizable positions in Bitcoin exchange-traded funds.

According to public disclosures filed on Aug. 5, Capula Management, Europe’s fourth-largest hedge fund, invested nearly $500 million in Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds.

The hedge fund, which is based in the United Kingdom and manages upward of $30 billion in investor assets, holds shares in Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) and BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT).

According to the filing, Capula owns shares worth more than $464 million in total, reflecting its portfolio as of June 30. The filings do not indicate that Capula owns any other crypto assets.

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Tether reports record-breaking $5.2B profit in first half of 2024

July 31, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Tether reports record-breaking .2B profit in first half of 2024

Coin Telegraph

Tether said its US Treasury reserve surpasses the size of all but 17 of the world’s governments.

According to a July 31 announcement, Tether, manager of the dollar-pegged USDT (USDT) stablecoin, reported record-breaking profits of $5.2 billion in the first half of 2024 and a larger-than-ever stockpile of United States government bonds.

Tether’s US Treasury portfolio is now worth approximately $97.6 billion, the company said. The growth in the company’s Treasury holdings reflects the ongoing proliferation of Tether (USDT) stablecoins, which Tether says are backed 1:1 with liquid US dollar-denominated assets. The figures are based on an attestation by BDO, an independent accounting firm.

The total market capitalization of USDT stands at some $114 billion, according to Binance, slightly less than Tether’s total reserves, which exceed $118 billion, Tether said.

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Bots suspected of pushing Solana over Ethereum — Research

July 30, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Solana overtakes Ethereum on numerous metrics, but research finds its performance to be inorganic.

Solana has overtaken Ethereum on various metrics this week, but a recent research article on X claims that most of this activity is conducted by bots.

The article, published by pseudonymous researcher Flip Research on July 30, found a suspiciously high count of daily transactions per user on Solana.

Solana recorded an average of 217 transactions per user on July 26 across 1.3 million active addresses. In comparison, Ethereum only recorded less than three transactions per user across 376,300 active users.

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Solana beats Ethereum in weekly total fees for the first time — Research

July 29, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

On July 28, Solana topped $5.5 million in daily total fees, the highest for the network in three months.

Layer-1 blockchain Solana surpassed rival Ethereum in weekly total fees for the first time in the week of July 22, clocking approximately $25 million in revenue versus Ethereum’s $21 million , according to Blockworks Research.

The purported “Ethereum killer” has been on a tear in 2024, aided by an ongoing frenzy of celebrity coin trading hosted largely on Solana-based memecoin platforms such as pump.fun and Moonshot. Memecoins now exceed $50 billion in total market capitalization.

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Blackrock foresees “very little interest” in crypto ETFs beyond Bitcoin, Ethereum — Bitcoin2024

July 25, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Analysis

Clients see Bitcoin and Ethereum as complements, not substitutes, in crypto portfolios, according to Blackrock's head of digital assets.

Asset manager Blackrock sees “very little interest” among clients in crypto beyond Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) and doesn’t foresee many crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs) outside of those two core digital assets, according to Robert Mitchnick, BlackRock’s head of digital assets, speaking at the Bitcoin2024 conference on July 25 in Nashville, Tennessee.

“I would say that our client base today, their interest overwhelmingly is in Bitcoin first, and then somewhat in ETH… and there’s very little interest today beyond those two,” Mitchnick said at a panel entitled From Strategy to Innovation: BlackRock's Bitcoin Journey.

“I don't think we're gonna see a long list of crypto ETFs,” Mitchnick said. Blackrock launched its first crypto exchange-traded funds — iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) and iShares Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHA) — in January and July, respectively.

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Fireblocks launches Web3 startup toolkit amid a surge in new ventures

July 25, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

The number of startups using the Web3 platform has already increased by some 50%, according to Fireblocks.

Fireblocks, the Web3 infrastructure platform, launched a suite of tools specifically designed for startups amid a proliferation of early-stage blockchain ventures, according to a July 25 press release.

The toolkit — Fireblocks for Startups — is designed to help startups quickly build and launch Web3 products and includes solutions for treasury management, self-custody, private key storage, and secure digital asset transfers, the company said.

“The short history of crypto shows that successful projects — whether crypto exchanges, DeFi bridges, or NFT platforms — go through periods of hypergrowth during market upswings, with development teams focused solely on maintaining front-end stability while neglecting security in the process,” Idan Ofrat, Co-founder & Chief Product Officer of Fireblocks, said in a statement.

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