Weekly Summary
- UK has a new bill to regulate “digital settlement assets”, onboarding a crypto-friendly new prime minister
- Bitcoin liquidates over $1 billion as BTC price hits 6-week highs
- Twitter is now an Elon Musk company, soon allowing NFT trading on tweets
- Defi hacks keep adding up, with Team Finance and QuickSwap exploited
- Crypto staking platform Freeway halts withdrawals, citing market volatility
Industry Stories
UK is moving faster on crypto, with a new bill and new PM: The U.K. moved forward on the Financial Services and Markets Bill on Oct. 25, hardening its vision for Bitcoin and “digital settlement assets” in the country. Lawmakers voted in favor of recognizing crypto as regulated financial instruments and products in the country, implying higher recognition for the digital assets industries.
Succeeding Liz Truss, the pro-crypto government official Rishi Sunak is set to become prime minister of the U.K. within days. Sunak discussed his ambitions to “turn the U.K. into a crypto hub” during his time as finance minister.
BTC price turns bullish: Bitcoin rallies this week since Oct. 24. While the current price is fluctuating, BTC is holding above the psychologically important $20,000 level. As of Thursday, BTC momentum has continued for three days now and is seeing green candles. Data shows that $704 million in cross-crypto shorts were liquidated on Oct. 25, with the Oct. 26 tally so far standing at $275 million. The rally starts cooling down on Oct 28, as data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD circling $20,500 on Bitstamp after reaching local highs of $21,012 the day prior.
Elon Musk completes US$44bn Twitter acquisition: After months of uncertainty, Elon musk closed his blockbuster purchase of the social media service, thrusting Twitter into a new era. In the meantime, concerns have been raised with Musk’s immediate firing of top executives and lack of clarity provided on how to achieve the ambitions he outlined for the social platform.
On the same day, Twitter announced that it is testing the NFT tweet files function, which will let users buy, sell, and display NFTs directly through tweets in partnership with four marketplaces.
Team Finance exploited for US$14.5m during protocol migration despite contract audit: Crypto launchpad Team Finance has suffered from a US$14.5m exploit in relation to a smart contract bug in its migration feature, said the firm on Thursday. Hackers appear to have spent as little as 1.76 Ether to initiate the attack vector. The platform has paused all activity till the exploit has been mitigated.
Previously on Oct 24, Polygon-Based DeFi platform QuickSwap closed its lending service after a US$220k exploit.
Crypto lender platform Freeway suspends withdrawals and trading services: Crypto staking platform Freeway has suspended access to yield-generating lending products to its customers, the firm said on late Sunday, citing “unprecedented volatility.” Freeway’s native token is also sent into a free fall when the small-cap platform that promised users up to 43% APY puts the brakes on withdrawals and scrubs its team from the site. Around US$161m assets could be affected in this incident, according to the AUM claimed by the Freeway.
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Matrixport News
In a Coindesk interview, Matrixport Head of Research and Strategy Markus Thielen reviews this year’s “turning points” for ether’s price, including the impact of the historic merge and rising inflation, and how its trajectory differentiates from the rest of the crypto markets. A potential ‘Big Breakout’ in Ethereum was predicted, and shortly ETH price rallied as high as US$1,507 overnight.
Watch the video here.
Matrixport’s institutional custodian Cactus Custody™ announces partnership with Trovio Group, APAC’s leading hybrid asset manager and technology solutions architect.
Under the partnership, Trovio Group will tap into unparalleled #DeFi connectivity and industry-leading warm and cold storage solutions with the highest level hardware security modules (FIPS 140-2 Level 3 or above). Cactus Custody™ will also provide institutional-grade crypto management and audit trails.
Read more here.
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