The biggest news in cryptocurrency on December 2 included Bitcoin’s negative 1.4% reaction to US payroll data, FTX Japan’s efforts to restore liquidity, and Binance’s $3 million freeze as a precaution after the Ankr protocol was used.
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Bitcoin fell 1.4% on better-than-expected US wages data
The latest payrolls data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that 263,000 jobs were added during November. Bitcoin (BTC) reacted to the news, falling 1.4% to $16,780.
FTX Japan will cancel Customer withdrawals
FTX’s subsidiary in Japan is working on a financial plan that allows users to withdraw funds.
On December 2, the subsidiary announced that the relevant authorities had approved its plans and that users would soon be able to withdraw.
Binance freezes $3 million from Ankr exploit.
An attacker exploited a bug in the Ankr Protocol (ANKR) code and minted six quadrillion aBNBc tokens. The exploiter converted a portion into a $5 million coin (USDC).
Possible hacks on Ankr and Hay. According to initial analysis, the developer’s private key was compromised and the hacker updated the smart contract to a more malicious one. Binance stopped withdrawals a few hours ago. It also froze about $3 million that the hackers had moved to CEX.
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) December 2, 2022
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said the exchange has frozen about $3 million in funds in response to the exploit.
More than 8% of Bitcoin supply was purchased between $15,500 and $17,000
According to the UTXO Realized Price Distribution (URDP) metric, 8% of the total Bitcoin supply was purchased when the price was between $15,000 and $17,000.
While the 8% volume suggests more redistribution is likely, Bitcoin consolidation remains high, indicating long-term holders are in control.
OpenSea’s Ethereum gas usage has dropped to almost zero
NFT market OpenSea’s Ethereum (ETH) gas usage has been declining for the past five months.
According to data from Dune Analytics, gas fees on the ERCC721 and ERC1155 token standards, which occurred in the main NFT markets, increased from October 2021 to January 2022, and OpenSea accounted for about 20% of this volume.
However, OpenSea’s interest has declined over the past five months, allowing Optimism and Arbitrum to grow.
Galaxy Digital won bid for GK8 in Celsius bankruptcy assets auction
Galaxy Digital announced the acquisition of GK8 without disclosing the amount. GK8 is a self-monitoring program that was acquired by Celsius in November 2021 and went bankrupt after the collapse of Terra.
Galaxy’s CEO said the acquisition of the self-protection platform was a “crucial cornerstone” in building a full-service financial platform.
US lawmakers are questioning the role of private firms in the development of CBDC
In response to allegations that private firms are involved in the design of a “hypothetical” US Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), US lawmakers have drafted a joint letter to send to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
Legislators claimed that some private firms participating in the CBDC project could participate in using the project to research and develop and expand other CBDC products to sell to commercial banks in the future.
CBDCs: India’s digital rupee falls flat amid low volume pest testing
Despite their negative attitude towards the cryptocurrency market, Indian lawmakers have always considered CBDCs useful.
India’s digital Rupee has been operational since early November as a pilot program. It finally went live on Dec. 1, but news outlets reported they couldn’t get hold of it.
Research Emphasis
Research: Analysis of Cryptocurrency Transaction Fees Shows Exchanges Are Favoring the Switch to Bitcoin.
Analysts at CryptoSlate looked at on-chain data on the cryptocurrency exchange’s internal transactions and found that they prefer to use Bitcoin to transfer funds internally.
The exchange fee dominance metric is the percentage of total transaction fees paid for exchange activity on the chain. The type of transaction that requires the fee is divided into deposits, withdrawals, internal and exchanges.
The chart above shows that Bitcoin transaction fees account for 36% of all Bitcoin-related exchange revenue sources. It also demonstrates that deposits and domestic transfers have grown exponentially in the last five years.
CryptoSlate Exclusive
Mythbusting Solana – Uptime, Competition and Technology with Matt Sorg of the Solana Foundation – SlateCast #38
Solana Labs Product and Technology Leader Matt Sorg gave an exclusive interview to CryptoSlate and talked about Solana (SOL) and its future in the crypto sphere.
Sorg said he was attracted to Solan because it was a “differentiated technology” in terms of scalability, speed and future potential. He said:
“Solana is a differentiated technology, there’s a lot of noise in the space about how things will scale in the future, but Solana is ready today and has a very clear path to arbitrarily scale in a very user-friendly way in the future.”
Sorg also noted that he expects the cryptocurrency space to evolve into a multi-chain future where “different chains and different protocols will learn a bit from other protocols.” He argued that Solana could become more configurable over time to adapt to this multi-chain environment.
News from around the Cryptoverse
Alameda invested in Genesis before it collapsed.
according to BloombergAlameda Research invested just $1.15 billion in Genesis Digital before the market crashed and the mining industry began to suffer.
Galaxy CEO expects Bitcoin to see $500,000
according to Bloomberg In an article published on December 1st, Michael Novogratz, CEO of Galaxy Digital, expects Bitcoin to rise to $500,000 based on a Federal Reserve interest rate hike.
The House Financial Services Committee thanks SBF for its candor
The Chair of the US House Financial Services Committee is Maxine Watts He tweeted Thanking FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried for being candid about the failure of FTX and inviting him to join the hearing on December 13th.
Binance Labs to invest $4.5 million in Ambit Finance
Binance Labs has announced that it has committed to invest up to $4.5 million in Ambit Finance to boost trustless DeFi development on BNB Chain.
Crypto market
Over the past 24 hours, Bitcoin (BTC) is up +0.33% to $17,001, while Ethereum (ETH) is up +1.11% to $1,288.