2023-12-27 08:06

Some $45 million stemmed from altcoin futures in an unusual move – with bitcoin accounting for a relatively lesser $36 million in liquidations. High funding rates, relatively low liquidity and reports of crypto exchange Mt.Gox starting repayments to victims of its 2014 hack spurred a market-wide decline in the past 24 hours, bringing losses to leveraged bullish traders. In futures market, traders betting on higher prices lost over $190 million to liquidations as bitcoin (BTC) dropped as much as 4% before recovering in Wednesday morning hours. Some $45 million of those stemmed from altcoin-tracked futures in an unusual move – with bitcoin liquidations accounting for a relatively lesser $36 million in losses. Traders of Solana’s SOL tokens took on nearly $20 million in losses, while those of Bitcoin protocol Ordinals (ORDI) lost $8 million, data from Coinglass shows. Crypto exchange Binance saw over $97 million in liquidations, the most among counterparties. The aforementioned liquidation figures are highest in recent weeks after a nearly $500 million flush-out in early December. Liquidations occur when an exchange forcefully closes a trader’s leveraged position owing to a partial or total loss of the trader’s initial margin. It happens when a trader cannot meet the margin requirements for a leveraged position, that is when they don't have sufficient funds to keep the trade open. The drop came as the Mt. Gox crypto exchange appeared to be starting to repay customers who lost 850,000 bitcoin (BTC), now valued at around $36 billion, on Tuesday. Some participants in the mtgoxinsolvency subreddit group said they had received payouts in yen over Paypal. Others, who’d chosen to receive cash into bank accounts, said they had not seen any inflows. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2023/12/27/long-crypto-traders-see-190m-in-losses-as-bitcoin-retreats-after-apparent-mtgox-repayments/

2023-12-27 07:34

Bullish bets by institutional investors and knowledgeable market participants have reached an all-time high on the CME, data tracked by MacroMicro show. Data tracking website MacroMicro's bitcoin futures smart money index rose to a record 13,711 last week. The record bias for bullish long positions comes days ahead of the SEC's impending decision on spot ETF applications. Some obsevers foresee a classic "sell the news" price action following the ETF launch. Smart money, or capital investments from institutional investors and knowledgeable market participants, is piling into bitcoin (BTC) as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) deadline to approve a spot BTC exchange-traded fund (ETF) nears. That's the message from Taiwan-based data tracking website MacroMicro's bitcoin futures smart money index, which tracks the spread between the large investors' long and short positions open on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The indicator is based on the CFTC's weekly Commitment of Traders report. The smart money index rose to 13,711 last week, surpassing the previous peak of 13,603 to signal record net bullish positioning by asset managers and other reportables. CME's cash-settled standard bitcoin futures contracts sized at 5 BTC are widely considered a proxy for institutional activity, allowing market participants to take exposure to the cryptocurrency through a regulated venue without having to own it. Futures are derivative contracts that obligate the buyer to purchase an asset and the seller to sell an asset at a predetermined price at a later date. Going long means being obligated to buy the underlying asset and conveys a bullish bias. Going short suggests otherwise. The smart money index has risen sharply this quarter amid the spot ETF narrative and strengthening expectations of a Fed rate cut in 2024. The U.S. SEC has reportedly set Jan. 10 as the deadline for approving/rejecting an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that invests in bitcoin rather than futures tied to BTC. Observers expect record inflows into the asset class following the potential launch of one or more spot ETFs. The bullish expectations have powered bitcoin higher by nearly 60% this quarter, opening doors for a potential "sell the news" price action following the launch. "As we finally approach the launch, we need to point out that it is likely that the actual demand for the BTC Spot ETF at the start will fall short of market expectations. This sets up a classic 'sell the news' scenario in the 2nd week of Jan," Singapore-based QCP Capital's market insights team said in an update published last week. "For this reason, we expect topside resistance for BTC in the $45,000-$48,500 region and a possible retracement to $36,000 levels before the uptrend resumes," QCP noted, adding that the bullish trend will likely resume ahead of April's mining reward halving. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2023/12/27/smart-money-is-record-long-on-btc-ahead-of-expected-bitcoin-etf/

2023-12-26 13:47

Shifke is the CFO of Silbert's Digital Currency Group and will take over Jan. 1, Grayscale said in an SEC filing. Grayscale Investments, whose application to turn its Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into a U.S. spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) is being considered by the Securities and Exchange Commission, said Barry Silbert resigned as chairman and will be replaced by Mark Shifke. Shikfe, DCG's chief financial officer, will replace Silbert as of Jan. 1, Grayscale said in an SEC filing without giving a reason for the changes. Mark Murphy, DCG's president, also resigned from the board. The SEC has delayed several ETF applications including those of Grayscale, BlackRock, Ark 21shares, Vaneck and Hashdex, many of which have met with the regulator and filed amended documentation as year-end approaches. The agency must approve or reject Ark 21Shares, the first deadline to approach, by Jan. 10. Silbert's Digital Currency Group (DCG), which owns Grayscale, was sued in October by New York Attorney General Letitia James for allegedly defrauding more than 230,000 investors, including at least 29,000 New Yorkers, of more than $1 billion. James also charged Silbert with defrauding the public by trying to conceal heavy losses. DCG and Silbert rejected the allegations. Matt Kummell, senior vice president of operations at DCG, and Edward McGee, Grayscale's CFO, also join the board. "Aligned with Grayscale’s commitment to responsible growth, we are pleased to welcome Mark Shifke, Matt Kummell and Edward McGee to Grayscale’s board of directors," a Grayscale spokeswoman said. "Grayscale and our investors will benefit from their respective experiences in the financial services and asset management industries as we prepare for Grayscale’s next chapter." https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/12/26/barry-silbert-resigns-as-grayscale-chairman-to-be-replaced-by-mark-shifke/

2023-12-26 11:38

Some liquidity pools built on the Metis network are offering as much as 200% in annualized fee rewards to users. Metis (METIS), the native cryptocurrency of layer 2 network Metis, surged as much as 50% in the past 24 hours before giving back some gains, as a previously announced grant made the rounds in crypto circles on X, galvanizing investor interest in the token and related projects. The price surge extended 30-day gains to over 240%, data tracked by Coingecko show, as trading volumes for the tokens jumped to over $50 million on Tuesday from just $2 million at the start of December. Metis is part of a cohort of layer-2 scaling protocols that allow users to transact on the Ethereum blockchain faster and for cheaper fees but with their own ecosystem projects and tools. Earlier this month, the MetisDAO Foundation, which maintains Metis, unveiled an Ecosystem Development Fund (EDF) of 4.6 million METIS dedicated to bootstrap development, liquidity, activity, and adoption in the Metis ecosystem. The amount is worth over $360 million as of Tuesday at current prices. Disbursements to projects are expected to start in the first quarter of 2024 after the release of the Metis decentralized sequencer, or a technology that distributes nodes that process transactions all over the globe. Users widely expect these rewards to trickle down to them as they use applications built on the Metis network. That has helped bolster the value locked on Metis projects to over $500 million as of Tuesday from just under $100 million last week, data shows. Metis Ecosystem heats up Tokens of some ecosystem projects have more than doubled in the past week: staking tool Maia’s MAIA token has surged 97%, and swapping protocol Hermes’ HERMES token has jumped 140%. Annualized rewards on the popular HERMES and METIS liquidity pool have jumped to 200%, while riskier trading pairs offer as much as 350%, data from Hermes shows. Trading volumes on the decentralized perpetual trading protocol Tethys spiked to over $18 million in the past 24 hours from an average of under $10 million in the prior weeks, bumping prices of the TETHYS tokens by 60%. https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2023/12/26/metis-surges-50-as-ecosystem-projects-eye-360m-in-grant-rewards/

2023-12-26 11:31

Payments through bank accounts are still awaited. Almost 10 years after being hacked, the Mt. Gox crypto exchange appears to be starting to repay customers who lost 850,000 bitcoin (BTC) now valued around $36 billion. Some participants in the mtgoxinsolvency subreddit group said they had received payouts in yen over Paypal. Others, who’d chosen to receive cash into bank accounts, said they had not seen any inflows. The exchange, launched in 2010, was the world's biggest when it was hacked in 2014. It was ultimately able to recover about 20% of the stolen funds. Earlier this year, it extended the deadline for repayments by 12 months until October 2024. The repayment could have some impact on bitcoin prices, due to the sheer volume of the tokens being released, but would not destablize the market, UBS had said in a report earlier this year. https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/12/26/mt-gox-appears-to-have-started-paypal-repayments-tied-to-2014-bitcoin-hack/

2023-12-26 10:30

Affected user balances will be restored as no private keys were stolen in the exploit, the developers said. The Telcoin (TEL) token price fell 40% in the past 24 hours after an apparent error relating to a wallet implementation on Polygon caused user balances to drop on the Telcoin mobile application. The slide was flagged as an exploit by blockchain security company Peckshield. The exploiter managed to make over $1.2 million in funds drained from affected accounts, according to messages on Telcoin's community on the Discord online forum. However, these were only from users who had "never initiated transactions" from the Telcoin application, the company said. Telcoin, which develops financial applications, such as trading and remittance tools, based on the Polygon blockchain for mobile-device users, froze its application in early Asian hours on Tuesday, developers said in an X post. In a follow-up post, they said the issue was related to how the application interacted with the Polygon blockchain and that no private keys or sensitive data were leaked. “We’ve identified the root cause, which was not an issue with the Telcoin Wallet code itself, but with the proxy implementation of the wallet on Polygon – primarily impacting wallets that have never initiated transactions,” Telcoin posted on X . “We have deployed a fix to stop further exploitation.” The team said it planned to restore all wallets to their previous balances prior to turning the application service back on. https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2023/12/26/telcoin-suffers-apparent-exploit-related-to-polygon-wallet-implementation-tel-drops-40/