Overview
- Solana wallet exploit.
- Micheal Saylor steps down.
- Markets pause amidst Taiwan tensions.
- dYdX introduces free trading.
- Magic Eden adding Ethereum NFTs.
Good morning Banter Fam,
You won’t believe who’s stepping down to focus on Bitcoin accumulation. None other than Micheal Saylor! Read the whole scoop below in the news section.
But not all is well in the cryptoverse today…
Another major exploit is taking place. This time the target is Solana-based wallets. Let’s dive directly into it.
Solana Wallet Hack
More than 8000 Solana wallets with $580m have been mysteriously exploited.
The common thread: 4 addresses have received the stolen funds. Very little else is known of the incident.
The Phantom wallet team has stated its working closely with teams to get to the bottom. There has been a lot of misinformation surrounding the incident since its emergence, but the exploit seems to be draining SOL tokens from affected wallets.
Adam Cochran digs deeper in the following thread:
Market update 🌍
Tensions rise, markets pause.
Despite receiving inconspicuous threats from the Chinese government Nancy Pelosi has flown into Taiwan marking the first time a high ranking US official enters the country in 25 years. Her arrival escalated tensions in the region and the Chinese military reacted by running live fire drills near the border of the disputed territory. Markets reacted by pausing recent bullish action.
BTC/USD
The crypto market followed the lead of the stock market with mild price action mostly to the downside. BTC continues to slowly fall towards the 21.7k support level after six days of similar activity. BTC completed the daily candle down -1.16% to $22,896.
High-resolution chart
ETH/USD
Ether failed to break through the $1,750 resistance and has trekked down into the $1600s. The current uptrend (green) appears to be in question with price seemingly ready to break through.
High-resolution chart
| US markets close | Gain |
| S&P 500 | – 0.67% |
| Nasdaq | – 0.10% |
| Dow | -1.73% |
| VIX | +4.77% |
Notable Gainers (24h):
| Protocol (Coin) | Price ($) | Gain (%) |
| Cronos (CRO) | 0.16 | +18 |
| Lido DAO (LDO) | 2.23 | +14 |
| Ethereum Classic (ETC) | 36.95 | +13 |
| Bitcoin Gold (BTG) | 30.52 | +12 |
| Synthetix Network (SNX) | 3.79 | +10 |
| Optimism (OP) | 1.65 | +16 |
| VVS Finance (VVS) | 0.0000084 | +13 |
| Ethereum Name Ser. (ENS) | 15.09 | +12 |
| Ribbon Finance (RBN) | 0.40 | +49 |
| Bitcoin Fear and Greed Index | 34 Fear |
| “Crypto” Google Trends 90d | 15 |
| “Bitcoin” Google Trends 90d | 27 |
Newswatch 📰
Micheal Saylor steps down as CEO. The Microstrategy CEO, Michael Saylor has stepped down to take a lesser role in the company. Why? To focus on accumulating more Bitcoin! During the Q2 earnings call, the company noted its loss of $917.8m during the second quarter in reference to its Bitcoin holdings. The former company CEO said “volatility means Bitcoin is more interesting, and so Microstrategy is more interesting”.
Recession avoidance. Federal Reserve President James Bullard believes the economy can avoid a recession despite a reaffirmation of continuing rate hikes. The markets believe otherwise after sending the yield curve into inversion. Bullard noted that the Fed is relying on its credibility to stop inflation and that “That credibility didn’t exist in the earlier era”.
Robinhood lays off 23% of the workforce. The firm behind the free trading app is laying off 23% of its workforce. The move comes after laying off 9% of their employees the previous quarter. The reason? The crypto winter.
News tidbits:
- Web3 foundation celebrates 400th grant awarded.
- BitMEX’s “ETHPow vs ETH2” report.
At the protocol level ⛓
dYdX introduces free trading. The soon to be Cosmos chain, perpetual exchange dYdX introduces free trading for up to $100,000k in volume per month across all markets.
Synthetics are coming to GMX. Synthetics follow the price of any asset and GMX will allow the decentralized trading of these assets. Volume on GMX could begin to skyrocket once the assets go live.
Protocol level tidbits:
- Moonbeam pauses to investigate a security incident.
- Introducing Aspect: The first NFT marketplace on StarkNet MainNet.
- How does L2 Scroll work?
- Uniswap bug.
NFT & Metaverse update 🐵
- Solana NFT marketplace Magic Eden is expanding to Ethereum after being valued at $1.6b in June.
- Shiba Inu team reveals its mobile NFT game, Shiba Eternity, in partnership with PlaySide Studios.
- Barcelona FC NFT featuring legend Johan Cruyff sells for $700k.
Banter’s take
The most important feature of any blockchain, protocol or wallet?
Security. Security. Security.
The most important feature of an individual’s participation in crypto?
You guessed it! Security!
There’s a lot out of our hands, but the security of our individual crypto wallets is not one of them. The simplest way to protect your wallet is with a cold storage device (hardware wallet).
A hardware wallet could have protected any custodial wallet involved in the Solana exploit.
If you don’t already have one, now might be the time to consider investing in one. It’s one of the most critical security features for anyone participating in the wild west of web3 finance.
Gabri
Follow me on Twitter for daily updates!
Disclaimer
Good Morning Crypto (issued by Crypto Banter) is a newsletter for entertainment purposes only.
All opinions expressed by the publisher, writers, and chartists should not be construed as financial advice, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Crypto Banter. The publisher, writers, and chartists may hold positions in the tokens and assets discussed. Readers are encouraged to do their own research.
