<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



The price of Bitcoin fell below $26,000 Thursday—its lowest level since June—amid a broader crypto market slump after the&nbsp;Wall Street Journal&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/behind-the-curtain-of-elon-musks-secretive-spacex-revenue-growth-and-rising-costs-2c828e2b?mod=hp_lead_pos5" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;that SpaceX has taken a significant write-down on its Bitcoin holdings and sold the cryptocurrency.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



The price of the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency stood at $26,400 early on Friday, down nearly 8% in the previous 24 hours and 10% compared to last week.



Earlier on Thursday evening, the price of Bitcoin had dropped even lower, to around $25,400 before a slight recovery.



Ether, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, also took a similar hit and fell to $1,680—down 6.6% in the previous 24 hours.



Other major tokens like Binance’s BNB, Cardano and Solana are also down more than 6%



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h2>



16%. That’s how much the price of Ripple’s XRP token has fallen in the past 24 hours, significantly worse than all other major cryptocurrencies. XRP’s steeper fall is a result of a federal judge’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-jones-08-17-2023/card/judge-in-sec-ripple-case-opens-path-to-partial-appeal-after-july-ruling-Qj9YAsJsOP72ufpmQfCx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">decision</a>&nbsp;on Thursday to allow the SEC to partially appeal a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-07-13/what-does-ripple-xrp-ruling-in-sec-case-mean-for-crypto" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ruling</a>&nbsp;in its case against Ripple.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Thursday evening’s crypto selloff began after the&nbsp;Wall Street Journal&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/behind-the-curtain-of-elon-musks-secretive-spacex-revenue-growth-and-rising-costs-2c828e2b?mod=hp_lead_pos5" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;that Elon Musk’s SpaceX wrote down the value of its bitcoin holdings by a total of $373 million in the previous two calendar years. The company has also sold off its crypto holdings, the report added, although it is unclear when this sale happened. Musk and his companies have been a key mover of cryptocurrency prices, with the market often seeing significant movement based on the billionaire’s tweets. However, the SpaceX selloff follows a similar move by Musk’s other company, Tesla, which&nbsp;<a href="https://tesla-cdn.thron.com/static/EIUQEC_2022_Q2_Quarterly_Update_Deck_J8VLIK.pdf?xseo=&amp;amp;response-content-disposition=inline%3Bfilename%3D%22tsla-q2-22-update.pdf%22" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">disclosed in an earnings report last year</a>&nbsp;that it had sold 75% of its Bitcoin holdings.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/behind-the-curtain-of-elon-musks-secretive-spacex-revenue-growth-and-rising-costs-2c828e2b?mod=hp_lead_pos5" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">A Rare Look Into the Finances of Elon Musk’s Secretive SpaceX</a>&nbsp;(Wall Street Journal)



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By signing up, you accept and agree to our&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/terms-and-conditions" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Terms of Service</a>&nbsp;(including the class action waiver and arbitration provisions), and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/privacy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Privacy Statement</a>.



<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-18/bitcoin-plunge-spurs-liquidations-as-spacex-s-token-sale-weighs?srnd=premium" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bitcoin Plunge Spurs Liquidations as SpaceX’s Token Sale Weighs</a> (Bloomberg)

Cryptocurrency Mining In Africa As Poor Sheperdherder Proves A Point

Bitcoin Drops To Lowest Level Since June Amid Wider Crypto Sell-Off

Exploring the emerging trend of using cryptocurrency as a hedge against inflation, highlighting real-world applications and driving economic growth in South Africa.



Cryptocurrencies have had a tumultuous history, often marred by speculation and fraudulent activities. However, the recent decline in public interest has allowed for more realistic applications to emerge, along with appropriate regulation. This maturation of the crypto space has led to an exploration of cryptocurrencies as a potential hedge against inflation.



Ahren Posthumus, CEO of Momint, a tech startup based in Cape Town, believes the reduction in hype has allowed for a focus on real-world projects that are auditable and have a real background. &#8220;We&#8217;re seeing this [crypto as a hedge against inflation] quite a lot&#8230; But not only is it being used as a hedge, it’s also being used as a mechanism to drive the bottom line and solve real problems that South Africa is facing right now,” he says to FORBES AFRICA.



Another notable advantage of cryptocurrency as a hedge against inflation is stablecoins. Since stablecoins are backed by the US dollar, owning them is equivalent to saving in dollars. Storing funds in USDT or earning in other stable tokens like USDC can help keep finances protected from devaluation.



According to Peter Mureu, Marketing Director at Yellow Card, “The rand has dramatically lost its value over the past decade. From ZAR10 for $1 in 2010 to almost ZAR20 for the same amount now, the purchasing ability of the rand has nearly been cut in half. Investing in crypto, especially USDT will allow for that risk to be halved and increase the ability to purchase alternative power sources to deal with the current power issues/load-shedding. For those earning in USDT, even the lack of power is an easily surmountable problem because the USDT is constantly appreciating regardless of the state of the rand.”



One such problem is South Africa’s current energy crisis. The combination of large tax rebates for investments in renewable energy, coupled with platforms such as Momint, has seen large growth in realistic applications for cryptocurrencies. “Our tokenized, fractionalized solar investments qualify for Section 12 rebates… this is massive,” continues Posthumus.



Lerato Lamola, consultant and crypto specialist at Webber Wentzel, notes that South Africa’s legislative process seems to be in line with this, with the country classifying crypto as a financial product rather than a security. This allows crypto to be managed more easily within the framework of existing financial instruments.



“South Africa is really focusing on the man in the street,” says Lamola. “South Africa is now focusing more on how crypto is impacting retail consumers.”



Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology are emerging as potent tools for socio-economic development in Africa, particularly South Africa. By facilitating low-cost remittances and microloans, they&#8217;re creating meaningful changes that uplift the economy.



Posthumus sees the burgeoning sector as a vehicle for innovation and economic growth, asserting that cryptocurrencies could engender a more equitable financial system by enabling secure and cost-effective transactions.



In Africa, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology are no longer theoretical concepts; they have become practical tools driving tangible change. Platforms such as Momint are already realizing this – one such example is the ability for users to fractionally invest in renewable energy projects, allowing investors to generate returns, take advantage of renewable investment tax breaks, and invest in sustainable development.



Cryptocurrencies in South Africa and Africa are increasingly seen as more than just volatile investments, but as powerful tools.



&#8220;The biggest thing for us is about having a product that people can use and understand. It’s about education, and we need to be building that trust with the consumer,” adds Posthumus.

Bitcoin on digital circuit board and graph

Crypto As Inflation Hedge: South Africa’s Innovative Approach To Digital Assets

Business fund investor planning for investment in crisis

Crypto Winter Watch: All The Big Layoffs, Record Withdrawals And Bankruptcies Sparked By The $2 Trillion Crash

An upcoming Christie’s auction has collectors starry-eyed:&nbsp;<a href="https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/deep-impact-martian-lunar-other-rare-meteorites/lots/2134" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Deep Impact</a>, featuring 65 of the rarest meteorites to ever hit Earth runs until February 23—and prices are expected to be astronomical. The only non-meteorite, the Aguas Zarcas Doghouse, which was struck by Carbonaceous chondrite rock in April 2019 (and just barely missed hitting its resident, a German shepherd named Roky) has a pre-sale estimate of $200,000 to $300,000.&nbsp;



Meteorites and other extraterrestrial objects have always attracted the attentions of Earthly stars—Elon Musk, Steven Spielberg and Nicolas Cage are reportedly collectors—but now a growing number of crypto investors are entering the market.



“Last year, a lot of people were cashing out of crypto and going into meteorites,” says Christie’s specialist James Hyslop, head of the Scientific Instruments, Globes &amp; Natural History department. A February 2021 Deep Impact sale became the most successful meteorite auction ever, according to Christie’s, with all lots selling—and 72 out of 75 going for above their high estimate.



“These really appeal to anyone who has looked up to the night sky in awe,” he adds. “There are museums buying, there are collectors, but we also have clients that are bidding in antiquity sales, post-modern art&#8230;The fascination of these objects really is universal.”&nbsp;



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/620d2bad4bc024874b14ade6/meteorite3/960x0.jpg?fit=bounds&amp;format=jpg&amp;width=960" alt="meteorite3" width="627" height="269"/><figcaption>The Deep Impact auction features such hard-to-find treasures as a Gibeon &#8220;sculpture,&#8221; a carbonaceous&nbsp;&#8230; [+]&nbsp;CHRISTIE&#8217;S</figcaption></figure></div>



With many lots listed with no reserve, meteorite auctions typically draw a much younger, more international crowd than an average Christie’s sale. There is also a more even gender balance. According to the auction house, 73 percent of last year’s bidders were first-timers.



Part of the rocks’ appeal is in their rarity. “If you took all the meteorites on earth and put them on a scale, it would weigh less than the annual output of gold,” said Hyslop. Once sold, they’re often kept private: Of the 64,000 meteorites in the world’s collections, <a href="https://www.christies.com/features/A-collectors-guide-to-meteorites-8231-1.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">it’s estimated</a> about two-thirds will never be available to the general public.



Values are calculated from previous sales, as well as a meteorite’s size, shape, scientific makeup and story, says Hyslop. And while stunning specimens such as&nbsp;<a href="https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/deep-impact-martian-lunar-other-rare-meteorites/gibeon-meteorite-singular-exotic-sculpture-outer-space-62/142846?ldp_breadcrumb=back" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lot 62</a>, a Gibeon meteorite, which he likens to a Henry Moore sculpture, are likely to draw the eyes of museums and private investors alike, it’s the doghouse that’s drawing much of the attention in next week’s sale.&nbsp;



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignleft is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/620d266e2e9c9b8442f05d4f/66744894-JPEG-large/960x0.jpg?fit=bounds&amp;format=jpg&amp;width=960" alt="66744894_JPEG large" width="-361" height="-420"/><figcaption> CHRISTIE&#8217;S</figcaption></figure></div>



While the current bid is well below the $300,000 estimate—it’s at a down-to-earth $1,600—the price is expected to soar. The actual meteorite that struck Roky’s home is also up for auction. It has a pre-sale estimate of $40,000 to $60,000 and the current bid is $2,200.



Star-crossed items such as this are rare, which makes them lucrative:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/15648/lot/15/?category=list" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">A mailbox from Claxton, Georgia</a>, sold for $83,000 in 2007 thanks to the meteoric damage it sustained in 1984. And a&nbsp;<a href="https://meteoritecar.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1980 Chevy Malibu</a>&nbsp;with a crater in its trunk from the 4.4 billion-year-old, 26-pound meteorite that smashed into it in 1992 turned into quite the investment: The owner sold the car, originally purchased from her grandmother for around $400, for $69,000 after the collision—and in 2010 it went for $230,000.&nbsp;



“Despite our huge imprint on the planet, manmade structures are a pretty small target for a meteorite falling from space,” says Hyslop. “There are only a handful of objects impacted by these falling rocks that are available to collectors.”



By Isabel Lord, Forbes Staff

Screenshot 2022-03-07 at 15.34.39

Meteorite Auction Prices Skyrocket Thanks To Crypto—Including A $300,000 Dog House

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



In the latest example of Netflix quickly pouncing on a true-crime tale, the company said Friday it had ordered a docuseries on alleged cryptocurrency launderers Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan—who only came to public attention with their arrest Tuesday.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/GettyImages-1231249886.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-52704" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/GettyImages-1231249886.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/GettyImages-1231249886-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/GettyImages-1231249886-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>BRAZIL &#8211; 2021/02/18: In this photo illustration the Netflix logo seen displayed on a smartphone screen. (Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)</figcaption></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Lichtenstein and Morgan–the latter of whom has attracted attention as much for her awkward rap videos as their alleged crimes– have been accused by federal prosecutors of attempting to launder $4.5 billion in bitcoin, $3.6 billion of which was recovered in what the Department of Justice says was its largest financial seizure ever.&nbsp;



While Netflix and other streaming services have been churning out more ripped-from-the-headlines “insta-docs” and reality content for years, the pandemic gave the trend&nbsp;<a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/coronavirus-tiger-king-reality-producers-double-down-docuseries-1288063/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">more impetus</a>: viewers were stuck at home with nothing to do but watch TV and producers could make use of archival footage instead of risking their health to shoot something new.&nbsp;



Last week Netflix put out&nbsp;The Tinder Swindler, a documentary about a man who was arrested in 2015 for allegedly defrauding women he met on dating apps of money, and this month will also release documentaries about Bubba Wallace’s 2021 NASCAR season and the 2018 and 2019 Boeing Max 737 crashes.&nbsp;



Friday the scripted series&nbsp;Inventing Anna&nbsp;premiered on Netflix, Shonda Rhimes’ fictional take on the real story of Anna Sorokin, a woman who pretended to be a Germain heiress and was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/25/us/anna-sorokin-found-guilty/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">found guilty</a>&nbsp;in 2019 of stealing over $200,000 from banks and people she socialized with.



Last year, several documentaries were released about recent scandals, including the downfall of WeWork, the college admissions scandal, and Rudy Giuliani’s Four Seasons and Total Landscaping post-election mistake.&nbsp;



The Crypto Couple docuseries will be directed and executive produced by Chris Smith, who was behind Netflix true-crime hits&nbsp;Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened&nbsp;and&nbsp;Tiger King, and will also be executive produced by Nick Bilton, of&nbsp;HBO’s The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley—works that made&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/aaronkwittken/2019/01/22/catching-fyre-what-marketers-can-learn-from-mini-madoff-mcfarland/?sh=3a41b2c26140">Billy McFarland</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisakim/2022/01/28/tiger-king-star-joe-exotic-resentenced-to-21-years-in-prison-for-murder-for-hire-plot-one-year-less-than-original-term/?sh=6f92178d59c0">Joe Exotic</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisadellatto/2022/01/03/elizabeth-holmes-found-guilty-on-wire-fraud-charges/?sh=6ab26e6f46b6">Elizabeth Holmes</a>&nbsp;household names.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Since the success of Netflix’s 2015 hit&nbsp;Making A Murderer, the platform and other streaming services have ramped up production of true-crime documentaries, docuseries and fictional spinoffs of real-world stories. In 2016,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/netflix-is-a-documentary-powerhouse-heres-why-2017-3#" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">68 million people</a>&nbsp;watched documentaries on Netflix, and 73% of their subscribers watched at least one. After being released at the onset of the pandemic,&nbsp;Tiger King&nbsp;became the most popular show on the streaming services in 2020. Netflix is one of the biggest buyers in the world of unscripted TV programming,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-11/netflix-hbo-amazon-buying-up-reality-tv-shows-for-streaming-services" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bloomberg</a>&nbsp;reported in November. And as pop culture remains fixated on true crime and scammers, there is no sign the streamer plans to slow down.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="tangent">TANGENT</h2>



Lichtenstein and Morgan, a married couple living in New York City, were charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and and conspiracy to defraud the United States for attempting to launder billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin that was stolen during a 2016 Bitfinex hack, though they haven’t been charged over the hack itself. The couple worked their way into entrepreneur and tech circles, with Morgan writing as a contributor&nbsp; for Forbes.com on business and entrepreneurship, until she was cut in September 2021. The government alleged the couple used fake identities and other &#8220;sophisticated laundering techniques&#8221; to launder the cryptocurrency. As news of their arrest and the seizure broke, Morgan’s odd rap videos posted on YouTube&nbsp; under the stage name Razzlekhan became an object of fascination. A lawyer for the couple&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/10/frozen-embryos-will-keep-accused-bitcoin-money-launderers-from-fleeing.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a>&nbsp;in a court filing Thursday that Lichtenstein and Morgan would not flee the U.S. if allowed on bail because the couple has frozen embryos in a NYC hospital and wouldn’t want to jeopardize “access to their ability to have children.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2022/02/08/feds-seize-36-billion-in-stolen-bitcoin-arrest-couple-five-years-after-massive-crypto-exchange-hack/?sh=3e4163b97c95">Feds Seize $3.6 Billion In Stolen Bitcoin, Arrest Couple Five Years After Massive Crypto Exchange Hack&nbsp;</a>(Forbes)&nbsp;



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2022/02/09/heather-morgan-ilya-lichtenstein-bitcoin-seizure/?sh=30bab60a1ea2">How The Crypto Couple Went From Wannabe Tech Luminaries To Targets In The Biggest Financial Seizure In Justice Department History</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)&nbsp;



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/cyrusfarivar/2022/02/10/heather-morgan-ilya-lichtenstein-cat-bitcoin-raid/?sh=c64b9e7405a0">Hollowed-Out Books, Fake Passports And Burner Phones: What Led To The Feds’ Raid On The Crypto Couple</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



By Marisa Dellatto, Forbes Staff

In this photo illustration the Netflix logo seen displayed

Netflix Orders Series On Crypto Couple Only Three Days After They Came To Fame, Highlighting Rise Of ‘Insta-Doc’

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Digital assets firm Jump Crypto said Thursday it replaced the $325 million worth of tokens allegedly stolen from its portfolio company Wormhole Portal, a platform that helps users transfer cryptocurrency between the Solana and Ethereum blockchains, in one of the biggest hacks ever to hit the booming—and largely unregulated—decentralized finance space.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Jump Crypto, the cryptocurrency-focused investment arm of quant trading firm Jump Trading, which has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccaszkutak/2021/09/14/jump-capital-raises-350-million-and-doubles-down-on-crypto/?sh=68875db226de">raised</a>&nbsp;more than $700 million in capital,&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/JumpCryptoHQ/status/1489301013408497666" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a>&nbsp;Thursday afternoon that it had &#8220;replaced&#8221; 120,000 stolen Ethereum-based tokens &#8220;to make community members whole&#8221; and support Wormhole but provided no further details about the bailout.



Jump&#8217;s tweet came hours after blockchain platform Wormhole, which launched last August and holds roughly $1 billion in deposited funds,&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/wormholecrypto/status/1489232008521859079?s=20&amp;t=IYFEdB9yWoO4mM2okL7SgQ" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">confirmed</a>&nbsp;on Twitter that funds involved in the hack had been &#8220;restored,&#8221; and said on Telegram that &#8220;all funds are safe.&#8221;



Wormhole previously notified users of a possible hack on Twitter at about 4 p.m. ET Wednesday,&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/wormholecrypto/status/1488976115750383626?s=20&amp;t=Iw5TGKo9Cp8f6gfWDIqPUA" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">saying</a>&nbsp;its network was down for maintenance as the firm looked into a potential attack.



About an hour later, Wormhole&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/wormholecrypto/status/1489001949881978883?s=20&amp;t=Iw5TGKo9Cp8f6gfWDIqPUA" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a>&nbsp;its network had been exploited and claimed about 120,000 tokens of a cryptocurrency known as wrapped ether, which tracks the value of the world&#8217;s second-largest cryptocurrency, ether, had been stolen—representing some $325 million in value.



In a message embedded onto the Ethereum blockchain, Wormhole offered the attacker a $10 million bounty to return the funds,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.elliptic.co/blog/325-million-stolen-from-wormhole-defi-service" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according</a>&nbsp;to blockchain analytics company Elliptic, which called the Wednesday incident the fourth largest cryptocurrency hack ever.



Soon after the heist, analysts at blockchain security firm CertiK said the hack represented the largest-ever attack on the Solana network and an &#8220;unfortunate reality&#8221; for the booming decentralized finance space, which has heated up among investors alongside the broader cryptocurrency industry over the past year, despite a growing number of similar hacks.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h2>



&#8220;[Jump] believes in a multichain future and that @WormholeCrypto is essential infrastructure,&#8221; Jump, which&nbsp;<a href="https://thefullfx.com/jump-trading-buys-certus-one/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">acquired</a>&nbsp;Wormhole&#8217;s parent company for an undisclosed amount in August, tweeted Thursday, referring to the type of protocol Wormhole uses to allow users to swap tokens between different blockchains. &#8220;That’s why we replaced 120k ETH to make community members whole and support Wormhole now as it continues to develop.&#8221;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="tangent">TANGENT</h2>



Even though the space only started gaining traction in 2020, there have been more than $2 billion in direct losses suffered by decentralized finance services due to hacks and exploits, according to Elliptic on Wednesday. In August, hackers&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/08/10/more-than-600-million-stolen-in-ethereum-and-other-cryptocurrencies-marking-one-of-cryptos-biggest-hacks-ever/?sh=70c80e727f62">breached</a>&nbsp;blockchain-based platform Poly Network and extracted more than $600 million in cryptocurrencies, marking DeFi&#8217;s biggest hack ever. Those funds were&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/08/12/hacker-finally-returns-nearly-all-600-million-stolen-in-ethereum-other-tokens-after-major-crypto-heist/?sh=5cd80c6c19cb">eventually</a>&nbsp;returned .



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="what-we-don-t-know">WHAT WE DON&#8217;T KNOW</h2>



It&#8217;s still unclear who the alleged hacker is and whether Wormhole is still working to retrieve the stolen funds.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="big-number">BIG NUMBER</h2>



$192 billion. That’s the market value of all decentralized finance tokens, according to cryptodata&nbsp;<a href="https://defillama.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">website</a>&nbsp;DeFi Llama. The space shot past a $250 billion valuation for the first time ever in December but has since fallen amid a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2022/01/10/looking-ugly-crypto-market-crash-intensifies-after-300-billion-sell-off-how-low-can-bitcoin-prices-go/">broader</a>&nbsp;cryptocurrency market sell-off.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler has repeatedly said the decentralized finance industry, also known as DeFi, deserves more government scrutiny. Such platforms largely sidestep traditional intermediaries like central banks and exchanges for financial services and instead rely on blockchains and cryptocurrencies to process transactions. Gensler has said the practices can implicate securities, commodities and banking laws, and last year&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sec.gov/news/public-statement/gensler-aspen-security-forum-2021-08-03" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">called</a>&nbsp;on Congress to ramp up its authority over the cryptocurrency industry, which he likened to the “Wild West.”&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/08/12/hacker-finally-returns-nearly-all-600-million-stolen-in-ethereum-other-tokens-after-major-crypto-heist/?sh=5cd80c6c19cb">Hacker Returns Nearly All $600 Million Stolen In Ethereum, Other Tokens After Major Crypto Heist</a> (Forbes)



By Jonathan Ponciano, Forbes Staff

Millennial generation boy on smart screen

Jump Crypto Fronts $325 Million In Stolen Crypto One Day After Solana’s Biggest Hack Ever

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Bitcoin tumbled 16% overnight Saturday amid a wider plunge of cryptocurrencies as investors pared riskier bets with financial markets unsettled by the spread of the omicron coronavirus variant.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY FACTS</h2>



Bitcoin, the No. 1 cryptocurrency by market value, was trading at $47,558.47 as of 9:30 a.m. Saturday, down 16% from a day earlier, according to<a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;CoinGecko</a>.



It had fallen as much as 20% before recovering some of its losses.



As of Saturday morning, Ether, the second-largest digital token, was off 13.1%; Binance Coin, the third-largest token, was down 11%; Solana, the fifth-largest token, had given up 17.2%, according to<a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;CoinGecko</a>.



Meme coin Dogecoin <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">shed</a> nearly a fifth of its market value and Shiba Inu coin declined 14.9%.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



The drop in cryptocurrencies came after a volatile week in financial markets. The omicron variant has led countries around the world to restrict travel amid worries that vaccines may not be as effective against the strain. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell indicated earlier this week the central bank could accelerate the tapering of its pandemic bond-buying program, with inflation looking more persistent than policy makers had believed.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-price-tumbles-after-wall-street-selloff-11638621435" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bitcoin Price Tumbles After Wall Street Selloff</a>&nbsp;(Wall Street Journal)



<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-04/bitcoin-plunges-more-than-20-amid-tumble-in-cryptocurrencies?sref=X2kHL3Gj" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bitcoin Plunges Over 20% in Another Sign of Global Market Nerves</a> (Bloomberg)



By Lisa Kim, Forbes Staff

Bitcoin and candlestick chart

Bitcoin And Other Digital Tokens Plunge Amid Volatility In Financial Markets

It’s everyone’s dream to get paid to do nothing. Bitcoin miner Layer1 is turning that dream into reality — having figured out how to make money even when its machines are turned off.&nbsp;



Layer1 is a cryptocurrency startup backed by the likes of billionaire&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/peter-thiel/#20734ccc533a">Peter Thiel</a>. In recent months, out in the hardscrabble land of west Texas,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2020/02/28/why-is-this-peter-thiel-backed-startup-mining-bitcoin-in-west-texas/#57cf2dc55174">the company has been busy</a>&nbsp;erecting steel boxes (think shipping containers) stuffed chockablock with high-end processors submerged inside cooling baths of mineral oil. Why west Texas? Beause thanks to a glut of natural gas and a forest of wind turbines, power there is among the cheapest in the world — which is what you need for crypto.&nbsp;



“Mining Bitcoin is about converting electricity into money,” says Alex Liegl, CEO and co-founder. By this fall Layer1 will have dozens of these boxes churning around the clock to transform 100 megawatts into a stream of Bitcoin. Liegl says their average cost of production is about $1,000 per coin — equating to a 90% profit margin at current BTC price of $9,100.&nbsp;



So it’s odd how excited Liegl is about the prospect of having to shut down his Bitcoin miners this summer.&nbsp;



Already this year west Texas has seen a string of 100-degree days. But the real heat and humidity don’t hit until August, which is when the Texas power grid strains under the load of every air conditioning unit in the state going full blast. During an intense week in 2019, wholesale electricity prices in the grid region managed by the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) soared from about $120 per megawatthour to peak out at $9,000 per mwh. It was only the third time in history that Texas power hit that level. And although the peak pricing only lasted an hour or so, that’s enough to generate big profits. Analyst Hugh Wynne at research outfit SSR figures that Texas power generators make about 15% of annual revenues during the peak 1% of hours (whereas in more temperate California grid generators only get 3% of revs from the top 1%).



Turns out that running a phalanx of Bitcoin miners is a great way to arbitrage those peaks. Layer1 has entered into so-called “demand response” contracts whereby at a minute’s notice they will shut down all their machines and instead allow their 100 mw load to flow onto the grid. “We act as an insurance underwriter for the energy grid,” says Liegl, 27. “If there is an insufficiency of supply we can shut down.” The best part, they get paid whether a grid emergeny occurs or not. Just for their willingness to shut in Bitcoin production, Layer1 collects an annual premium equating to $19 per megawatthour of their expected power demand — or about $17 million. Given Layer1’s roughly $25 per mwh long-term contracted costs, this gets their all-in power price down 75% to less than 1 cent per kwh (just 10% of what residential customers pay).&nbsp;



It may seem like grid operators are paying Layer1 a lot for something that might not even happen, especially with coronavirus reducing electricity demand, but it makes total sense, says&nbsp;<a href="https://uh.edu/uh-energy/about-uh-energy/energy-fellows/blog-posts/ed-hirs/index.php" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ed Hirs</a>, a lecturer in energy economics at the University of Houston and research fellow at consultancy BDO: “It’s a lot cheaper option than building a whole new power plant or battery system just to keep it on standby.”&nbsp;



And although this may be a new concept for cryptocurrency miners, it’s been done before. Two decades ago industrialist Charles Hurwitz bought up power-hogging aluminum smelters in the Pacific Northwest and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2001/0402/053.html#34cccc1d3da9">made more money reselling electricity</a>&nbsp;than making metal. “It used to be called load management,” says Dan Delurey, a consultant with&nbsp;<a href="http://www.wedgemere.com/team/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Wedgemere Group</a>. “In old commercial buildings you might still find telephone wires connected to air conditioning systems so that grid operators could send a signal to shut off.” More recently we’ve seen companies install radio-based devices to control hot water heaters and lighting systems. Indeed, grid management is a hot enough area that in 2017 Italy’s power giant Enel bought Boston-based Enernoc for $250 million and Itron&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/itron" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ITRI</a>&nbsp;bought Comverge for $100 million. What’s emerged are entities, like Layer1, that Delurey calls the “prosumer” — producing consumer.&nbsp;



As for Layer1, Liegl says his next step is to vertically integrate into financial products, including Bitcoin derivatives and more. “We are building an in-house energy trading division to leverage this into being a virtual power plant.”&nbsp;



His message to any pikers still trying to mine cryptocurrencies from their bedroom PC or even via cloud services: “I can’t think of something more irrational at this point. It’s like if I wanted to dig a hole in my backyard and try to get oil out of the ground.”&nbsp;



&#8211;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/">Christopher Helman</a>, Forbes Staff, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/energy">Energy</a>

gettyimages-1130794858-170667a

How This Billionaire-Backed Crypto Startup Gets Paid To Not Mine Bitcoin

Yele Bademosi is passionate about helping his home continent of Africa. Born into a missionary home in Ibadan, Nigeria, Bademosi’s mother and father used to deliver medical services and bibles to the Yoruba tribes-people in the forests surrounding&nbsp;his home-town, often going from hut to hut. When he and his sisters were old enough, they helped. “That is my earliest memory in terms of thinking about how to give back,” he says, “But as I grew older, I changed my views to thinking about, how do you actually help people at scale?”&nbsp;



Last year, Bademosi became a director at the venture capital arm of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance, which trades $1.5 billion in crypto assets each day. And today he is excited because he’s launching Bundle, one of six African startups the Malta-based crypto exchange is now funding, and the first it launched. The startup is being run by Africans in an effort to get Africans to use cryptocurrency, not as an investment vehicle, but as a global means of exchange. Bundle is essentially a social payments app, similar to Venmo or Square’s Cash App.



It lets users send, receive and spend bitcoin, ether, and Nigerian naira with little more than the recipient’s phone number. Unlike Square though, Bundle will also let users spend Binance coin (BNB), the exchange’s native cryptocurrency, which has been doled out to loyal and active traders using its crypto exchange. In the near future they’ll be able to spend and (more importantly) save Binance U.S. dollars (BUSD), stablecoins backed by U.S. dollars and regulated in the United States.



Bundle joins numerous tech giants working on ventures in Africa. Facebook <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2020/04/16/libra-compromises-undermine-original-facebook-promise/#41334dc02737">intends</a> to co-launch a cryptocurrency targeting the unbanked and Square’s founder Jack Dorsey recently announced plans to immigrate to the continent. “Regardless of your geography, you should have access to the best financial services. And unfortunately, your geography today defines the quality of financial services that you have,” says Bademosi, who is also Bundle’s CEO. “The same way the internet created freedom of information, I think blockchains create freedom of quality of financial services.”



Born in 1991, the only boy among five sisters, Bademosi always knew entrepreneurship was in his future. Perhaps rebelling from his bossy sisters, he knew he didn’t want to work for others. Bademosi’s first experience with a computer was at an internet cafe. As a child, he’d walk up a flight of stairs to the second floor of his local shopping center, push open a sliding door and frantically scan for cheat codes to his favorite computer games in 30-minute chunks, before his money ran out.



It wasn’t until 2007, when Bademosi was 16-years-old, that he finally got his first computer, an Acer Aspire One Series his parents got for him when he started classes at Lansdowne College, a preparatory school for University, similar to a high-school, in Westminster, England. For the first time, he had unlimited online access and an outlet to focus his burgeoning interests. By the time he graduated two years later, the 6’ 6” Bademosi had not only competed on the school’s football and basketball teams, but studied biology, chemistry, psychology and mathematics. “There&#8217;s a huge difference between what you learn in college in a structured environment and what you can learn online,” he says. “It felt like what I imagined the Enlightenment period felt like for people who lived when the printing press was first available.”&nbsp;



Growing up in Nigeria, he says, meant that students who did well in school were pushed into the sciences. When his youngest sister decided to go into economics, or what he called “liberal-type accounting,” he was in shock. In spite of his entrepreneurial aspirations, he knew he would be expected to either to become a medical doctor like his father, an engineer or an architect. He hated physics though, so passed on engineering, and architecture was out because as he put it, “I couldn&#8217;t draw straight lines.” His father convinced him that even if he didn’t end up practicing medicine,&nbsp;the University of London’s accelerated three-year program meant he’d have extra time afterwards to find a path of his own, and he enrolled in 2009.



In his first year of medical school his father died of kidney-failure. His father’s death gave him the courage to rebel. He had always found that he was more interested in computers than medicine so he dropped out of medical school with plans to build apps for Apple’s OS.&nbsp;After a few unsuccessful months building a social media app Bademosi flew back to Nigeria.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5ea0b91d8c2caa0006e71892/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="Yele Bademosi, Bundle"/><figcaption>Bademosi works in his company&#8217;s office.&nbsp;BINANCE / YUSUF</figcaption></figure>



There he got a job as manager of Starta, devoted to helping African companies get off the ground by providing education, tools, and networking opportunities. After developing a taste for helping startups get off the ground, Bademosi founded his own angel investing firm called Mircotraction. His venture had well connected backers: Nigerian energy and real estate tycoon, Tunde Folawiyo; the CEO of Y-Combinator, Michael Siebel, and Google’s head of ecosystem for sub-Saharan Africa, Andy Volk.



Lagos-based Microtraction is now among the most active investors in Western Africa, having funded 15 companies, including 54gene, an African genomics research startup that recently attracted $15 million from Adjuvant Capital, Y-Combinator and others.



Bademosi had learned about bitcoin in college but it wasn’t until 2017 after he read a book called Master Switch by Columbia professor Tim Wu, that he began to see blockchain as a way to let networks of individuals compete against the likes of Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple using a shared technology infrastructure. “We’re not there yet,” he says. ‘But I believe that blockchain and decentralized technologies can open up the internet again, and create a new playing field that new entrants could play on.”



While the jump from medicine to blockchain may seem big , Bademosi sees them as strongly related. “The similarity really is the fact that you have individual organisms, whether that&#8217;s a cell or a human or a computer, acting in their own best interests towards what&#8217;s still a common goal, and there are a bunch of rules they all have to obey.”



Just a few months after founding Microtraction in August 2017, Bademosi bought his first bitcoin and as its price fluctuated wildly he became hooked on crypto asset investing. That led him to Binance, which was, founded in China, and is now doing business from Malta. In November 2018, Binance published a ten-point <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://medium.com/@benjaminrameau/10-reasons-why-binance-labs-is-fully-committed-to-africa-3aeaaa32fe9e" target="_blank">thesis</a> on why it was dedicated to the continent and launched a subsidiary in Uganda. Number four on Binance’s list was Bademosi’s childhood mantra: scalability. 



“For me, blockchains are as big as the internet,” says Bademosi. “And can you imagine Bill Gates or Larry Page or, Mark, Zuckerberg coming to Africa less than one year after the company was started?” He was impressed. So much so, that by January 2019, he had pitched his vision for what Binance should be doing in Africa and instead of taking him up on his advice, the company hired him, making him the first director at Binance Labs focused on investing in Africa-based blockchain startups and leading the Africa chapter of the organization’s incubation program.



So far Binance Labs has invested in five African startups, one from South Africa, one from Kenya, one from Ghana and three from Nigeria, all serving different aspects of the content’s growing crypto economy. Notably, Lagos-based Yellow Card is a way to buy bitcoin even without a bank via local agents, and Flutterwave is the same fiat-to-crypto bridge that lets Binance customers buy cryptocurrency with naira.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5ea0b97cbed92b0006690434/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="Bundle team"/><figcaption>Bundle backend engineer Kenny Shittu (left) meets with blockchain engineer Oluchi Enebeli, user experience designer Ugo Ifezue, backend engineer Seyi Ajonibode and operations associate Chinny Eze at Bundle&#8217;s offices on March 9, 2020   BUNDLE / YUSUF</figcaption></figure>



Binance and its new Bundle have Western competitors in Africa. Facebook’s Libra has its sights set on banking the unbanked. Another potential competitor using cryptocurrency to serve the unbanked is Akon, the Senegalese-American musician whose Akoin project announced recently that it would be the exclusive currency of the Mwale Medical Technology City in Kenya.&nbsp;“Our goal is for akoin to be the official currency of the continent,” says Akon.



To give an idea of the total market up for grabs here, even if the average account holder might only own a fraction of what Western banks require to open an account, the World Bank estimates that 1.7 billion adults around the world are without such access. Fifty-seven percent of adults in sub-Saharan African, or about 350 million people, don’t have bank accounts, according to the World Bank. To help close that gap nearly&nbsp;$700 million was invested in fintech in Africa last year, according to media firm WeeTracker.&nbsp;Of the 1.2 billion people living in Africa, Bademosi estimates only 1.4 million are already using crypto.&nbsp;



In two weeks Bundle expects to add BUSD, a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar, created by blockchain startup Paxos, regulated by the New York Department of Financial Services, and spendable anywhere in the world. One possible financial product that could eventually be offered using this technology would be what amounts to a savings account denominated in U.S. dollars for people living in Nigeria, and eventually other African nations. Instead of Nigerians losing 12% to inflation at current rates by keeping their cash in a savings account, they could be paid interest denominated in U.S. dollars for funds held in custody elsewhere. “Being able to save in stablecoins and earn interest per annum is huge,” says Bademosi. “And we can offer that up to anyone anywhere.”



Users will also be able to cash in and cash out using local fiat currencies. Longer term plans include a physical debit card and the ability to purchase U.S. stocks, Nigerian mutual funds and agriculture debt, and unspecified incentive programs designed to jumpstart the cryptocurrency economy in Africa, according to internal documents provided to&nbsp;Forbes. The documents compare Bundle to Mosaic, the internet browser invented by Marc Andreessen, and credited for weaving together the previously esoteric processes required to use the internet into a single, intuitive browser.&nbsp;



In September 2019, Bundle quietly raised $450,000 from Binance, Pave Investments and other African investors. “We believe Bundle can become one of the key projects that will support Binance&#8217;s mission of scaling the adoption of crypto on the continent,” says Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ). To help do that, Bundle will be free at launch, with plans to eventually charge 0.5% to 2% per transaction on all short term trades and 3% of assets under management on yearly gains, for longer-term investing. While the finer details of how that works have yet to be announced, we can look to Binance for some intriguing clues.&nbsp;



After creating BNB in July 2017, the asset has grown to a total market value of $2.2 billion, making it the eighth largest crypto-asset according to&nbsp;CoinMarketCap.com, the widely used cryptocurrency markets site Binance recently acquired for a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2020/03/31/bitcoin-and-crypto-world-rocked-by-massive-400-million-binance-bid-for-coinmarketcap-report/#34f2d302247f">reported</a>&nbsp;$400 million. But it’s the way Binance uses that asset, which users acquire in exchange for making transactions on-site, that Bundle perhaps has the most to learn from.&nbsp;



Binance’s users are allowed to pay their fees on the site using the same BNB cryptocurrency they are rewarded for being regular users, and a new platform, called LaunchPad, lets users raise capital via initial coin offerings (ICOs) also payable in BNB, establishing what cryptocurrency news site CoinDesk <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.coindesk.com/the-unbelievable-brilliance-of-binance" target="_blank">called</a> “a virtuous cycle by which its users were incentivized to stay within its platform.” Bademosi, it would seem, has learned his lessons well, a promising sign for the future. “Bundle does an excellent job of putting fiat and crypto side by side,” he says. “And then nudging the user to use some of these digital currencies or assets in innovative ways.”



&#8211;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/">Michael del Castillo,</a>Forbes Staff, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/crypto-blockchain">Crypto &amp; Blockchain</a>

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Binance Spinoff Aims To Be Bitcoin-Powered Venmo Of Africa

Bitcoin

Bitcoin’s Guardian Angel: Inside Coinbase Billionaire Brian Armstrong’s Plan To Make Crypto Safe For All

Take a close look at trading activity on BKEX—a cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2018 and registered in the British Virgin Islands—and you’ll see something odd. Compare its transactions side-by-side with those of Binance, one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, and you’ll notice BKEX’s trading history is a replica, printing the same numbers delayed by a few seconds. 



According to CoinMarketCap, BKEX has $1.1 billion in daily volume, making it the 20th-largest exchange on the planet. Yet it seems to be simply copying Binance’s trade history and passing it off as its own, in perhaps the laziest attempt in history to fool people into thinking it’s a lively place to trade digital assets.   



A new report by Alameda Research, a 20-person crypto trading firm with offices in Hong Kong and Berkeley, California, reveals a clever set of tricks used by crypto exchanges to fabricate volume. 



In the wake of other reports on phony trades, including one by digital asset manager Bitwise indicating that 95% of all transactions are bogus, Alameda felt it could create better research by leveraging its trading data and experience. 



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The startup was cofounded in 2017 by Sam Bankman-Fried, 27, an MIT alum and former trader at high frequency trading outfit Jane Street. Gary Wang, 26, a fellow MIT grad and former Google software developer, is his cofounder. The firm has $100 million in assets, and over the past month it has traded $1 billion a day on average, making it one of the largest crypto trading firms in the world. 



Exchanges make money by charging users to trade, and they have many reasons to artificially inflate volume. More activity means a higher rank on the still-popular website CoinMarketCap, which can attract new users. 



Exchanges also charge fees to new cryptocurrency projects that want to get listed in their marketplace, and the perception of popularity helps them command higher rates. Since an exchange’s place of business is just a website or an app, and many located outside the U.S. are unregulated, it can publish any numbers it wants and call them trades. 



Meanwhile, CoinMarketCap continues to insufficiently vet exchanges’ transaction volume, often taking companies at their word and publishing dubious numbers. 



According to Alameda’s research, another method exchanges use to juice their statistics is sneaking in large, fake transactions amid a flurry of smaller ones. CoinEgg, a Hong Kong-registered exchange that trades $1.1 billion a day reported by CoinMarketCap, recently employed this tactic with litecoin (LTC) trades. 



During a period when Alameda observed 15 different offers to buy and sell litecoin in a maximum quantity of 134 LTC, several trades printed as large as 2,000 LTC, as if a buyer appeared out of thin air. 



Trading marketplaces typically publish their “order book,” showing a list of bid prices at which people are willing to buy an asset, plus a separate set of offer prices where people are willing to sell. 



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For instance, Bill might be willing to buy bitcoin at $10,000, while Mary wants to sell at no less than $10,050. For a trade to happen, a new buyer must be willing to pay the $10,050 that Mary is offering, and the vast majority of trades that clear will align with orders that previously showed up in the order book, unless two users place offsetting orders at the same exact time. 



Yet on some exchanges, trades get executed at prices and sizes that fall outside anything sitting on the order book. On Digifinex, a Singapore-based crypto trading venue, Alameda observed bids and asks for bitcoin between $8,296 and $8,298, but several trades printed at $8,290 and $8,293, prices lower than what anyone was willing to sell at.



On LAToken, a Moscow digital exchange, Alameda saw bids and offers with a maximum size of 1.6 bitcoin in the order book. Implausibly, several trades sailed through at sizes up to 20 bitcoin. LAToken founder Valentin Preobrazhenskiy says his platform only has a “tiny share” of 20-bitcoin orders and that exchanges use inflated volumes as a marketing tool. 



“The situation would change when large exchange-ranking sites would add a section for trading volumes based on trades reported to regulators,” he says. On Singapore-based ABCC, the best bid and offers Alameda saw were for sizes less than one ether, yet several transactions materialized with sizes of up to 11 ether. 



Among trading venues, there’s also the well-worn method of simply printing transactions that fall in the middle of the bid and ask prices, which Alameda’s research spotted in IDAX and Coineal. In total, Alameda’s report gives examples of fishy trading patterns on 60 different crypto exchanges. Aside from LAToken, none of the exchanges named above responded immediately to&nbsp;Forbes’&nbsp;request for comment.&nbsp;



The methodology behind Alameda’s research was to test each exchange on six different criteria. First, they manually looked at an exchange’s order book and observed where trades printed. If more than 10% of transactions didn’t appear on the order book, it failed on this dimension. Another test involved observing the percent of an exchange’s trades that took place at the best available bids or offers.&nbsp;



A third criterion was to analyze how much Alameda itself traded on a given exchange, since the startup deals in “virtually every cryptocurrency,” considers its algorithms “exchange-agnostic” and estimates that it trades 5% of all global crypto volume. 



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“If we trade more than .5% of an exchange’s reported volume, we consider that exchange to pass according to this criterion,” the report  reads. For more details on its methodology, see the full report.</blockquote>



Beyond exchanges’ bad behavior, the report has other provocative insights. It claims that crypto—including both “spot” trades of actual digital assets and derivatives, like bitcoin futures—trades $38 billion in real volume a day, and 87% of that happens on Asian exchanges, with just 9% happening on U.S. venues. The strict regulatory environment in the U.S. is likely a contributing factor in Asia’s dominance, Alameda says.&nbsp;



Compared with Bitwise, which released a follow-up fake volume reportin May 2019, Alameda thinks more crypto volume is real. For large exchanges like OKEx and Huobi, which were founded in China, Alameda estimates about 70% of their transactions are authentic. 



Bitwise is much more skeptical, as is the Blockchain Transparency Institute, which has estimated that more than 60% of Huobi’s volume is fake and more than 90% of OKEx’s volume is fabricated. 



A Huobi spokesperson says it doesn’t engage in wash trading, but that it has observed some market-makers doing so on its platform, and it takes steps to stamp them out.



 An OKEx spokesperson says the company isn’t involved in and doesn’t tolerate wash trading, adding, “Recently we have joined the Data Accountability &amp; Transparency Alliance (DATA) led by CoinMarketCap, as a commitment to reveal as much data as possible.”



-Jeff Kauflin; Forbes Staff

The Anatomy Of A Fake Cryptocurrency Trade: How Exchanges Create Phony Transactions

Alex Sunnarborg is a founding partner of Tetras Capital, a New York City-based cryptocurrency hedge fund Forbes estimates to have $30 million in assets under management. Tetras is well known for a recent bearish bet it made: It shorted ether in May 2018, a month when the digital currency’s average price was nearly $700. Today, ether hovers around $100. Before Tetras, Sunnarborg did a stint in investment banking and founded crypto exchange and research app Lawnmower, which was acquired by CoinDesk in 2017.



Forbes:&nbsp;How would you describe your investment strategy?



Sunnarborg:&nbsp;In a bull market when everything is going up, especially when bitcoin is going up, altcoins generally will return more than bitcoin. In 2017 when we launched, we were looking to make altcoin trades. [Altcoins are generally considered any crypto asset other than bitcoin.] They historically have more volatility and higher betas.



In a bear market, altcoins are still trading at a higher beta, but to the downside. In 2018, bitcoin fell about 75%, but altcoins fell 95%. It’s funny how strongly they’re still correlated, yet altcoins have a higher beta. Today, if we’re trying to hedge our exposure to this space, before we short bitcoin we look at something with a higher beta.



Forbes:&nbsp;You shorted ether in May 2018, when it was trading above $500. Now ether is at $100. Obviously, that went well. Was it your biggest win for 2018?



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/current-affairs/2019/02/02/why-genesis-made-over-1-billion-in-bitcoin-ethereum-and-xrp-loans/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Why Genesis Made Over $1 Billion In Bitcoin, Ethereum And XRP Loans (opens in a new tab)">Why Genesis Made Over $1 Billion In Bitcoin, Ethereum And XRP Loans</a>



Sunnarborg:&nbsp;I would say so, yeah.



Forbes:&nbsp;Where’s the bottom for ether?



Sunnarborg:&nbsp;It’s funny, these cryptos don’t have a good way to come to a fundamental value. I can’t tell you ether is fundamentally going to bottom at $50. It was at $10 two years ago, right? These assets trade so much relatively to each other, so I think ether’s short-term bottom would be in line with bitcoin starting to turn. If bitcoin turned tomorrow and rallied, I think ether would, too.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">School Counselors Are The Glue In The School</h4>



Forbes:&nbsp;Over the past few months, we’ve seen issues with ConsenSys struggling and doing layoffs. Do you think that’s a bad sign for the future of Ethereum?



Sunnarborg:&nbsp;Yeah. ConsenSys is an integral piece of the Ethereum ecosystem. All the Ethereum decentralized applications and products it supports have had minimal user growth. A lot of them still haven’t launched and are still pretty difficult to use, and the daily active user counts are less than 100.



Augur has about $40,000 of money at stake across all its prediction markets, but the investors behind Augur have put up tens of millions. It has a market cap of hundreds of millions. There’s this massive disconnect between how much money is still tied up in these projects and how much people actually use them.



I’ve also noticed some Ethereum developers basically talking about building on some competing blockchains. People are talking about launching on Dfinity or Polkadot. At least at a high level, it does not look or feel good. It looks like a drop in momentum and steam.



Forbes:&nbsp;Are you currently short ether?



Sunnarborg:&nbsp;I don’t think I should comment on that right now. We have not held ether since we first published our short thesis in July 2018. We then went short ether, and we have taken that position off three or four times in 2018.



Forbes:&nbsp;Has bitcoin bottomed yet?



Sunnarborg:&nbsp;I don’t think so, and I think calling that is very difficult. That’s part of the reason I’m really thankful that we’re in the position we are right now. We can hedge ourselves, remain more neutral and not have to call that exact price or timing bottom. I’m not confident right now. Our portfolio is relatively neutral—we have cash and short positions.



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Forbes:&nbsp;What are you buying and holding?



Sunnarborg:&nbsp;Obviously, I’m a huge proponent of bitcoin. And if the market were to turn right now, what liquid altcoin sector would we even look at? We’re very biased against anything that did an ICO, because we think they’re pretty much all illegal securities offerings. Just by cutting that out, you are left with a very small handful of assets. A use case I still find interesting, because bitcoin doesn’t have that functionality yet, is private transactions.



Forbes:&nbsp;Among privacy coins, which do you like best?



Sunnarborg:&nbsp;I think Mimblewimble and Grin are pretty interesting—the fair launch process, the focus on privacy and the inflation. I think zcash and monero are both still interesting.



Forbes:&nbsp;Can you explain what Grin did to create a fair launch?



Sunnarborg:&nbsp;There’s only so many projects that don’t launch their blockchain or token without an ICO or some initial funding. Grin tried to use the ethos of bitcoin of saying there’s going to be a genesis block, and people are going to start mining the coin. There’s no way you can buy it or get access to this coin ahead of time. That’s very similar to how monero launched, and both of those attract a lot of interest from people in bitcoin, largely for that reason.



Forbes:&nbsp;What other factors do you look at?



Sunnarborg:&nbsp;Another huge thing for me is the security. So, things like that recent Ethereum Classic 51% attack (when users attacked the blockchain with computing power to spend the same coins twice, undermining the primary function of the blockchain). These blockchains where it’s possible to rewrite the blockchain for not that much money relative to how much you could make by double-spending—those are immediately not attractive. Unfortunately, in the crypto space, security and price are generally very correlated. So, as the price of ether falls, it gets less secure.



Forbes:&nbsp;I’ve seen you tweet about the virtual reality Ethereum-based platform Decentraland. Do you like that project?



Sunnarborg:&nbsp;I find the concept of digital land very interesting, because of its scarcity. I like the concept of digital scarcity. This land asset seems interesting as something I could own and build on, and maybe charge players a fee for. I could sell it to someone else in the future. The value actually makes sense to me. But there’s this other token in Decentraland called mana, which was created via an ICO. You have to use mana to buy land. I absolutely hate this token; it’s totally unnecessary. I think the ICO was just done to raise money. They sold these tokens, and then essentially, they’re backing into what to do with them.



Forbes:&nbsp;I’ve also seen you tweet about EOS and its growing number of transactions. Are you bullish on it?



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Sunnarborg:&nbsp;No. The one-year long, $4 billion-dollar ICO seems a little excessive to me. The whole governance system, with 21 block producers that can essentially make, vote, or deny everything, is a weird concept to me.



Forbes:&nbsp;What should investors be monitoring for signals about where the market is headed?



Sunnarborg:&nbsp;One of the big, fundamental things I want to see is whether the Fidelity crypto trading product actually rolls out in March. And do people actually start to use it? A very similar question: What’s the status of trading platform Bakkt? Will it get approved, and are people going to use it?



And how does the composition of global exchange volume start to shape up from here? Does volume increase on regulated, brand-name platforms—platforms that the next wave of institutions would actually trust?



What I’m really looking for in all these comments: Will this market actually clean up? Can we start to trust crypto data more, like trading volume numbers? We need more regulated, trusted players to improve the trading venues, because I think right now the SEC and many people are scared of manipulation, hacks and very shady venues for trading.



What would be really good for a market bottom to happen would be for every potential bad thing to happen immediately. I would love to see the SEC come down on people really hard. One of the biggest problems in this space is there are so many bad actors, and so many were related to ICOs. The SEC just has such a massive task ahead of them.



One way to think about the bottom is that it happens when all the bad news gets washed out. At that point the only thing to do is go up, and you can’t really talk about any negative catalysts anymore, because they’ve all happened.



Basically, I think we’re pretty close to the bottom, and what would help is if some more of that clarity and action came out. It probably would have been helpful for the bottom if the VanEck exchange-traded fund would have gotten totally rejected; if the SEC slapped some more of these people around and essentially maximum pain came onto the market. At that point we would see where, if any, buyers jumped in.



Excerpted from the February 2019 issue of&nbsp;<a href="https://esp.forbes.com/subscribe?PC=F8" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Forbes CryptoAsset And Blockchain Advisor</a>.



-Jeff Kauflin; Forbes Staff

Tag: crypto

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