Ledger, the makers of the Ledger Nano S and Ledger Nano X has announced that their application, Ledger Live now supports buying cryptocurrencies with credit card or bank transfer. This feature is operated with their partners, Coinify, MoonPay, BTC Direct and Wyre, and now users can directly go onto Ledger Live to buy their cryptocurrencies and have them sent to the safety of their Ledger device. No more having to go through extra steps such as buying cryptocurrencies on exchanges and then sending it to your hardware wallet for safekeeping! In this guide, we give you step-by-step instructions on how to buy cryptocurrencies using Ledger Live on your Nano S and Nano X.
Thanks to several crypto platform partners, Ledger Live now offers for purchase more than 40 different cryptocurrencies from the top 50 market cap projects.
Although the available range of cryptocurrencies is quite wide, users who would like to buy other cryptos supported by their Nano S will have to buy them elsewhere, such as cryptocurrency exchanges.
To get started with buying cryptocurrencies using your Nano S or Nano X, open up the Ledger Live application on your PC and go to “Buy crypto” on the sidebar. Choose which cryptocurrency you wish to buy. You can choose from 40+ different coins, including BTC (Bitcoin) and ETH (Ethereum). For the purpose of this guide, we will be demonstrating buying Bitcoin through one of Ledger Live’s partners, Coinify, but purchases using other partner platforms should work in the same way. Choose Bitcoin as the crypto asset we wish to buy. Then choose which account you want your cryptocurrency to be deposited to. Alternatively, you can add a new account for your cryptocurrency purchases- see our section titled “How to add new account for cryptocurrency purchases“.
Click “Buy crypto” on the sidebar
On Ledger Live, you would be asked to either sign up or log in to your Coinify account. For a tutorial on how to set up a Coinify account, see our section titled “How to register a Coinify account on Ledger Live“.
Login or set up a Coinify account
You will then be asked to select the amount of cryptocurrency you wish to buy, the payment currency and payment method. Ledger allows you to pay in the following currencies: AUD, BGN, CAD, CHF, DKK, EUR, GBP, HKD, HRK, HUF, INR, JPY, NOK, NZD, PLN, SEK, TRY, USD and VND. You can pay for your cryptocurrency using credit card (Visa or Mastercard) or for European locations, bank transfer via. SEPA.
Select your cryptocurrency purchase and confirm the transaction.
Because cryptocurrency prices do fluctuate, Ledger will lock in your purchase price and give you 15 minutes to complete the purchase. Enter your credit card details, double check your purchase details and click “Pay”. Your purchased cryptocurrency will be automatically deposited into your designated account on your Ledger device.
Complete payment
How to Register a Coinify Account on Ledger Live
For those who don’t have a Coinify account or are buying cryptocurrencies for the first time on Ledger Live, you will need to go through Coinify’s Know Your Customer (KYC) process and set up an account. On Ledger Live, enter your email and choose a password, then click “Create account”. You will then be asked to answer a few KYC questions.
Create a Coinify account
Confirm your email (Coinify will send you a confirmation email) and location.
Confirm your email and location
Provide information on your residential address and how you plan to use your account.
Provide residential address and account usage
You will also be asked to verify your identity by providing a photograph of your ID Card/ passport and to scan your face similar to setting up FaceID on your iPhone.
Verify your identity
Afterwards Coinify will automatically process your registration which takes around 2 minutes. Then you are all set!
Coinify will process your registration within 2 minutes
How to Add a New Account for Cryptocurrency Purchases
To add an account, click “+ Add account” as shown in the above image. Then choose which crypto asset account you wish to add. For the purpose of this guide, I will be showing you how to add a Bitcoin account, so I choose Bitcoin as the asset and clicked “Continue”. (Xanax) When asked, connect your Ledger device to your PC and unlock it. Then go to the corresponding app for the cryptocurrency you want to buy on the device, your device will say “Application is ready” whilst it synchronises with Ledger Live on your PC.
Once synchronised, you will be given options on which new account you wish to add. Choose the account(s) to add then click “Add account”. Your new account will then be added and you can then choose to either add more accounts or close the window to finish.
How to Purchase Cryptocurrencies on Ledger Live with Other Partners
In addition to Coinify, Ledger Live now also supports buying crypto through partners like Wyre (available only in the US), MoonPay, and BTC Direct. All of these alternative purchasing platforms are KYC (Know Your Customer) compliant, which means for anyone wanting to purchase crypto through them, they will have to provide personal information such as email, full name, address, phone number, and personal ID (driver’s license or passport). However, once that is done and an account has been created for any of these platforms, the purchase and selling of cryptocurrencies within your Ledger Live app should be quick and seamless in very much the same way as the purchase of coins through Coinify.
User Experience and Conclusion
We’ve tried out a lot of cryptocurrency hardware wallets and Ledger’s devices are definitely our preferred choice. This preference is definitely solidified by the fact that we can now purchase cryptocurrencies on Ledger Live because it means we no longer have to buy cryptocurrencies on exchanges, especially when most exchanges require you to go through KYC procedures if purchasing crypto for the first time.
So whilst you do also have to go through KYC procedures when buying with Ledger Live for the first time which is a bit trouble, the whole process only took around 5 minutes to complete. And at the end of the day it is worthwhile to buy cryptocurrencies using Ledger Live in the long run because your cryptocurrency is sent directly to your device which is a relatively safer storage device.
Many may use multiple exchanges and even skip from one exchange to another but at the end of the day your hardware wallet is where most of your cryptocurrency should be stored anyway. Therefore we highly recommend trying this feature out and whilst there are only 4 cryptocurrencies available to purchase, it is generally sufficient as a start to trading on exchanges and we hope and expect that Ledger may add more coins in the future.
Note: Until 8th Aug 2022, Ledger is offering 10% off the Ledger Nano X and Ledger Nano S Plus when entering the code MOVESOL2LEDGER at checkout.
Bitcoin (BTC) is by far the best-known digital asset with the largest trade volume.
Bitcoin is both a currency and a technology. At its core, Bitcoin is peer to peer electronic money with one express objective. The objective is to replace the intermediation and trust vested on centralised financial institutions. It aims to be a replacement for traditional fiat currency and an innovative settlement layer for processing transactions without requiring a third party.
To learn more about Bitcoin and how to get started with cryptocurrencies, check out our beginner’s guide series.
Beginner’s guide to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies
Bitcoin is Decentralized
Before Bitcoin was invented, the only way to use money digitally, it was through an intermediary, like a Bank or PayPal. Even then, the money used was still government issued and controlled currency. However, Bitcoin changed all that by creating a decentralized form of currency that individuals could trade directly without the need for an intermediary. Instead of trusting a centralized bank to process transactions, we would trust a Protocol that is run by different individuals all over the world.
Each Bitcoin transaction is validated and confirmed by the entire Bitcoin network. There is no single point of failure, so the system is virtually impossible to shut down, manipulate, or control.
Main Features of Bitcoin
Decentralized control: There is no authority that controls Bitcoin. All transactions are visible on a public ledger called the blockchain.
Bitcoin is a store of value: You can use Bitcoin to purchase goods and services.
Security: Bitcoin has never been hacked.
Open source: the Bitcoin source code is publicly available and community members can update it.
Public: All transactions are visible on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Pseudonymous: You can use a pseudonymous identity to make Bitcoin transactions. It is not truly anonymous because the transaction addresses are visible on the public chain.
Limited supply: Bitcoin has a limited and predictable supply.
How do Bitcoin transactions work? How do you earn Bitcoin?
The Bitcoin network is essentially a decentralized public ledger that relies on the combined computing power of its community. Bitcoin works as follows:
Bitcoin transactions are unconfirmed until they are updated on the bitcoin transaction ledger. This is called the blockchain. This is a decentralised public ledger, i.e. everyone can update it and no one person controls this ledger.
People can help update this ledger by using specialised computers. The computers will generate random numbers. The aim is to generate the correct answer to the mathematical problem generated by the system.
The computer that guesses the solution gets to decide which of the pending bitcoin transactions will be grouped together into a block.
The block and the answer to the mathematical problem is sent to the bitcoin network. This is a network of computers.
The bitcoin network will check if the answer is correct. If it is, they will update their copies of the bitcoin transaction ledger with the block you had created. The process is then repeated. Hence the name “Blockchain“.
The computer which guessed the correct number receives an award of Bitcoins and the transaction fees for the transactions in the block.
This process is called mining. This is because you mine (earn) Bitcoins by helping update the bitcoin transaction ledger.
Bitcoin mining farm
What is the halving in Bitcoin mining?
The Bitcoin halving is an important concept for Bitcoin miners. When Bitcoin was first mined, miners were rewarded 50 BTC for generating the correct answer to the mathematical problem. Every 210,000 blocks which occur around every 4 years, this reward is cut in half. (locals.md) This is known as the Bitcoin halving.
The last Bitcoin halving occurred on 11th May 2020 at around 3:00p.m. EST. Following this halving, the block reward was reduced to 6.25 BTC. The next halving is therefore expected to be in 2024 when the block rewards will be cut down to 3.125 BTC.
Bitcoin owners store their coins using wallets. You do not actually hold your Bitcoins, rather you hold a private key that allows you to access your Bitcoin address i.e. your public key.
Click here to learn more about private keys and public keys.
Online wallets: Run on a cloud server and so can be accessed by multiple computers. Most common online wallets are cryptocurrency exchanges. Check out our review of the top exchanges.
Paper wallets: A printout which contains your public and private keys. Though the most rudimentary, it is the safest method of keeping your cryptocurrencies safe.
Desktop wallets: They are downloaded and installed onto your computer.
Who is Satoshi Nakamoto
It is the invention of a “Satoshi Nakamoto” in 2008 as a decentralised virtual currency that runs on blockchain technology. We still do not know the true identity(ies) of Satoshi Nakamoto, though there are people who claim to be him.
What’s the future of Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is getting more adoption for payments across the world. At the moment, many stores and merchants accept payment in Bitcoin. The list of merchants are increasing by the day.
Bitcoin is even usable with some credit and debit cards.
However, Bitcoin is not as easily scalable as most other subsequent coins. Accordingly, a future where Bitcoin replaces traditional currency is highly unlikely.
However, Bitcoin will remain an excellent Store of Value (SOV). This is because of its immutability and periodic price appreciation. That said, the question of regulatory policies across the world may be the actual obstacle to Bitcoinās long-term success.
Can Bitcoin disappear?
Despite what some naysayers will say about Bitcoin having no value or being a scam, Bitcoin cannot and will not disappear. Bitcoin is widely accepted as a value accept and can be converted into fiat currencies. There are also many places that accept Bitcoin as a form of payment such as Home Depot, Microsoft, and Virgin Airlines.
Bitcoin is also decentralized (i.e. not held by any central authority). This means that no single person or entity can confiscate your Bitcoins or shut Bitcoin down.
What will happen after all 21 million Bitcoins are mined?
The total supply of Bitcoin is capped at 21 million and it is expected that all 21 million Bitcoins will be mined in around 2140. When this happens, Bitcoin mining fees will disappear. Bitcoin miners instead will only earn income from transaction processing fees instead of both block rewards and transaction fees.
BTC price predictions once the last Bitcoin is mined?
In an interview with Cointelegraph, Mohamed El Masri, Founder of mining solutions provider PermianChain predicts that BTC would be worth US$430,500 once the last Bitcoin is mined.
El Masri also feels positive that Bitcoin miners will still be able to profit from Bitcoin mining despite all of them being mined. This is despite the fact that by then, Bitcoin miners can only earn transaction fees as a source of income. His positivity stems from the fact that transaction fees will still generate almost US$3 billion a year at his predicted BTC price. This is because Bitcoin miners will still be a necessary part of supporting the Bitcoin infrastructure operating at any cost.
Cardano is a decentralized smart contract platform which would be driven by peer reviewed academic research and capable of running both financial applications and decentralised applications. Established by a former co-founder of Ethereum, Cardano aims to improve on Ethereum by offering low-cost, secure and scalable transactions. To improve smart contract security, Cardano uses the programming language Haskell which has been proven to be easier to audit and formally verify. In addition, Cardano openly addresses the need for regulatory oversight whilst maintaining consumer privacy and protections through an innovative software architecture.
Check out our explainer video on Cardano ($ADA)
What is the ADA token and its uses?
ADA is Cardano’s native cryptocurrency. It was launched on 1st January 2018 through an initial coin offering as a utility token and will have 45 billion total supply. It is currently the 8th most popular cryptocurrency based on market capitalisation according to CoinGecko.
Upon the opening of the Shelley Public testnet on 9th June 2020, and any operator can set up a Cardano stake pool in anticipation for staking and delegation on the mainnet to be released in Summer 2020.
Eventually, ADA will allow users to send value between two parties, pay for goods or services, deposit funds on an exchange, or enter an application. ADA will also be used to power the transactions on the Cardano network.
Founder: Charles Hoskinson
Charles Hoskinson is a co-founder of Ethereum and founder of Ethereum Classic, with extensive experience working with smart contracts and the programming language Haskell. He is an outspoken critic of Ethereum and parted ways with the Ethereum team in 2016. This was likely due to ideological differences arising from the team’s response to the DAO hack of 2016. Hoskinson is now the CEO of Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK), and they have devoted a large team of expert engineers and researchers to build Cardano from the ground up.
Cardano – development of the blockchain protocol
Cardano aims to become the third generation blockchain, overcoming issues with previous generations of blockchains namely lack of scalability, interoperability and sustainability. Cardano aims to develop its platform upon these 2 guiding principles:
Peer-review: any science guiding the solutions to these issues goes through peer review.
High assurance code: Cardano aims to bring the same level of scientific rigour for mission critical systems such as aerospace to the development of their project.
Cardano’s platform has the following key features:
Cardano will be built in Haskell code. Haskell uses a math based approach that results in a much more secure and reliable protocol.
A formally verified Proof of Stake consensus called Ouroboros. It is the first provably secure blockchain protocol developed by the IOHK team and peer reviewed. It has advantages over the traditional proof of work blockchains (e.g. as used by Bitcoin) by requiring less computation resources (there will be no mining) and is thus cheaper to run, yet being just as secure as the more popular Proof of Work algorithm. It also comes with a novel reward mechanism to prevent attacks like block withholding and selfish-mining.
Recursive InterNetwork Architecture (RINA): Cardano is looking towards building RINA in order to reduce the bandwidth which is required for communicating and disseminating data. The idea is that RINA has fewer protocols but is able to work faster, yet still providing transparency, privacy and scalability.
The protocol is geared towards protecting users’ privacy rights while taking into account the needs of regulators. In doing so, Cardano is the first protocol to balance these requirements in a nuanced and effective way, pioneering a new approach for cryptocurrencies.
Cardano will also be completely open source and patent-free.
Cardano’s platform is being constructed in 2 layers- a settlement layer and a computational layer. This gives the system flexibility during maintenance and allow for upgrades by way of soft forks.
After completion of the settlement layer that will run ADA, the separate computing layer will be built to handle smart contracts. Cardano will also run decentralised applications, or dapps, services not controlled by any single party but instead operate on a blockchain.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Cardano?
Advantages of Cardano
Many smart contract users believe that Cardano holds the key for long term secure development. This because of the numerous hacks and vulnerabilities in platforms such as Ethereum. Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has criticized Ethereum as a “rushed product” with vulnerabilities which led to famous hacks such as The DAO. This could be viewed as a symptom of the flaws in Ethereum’s programming language, Solidity. Cardano improves on this by allowing for development using Haskell which can be formally verified.
Cardano’s use of the proof of stake model in itself brings lots of advantages such as less susceptibility to interference because the nodes will be responsible for throughput and thus eliminating the need for extra machines. In turn less energy will be consumed which is better for the environment.
Rewards are given out based on the number of tokens held rather than the amount of computational power contributed, which is fairer.
The platform’s 2 layered system allows for each layer to be responsible for a complete set of tasks. This means more potential for interoperability with different cryptocurrency platforms and is therefore more scalable compared to Ethereum.
Disadvantages of Cardano
Critics of Cardano have pointed to the slow development and overly ideal goals of the project. This can be risky for Cardano because it could be overtaken by more aggressive competitors, or the regulatory environment can change meanwhile.
Many features promised by the Cardano team are still not yet available. So a lot of what is said about how its cryptocurrency ADA would work is still theoretical.
What is the Daedalus wallet?
In order to store and use ADA, you must install Cardano’s Daedalus wallet. With the wallet you can send and receive ADA as well as view your transaction history.
The Daedalus wallet will also offer the following features:
Unlimited Accounting – Manage any number of wallets with Cardano’s innovative hierarchical deterministic wallet implementation. This will give you more control over how your funds are organised. It also has powerful backup features to help recover your funds anytime.
Advanced Security – Cardano will not hold your keys. They use the most advanced cryptography in the world to ensure safety from attack and offer spending passwords and seeds for all your accounts.
Export to paper certificates- Wallets can be exported to paper certificates giving users the option of placing funds in cold storage.
Built with Web Technologies – Daedalus is built on top of Electron, a battle-proven open source development platform to build cross-platform desktop apps using Javascript, HTML and CSS.
The Daedalus wallet is still a work in progress, features which are expected to be coming soon include:
Support for Bitcoin and Ethereum Classic.
Staking features which allow ADA holders to earn more ADA tokens.
A mobile wallet for both iOS and Android.
What is the Goguen Era of Smart Contracts?
On 12 September 2021, Cardanoās Alonzo hard fork upgrade went live on mainnet. Therefore, users can now create and deploy smart contracts on the Cardano blockchain.
To learn more about what the Gouguen Era and Alonzo Hard Fork means for the development of Cardano, check out our detailed article here.
Cardano enters DeFi with Occam Finance ($OCC)
Occam Finance ($OCC) is a suite of DeFi (Decentralized Finance) solutions tailored for Cardano and managed and maintained by the Occam Association, a blockchain entity based in Switzerland. Currently, Occam offers 3 major products: OccamRazer, OccamX and OccamDAO.
This week we have witnessed a very strong Bitcoin comeback after the approx. 20% price dump. The price has been going sideways in the USD $18-19,000 area for a few days now in the anticipation of the next move. The bottom of the dip was $16200 (Bitstamp) and many hope this could be the right time to pass the critical wall at $20k (which many have been dreaming about for years). The Relative Strength Index (RSI) on the weekly chart is still in overbought territory and we are far above the 21 Moving Average, an indicator that has historically been respected pretty well by previous bull runs, when the price repeatedly bounced over it during retraces.
In the meantime, some altcoins have had relief rallies like $SUSHI (2.25x in 10 days) and $RAMP (x2 in the same period), which is now at 6x since the after-launch bottom in October 2020.
BTC hovering around highest weekly ressistence
On the daily chart, we can observe that after the initial spike to almost ATH at the highest existing weekly resistance on the chart, Bitcoin dropped quite abruptly back to the previous weekly support before bouncing back strongly. This channel has then been respected perfectly until now. The price seems to be consolidating at its top and we all hope this could be the launchpad for the next run up!
Facebookās Libra to launch in January 2021?
Libra, the awaited digital currency project founded by Facebook in 2019, could see the light of day at the beginning of 2021.
In an article published by Coindesk on November 27th, sources claim that the Libra (now re-named Diem) may launch with only one stablecoin, backed by the dollar, unlike the original plan which included a basket of different FIAT currencies (we wrote about Libra/Diem in depth here).
Libra/Diemās journey has been quite tormented by regulators in its short history and some of the initial members have already left the project, like Paypal, Mastercard and Ebay. Many others have declared that they are waiting to see how the launch will go before even considering an investment.
Regulatory approvals by the Swiss Financial Market Supervision Authority (FINMA) are still pending. There is no official date.
Introduced by the United State Congress, it aims at reinforcing regulations for stablecoins and stablecoin-related products. In particular, it would require issuers of stable coins to get bank charters and regulatory approval prior to circulating stablecoins.
The justification for this regulation, according to US Representative Rashida Tlaib is that it would prevent cryptocurrency providers from repeating the crimes by “big banks” against low-moderate income minorities.
Under the proposed regulations, cryptocurrency providers would be required to fulfill a list of actions like āRequire any prospective issuer of a stablecoin to obtain a banking charterā or āRequire that any company offering stablecoin services must follow the appropriate banking regulations under the existing regulatory jurisdictionsā and more.
While this should mainly impact private stablecoins provided by big tech companies or big exchanges (and probably less the DeFi movement), many in the cryptocurrency space have raised their voices and doubts. The problem being that, in the end, these regulations if they do become law could have the opposite outcome of what is proposed. Cryptocurrencies have always been totally transparent and equal to all the people who want to invest in it. Costs involved in maintaining your portfolio are mostly negligible, unlike the traditional financial sector, there is no need to wait weeks for approvals, everyone can control their own money and you can access them from anywhere in the world, no matter your āsocial classā or bank account. Could these regulations in fact increase costs and deter poor people from accessing these services?
European Central Bank is working on the Digital Euro…will it surpass China’s DCEP?
Speaking about digital currencies Fabio Panetta, board member of the European Central Bank (ECBD), outlined last week four major areas they are mainly working on to bring forward the digital Euro:
The Target Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS), which allows āindividuals and firms to transfer money between each other within secondsā. In particular the ECBD needs to establish that it will be able to function with hundreds of millions of customers;
interoperability between centralized systems and distributed ledger technology (DLT);
use of āpayment-dedicated blockchains with electronic identityā; and
study of hardware devices able to maintain the privacy.
Will it surpass China’s national currency DCEP? For now it seems unlikely as DCEP is in much more advanced stages of testing. The most recent test being a large scale airdrop of RMB 10mil to around 50,000 Shenzhen residents to spend.
On 1st December 2020 the Ethereum 2 Beacon Chain went live exactly one week after the threshold deadline!
If you are interested in becoming a validator, you can read our full guideĀ hereĀ or watch our dedicated livestream on how to set up an Ethereum 2.0 Node!
GBV acquires OMG Network
Genesis Block Ventures (GBV), an investment company working with Genesis Block, has announced the acquisition of OMG Network.
This decision was taken to āleverage its (GBV) network strength, to promote the accelerated growth of OMG Network, and further enhance the adoption of OMG blockchain in Asia and beyondā.
This is the first acquisition for GBV, an āinvestment company with a mission of building the future through blockchainā which has been pretty active in Defi this year and has so far worked on building meaningful relationships and collaborations in the area.
OMG, which launched in 2017 as Omisego, is a second-layer scaling solution for Ethereum platform capable of high-speed transactions (thousands per second).
Developing story: OKEx suspends withdrawals…but is there more to this?
On 16th October 2020 OKEx suddenly announced one of their private key holders (later confirmed to be Star Xu, OK Group’s CEO and Co-founder) is cooperating with a “public security bureau” and is unable to be reached. Therefore the Exchange cannot complete authorisations for transactions and thus decided to suspend all withdrawals of digital assets/cryptocurrencies from 16th October 2020 at 11:00 (HKT).
But is there more to this?
Let’s take a look at some events on 16th October 2020 which may (or may not) be relevant to this:
1:00a.m.: Twitter user @whale_alert tweets: 5,000 #BTC (57,033,847 USD) transferred from unknown wallet to #OKEx
4:00a.m.: Twitter user @whale_alert tweets: 1,180 BTC (13,588,646 USD) transferred from OKEx to unknown wallet
9:00a.m.: Twitter user @whale_alert tweets: 50,000,000 TRX (1,317,074 USD) transferred from OKEx to unknown wallet. 11:55a.m.: Chinese crypto media platform éå°č (Feixiaohao) and UAICOIN publishes notices from OKEx that withdrawals will be suspended from 3:00p.m. onwards. This was also reported in a tweet from Co-founder of Chinese crypto media outlet @redtheminer who also notes the rumours circulating in the Chinese crypto community that over 800 accounts from a ācertain large crypto exchangeā are involved in cross border money laundering.
12:00p.m.: OKEx announcement that it would suspend withdrawals from 11:00a.m. onwards.
1:00p.m.: OKEx finally tweets their announcement on the withdrawal suspension.
2:00p.m.: OKEx CEO Jay Hao tweets, reassures that all other operations are unaffected and that, “The investigation concerns a certain private key holder’s personal issue only. Further announcements will be made.”
2:51p.m.: Someone asks OKEx support “Why is Star Xu’s Weibo page emptied?” and they replied, “The person you are referring to has no relation to our platform”.
3:51p.m.: Twitter user @whale_alert tweets: 998 BTC (11,333,911 USD) transferred from Huobi to OKEx.
10:31p.m.: Twitter user @whale_alert tweets: 3,500 BTC (39,627,432 USD) transferred from OKEx to Binance. They however are suspecting it may be an internal transfer.
*All times are stated in HKT unless otherwise specified.
There are reports from Chinese media that Xu was in fact already arrested a week ago, whilst 2 executives that were also arrested have since been relased on bail. His arrest is causing a stir because he holds the private keys to OKEx’s funds, and according to Glassnode’s data, OKEx holds around 200,000 BTC i.e. USD$2.3 billion worth of Bitcoin.
From the events and how OKEx could have simply made another “less alarming” reason for suspending withdrawals, we have a feeling the Exchange was caught off guard by the events too. Although there are reports that Xu was arrested in relation to matters unrelated to OKEx. In particular it was in relation to funds he had borrowed from a Shanxi-based underground bank for the purposes of the backdoor listing of OKC Holdings on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2019.
In the meantime we can only await further official announcements from the Exchange.
Due to overwhelming positive response, we are bringing back our list of potential issues with DeFi/Yield farming projects. Please note that some of these raised issues are subject to further verification so please do your own research. Hereās what was discussed this week on our Telegram/Discord alone:
cVault Finance ($CORE): Not related to the project itself but there is a scam pretending to be an “official” 1,000 CORE giveaway with a fake telegram channel.
Decore.finance ($DCORE): The website says that due to a contract bug they have halted the process of adding/withdrawing liquidity from vault. One of our members apparently spoke with a contract auditor who said on an initial review it didn’t seem like anything was suspicious. However, we do note that Coingecko’s page for the project has put up a notice that they have received allegations the team has abandoned the project and asks users to proceed with caution.
Fuelswap. finance ($FUEL): Unencrypted network used to connect to your Metamask which could result in loss of funds. Telegram is gone.
Justswap.finance ($JUST): Not related to Justin Sun’s justswap.io. This is a virus/malware disguised as an airdrop. The website will take your money and attack your computer with malware injected into the website.
Piratetoken.finance: All trades apparently would get 5% pirate tax that gets distributed to 1 holder daily at random when in fact there was no prize. Website can no longer be found.
Rabbitwallet.org: You will be prevented from withdrawing and empty your wallet if you approve any spending limit on the website.
Seal Finance ($SEAL): Potential code that can allow devs to withdraw tokens from your wallet. Note the Seal finance team have responded that this code is only for their cSeal token farming contracts, and is only for them to help users who mistakenly transfer their assets.
Thirm protocol ($THIRM): Initially said their early developer’s wallet was hacked and warned users to remove liquidity ASAP. The Team later clarified that in fact the promotor wallet was hacked and dumped around 2,000 THIRM. New tokens will be created and THIRM holders before the hack would be given the same balance plus 2% bonus tokens.
Triangle.finance ($TRI): Website and Telegram disappeared. Twitter only has one post on it from 12th October 2020.
Wineswap.finance: Entire contract was emptied within 20 minutes from launch and social media is now gone.
Thank you to CC, Cheatbandit, Coderwongy, madrick8, Ronald Jones, RyGuy31581156 and Lolibutts!
Are DeFi scams ruining yield farming for everyone else?
This week we were interviewed by CoinTelegraph on our views on “Escalating DeFi scams tarnishing the crypto yield farming market niche”. In relation to the topic, we definitely think the recent strings of DeFi scams are seriously affecting the reputation of this field and people’s interest. We also gave our insights on how we try to avoid scams through research, and some of our methodologies.
Filecoin mainnet is finally launched and listed after 3 years
Filecoin ($FIL) was one of China’s hottest projects back in the 2017 Initial Coin Offering (ICO) craze, having raised USD$200 million. At around 3:00pm (UTC) on 15th October 2020 the mainnet was finally launched and exchanges such as Binance, FTX and Huobi, etc rushed to list FIL.
Upon listing, prices for FIL shot up 118%, and this is due to the very small circulating supply at the time- around 0.7% of the total. And at the very early moments of listing, due to the price differences for $FIL on different exchanges such as HuoBi and FTX, some traders were able to take advantage by purchasing a short and a long on each of these exchanges respectively. This was further explained in our livestream on 16th October 2020 (at 5:13 mins). The discrepancy in prices though has converged so this “IQ 200 play” is no longer viable š
As with most new listings, prices dipped after the initial moments of listing. Prices are down 45% but the downward trajectory seems to be slowing down. Currently, prices are still sitting above USD$40.
However, we do question what would happen to prices when another 0.7% of $FIL is released? Also, the fully diluted valuation is USD$136 billion dollars- approximately 4x of Ethereum. Is that realistic?
PlotX Mainnet launch
On 13th October 2020 PlotX ($PLOT) has been launched on the Ethereum Mainnet and listed on Uniswap.
PlotX was one of the most anticipated launches of the last weeks being a decentralized predictions market protocol that lets users guess the future market outcome and get rewarded for correct predictions. Here you can read our article on the project and view Michaelās video with Ish Goel, Co-founder of PlotX.
Making prediction markets easier- PlotX with Ish Goel
As with many times before, the hours preceding the launch have been characterized by fake tokens appearing on Uniswap creating problems for distracted investors. The listing price was USD$0.05 but it spiked to more than USD$1 at the beginning to later start its real discovery price phase. It has so far been stabilizing itself around a more modest 10 cents price.
SWAG Finance (pleasantly) surprises everyone with early launch
SWAG Finance ($SWAG) was offering a decentralised community governance token i.e. $SWAG as a part of Swag.live’s expansion. Swag.live is a popular adult entertainment platform with over 10 million users worldwide. They are currently based in Asia but have plans to expand operations to North America and worldwide.
SWAG launched its First Swap Event at 10:00p.m. UTC on 14th October 2020 which would allow users to swap for SWAG and be entitled to their rewards distribution, known as SQUIRTS.
This launch was hugely successful and according to the Team, SWAG prices shot up 240% upon launch. Whilst prices are no longer at their all-time high, it is still up nearly 3 times compared to launch.
Andre Cronje comes back
A few days ago, Andre Cronje, one of the most famous personalities in crypto as well as one of the best and most genius developers, came out with a new medium article “Unpacking my involvement in DeFi“.
After having disappeared for a while after receiving death threats related to the Eminence ($EMN) episode, when a lot of crypto investors who started speculating and buying into his not-yet-released project ended up losing their money (a hack for a total amount of USD$15 million, 8 of which have then been sent back by the hacker), Andre came back to clarify a few things. Among them:
āI do not build to make a number go upā. Meaning that he only wants to build for developers and to enable them to easily create products out of his initial work
āTokens are not stockā, you buy a token to be a contributor of a project, not a bystander
āDevelopment processā, where he explains that his famous ātest in prodā statement has been misinterpreted and it āexists to deter people from using systems without investigationsā.
He then goes on to clarify that he is just a contributor to Yearn Finance ($YFI), not the creator and that he has now stopped using Twitter to avoid further misunderstandings, as long as using his deployer account (that makes his new projects immediately traceable back to him, hence starting the FOMO).
He ends with his personal thoughts about this space, which give him mixed feelings which he doesnāt really know how to express. We also see a lack of trust that is increasing among the community and that lately, we have also heard rumors about a group of DeFi users grouping up and planning to sue him for what happened.
We understand that things are adding up in his mind, creating even more confusion about what the future holds for him.
More and more companies investing in Bitcoin
Bitcoin treasuries in publicly traded companies
The list of Public Companies that use Bitcoin as a reserve asset is growing by the day. In September 2020, we discovered how Microstrategy was able to raise its holdings to over USD$435 Million worth of Bitcoin, and it just showed us once again how Crypto is still nothing compared to traditional finance in terms of numbers. Its CEO Michael Saylor tweeted: āTo acquire 16,796 BTC, we traded continuously 74 hours, executing 88,617 trades ~0.19 BTC every 3 seconds”, which translated in roughly $39,414 in BTC per minute.
The last additions to the crypto game have been Stone Ridge, which revealed a USD$115 Million investment (part of a Billion-dollar spinoff), and Square, that invested USD$50 Million. Its CEO, Jack Dorsey, has been known as a Bitcoin supporter for quite some time now.
With all these big names trusting the future outcome of Bitcoin, who are we to doubt their judgement?
DCEP- testing China’s digital currency, lottery style
China’s national digital currency DCEP is now undergoing testing amongst the public in Shenzhen. The government in Shenzhen gave away RMB10 Million in an experiment to test their digital currency, which is not a traditional cryptocurrency as we usually imagine them because it is centralized and under the control of the People’s Bank of China.
Recently, Shenzhen residents were able to sign up for a lottery to get some free DCEP to test out. The lottery was hugely oversubscribed, and only a lucky 2.61% were able to get their hands on RMB200 (around USD$30) of DCEP to spend at designated stores.
If you want to know more about what is DCEP, take a look at our article.
Upcoming events
19 Oct 6:00am: Injective Protocol ($INJ) ticket claim will open on Binance Launchpad. More details here. 19 Oct 2:00pm: Trading opens for CryptoLocally ($GIV) on Bithumb. 20 Oct 8:00am: Winning tickets for Injective Protocol will be announced. 21- 22 Oct: Blockchain Life 2020 (Moscow) 22 Oct: Token sale starts for The Graph ($GRT) for already registered participants.
*All times are listed in UTC unless otherwise stated.
Disclaimer: Cryptocurrency trading involves significant risks and may result in the loss of your capital. You should carefully consider whether trading cryptocurrencies is right for you in light of your financial condition and ability to bear financial risks. Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile and can fluctuate widely in a short period of time. As such, trading cryptocurrencies may not be suitable for everyone. Additionally, storing cryptocurrencies on a centralized exchange carries inherent risks, including the potential for loss due to hacking, exchange collapse, or other security breaches. We strongly advise that you seek independent professional advice before engaging in any cryptocurrency trading activities and carefully consider the security measures in place when choosing or storing your cryptocurrencies on a cryptocurrency exchange.
Regulators are catching up…but who are they really protecting?
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) will be banning the sale of cryptocurrency derivatives to retail consumers from January 2021. The ban will cover exchange-traded notes (ETNs), crypto futures, options, CFDs and other derivatives. Whilst direct cryptocurrency trading and commodities, and central bank digital currencies, e.g. China’s DCEP will not be covered.
Their rationale was that cryptocurrency derivatives were not suited for consumers due to the harm they pose. Specifically, the inherent nature of these products meant that there is no reliable basis for valuation and that market abuse and financial crime is prevalent. From the consumer’s standpoint, the FCA took the view that they have an inadequate understanding of crypto assets, and there is a lack of legitimate investment need for them to invest in these products.
When interviewed by CoinTelegraph, Coinshares, a UK-based company providing cryptocurrency ETNs expressed its disappointment in the ban. Coinshares recalls they were heavily involved in the consultation process and lobbied against it. Yet the FCA ignored the reasons put forward by Coinshares and other industry participants against the ban or dismissed them with little additional information. Further, they take the view that the FCA had made it clear in initial consultations and draft rules that they do not believe digital assets including Bitcoin have any value, suggesting that the FCA had long ago made up its mind on the matter.
Coinshares also expresses concern that the ban would instead have the opposite effect, driving UK retail investors to unregulated cryptocurrency exchanges.
We also consider this ban a step backward for investors who are now deprived of options. Looking at the reasons put forward by the FCA, it appears they would like to maintain the status quo rather than allowing room for innovation. And shutting it down on the basis of consumers’ ignorance before they even have a chance to understand it. And in fact, according to the FCA’s Policy Statement on the matter, 97% of the respondents to the FCA’s consultation opposed the ban. Which brings up questions on who the FCA is really interested in protecting.
RAMP DeFi ($RAMP) sells out in 4 minutes
RAMP Defi held it’s public sale at 10 pm on the 10th of October (what perfect timing). The sale was packed with a few hard questions, but this didn’t deter avid buys from buying out the token sale in less than 4 minutes. Overall, this shows that the demand for good projects is still extremely strong.
Meanwhile, financial heavyweights are banking big on Bitcoin
Square Inc. (NYSE: SQ), a US mobile payment company and creator of Square Cash App- an app used to buy and sell cryptocurrencies announced it has purchased USD$50mil in Bitcoin. This amounts to 4,709 BTC at an average price of USD$10,617.96 per BTC.
The Company calls Bitcoin an instrument of “economic empowerment” and that the purchase is in alignment with their vision of building products based on a more inclusive future. They also believe that Bitcoin, “…has the potential to be a more ubiquitous currency in the future”.
But Square is not the first to do this, in early 2020 business intelligence firm MicroStrategy already invested half a billion dollars into Bitcoin.
This news gave the markets a much-needed breath of positivity. Prices for Bitcoin hovered below USD$10,750 earlier this week and upon the news effortlessly pushed back up to over USD $11,250. Now it remains to be seen whether this positivity can be upheld.
DeFi/yield farming scams are ruining things for the space?
Not a day goes by on our Telegram/Discord without discussions about potential issues with DeFi/yield farming projects or worse, outright scams. Please note that some of these raised issues are subject to further verification so please do your own research. Here’s what was looked at this week in our Telegram/Discord alone:
Amplyfi.money: Rug pulled after collecting 2,500 ETH from investors. Their social media and websites are gone
Beer Garden Finance: Founder holds over 50% of the token supply in his personal wallet. When our community asked for more details such as a github link for the project, or timelocks for the tokens they were banned from the Telegram group.
Burn Vault Finance ($BFV): Allegedly rug pulled. Their Telegram and social media no longer exist.
CBDAO ($BREE): The project had a presale for $SBREE tokens which would be swapped for $BREE. One of the admin wallets exploited a backdoor in the SBREE token contract, minted 50,000 SBREE, converted it to BREE and sold it on the market, pushing down the price of BREE at the expense of other holders. The 50,000 BREE was sold for under 200 ETH.
Degenballz: staking may steal 1% of your LP tokens.
Emerald Mine (EMD): User tokens worth nearly USD$2.5mil that were supposedly locked under a smart contract were moved to another account. Fortunately, cryptocurrency exchange ChangeNow managed to stop the sale of 135,020 EOS. However, this only represents a small fraction of the total amount stolen.
Lv.finance: Falsified audit results, after investors deposited their funds in they found they were unable to withdraw. The team has disappeared.
Minions Farm: Has cute Minions but will access all your assets when you connect your wallet to the Minions Wallet site.
Steaks.finance: Developers apparently had trouble interacting with their own timelock. Though some consider it may be due to a problem with their code rather than ill-intentions.
Tomatoes.finance: Hacker triggered simple permission granting and withdrew tokens.
UniCat ($MEOW): Back door in smart contracts allowed UniCat to keep control over users’ tokens even after they were withdrawn from the pool. Around USD$200,000 worth of crypto has supposedly been stolen.
Unirocket ($URCKT): Apparently rug-pulled, cannot be located on social media.
Yfdex.finance: Project promoted themselves on Twitter for 2 days, took a total of USD$20mil of investor funds and absconded.
These incidents have caused users substantial losses, even more so when some people unwisely put in more than they can afford to lose. As a result, it seriously affects their appetite and even the ability to believe in DeFi’s potentials. What’s more, it affects people’s interest in yield farming which like it or not, was the main draw for people since some farms promised unheard of returns not found in any other asset class. Now with the interest and returns for yield farming decreasing due to how prolific these scams and exploits are, the corresponding interest in DeFi, in general, is also losing steam. This is a huge shame considering DeFi had huge potential to bring financial services to the unbanked and was a direct challenge to the status quo being perpetrated by institutions and regulators, as we can already see above.
Will DeFi push governments to finally adopt CBDCs?
With DeFi gaining traction and new projects emerging every day, what can central banks and governments do to maintain their dominance whilst benefitting from the new technologies and conveniences brought by DeFi? An answer could be to create a Central Bank Digitial Currency (CBDC). In an article published in Forbes, the author suggests that governments should push towards issuing CBDCs as it would allow users to enjoy cheaper and faster transactions. The article also touches upon our coverage of DCEP and contrasts Chinaās progress in testing DCEP with the US which is still only debating the topic.
Indeed the European Central Bank (ECB) has announced it would pursue the possibility of issuing a “digital Euro”. Though there are no concrete plans yet, the ECB recognises consumers’ demand for digital payments, and in their Report on a Digital Euro published on 2nd October 2020 noted that they would be “..ready to introduce a digital euro, shall the need arise.”
In any event, as the Forbes article suggests governments need to be quick to catch up to DeFi. The legion of innovators in the DeFi space is growing, and will the overwhelming advantages of DeFi, there is a real risk of it toppling the status quo long-held by governments and institutions in their favour.
Upcoming events
11 Oct 2020: Results for Shenzhen, China’s DCEP lottery will be announced. Winners will receive RMB 200 (US$30) in DCEP and can spend it at 3,389 participating shops. We are eagerly awaiting winners to post how DCEP will work in action! 12 Oct 2020 3:00am: Boxmining livestream 15 Oct 2020: Filecoin ($FIL) mainnet launch. Huobi Global will launch FIL on the same day and trading, deposits and withdrawals will be opened.
*All times are listed in UTC unless otherwise stated.
Disclaimer: Cryptocurrency trading involves significant risks and may result in the loss of your capital. You should carefully consider whether trading cryptocurrencies is right for you in light of your financial condition and ability to bear financial risks. Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile and can fluctuate widely in a short period of time. As such, trading cryptocurrencies may not be suitable for everyone. Additionally, storing cryptocurrencies on a centralized exchange carries inherent risks, including the potential for loss due to hacking, exchange collapse, or other security breaches. We strongly advise that you seek independent professional advice before engaging in any cryptocurrency trading activities and carefully consider the security measures in place when choosing or storing your cryptocurrencies on a cryptocurrency exchange.
Swerve ($SWRV) is a fork of Curve Finance ($CRV) that is 100% community-owned and governed. Decentralized finance (DeFi) projects came about because of a need to convenient access traditional banking services without centralisation. Some of DeFiās most controversial areas include governance, pre-mining, and fixed allocation of coins to founders or shareholders of the respective platforms. This has led to DeFi systems being forked to create more transparent products. Swerve is one such fork.
Background
As mentioned previously, Swerve is a fork of Curve Finance. Curve Finance is a blockchain-based platform that powers the exchange of stablecoins. Its main advantage is the fact that dealing with stablecoins leads to minor slippage, increasing the profit margin for liquidity providers.
Curve also has a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) to enhance distributed governance through voting. Unfortunately, the platformās founder, Micheal Egorov, holds more than half of the voting power. This led to Swerveās birth to provide a platform thatās 100% owned by the community.
Swerve.fi
What is Swerve and how is it different from Curve?
Swerve is a clone of Curve Finance but without:
A pre-mine;
token allocation to shareholders;
extended distribution of tokens;
a controlling founder or shareholder.
Swerve has a single pool that accommodates leading stablecoins such as DAI, TUSD, USDT, and USDC. Note that the creation of new pools is a function of the protocolās DAO.
As such, the community can vote to introduce additional pools. Unlike other DeFi platforms, Swerve does not whitelist smart wallets allowing projects like Yearn.Finance and other DeFi-based smart contracts to participate in its votes.
Swerve Token ($SWRV)
Swerve’s native token is called Swerve token (SWRV) and it is supplied to the community without a reserve for founders or the team. SWRV has a total supply of 33,000,000 tokens, which are unlocked on a yearly basis, with all coins going to liquidity providers.
However, the first distribution of nine million SWRVs occurred 2 weeks after launch. The first year will see liquidity providers receive another 9 million SWRV tokens. The remaining 15 million tokens will then be equally spread over five years at a rate of 3,000,000 tokens per year.
How to Farm SWRV
Visit Swerve.fi, click “Swerve app” and connect your Metamask wallet. Other wallet options include Ledger, Dapper, and Trezor. Stuck? Check out our MetaMask guide.
Next, access the “Pools” tab. Click on “$ SWEVE POOLS $” where you will be able to see the pools for 4 stablecoins (i.e. DAI, USDC, USDT and TUSD). Note that the “POOL APY” means the APY you get for providing liquidity to the stablecoin pools, whilst “SWRV APY” refers to the APY for staking your tokens.
Once you enter the pools you will be taken to the “BUY and SELL” tab where you can buy the supported stablecoins directly (though payments must also be in other supported coins). Alternatively, you can just obtain the stablecoins directly from Uniswap.
Go to the “DEPOSIT” tab. Here you will be able to select the amount of stablecoins you want to add. In “Advanced options” you can also set the amount of slippage. Once you are done, you can go ahead and select “DEPOSIT”. There will be 2 transactions to confirm: (1) to approve the tokens to be used; and (2) to confirm your deposit into the protocol.
By depositing into the Swerve pools you would be rewarded in SWUSD tokens i.e. Liquidity Provider (LP) tokens. To start earning some of the APY referred to on the website go to the “DAO” tab, go to the bottom box titled “SWUSD LIQUIDITY GAUGE”. Use the slider to select the percentage of SWUSD you would like to deposit and click “DEPOSIT”. Depositing SWUSD here gets you SWRV tokens in return.
However, doing this does not enable you to earn the stated SWRV APY. To do so, you would have to “BOOST” their deposits to the maximum possible amount.
To enable the “BOOST” feature, you will need to lock SWRV tokens. This is done on the same page and you can choose the amount and duration of the lock. Locking for a longer duration increases the amount of “boost” and you can see the amount of boost by going to the “CALC” tab.
Note that locking SWRV tokens also enables you to exercise voting powers on how the protocol should be run.
To see more about Swerve’s statistics such as total value locked, price, 24-hour volume and market cap etc, see the Swerve dashboard which was created by @Chickenpie347, a member of the Swerve community.
Conclusion
It is noted that Pecksheild has completed the highly anticipated audit of Swerve and no critical vulnerabilities were found. However, on 6th October 2020 the Swerve team posted findings from 0xProject concerning a high severity exploit that would allow attackers to withdraw a large fraction of token balances when the smart contract’s amplification coefficient A is updated. Note that this also affects Curve Finance, as they both use the same contracts and see here for the full vulnerability report. Swerve posted they are working to fix this exploit and are attempting to reassure users that since there are no upcoming “A” factor changes which would trigger the vulnerability, the funds locked on Swerve are not at risk. However, one equally large obstacle faced by Swerve is the overall market sentiment which seems to have taken a negative turn, possibly due to a large number of other scams in this space. One will have to wait and see if Swerve can emerge as a survivor even in the face of these difficult circumstances.
Decentralised Finance (DeFi) series: tutorials, guides and more
With content for both beginners and more advanced users, check out our YouTube DeFi series containing tutorials on the ESSENTIAL TOOLS you need for trading in the DeFi space e.g. MetaMask and Uniswap. As well as a deep dive into popular DeFi topics such as decentralized exchanges, borrowing-lending platforms and NFT marketplaces
More videos and articles are coming soon as part of our DeFi series, so be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our Youtube channel so you can be notified as soon as they come out!
Disclaimer: Cryptocurrency trading involves significant risks and may result in the loss of your capital. You should carefully consider whether trading cryptocurrencies is right for you in light of your financial condition and ability to bear financial risks. Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile and can fluctuate widely in a short period of time. As such, trading cryptocurrencies may not be suitable for everyone. Additionally, storing cryptocurrencies on a centralized exchange carries inherent risks, including the potential for loss due to hacking, exchange collapse, or other security breaches. We strongly advise that you seek independent professional advice before engaging in any cryptocurrency trading activities and carefully consider the security measures in place when choosing or storing your cryptocurrencies on a cryptocurrency exchange.
“Good guy” hacker: Hacks Andre Cronje’s project, returns 50% of loot
Eminence Finance was a work in progress teased by Andre Cronje in a cryptic tweet. This however was already enough for some investors who rushed to buy EMN tokens.
On 29th September 2020 however, the crypto community sounded the alarm of a rug pull after seeing that Cronje’s developer wallet had interacted with a new Ethereum address. The hacker stole a total of USD$15mil worth of invested assets.
Those who had invested attacked Cronje, accusing him of failing to take safety precautions and not making his project private. Some even went as far as sending death threats to Cronje and one person has even alleged they lost USD$100,000 in this hack.
Strangely, the hacker decided to send USD$8mil back to Cronje’s address but retained USD$7mil for himself. Subsequently, Cronje tweeted that he had asked the yearn treasury to refund the USD$8mil returned by the hacker to affected users.
This is certainly a painful lesson for those affected. But it is yet another reminder that people should always do their own full research before putting any funds into a project. This is especially true considering we have been observing a marked rise in scams in the past few weeks.
KuCoin Hack pt 2: Still not out of the woods yet
The KuCoin hack occurred on 25th September 2020 and the tally so far seems to be that over USD$200 million in customer funds have been lost, though according to KuCoin, around 130 million has already been secured or in the process of being recovered.
Not all projects have their services fully restored (i.e. trading, deposits, and withdrawals).Ā As at 2:30pm on 2nd October 2020 (UTC) the following projects HAVE had their services fully restored:
Full services restored for the following projects. Items in red are the latest additions to the list. (Image credit: KuCoin.com)
To mitigate the effects of the hack, projects have generally taken 1 of 4 approaches: (1) freeze their tokens; (2) replace their tokens; (3) if the tokens were recoverable, to return them to KuCoin; or (4) invalidate the tokens.
Meanwhile, Hacken have announced that as a way of supporting the cryptocurrency community, they will be looking into the KuCoin hack and publishing their findings. From their initial investigations, it seems that it was a social engineering attack on a KuCoin employee who had access to private keys worth USD$150mil.
KuCoin of course has also launched their own investigations and apparently identified those involved in the breach with “substantial proof at hand” against them. KuCoin has contacted law enforcement officials and police to take action against them.
A reminder again to put your cryptocurrencies in a hardware wallet if you haven’t done so already! Check out ourĀ Ledger Nano X reviewĀ orĀ buy it here.
BitMEX is in hot water
On 1st October 2020, civil and criminal proceedings have been respectively issued by the DOJ and CFTC against BitMEX, its CEO Arthur Hayes, together with other key personnel and affiliates. Meanwhile, BitMEX’s CTO who was at the time working in the US, was arrested. The DOJ accuses BitMEX of failing to implement proper KYC/AML procedures in breach of the Bank Secrecy Act, whilst the CTFC alleges the Exchange had failed to register as a derivatives exchange yet still offering services to US customers.
However, the speculation is that the current charges are only a precursor to more severe charges that would be issued against the individuals once they have been extradited to the US e.g. breaching international sanctions via BitMEX allowing those from Iran and North Korea to move out of their cryptocurrency positions.
As a result of this news, traders flocked to withdraw their funds from the Exchange fearing it would be shut down. A total of USD$23mil was withdrawn from BitMEX in a single hour and so far over 45,000 BTC has been withdrawn. According to data from Crystal Blockchain, other centralized exchanges benefited from this mass exodus from BitMEX, with around 20,000 BTC going to Gemini, Binance, OKEx and Huobi Exchanges.
It is unknown how the legal proceedings and events will unfold. Most importantly, no one knows whether BitMEX operations and accounts will be frozen. So users of the Exchange may want to consider withdrawing their cryptocurrencies just in case.
Bitcoin resilient against negative news hammer
Prices of Bitcoin were unmoved by the KuCoin hack, but took a dip upon the news of the legal proceedings against BitMEX. Even news that US President Donald Trump testing positive for COVID-19 did not significantly shake prices for long. During this week and despite the generally negative news, Bitcoin prices appear to be on the way to recovery. This has led to some analysts taking the view that professional and retail investors remain bullish on Bitcoin and the ongoing upwards trend to USD$12,000 could return sooner rather than later.
Disclaimer: Cryptocurrency trading involves significant risks and may result in the loss of your capital. You should carefully consider whether trading cryptocurrencies is right for you in light of your financial condition and ability to bear financial risks. Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile and can fluctuate widely in a short period of time. As such, trading cryptocurrencies may not be suitable for everyone. Additionally, storing cryptocurrencies on a centralized exchange carries inherent risks, including the potential for loss due to hacking, exchange collapse, or other security breaches. We strongly advise that you seek independent professional advice before engaging in any cryptocurrency trading activities and carefully consider the security measures in place when choosing or storing your cryptocurrencies on a cryptocurrency exchange.
Around 50 notable names in the crypto Twitter space were caught red-handed for essentially orchestrating a pump and dump scheme.
This started when they apparently missed out on the $MEME airdrop and so decided to “redeem” themselves…at the expense of others. Their plan, known as “The Experiment” was to create a new flash mob project called $FEW. There was not much of a plan in terms of launching the project or what it was about. But, there was a clear intent to airdrop the token to their fellow members who would promote it on Twitter to pump up the price of $FEW. Afterward, the members would proceed to sell their airdropped tokens and walk away with a few extra bucks in their pockets.
However, SOMEONE leaked screenshots of the private Telegram discussion to the public. Needless to say, the public went into an angry frenzy, with Anthony Sassano (@sassal0x on Twitter) getting the brunt of the anger as the screenshots showed him saying their project needed āpeople to dump on”.
Members of the group quickly came to say that “The Experiment” was a joke. When the public wasn’t satisfied with that explanation they also claimed they were going to donate all their profits from the project. Sassano eventually admitted his initial explanation that it was “a joke” was weak and apologised. However, he maintains he did not think $FEW was a scam since he saw some notable influencers in the Telegram. He also burned his $FEW to assure the public he was not going to dump the tokens on them. Other members such as Alex Masmej also insisted that no harm was actually done since the token was never listed and that he had also burnt his $FEW.
However, this wasn’t a joke to some people as they actually ended up buying $FEW because of the influencers’ promotional posts on Twitter. Others, seeing that $FEW wasn’t listed on any exchange yet, tried to profit off the hype by listing fake $FEW trading pairs on Uniswap in an effort to get some members to trade.
The public may have moved on for now seeing as how quickly trends come and go in crypto, but the $FEW incident had just confirmed and exposed what many of us had been suspecting for a long time.
KuCoin gets hacked
KuCoin confirmed on 26th September 2020 in a Twitter post they had detected huge withdrawals of BTC and other tokens from their hot wallets out of the Exchange. It is estimated that the withdrawals are around USD$150million worth, a “small amount for KuCoin” according to a Livestream they did shortly after the hack was confirmed. The Exchange is still trying to investigate how the withdrawals came about, but they are reassuring the public that their funds are safe and they will cover any losses suffered by the public.
They also mentioned they are working with other exchanges to track down the flow of the stolen funds and stop them from being disposed of on the market. Kucoin will also be temporarily suspending all withdrawals from the Exchange “until next week”.
The moral of the story is, take your cryptocurrencies off exchanges and store them offline in a hardware wallet. If you don’t have one yet, please consider getting one. Check out our Ledger Nano X review or buy it here.
NFTs suddenly becomes hot
This week, Non-Fungible Token (NFT) hype seemingly appeared out of nowhere and now everyone is trying to make NFTs and selling them for profit. But is it sustainable? Or is it just something to keep everyone entertained since the DeFi craze is cooling down? I invited Yat Siu, Co-Founder/CEO of Animoca Brands ($REVV) and Sandbox ($SAND) to debate whether NFTs are the next big thing, and I did NOT hold back in playing the devil’s advocate:
Upcoming events
26 Sep 1:00pm: Flamingo.Finance ($FLM) will resume Mint Rush. 28 Sep 8:30am:RioDeFi (RFUEL) will list on Uniswap at an initial price of $0.20 per token. 29 Sep 1:00pm: CryptoLocally ($GIV) will auction off 30mil GIV tokens (3% of total supply)Ā less the whitelistedĀ allocation of approx 1.5mil GIV. The initial price will be 0.0065 USDC/GIV and the auction interface will be revealed on the CryptoLocally website at the start of the auction. For those who want a head start, CryptoLocally allows you to place your orders on Mesa before the auction. 3 October (tentative): KuCoin will resume withdrawals from their exchange. But do check the KuCoin Telegram for the most updated info.
*All times are listed in UTC unless otherwise stated.
Disclaimer: Cryptocurrency trading involves significant risks and may result in the loss of your capital. You should carefully consider whether trading cryptocurrencies is right for you in light of your financial condition and ability to bear financial risks. Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile and can fluctuate widely in a short period of time. As such, trading cryptocurrencies may not be suitable for everyone. Additionally, storing cryptocurrencies on a centralized exchange carries inherent risks, including the potential for loss due to hacking, exchange collapse, or other security breaches. We strongly advise that you seek independent professional advice before engaging in any cryptocurrency trading activities and carefully consider the security measures in place when choosing or storing your cryptocurrencies on a cryptocurrency exchange.
As we head towards late September, we see a significant cooldown on the profitability of Yield Farming. The days of 3 digital farms are gone, with yields now nearing ~50% APY for low-risk farms. Whilst some high yields still remain, the number of scams in the yield farming space has drastically increased. Overall, this is a healthier direction for the entire space.
Week in review
YFValue is evolving-but is it for the best?
YFValue will be going through a lot of changes in the coming few weeks. Here’s a summary:
15th September 2020 at 2:00pm UTC: Governance Vault (beta) opened and is intended to replace Staking Pool v2. It is supposedly an upgrade because the YFV staked in Governance Vault will now also be farming for yield. Profits would be used to buy back VALUE and distributed to stakers.
16th September 2020: YFValue’s new token VALUE deployed. The total supply of VALUE is capped at 3mil. A swap portal will soon be opened for holders to swap their YFV to VALUE.
18th September 2020: Value Liquid exchange will be launched. All liquidity from YFV pools will be automatically migrated from Balancer to Value Liquid. Balancer Pools will stop issuing YFV.
21st September 2020: Value Vaults will be available. Currently, it is known that after its release, 6.8% of profits from Value Vault’s strategies will be used to buy VALUE and distributed to Governance Vault Stakers. However, full details of what Value Vaults do are not announced yet.
2nd October 2020: Stablecoin seed pool’s double inflation rate will end.
Yieldfarming.insure- DeFi drama on x4 speed
Yieldfarming.insure ($SAFE) was only launched on 14th September 2020 and was all the buzz in various telegram groups. Shortly after launch on 15th September 2020, prices for $SAFE shot up to over USD$4,200 at its peak. However, the next day its developer “Chefinsurance” (“Chef”) published a lengthy message about the drama happening behind the scenes.
Turns out there was some conflict between Chef and “AzeemFi” (“Azeem”), apparently in investor into Yieldfarming.insure. According to Chef, Azeem insisted to deploy Pool 4 earlier than planned and eventually forced Chef to do so. Minutes after deployment, Azeem apparently realising he may be exposed to the risk of impermanent loss suddenly withdrew all his liquidity from Pool 4, essentially locking that pool and rendering it unusable. Azeem apparently then messaged community members to backstab and shift the blame for the issues on Pool 4 onto Chef. He also allegedly plans to oust Chef and was dumping his $SAFE tokens on the market.
Soon after Azeem issues his own reply that Chef is not truthful and posted message histories between himself and Chef. According to Azeem, he had only later discovered that Chef had created a clone farm and there was no actual product at all. Further, he insists he did not tank Yieldfarming.insure and instaed was trying to save it. Furthermore, the $SAFE tokens were according to Azeem “fairly farmed” by him and he had sold them to “take fairly farmed profits”.
Only 24 hours later and apparently Chef and Azeem have reconnected and are prepared to put aside their differences and reconcile.
From the latest update, it appears that Azeem would be stepping away from the project entirely. Meanwhile, Chef will be taking a break from his university studies and was given a grant of USD$25,000 and 5ETH from Andre Cronje and BlurKirby.eth to focus on the project.
The new project, known as COVER will be fully built from the ground up and will allow users to buy and sell cover on anything on a decentralised and scalable platform. Their MVP is expected to be available for beta testing by 1st November 2020.
As for SAFE holders, they will be able to migrate to $COVER through a smart contract after the completion of the beta tests for COVER.
$UNI-versal free lunch
Uniswap dropped a (welcome) bomb on 17th September 2020 when it launched its community token $UNI. Anyone who used Uniswap (including failed transactions) will be able to claim 200 UNI tokens for FREE. For those who provided liquidity to the platform, Uniswap will award you with even bigger bonuses. Check out our video below on how you can claim your free lunch:
Claim Free Uniswap ($UNI)
Exchanges saw how hot these free lunches were going to be and immediately raced to list UNI. Currently, UNI is listed on FTX, Binance, KuCoin, OKEx, Poloniex etc. Prices for UNI were also on an upwards trajectory, with UNI going to USD$8.40 at its highest.
However UNI is still at its early stage and it needs to be seen the approximate range at which prices will be. Hence we hear a lot of people in the community saying that they will hold onto their UNI for now with a “wait and see” approach.
Ledger hardware wallet sale!
LAST FEW DAYS! LedgerĀ is offering 20% off on theirĀ Nano XĀ andĀ Nano SĀ cryptocurrency hardware wallets with promo code:Ā backtoschool. Offer is only available from 7-21st Sept 2020. Click below to buy!
Upcoming events
21st September 2020: YFValue’s Value Vaults will be available. 23rd September 2020: Flamingo.finance’s yield farm, Flamincome will launch.
Disclaimer: Cryptocurrency trading involves significant risks and may result in the loss of your capital. You should carefully consider whether trading cryptocurrencies is right for you in light of your financial condition and ability to bear financial risks. Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile and can fluctuate widely in a short period of time. As such, trading cryptocurrencies may not be suitable for everyone. Additionally, storing cryptocurrencies on a centralized exchange carries inherent risks, including the potential for loss due to hacking, exchange collapse, or other security breaches. We strongly advise that you seek independent professional advice before engaging in any cryptocurrency trading activities and carefully consider the security measures in place when choosing or storing your cryptocurrencies on a cryptocurrency exchange.
What is Crust Network?Ā Crust Network implements the incentive layer protocol for decentralized storage. It is adaptable to multiple storage layer protocols such as IPFS, and provides support for the application layer. Crustās architecture also has the capability of supporting a decentralized computing layer and building a decentralized cloud ecosystem. At present, public testnet Maxwell CC2 is live, and everyone is welcome to participate in the testnet. Crust Network successively joined Substrate Builders Program and Web3.0 Bootcamp, and also obtained a Web3 Foundation Grant.
Who is Leo Wang? Leo is the Co-Founder of Crust Network, leading products and technologies. Leo is experienced in distributed storage, cloud computing and blockchain areas. Leo worked in Microsoft and Cisco as their Development Lead. In Cisco Leo also led a blockchain-based project to store and exchange manufacturing data in different geo-locations.
This video is aimed at all levels of cryptocurrency enthusiasts so feel free to ask Leo your burning questions about Crust Network and this space in general.
I will personally be giving out prizes for the best 3 questions. To ask a question, leave a comment in this post below!
Event Time:Ā 17th September 2020 at 3:00am (UTC)!
Disclaimer: Cryptocurrency trading involves significant risks and may result in the loss of your capital. You should carefully consider whether trading cryptocurrencies is right for you in light of your financial condition and ability to bear financial risks. (Clonazepam) Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile and can fluctuate widely in a short period of time. As such, trading cryptocurrencies may not be suitable for everyone. Additionally, storing cryptocurrencies on a centralized exchange carries inherent risks, including the potential for loss due to hacking, exchange collapse, or other security breaches. We strongly advise that you seek independent professional advice before engaging in any cryptocurrency trading activities and carefully consider the security measures in place when choosing or storing your cryptocurrencies on a cryptocurrency exchange.
This article is for information purposes only and is not intended to comment on the viability of FalconSwap (FSW). As with any cryptocurrency projects it involves a huge amount of risk. Anyone intending to participate should do full research and consider carefully the risks involved beforehand.
FalconSwap ($FSW) is a layer-2 scaling solution built on Uniswap and further extendable to aggregate other Decentralised Finance (DeFi) platforms like Mooniswap, Kyber, Balancer, Airswap, and Bancor. It aims to solve the ongoing issues in the Ethereum ecosystem like high transaction fees, slippage in trading, lack of privacy, slow transactions, and poor user experience.
Summary
The platform promises to offer features like Layer-2 Order Matching, DEX Aggregation, Lower trading fees, Low Slippage, Additional Privacy, and Faster Transactions.
The FalconSwap (FSW) tokens are designed to incentivize token holders and platform users by offering Fee discounts, Staking rewards, Token burns, and Liquidity mining features.
Potential Red flags include lack of a Whitepaper and roadmap, no public Github profile, an anonymous Team, and Investor uncertainty.
Can the team overcome these hurdles to capture market share from the existing players and establish themselves as the go-to solution for Ethereum scaling?
What is FalconSwap trying to solve?
DeFi platforms have gained immense traction in the 3rd quarter of 2020. As per data from DeFi pulse, the total value locked in DeFi protocols has surged from close to USD$1 billion in June to $9 billion in September. Uniswap has emerged as the most sought-after platform to trade and swap digital assets on the Ethereum blockchain. On August 30, 2020, Uniswap became the first decentralised exchange (DEX) to overtake the biggest US-based crypto exchange, Coinbase.
However, as the DeFi community continues to push their activity beyond network limits, congestion on the network has led to an increasing number of unconfirmed transactions, longer wait times, and higher fees as users compete to get their transactions confirmed faster, making it an extremely crucial roadblock for the future of Ethereum as a smart contract platform. Ethereum Gas fees have skyrocketed in recent months with over 5,869 ETH (US$2.17 million) spent as per the latest data from Glassnode, with fees as high as 15,374 ETH (US$ 3.5million) recorded on June 11, 2020.
Ethereum total transaction fees as at August 02, 2020
There is therefore an immediate need to solve the Ethereum scaling issue to enable users and projects make the most of the growing DeFi ecosystem. This is where FalconSwap aims to provide a solution.
FalconSwap overview
Calling itself the āThe Powerhouse for DeFiā, FalconSwap operates as a second layer solution on Uniswap and other DeFi platforms. It aims to solves the ongoing issues of high transaction fees, slippage in trading, lack of privacy, slow transactions and poor user experience in the Ethereum ecosystem. This it plans to do by offering the following features:
Layer-2 Order Matching: Orders are matched in Layer-2 and aggregated before accessing the liquidity from Uniswap pools.
DEX Aggregation: Orders are aggregated across multiple liquidity pools like Uniswap, Mooniswap, Balancer, Kyber, and so on.
Lower trading fees: Aggregating orders distribute the transaction fees across multiple users thereby lowering fees per user.
Low Slippage: Aggregating platforms provide a larger liquidity pool to execute orders thereby lowering slippage in trading.
Privacy: Layer-2 orders matching occurs without on-chain knowledge of the trade.
Faster Transactions: Faster transactions powered by the aggregating and executing of several trades in Layer-2.
To understand this better, let us assume there are 3 buyers buying 2 ETH, 3 ETH and 5 ETH worth of tokens respectively, and 3 sellers selling 6 ETH, 6 ETH and 8 ETH worth of orders respectively.
Using the current trading approach on Uniswap, every user would pay for their own gas fees and the total fees spent would be 6x the gas fees per order. User might also experience transaction slippage and even higher fees if their orders are distributed among multiple liquidity pools.
However, when the above-mentioned trades are placed and executed on the FalconSwap platform, the protocol would aggregate 6 orders matching the 10 ETH worth of buy orders with 10 ETH worth of sell orders. The remaining 10 ETH worth of sell orders will then be sent to Uniswap or distributed among different liquidity pools. This would help optimize gas fees per user and minimise slippage.
FalconSwap token ($FSW)
FalconSwap tokenomics are designed to incentivize users and token holders in the following manner:
Fee discounts: FSW token holders get additional fees discount of up to 50% to use FalconSwap over and above the fee savings from Layer-2 trade execution.
Staking: A part of the fees collected from the FalconSwap protocol will be used to buy FSW tokens from the market and distributed to the FSW token staking holders.
Token burn: FSW is a deflationary token. 10% of the fees collected will be used to buy FSW tokens from the market and burned.
Liquidity mining: Users mine FSW tokens when they trade on FalconSwap.
As at September 4, 2020, FSW token ranks 381 out of 5890 coins listed on CoinGecko. The current token circulating supply is 33 million with a max supply of 100 million. The FSW Token are currently available for purchase on Uniswap V2 (ETH/FSW) and Hotbit exchanges.
FalconSwap testnet results
On August 27, 2020 the team reported successfully completing their first milestone, which was to build a decentralized protocol to aggregate orders on Uniswap and publicly shared the test net results with the community. As per the results, trading on FalconSwap offered Gas savings of approximately 64% per transaction when compared to Uniswap.
FalconSwap has several aspects to it which makes us question the legitimacy of the project, for example, the lack of whitepaper and Github. We also have concerns about the fact that the team is anonymous and queries whether they are indeed backed by the investors as claimed. Concerning these questions, we contacted the FalconSwap team and they were kind enough to promptly respond. Below are details of our concerns on FalconSwap and the response from the team.
No whitepaper
Undoubtedly the most important document for any upcoming project is a detailed and structured whitepaper with a clear road map for potential investors. It is the first litmus test a project needs to clear to be considered trustworthy. FalconSwap has not yet published its whitepaper to the community.
According to the team, there is no white paper because the team is already aiming to launch the final product by the end of September 2020 and have partnered with companies like DEX Tools for initial liquidity mining, trading, and integrations. The roadmap is set to be presented along with the product launch.
No Github
Most projects today have an active Github profile where they regularly provide updates to the progress on their code for peer review and fault identification by the community. FalconSwap doesn’t have any such public Github profile. As to this issue, the FalconSwap team says that their GitHub has not been made public so they can have an edge on competitors and avoid their code being copied. However, it will also be made public post product launch.
Anonymous team
Another potential red flag is that the team is anonymous. To be fair, there are some projects where teams opt to stay anonymous due to the threat of a potential government crackdown or operational risk. (Xanax) However, these projects overcompensate by being transparent on all the other aspects of their projects to magnify trust, which FalconSwap currently lacks. When we asked the team on this, they responded that they decided to stay anonymous to avoid any adverse effect on operations.
We note that whether investors or partners mention FalconSwap on their website or not is beyond the control of the FalconSwap team. From our further research, we note that TRG Capital Director Etienne VantKruys tweeted about FalconSwap. We also note that some of the FalconSwap community members did their own research and emailed investors to confirm the veracity of their partnerships with FalconSwap. It was confirmed by those Community members that they got positive responses.
Closing thoughts
FalconSwap clearly has identified an important issue plaguing the Ethereum ecosystem. Their Layer-2 transaction aggregation solution might be one of the best answers to scale Ethereum and lower fees. The team therefore has a very small window to bring the product into the market since the Uniswap team are also working on their Layer-2 solution expected to be launched later this year.
Moreover, healthy competition is expected from the newly launched Polkadot protocol which already enables cross-blockchain transfers of any type of data, asset, or tokens along with transactional scalability by spreading transactions across multiple parallel blockchains. Ethereum itself could scale very soon, unclogging the network, lowering fees and boosting transaction speed, leaving very little incentive to use the FalconSwap platform in the future.
However, if the team delivers by launching the platform within the promised timeline and make the code publicly available to the community, it can surely capture significant market share from the existing players, gain community trust and establish themselves as THE go-to solution for Ethereum scaling.
Decentralised Finance (DeFi) series: tutorials, guides and more
With content for both beginners and more advanced users, check out our YouTube DeFi series containing tutorials on the ESSENTIAL TOOLS you need for trading in the DeFi space e.g. MetaMask and Uniswap. As well as a deep dive into popular DeFi topics such as decentralized exchanges, borrowing-lending platforms and NFT marketplaces
More videos and articles are coming soon as part of our DeFi series, so be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our Youtube channel so you can be notified as soon as they come out!
Disclaimer: Cryptocurrency trading involves significant risks and may result in the loss of your capital. You should carefully consider whether trading cryptocurrencies is right for you in light of your financial condition and ability to bear financial risks. Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile and can fluctuate widely in a short period of time. As such, trading cryptocurrencies may not be suitable for everyone. Additionally, storing cryptocurrencies on a centralized exchange carries inherent risks, including the potential for loss due to hacking, exchange collapse, or other security breaches. We strongly advise that you seek independent professional advice before engaging in any cryptocurrency trading activities and carefully consider the security measures in place when choosing or storing your cryptocurrencies on a cryptocurrency exchange.
