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Category: Newsletter

  • Newsletter #13: Ethereum 2.0 Arriving in December!

    Newsletter #13: Ethereum 2.0 Arriving in December!

    ETH 2.0 is armed to launch

    The ETH2 deposit contract address is finally here! Although the final version of the new era for Ethereum is still far away (probably a few years), users are now able to stake their coins and get rewards if they wish to become validators. Learn everything about ETH2 and we answer all your FAQs in this article. A few important things need to be reminded:

    • The staked funds won’t be redeemable for ETH anymore. Once they’re sent, they will be gone for a long time. Since there are no other functionalities already available on ETH2, the only possible thing to do is use them as a passive source of income.
    • If you want to become a validator, you need to have at least 32 ETH to start with and fulfill the requirements. There are possible penalties if you fail at that (you can run into them in different ways), although Vitalik himself, founder of Ethereum, recently tweeted reassuring that the sanctions are not as bad as people might think.
    • Phase 0 “Beacon Chain” is supposed to start on 1 Dec 2020 (as opposed to previous speculations which dated it to 2021), but one condition has to be met in order to trigger the action: 524,288 ETH (16384 validators) have to be in the deposit contract 7 days before the planned date.

    Learn 5 important things about ETH 2.0 in under 10 minutes!

    Ethereum 2: FIVE things you MUST KNOW

    Election Madness is over! Markets react to Biden win

    Bitcoin broke through $15000 area for the first time since the beginning of 2018 on 5th November 2020 a short while after the 12th anniversary of the release of its Whitepaper by Satoshi Nakamoto on 31 October, 2008. The rally continued until $16000 before pausing for what it looks like a possible healthy retrace. It has been moving in the 14-15k range ever since, leaving people wondering whether the bottom is in or not.


    This bullish action started long before the US elections craze and before there was a clear winner. If we look at the chart, we see that $BTC has been in an uptrend for weeks and has decisively broken the $12000 resistance a couple of weeks prior to the elections, stopping only around the weekly resistance in the $16000 area.

    Bitcoin prices from 1 February to 8 November 2020
    Bitcoin prices from 1 February 2018 to 8 November 2020

    A comparison with the Fear and Greed Index, reveals that the level, now at 90, is its second highest ever. A major pullback was then to be expected soonish rather than later but as always with $BTC, and especially in a parabolic phase, trying to predict the price action is useless if not even dangerous for non-professional traders.

    Following the spike in price, Bitcoin’s market cap has risen to $283B and it is now bigger than some major US companies, like Coca-Cola, Netflix, Disney and PayPal (which recently announced crypto payments will be possible within their platform).

    Crypto Exchange CEO among the top donors for Biden’s campaign

    In a report disclosing the top donors to Mr. Biden’s Democratic Presidential Campaign, FTX.US (the US arm of FTX exchange) stands out as a familiar crypto face amongst the donors, with a total contribution of $5,22M.

    This donation came directly from Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of the Exchange, and it’s the second-largest contribution from a CEO in the list, behind Michael Bloomberg, who donated $56M.

    Hopefully this is a good push for positive publicity for cryptocurrencies. Showing that cryptocurrencies and the various industries surrounding it should be taken seriously and can be highly profitable ventures.

    Red flags of the week

    Tron suffered attack

    On 2 Nov around 6 am HK time, the Tron Network suffered an attack by a malicious smart contract during a routine update to the new 4.1 mainnet version. As Justin Sun himself declared on Twitter, the attack used “the authority granted to the contract developer. The attacker initiated malicious transactions and caused the Super representative to suspend the production of blocks”.

    As a consequence, all transactions were halted and users couldn’t interact with the network.

    The community was very helpful in identifying the attack and fixing it. The nodes had then been upgraded and everything went back to normal in less than 4 hours.

    This incident raised once again a question regarding the real level of decentralization of Tron, as it uses DPoS (Delegated proof-of-stake), and the “Super Representatives” (which validate transactions and are in charge of blocks production), whether individuals or companies, are mostly related to Justin Sun himself.

    Cred Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection

    Cred, the US cryptocurrency lending service has filed for “Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection” on 7 November 2020.

    This comes not long after they announced on Twitter a halt on all inflows and outflows from the platform in relation to a “fraudulent incident”. The day after, they also declared that the company was “not under investigation”, but that the halt was voluntary.

    Cred assets are credited around $50-100 million and its users are left worrying about their funds as the situation is unclear. Alex Mashinsky, Founder of CelsiusNetwork, tweeted that they will try to help their community as he understands that many users have deposited funds with Cred.

    Other news

    Banks ditching gold

    There is a shift in central Banks in that, as Michael Sonnenshein (Grayscale managing director) tweeted, they are now more willing than ever to ditch Gold ETFs for Bitcoin. This, and the multiple news we had about Investment Funds buying crypto to diversify their portfolio, is definitely not something to underrate.

    Record $1 billion crypto seizure by US Government

    US Attorney David Anderson has confirmed that officials have sized crypto assets moved from a Silk Road hack related wallet a few days ago. The wallet owner is an unknown hacker and has been referred to as “Individual X”.

    Silk Road used to be a known website for criminal exchange of goods. On the black marketplace users could buy and sell drugs, stolen credit cards, weapons and more. The website was shut down in 2013 and the founder, Ross Ulbricht, is currently in prison serving two life sentences. The last time funds were moved from a Silk Road related wallet was in 2015.

    The assets consist of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV, for a total net worth of around $1B, making this the biggest seizure in the history of crypto.

    Source BBC.

    HK new regulations proposal

    Hong Kong is proposing newer and stricter regulations for cryptocurrency exchanges in its Public Consultation on Legislative Proposals. This regulation will target all the trading platforms operating in Hong Kong that cover virtual assets, together with overseas platforms involved with Hong Kong’s investors.

    Most worryingly to Hong Kong cryptocurrency enthusiasts is the proposal that virtual asset service providers should only offer services to “professional services”.

    Learn more about these proposals and how Hong Kong’s crypto community are reacting.

    Keep3r.network ($KP3R)

    Andre Cronje, the well-known developer and the most prominent name behind yEarn Finance($YFI), has recently launched another experiment- Keep3r Network ($KP3R).

    Keep3r Network is basically a network consisting of “Jobs” (smart contracts that need an external entity to perform an action) waiting to be operated by “Keepers” (usually knowledgeable teams that are able to perform these tasks). The token is simply the reward for Keepers as they complete assigned Jobs.

    As it usually happens, as soon as the father of Decentralised Finance (DEFI) wrote a new Medium revealing a new product, investors jumped on the boat pouring money at it, hoping to increase their portfolio size. As a result, the token raised to almost $400 in 48 hours. It is now at $120.

    Boxmining updates

    Genesis Block Hong Kong appoints Boxmining as Strategic Advisor

    Genesis Block Hong Kong, a leading Over The Counter (OTC) trading center for digital assets, announced our appointment as Strategic Advisor. The collaboration has been set with the aim of creating content and exchange of information on the whole crypto industry and digital assets.

    New clips channel

    We have opened a new Boxmining Clips YouTube channel for short clips from videos and livestreams for bite-sized insights!

    Upcoming events

    18 Nov 23:59 UTC: deadline for joining Oasis Labs’ ROSE garden.

    13 Nov: SWAG Finance SQUIRT 4 ends and 5 begins

    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.

  • Newsletter #14

    Newsletter #14

    Red flags of the week

    Value DeFi ($VALUE) vaults suffered $6 million flash loan exploit, similar to Harvest’s

    If it wasn’t for the recent Bitcoin’s rally, this could have been known as the Hack Season. More and more projects, especially in decentralised finance (DeFi), are getting attacked and no smart contract seems to be safe anymore.

    On Nov 14 at 10:45 AM EST, mere hours after the release of Vault Phase 2 which was celebrated on Twitter as the ”highest security, the best return and the greatest community“ in crypto, a complex “double” flash loan attack exploited the MultiStables vault of ValueDefi Protocol. In what was later defined as one of the most complex attacks seen in DeFi, the hacker used two flash loans, with Aave and Uniswap, to steal USD $6 million.

    A Post-Mortem article by the Team explained what happened: the attack took 80k ETH through a flash loan on Aave, bought 116 million DAI and 31 million USDT, deposited 25 million DAI in the Vault, got back 24 million mvUSD and swapped 91 million DAI and 31 million USDT to USDC. The mvUSD were then withdrawn from DAI and the 80k ETH plus fees returned to Aave. Finally, 33 million DAI were bought back and 2 were sent back to the Deployer (as other times have happened lately). The culprit did this by taking advantage of vulnerabilities within Value DeFi vaults.

    Origin Dollar ($OUSD) has lost millions in a flashloan attack

    Three days later, it was Origin dollar ($OUSD)’s turn to be attacked.

    The Yield-generating stablecoin project suffered a loss of funds of $7 million, $1 million of which were deposits by Origin’s founders, employees and the company itself. The team is still looking into exactly how the attack was carried out but they suspect it was a flash-loan transaction that seems to be the root of the attack.

    Allegedly, following the attack, the hacker was able to sell some of the stolen OUSD, DAI and ETH on Uniswap and Sushiswap. the attacker is also washing the stolen funds using RenBTC.

    You can read the detailed explanation of the exploit in this updated article by the Origin team.

    This was the fifth flash loan attack for Defi in the last month, after Harvest Finance, Akropolis, CheeseBank and Value.

    Overall, according to CipherTrace, Defi hacks are credited to around $100 million in 2020 so far.

    Crypto Exchange Liquid Says User Data Possibly Exposed in Security Breach

    As officially confirmed, crypto Exchange Liquid as been hacked on 13th November.

    The attack consisted in one of the hosting providers incorrectly transferring the account control and domain to a malicious actor which gained access to some of the internal email accounts. This breach resulted in user data exposure. As they stated:

    “We believe the malicious actor was able to obtain personal information from our user database. This may include data such as your email, name, address and encrypted password. We are continuing to investigate whether the malicious actor also obtained access to personal documents provided for KYC such as ID, selfie and proof of address, and will provide an update once the investigation has concluded.”

    This could possibly lead to identity thefts, spam emails and phishing attempts. Even though the team doesn’t believe it would pose an immediate threat for its users, they suggest “that all Liquid customers change their password and 2FA credentials at the earliest convenience”.

    UNI farming ends…what happens next?

    As the $UNI farming was coming to its planned end on 17th November, speculations on the future price of $ETH and of the Uniswap token were emerging, and the first Uniswap Community Call didn’t succeed in establishing any definite decision on the platform’s future steps. More than USD $2 billion worth were locked in four pools that were giving $UNI rewards (ETH-DAI, ETH-USDC, ETH-USDT, ETH-WBTC); all money that were destined to flow back on the market. As $ETH price was in the mid $300 before the farming started in September, many were fearing for an imminent dump as people would swap it to stable coins or more investment-appealing altcoins. Price was not the only concern for Uniswap, as all that pooled money meant very slow slippage on the Dex as well.

    To seize the moment, Sushiswap ($SUSHI) announced an increase in rewards for the same four pools on their platform. Exactly one hour later, Hayden Adams (inventor of Uniswap) advanced a new proposal to continue with the rewards for an additional 2 months at half the rate of the genesis distribution. The proposal is now awaiting the consensus check phase, before farming could restart on 4th December.

    Sushiswap and Uniswap TVL
    Sushiswap and Uniswap TVL (Image credit: DeFi Pulse)

    In the meantime, as we can observe in the next image, the Uniswap TVL has significantly dropped at the expenses of Sushiswap’s, which increased reaching a similar net value to that of its main competitor.  

    Bitcoin continues its rally


    In the aftermath of the US elections, even if the result is still controversial, $BTC continues its rally like it couldn’t care less. In the last days its Market Cap even reached an ATH of $350 billion, surpassing the Dec 16 2017’s previous high (due to $BTC inflation, even if the price is not at ATH there are more coins in circulation than 3 years ago, resulting in a higher market cap). The price is currently over $18k! Finally!

    Bitcoin price chart
    Bitcoin price chart (Image credit: Coingecko)

    As $BTC was growing lately, one could bet that the media would start covering the news as well, and that is exactly what happened. We have seen BBC, CNBC’s Fast Money, CNN and many more interviewing “experts” and speculating about the next ATH, paired with a lot of old and new memes being shared everywhere. With wide coverage and more retailers getting onboard fearing of missing out (Paypal’s crypto service reached $25 million in trading volume in the first month since launch) could this mean that the (local) top is getting closer?

    While all of this was happening, it looks like things for Chinese miners are not that good. Wu Blockchain reported that 75% of the surveyed miners are struggling to pay their electric bills. This is due to the restrictions the Chinese government is applying on crypto making it very difficult to buy and sell into $CNY. Many miners have seen their bank cards frozen or their machines shut down because they didn’t have cash to pay the electric bill.

    Therefore, there is also speculation that this big rally has not only been driven by an increase in demand, but also because the dump activity by miners, that creates constant sell pressure, has slowed down.

    What the fork Bitcoin cash?!

    On 15th November Bitcoin Cash ($BCH) has undergone a protocol upgrade, as established by the roadmap.

    This update contained a Hard Fork which has split the chain into two, BCHN and BCHA after block #661647. The reason why this is happening is because of a disagreement on the current state of the blockchain between the Bitcoin Cash Node and the Bitcoin Cash ABC communities after a proposed update by Amaury Sechet (ABC) had been rejected. It looks like $BCHN will be the dominant part as 80% of the miners showed support before the split and it is now 667 blocks ahead.

    This is not the first fork for $BCH as it was, itself, the result of a Bitcoin fork in 2017.

    How’s ETH2 staking race going?

    Less than a week before the deadline, the ETH staked on the Ethereum 2 mainnet are less than half of what’s needed to trigger the start of the Beacon Phase 0. As anticipated by many sources, the community is expecting a decisive increase in deposits rate in the last days before the deadline. If the minimum requirements will be met by 24th November, ETH2 will launch on 1st December, otherwise it will automatically start 7 days after the threshold will be met.

    In a recent AMA, Danny Ryan, Core Researcher at the Ethereum Foundation answered users’ concerns about the possibility of a failed launch. Ryan says the Foundation does have a solution, which is to adjust the threshold down to around 100k+ ETH which they consider to be sufficient. This will avoid leaving the staked ETH in limbo. Ryan also noted that for those who did stake, there will be high rewards for these early adopters. Their Github page also goes into more details on other alternatives.

    Here’s 5 things you NEED to know about ETH 2.0

    Also, learn more about this staking race and its potential implications:

    https://youtu.be/VqEP_c4jhvc
    Will Ethereum 2.0 (ETH) launch successfully?

    OKEx Exchange is finally resuming withdrawals!

    More than one month after the Okex Exchange decided to suspend all cryptocurrency withdrawals, the team has just announced that operations will reopen on or before 27th November. They also reassure that 100% of users’ funds are safe.

    The official announcement confirmed that one of Okex’s private key holders was cooperating with the authorities in a case that has nothing to do with the Exchange itself. They specified that although “OKEx has always used a backup mechanism for private key holders to ensure that each private key holder can trigger the activation of the backup private key in the event of long-term incapacitation, such as death or memory loss”, this particular scenario caught them off guard as no strategy had been prepared for.

    Significant loyalty campaigns will be announced as a sign of gratitude to the community.

    Follow the OKEx developing story here.

    Boxmining happenings: Interviews, giveaways and more!

    • Why do we need privacy and scaling on the blockchain? Privacy is the next big leap for blockchain technology as can be used to allow anonymous data sharing, exchanges without front running, and the real fungibility of tokens. We spoke to Prof. Dawn Song about the need for privacy-preserving smart contracts and how this is implemented on Oasis Protocol ($ROSE): https://youtu.be/JQzKKOV_ycA
    • After months of work our NEWLY REDESIGNED website is up!! https://boxmining.com/
    • We have a fantastic collaboration with the DuckDao team for a chance to win (in our opinion) the best NFT EVER!

    Upcoming events

    *All times are in UTC unless otherwise specified

    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.

  • Newsletter #17: Bitcoin markets choose between good and bad news

    Newsletter #17: Bitcoin markets choose between good and bad news

    Do you want to hear the good news…or the bad news first? This has been an age old question which the Bitcoin markets had to grapple with this week. As we will see below, there IS a correct answer to this…but has Bitcoin chosen wisely?

    All I want for Christmas is a Ledger!

    Ledger is doing a crypto starter bundle! Get a USD$25 voucher to buy crypto with every Ledger Nano X purchase! Limited to 5,000 vouchers and only available until 29th December 2020!

    Gift yourself or your family a bundle they truly want! Say NO to hand cream gift sets and socks!

    Check out our Ledger Nano X review and CLICK HERE TO BUY!

    Give better gifts this Christmas!

    Market Sentiment: Going sideways?

    This week’s market price action wasn’t very exciting, with Bitcoin and Ethereum mostly going sideways. On 12th December 2020, we saw a reaction that is still continuing today and has brought $BTC back to the $19000 area and $ETH closer to $600.

    $BTC and $ETH (daily charts) at weekly resistances
    $BTC and $ETH (daily charts) at weekly resistances

    Both coins are still at weekly resistances trying to build momentum around the 21 EMA (Exponential Moving Average) on the daily chart. We could expect another attempt to pass ATH in the next few days!

    Key news this week

    Big investors keep accumulating

    Big funds/companies are buying and accumulating Bitcoin and Ethereum.

    Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual), has just bought $100M of $BTC through NYDIG, a fund management company in New York. This is reportedly their first Bitcoin purchase and is equivalent to less than 1% of their entire investment account worth around USD $235 billion.

    Grayscale has also increased their holdings. Whilst they are not new to investing in crypto, they have just bought another 130000ETH, reaching a total of 3 million tokens in their accounts.

    Microstrategy announced they had completed “a $650M offering of 0.75% Convertible Senior Notes Due 2025”, to invest in $BTC in accordance with their reserve policy. A few days earlier, the CEO Michael Saylor, tweeted that they hold approximately 40,824 Bitcoin.

    The interest in crypto by financial giants points to increased demand from the wealthy as a form of diversification and are them betting on prices to increase in the future.

    Mt. Gox’s reimbursement deadline approaching

    15th December 2020 will mark the next deadline for Mt. Gox Exchanges’s creditors to hopefully get back what they lost on the platform. The Exchange, one of the most known at the time and launched in 2010, ceased to operate in February 2014 after filing for bankruptcy. A whopping 860,000 $BTC were “missing” of which 200,000 has been “recovered” (and this does not even include other cryptocurrencies which also went “missing”). In 2015 new evidence by Tokyo security company WizSec showed that “most or all of the missing bitcoins were stolen straight out of the Mt. Gox hot cryptocurrency wallet over time, beginning in late 2011.”

    Users of the platform should expect to receive a total of 140,000 $BTC ($2.6 billion dollar worth) which are now in the hands of Nobuaki Kobayashi, the Japanese lawyer in charge of the process.

    Nothing is certain however as the refund deadline had been already postponed several times in the past, the last of which was in October 2020. There is also a serious concern in the market as to the possible consequences of a large Bitcoin market sell-off by victims when they receive their funds after 6 years. Considering Bitcoin in 2014 was worth less than $1000, this would represent now a roughly 20x on their re-acquired funds!

    Thoughts on the Mt. Gox refund

    Singapore’s DBS to launch digital exchange with crypto

    After rumors appeared a few months ago, it is now official: Singapore’s DBS will be the first bank to launch a digital currency exchange.

    The platform will only be open to institutional and accredited retail investors. There will be 4 major tradable cryptocurrencies: $BTC, $ETH, $XRP and $BCH, paired with 4 FIAT currencies: USD, SGD, HKD AND JPY.

    The Exchange will also offer Security Token Offerings (STO) and a platform for tokenized assets like bonds, private equity funds, real-estates and so on. DBS Chief Executive Piyush Gupta said:

    “I believe that the time is right for this”, and added “We are on the cusp of a massive tokenization and therefore you’ll find tokenization of all kind of assets around the world and I think more and more exchanges will start dealing with the tokenized assets”.

    U.S. Congressmen manifesting doubts on new self-hosted wallets regulations

    A couple of weeks ago we mentioned that Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong was concerned regarding rumors that the U.S Treasury was planning to impose regulations on self-hosted cryptocurrency wallets.

    Self-hosted wallets, whether online (hot) like Metamask or offline (cold) wallets like Ledger and Trezor, let you retain personal and total access to your funds, without any intermediary entities or third parties. The owner possesses their own private keys and takes full responsibility of their funds. Most importantly, wallets don’t usually need KYC procedures to set up. Learn more about hot and cold wallets, and their pros and cons.

    Armstrong stated his thoughts (shared by many other prominent names in crypto space), among which the possibility that regulations could result in being more harmful than anything else. This is because it could essentially exclude those who cannot obtain the documents and proofs for regular KYCs, and those are usually the most disadvantaged groups who may already be excluded from the financial system. Furthermore, this proposal could be a step back in innovation by the US, leading companies and users to bypass them for other countries.

    A few days ago Warren Davidson, U.S. Congressman serving Ohio’s 8th District, together with a few colleagues, embraced these opinions by sending a letter to U.S Treasury. The letter also points out that “multiple reports have shown that digital assets are not widely used by illicit actors”.

    Warren Davidson’s letter to the US Treasury

    What about Europe?

    Meanwhile in Europe, the development of the digital Euro continues. However sources have indicated that the French Finance Ministry is preparing “to not only harden know-your-customer (KYC) rules for crypto firms but also regulate crypto-to-crypto transactions, according to Simon Polrot, president of French crypto association ADAN.”

    This apparently comes as a response to recent terrorist attacks when 29 people were arrested for illegal terrorism funding via cryptocurrencies.

    Other key news

    • Canada has become the first country to have an Ethereum-based Fund listed on a major stock exchange. The Ether Fund (TSX:QETH.U) is offered by 3iQ Corp, a digital asset manager based in Toronto. The Ether Fund is trading at around $11 per share today.
    • The second giveaway of DCEP (China’s National Digital Currency) has kicked-off on in Suzhou, China, on 12th December 2020 for 10,000 winners. Last week, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) also confirmed it is working with the Digital Currency Institute of the People’s Bank of China on technical pilot testing of DCEP for cross-boarder payments between Mainland China and Hong Kong. You can read more in our article.
    • Messari, a leader crypto Research and Data company, has recently listed their take on the “top 10 people to watch in 2021”

    $YETI Index: the Yearn ecosystem in one token

    After all the recent announced collaborations between the Yearn Finance team and many other big Defi projects, such as Cover Protocol ($COVER) or Sushiswap ($SUSHI), the Yearn Ecosystem Token Index, $YETI, has been created by Powerpool ($CVP).

    The Index comprises of 8 tokens: $YFI, $SUSHI, $CREAM, $AKRO, $COVER, $K3PR, $CVP, $PICKLE with a proposed weighted distribution of 35% for $YFI, 17% for $SUSHI and 8% each for the rest. So investors now have the chance to invest in the entire Yearn ecosystem in one token, receiving “cash flows from Vault strategies applied to composite tokens, and vote on proposals in the Yearn ecosystem governance using PowerPool’s meta-governance approach.” It will also allow holders to save on gas fees which would be normally required to stake multiple tokens.

    Speaking of $YFI, this week we have also witnessed the first gasless (for users) transaction vault deposit on Yearn.Finance.

    Red flags of the week

    DeTrade Fund, first case of deep-fake in crypto?

    DeTrade Fund, a supposed upcoming arbitraging and front-running Defi project has vanished with 1450ETH a few hours before listing.

    The team appeared to be non-anonymous, with public Linkedin profiles, a publicly registered company, a Twitch profile and a video where the “CEO” Mark Jensen, spoke to the community. The video has quickly become famous on crypto Twitter with the community suspecting it was a deep-fake used by crypto hackers. Another theory circulating around the community is that the hackers hired an actor to impersonate the CEO.

    Video from DeTrade “CEO” Mark Jensen

    Through two rounds of presale investments, the DeTrade fund team managed to raise a remarkable amount of 1,450 $ETH in a few hours. Their contracts were audited by Solidity Finance which immediately raised a few concerns in their audit report, assessing that the team was in charge of too much power over users’ funds. It is likely that the team took advantage of this and stole the presale funds sometime between the second presale and the official listing which should have taken place a few hours after. (Tramadol)

    Several hours later and probably because someone was able to trace the misappropriated funds, 70% of the stolen $ETH was sent back to investors via internal transactions.

    This “partial return is becoming more and more common in DeFi attacks. For example, Eminence’s hacker sent back 50% while Harvest Finance users only received 10% of their amount back.

    $12 million have been stolen by Compounder Finance

    On 1st December 2020, Compounder.Finance ($CP3R), a clone of Harvest and Yearn Finance, has “pulled the rug”. It looks like the anonymous team behind the project is the one to blame.

    Compounder had been audited by Solidity Finance. In chat logs between the two companies we can see that Solidity Finance pointed out that the project’s Treasury contract and updating of strategy pools is controlled by their team. Solidity Finance also pointed out that they felt this fact should be disclosed in their audit report. The exploit was exactly as pointed out by Solidity Finance. After the audit, the withdraw function was swapped with a malicious one which was later used to drain all the money in the contract to their deployer address. Nobody recognized the fraud in time so users were not able to withdraw their funds.

    The attack is composed by 4 steps and is explained in details in this post-mortem by developer Vasa and Solidity Finance.

    It is not the first time that an audited project suffered a hack and we all know quite well by now that Audits cannot guarantee 100% safety. This should always be reminded.

    A known developer of the Defi space and owner of Defiyield.info was also a victim of the attack. He is also investigating the matter and working towards filing a case with the relevant enforcement authorities.

    Fake Deriswap tokens

    Malicious actors have recently created various fake Deriswap tokens to take advantage of the hype surrounding this latest experiment from Andre Cronje. The malicious actors would create tokens with similar names to Deriswap and approve it for trading on Uniswap to entice people to buy.

    Let’s remember that Deriswap doesn’t have any official token at the moment!

    Boxmining happenings

    • Libra is now Diem! Everything you need to know on Facebook’s cryptocurrency!

    Diem ($DIEM) – Facebook’s Libra 2.0

    • In case you missed it check out our podcast interview with Geralt of CyberFi where we discussed automated trading, Ethereum interactions such as unstaking and more.
    • Velo Protocol is building out the biggest payment network in South East Asia with its partnership with Lightnet and Visa. The end goal is to create payment solutions for the under-served micro, small and medium enterprise lending market in Asia.
    The next XRP killer? Velo Protocol is making HUGE moves

    Click here for back issues of our newsletters!

    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.

  • Newsletter #18: Bitcoin prices reach all-time highs

    Newsletter #18: Bitcoin prices reach all-time highs

    As we near the holiday season we would like to wish everyone a happy and safe holidays! Here’s hoping for gifts of Bitcoin and altcoin pumps!

    Bitcoin reaches ATH of USD$24k!

    It has been awaited for a very long time, but after exactly 3 years the moment has arrived. Bitcoin has literally smashed through the previous high reaching the incredible price of $24,000!

    All the charts look stunning, whichever you look at: daily, weekly and monthly they all say the same thing: Bull Season is here!

    While nobody knows how exactly this will play out people believe that we are in a bull market now. Many actually believe it started right after last March’s Black Swan, where all markets (not only crypto) basically flash crashed within a day.

    If we take a look at the weekly chart, we are still far above the 21 EMA (Exponential Moving Average) and the Relative Strength Index (RSI) is at 2017 peak levels. On the weekly chart it has only been decisively higher a couple of times in 2013. As we repeatedly said in previous issues of the newsletter, big retraces (around 30-40%) are to be expected in bull markets. Until now, the maximum negative “delta” in price we had since last March has been around 20%. This doesn’t necessarily mean that a massive dump is going to happen now though (could happen like not). (https://www.apolloclinic.com/)

    $BTC weekly chart, RSI at top 2017 levels
    $BTC weekly chart, RSI at top 2017 levels

    Bitcoin still not “hot” on Google Trends

    If we have a quick glance at Google Trends we can notice how the query “bitcoin” is still not very much searched worldwide, especially when compared to 2017’s peaks. This is a sign that even though mass media exposure has recently picked up the $BTC trend, the retail FOMO is probably still distant from where we are now. This could hopefully mean that the upside is still gigantic!

    Google Trends $BTC December 2020
    Google Trends $BTC December 2020

    Every $BTC holder is now in profit

    Thanks to the recent pump, Bitcoin is now #12 in assets’ ranking by Market Cap. Just behind Visa and ahead of Walmart! Moreover, the fact that we are beyond ATH, in unexplored price territory, automatically means that each person that has ever bought a fraction of the coin before last week, is now in profit!

    As a consequence, as Glassnode reported, the number of addresses holding more than $1 millions worth of $BTC has increased +150%, equal to 66,540 single wallets now!

    Ethereum follows Bitcoin’s upside while Grayscale continues to load up

    After “The King” moves, the rest usually tends to follow, starting with Ethereum. ETH prices have been going up reaching a new high of almost $680 this week. Differently from $BTC though, its ATH is still way higher than this level, at more than $1400. 2021 could look like the year price will finally reach unexplored territory.

    Meanwhile it doesn’t come as a surprise anymore that big investors continue to accumulate crypto, despite the continuous rise in price, spreading positivity about crypto’s future. According to a report, Grayscale keeps accumulating $ETH. Their Grayscale Ethereum Trust is still considered “the only SEC-registered way to invest in Ethereum.”

    Are you interested in staking on your Ethereum? Learn how to make passive income with ETH 2.0!

    The FinCEN is proposing new KYC reinforcements

    As anticipated in the last weeks, it is now official. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is “proposing a rule on certain digital currencies that will protect national security, assist law enforcement and increase transparency while minimizing the impact on responsible innovation”, said Steven Mnuchin, lead of the U.S. Treasury Department.

    The proposal will impose new regulations on transaction records including those to self-hosted wallets. Especially used in Defi where users prefer to keep their funds in decentralized manners, where they are the only ones responsible for what happens, these private wallets have not required KYCs until now. As a result of the changes (CVC stands for convertible virtual currency while LTDA for legal tender digital asset.):

    “The proposed rule complements existing BSA requirements applicable to banks and MSBs by proposing to add reporting requirements for CVC and LTDA transactions exceeding $10,000 in value. Pursuant to the proposed rule, banks and MSBs will have 15 days from the date on which a reportable transaction occurs to file a report with FinCEN. Further, this proposed rule would require banks and MSBs to keep records of a customer’s CVC or LTDA transactions and counterparties, including verifying the identity of their customers, if a counterparty uses an unhosted or otherwise covered wallet and the transaction is greater than $3,000.”

    This embitterment in regulations was firstly revealed by Brians Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, in a tweet at the end of November, where he expressed his doubts and concerning on the matter, together with many other public figures. Four U.S Congressmen wrote a public letter and Wyoming Senator-Elect Cynthia Lummis shared her concerns as well in a tweet. The major point of debate are the fact that the proposal could do more harm than good to investors and could leave the U.S. behind in blockchain technology, deviating principal investments outside the county.

    Coinbase IPO is getting closer

    Coinbase, the known U.S. exchange, has “submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the SEC. The file is now being reviewed. If approved, its IPO will be one of the biggest and most awaited in crypto, considering that Coinbase is already the most valuable American crypto company.

    It is not actually easy to determine exactly how much the company is worth at the moment. The Last evaluation in a funding round in 2018, was of $8 billion, but Coinbase is certainly worth more now, especially considering what prices has Bitcoin arrived at in 2020.

    The Graph goes live on mainnet

    The Graph ($GRT), “the first global and easily searchable index of blockchain data”, has launched its mainnet after 3 years of development. The indexing protocol aims at making web3 accessible to everyone and helping create applications that require no servers.

    The listing was one of the most successful ones recently and the token is already tradable on many exchanges, including first tier ones like Binance and Coinbase. The price is now 24 times higher than that of the token sale which happened last October. At that time, it was offered at $0.03!

    The first phase after launch will be useful to stress and improve mainnet performances before the queries amount will increase exponentially. Following, in the next months, the team will be building a “production-ready Graph Explorer dApp and Gateway” to support all network contributors.

    Here’s everything you need to know about The Graph in our article.

    Red Flags

    Ledger Email Breach – 270,000 emails & addresses leaked publicly

    On July the 14th, Ledger’s database got breached when a hacker stole 1,075,382 email addresses and 272,853 hardware wallet orders. This meant that personal data such as emails, phone numbers and physical addresses (for people who actually bought a device) were probably available behind payment to the hacker himself. As a matter of fact, numerous have been the phishing attempts reported in the last months, usually via emails and/or text messages to their phones.

    Today, as if this wasn’t bad enough itself, the whole database has been dumped for free by an anonymous profile on Raidforum. While funds are still technically safe, users, at the very leas, should expect a new and massive wave of phishing tentatives.

    Check out our video where we explain everything on the Ledger data breach: what happened, who is affected and what NOT to do right now.

    URGENT: Ledger Email Breach – 270,000 emails & addresses leaked publicly

    The company commented on twitter confirming that “early signs” tell them this content is probably from their database.

    They also shared a page with phishing news and tips, like the classic “Never share the 24 words of your recovery phrase with anyone under any circumstances”. While this is certainly important, it is difficult to imagine that hardware wallets’ users still need to hear it. Considering that now anyone can see where the devices owners live, they would probably rather know that the company is actively doing things to prevent future breaches and more.

    Even though protecting funds with col wallets is not something for just rich crypto holders, this is what most people think, and we can all imagine what criminals can do with those addresses in their hands.

    Unfortunately, it appears that new phishing messages are already coming.

    You can use this website to check whether your personal data (and what) was compromised https://haveibeenpwned.com/

    Nexus Mutual’s CEO personal address got hacked

    Unfortunately, this week brought new red flags. The most prominent one involves a project whose mission is (almost ironically) that of protecting protocols’ users from malicious actors.

    Hugh Harp, founder of Nexus Mutual, has seen his personal wallet directly attacked. The hacker has mysteriously managed to install a malicious version of Metamask on his computer, misleading him into confirming a transaction to a different recipient address. The hacker himself. It is one of those cases where using a hardware wallet to sign transactions as second layer of security can’t help.

    The CEO, recognizing this hack was “next level stuff”, has offered a bounty of $300,000 to the hacker in case he decided to send everything back. The unknown figure answered via input data on a subsequent empty transaction.

    “Hello Hugh. I will not sell wNXM any more until wNXM recovers his value or you send me 4.5k ETH. If you need any negotiation with me, send msg to my eth address…..“

    The text end targeting other Hugh’s personal addresses, exposing Hugh’s private details even more.

    We will see how this story unfolds. Meanwhile, someone has started a gitcoin grant to directly compensate Karp for what happened. As a response, he has proposed that all the money raised would be used for improving smart contracts security.

    Boxmining happenings

    • Worried about your funds? Learn more about Cover Protocol ($COVER), one of the most successful platform where to buy coverages.

    Cover Protocol ($COVER): peer-to-peer coverage market for DeFi

    • Yearn Finance ($YFI) has recently partnered with many other top level protocols. Here’s our introduction to the Yearn extended family!

    Yearn.Finance merging the DeFi Ecosystem

    • Interested in lending-borrowing? Is a credit scoring system appealing to you? Listen to what is $WING and how can you profit off of it!
    • Wootrade ($WOO): Boosting the power of cryptocurrency trading?

    Wootrade ($WOO): Boosting the power of cryptocurrency trading?

  • Newsletter #16: Ethereum 2.0 Launches successfully

    Newsletter #16: Ethereum 2.0 Launches successfully

    Market situation: Is the $BTC sale over?

    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
    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!

    Facebook’s 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/Diem’s 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.

    US regulators tighten grip on stablecoins

    One of the issues related to stablecoins (like Facebook’s Diem) could now become the Stablecoin Tethering and Bank Licensing Enforcement (STABLE) Act.

    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 “Require any prospective issuer of a stablecoin to obtain a banking charter” or “Require that any company offering stablecoin services must follow the appropriate banking regulations under the existing regulatory jurisdictions” 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 “social class” 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:

    1. The Target Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS), which allows “individuals and firms to transfer money between each other within seconds”. In particular the ECBD needs to establish that it will be able to function with hundreds of millions of customers;
    2. interoperability between centralized systems and distributed ledger technology (DLT);
    3. use of “payment-dedicated blockchains with electronic identity”; and
    4. study of hardware devices able to maintain the privacy.

    Read the whole article by ledgerinsights. 

    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. 

    Learn more about China’s DCEP.

    ETH2 is live!

    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 guide here 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 “leverage its (GBV) network strength, to promote the accelerated growth of OMG Network, and further enhance the adoption of OMG blockchain in Asia and beyond”.

    This is the first acquisition for GBV, an “investment company with a mission of building the future through blockchain” 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).

    Find out more in our upcoming livestream

    See HERE for back issues of our newsletter! 

  • Newsletter #12

    Newsletter #12

    Week in review

    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 非小號 (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 “certain large crypto exchange” 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.

    We’ve already mentioned this in our previous newsletter about the KuCoin hack– please 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.

    For FULL and ONGOING coverage of this incident, check out our article “Developing story: OKEx suspends withdrawals…but is there more to this?”

    Potential red flags and rugs of the week

    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. Here’s 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 🙁

    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 Michael’s 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:

    • “I do not build to make a number go up”. Meaning that he only wants to build for developers and to enable them to easily create products out of his initial work
    • “Tokens are not stock”, you buy a token to be a contributor of a project, not a bystander
    • “Development process”, where he explains that his famous “test in prod” statement has been misinterpreted and it “exists to deter people from using systems without investigations”.

    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 doesn’t 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: “To 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.

    See here for back issues of our newsletter.

    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.


  • Newsletter #11

    Newsletter #11

    Week in review

    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 China’s 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.

    See here for back issues of our newsletter.

    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.

  • Newsletter #10

    Newsletter #10

    Week in review

    “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). 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 our Ledger Nano X review or 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.

    Upcoming events

    5th Oct 5:00am: Boxmining livestream
    8th Oct 6:00am: Alpha Finance Lab token sale on Binance Launchpad. Farming on their Launchpool already started at 12:00am on 30th Sept.
    8th Oct 6:00pm: Radix DLT token sale
    10th Oct 2:00pm: RAMP DeFi public sale

    *All times are listed in UTC unless otherwise stated.

    See here for back issues of our newsletter.

    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.

  • Newsletter #9

    Newsletter #9

    Week in review

    $FEW tried to profit off the backs of others

    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 “people 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) less the whitelisted 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.

    See here for back issues of our newsletter.

    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.

  • Newsletter #8

    Newsletter #8

    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! Ledger is offering 20% off on their Nano X and Nano S cryptocurrency hardware wallets with promo code: 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.

    See here for back issues of our newsletter.

    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.

  • Newsletter #5

    Newsletter #5

    Week in review

    Bitcoin makes front page news

    On 24th August 2020, a full-page advertisement appeared on Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily. The advertisement tells people “Banks, today you are not ditching me, I am ditching you” (in Cantonese) and “Bitcoin will never ditch you”. The advertisement does not promote a specific cryptocurrency-related business of service. Rather it only seems to educate readers on what is Bitcoin, saying: “Bitcoin is digital money. It is not issued or controlled by any government or corporation. Nobody can stop you from transacting on the network and it cannot be shut down. Bitcoin is available to anyone regardless of their nationality, gender, or beliefs. Bitcoin began with the GENESIS BLOCK during the financial crisis of 2009. Now, its time is coming.”

    Apple Daily is one of Hong Kong’s largest print media, made even more popular recently due to their CEO’s arrest for alleged violations of Hong Kong’s National Security Law, though he has since been released from custody.

    Bitcoin advert on Apple Daily
    Bitcoin advert on Apple Daily

    Cleaning house

    Recently with the increased interest in cryptocurrencies, I have been frequently asked what are my main coins for 2020. With all the different projects I’ve been looking into I realised that I am holding so many coins such that it is becoming difficult to manage. So this week I’ve cleaned my portfolio a bit and identified my “medium bags”. These are coins which I believe have a proven use case and a reason to go up in value. These “medium bags” are distinguished from my “HODL” i.e. coins I intend to hold long term and my “moonshot” speculative assets.

    Top coins for 2020

    What does it mean to “pull rug” and how not to get rekt

    The 2020 equivalent of 2017’s “exit scam”, DeFi projects “pulling the rug” on unsuspecting victims is sadly becoming more popular as the DeFi craze and markets are heating up. There are 2 common ways this is done:

    1. The scam project entices people to lock their cryptocurrencies e.g. ETH into a wallet with the intent to purchase the token before it is listed. (www.focolare.org) The wallet would then be “compromised” whereby the contract address ownership would be changed and the cryptocurrencies locked in the wallet would all be withdrawn and quickly sold on exchanges.
    2. The scam project would mint a token and either airdrop or give a percentage of the token to some early adopters. Afterwards the scam project would try to generate hype on social media and list the project on Uniswap. Unsuspecting victims would then deposit their ETH in Uniswap in exchange for the token. After people start injecting liquidity into the Exchange, the scammer would quickly drain the liquidity from that pool, leaving holders with worthless tokens.

    Here’s some of the ways to identify scams:

    1. Do full research on the project, check and monitor their social media. See also what other groups and people are saying about the project, and check if the claims on the project’s website are true. Also, has the project’s smart contract been audited? Is the project working with anyone reputable?
    2. Check if the project has actually burnt their minter key, which would prevent them from minting more tokens, withdrawing them, and rendering your tokens worthless as in the scam in 2 above.

    Bear in mind that if you are the victim of a “rug pull” there is almost no way to recover your losses. So if you have any doubts about a project it is probably best to trust your instincts and not go into it. And if you do choose to put your assets into it, only put what you can afford to lose.

    Oin Finance public sale delayed- you can stop spamming your F5 button now

    OIN Finance aims to become a bridge between Ethereum and Ontology assets and tokens- this would mean you can trade between these 2 types of assets. One interesting potential this that by allowing the bridging of other assets from Ethereum onto Ontology, users would be able to use Ontology as a way for the exchange of assets. So users can bring assets onto Ontology chain and use Ontology to complete transactions which may make it faster and cheaper.

    OIN is also a hugely popular project in China, and as we’ve seen with other projects like Polkadot, the China hype is very real. So when OIN announced it was doing a limited public sale of its token, everyone went onto their website and eagerly spammed the refresh button in the hopes of being able to sign up. However on the day of the public sale, according to OIN, they experienced a severe DDOS attack that took down their official website and registration page and were unable to resolve the issue in time.

    Their rescheduled public sale will be on 31 Aug 2020 at 12:00pm (UTC). The participation instructions will only be given at that time through their social media channels. Only winners will be required to submit KYC, and each winner can only buy 7,500 OIN at $0.08 USD.

    Meanwhile, be careful of fake OIN telegram channels (this is the real OIN telegram channel) which we saw pop up literally minutes after the announcement to postpone or scammers who contact you to try to sell you OIN.

    Upcoming events

    Sat 29 Aug 2020 at 12:00pm (UTC): My segment on Phoenix TV’s “一虎一席谈” (a popular hardcore debate show in China) will be broadcast. The episode discusses CBDC/ DCEP- China’s digital currency and also features fellow $YFII governance key signer Cao Yin. Note the program is in Chinese only.

    31 Aug 2020 at 12:00pm (UTC): OIN Finance public sale

    Tues 1 Sept 2020 at 1:00pm (UTC): Hedget token auction. Details here.

    Thurs 3 Sept 2020 at 4:00pm (UTC): SKALE Network’s SKALE token will be launched and available for sale for 48 hours. However, only those who have successfully passed the KYC process will be eligible to purchase. For details, check the email from Codefi Activate.

    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.

  • Newsletter #2: Yield Farming is HOT – but Farmers Beware of scams

    Newsletter #2: Yield Farming is HOT – but Farmers Beware of scams

    I’ll keep this week’s newsletter short and sweet. Primary markets (BTC, ETC) have been relatively stable, which an overall trend of recovery after last week’s flash crash on the 2nd of Aug. The crash was primarily targeted at leveraged traders, with over $1 Billion USD worth of contracts being liquidated across multiple exchanges. After this crash, prices quickly recovered nearing previous highs. This goes to show one of the dangers of over-leveraged positions, as there can be sudden volatility in either direction causing positions to be liquidated.

    Yield farming is HOT, but farmers Beware!

    Personally, I’ve been yield farming quite a lot this week with generally favorable results. Please note that Yield Farming is EXTREMELY dangerous as it involves the use of potentially unverified audited code on smart contracts. Do Your Own Research (honestly this is what’s taking up most of my time)

    Starting off, Yearn’s developer Andre Cronje (check this interview summary) launched Yvaults 2. Simply funds saved there will automatically be invested into the best strategy possible to generate more profit. The new system allows for the addition of new strategies too – basically what the founder Andre sees fit. Annual returns can vary – we’ve seen numbers between 50% and 200% APY. However, there isn’t a good way to calculate for the time being.

    One of the biggest trends this week is the emergence of $YFI clones. $YFI farming was extremely popular 2 weeks ago as it has extremely high yields. However – this has since paused as there is no new distribution of $YFI. Many opportunistic developers sought to create forks for $YFI that would distribute new coins such as $YFII, $YFFI, $YFT, and $WIFEY (just to name a few) in a similar fashion. One of the biggest risks with these $YFI clones is that the use un-audited code  – so they are extremely vulnerable to smart contract bugs (such as this one https://twitter.com/oli_vdb/status/1290370855709573122 ).

    BEWARE: $ASUKA & YYFI exit scams

    Two infamous projects pulled of exit scams in the past month, with developers minting a huge number of tokens and trading it into DAI. Both $ASUKA and $YYFI preyed on farmers who added liquidity to balancer pools that are required to farm the tokens. These pools are dangerous because the funds are directly used as a counter-party to trades, meaning that the pool’s DAI will directly be used to buy up the corresponding token. The $YFFI developer minted 1,000,000 $YFFI and sold it immediately, making off with $70,000 in the process (could have been more if he understood how balancer works).


    For the time being, I’m staying away from any yield farming involves liquidity pools.

    CREAM

    This week I’m testing out CREAM mining. CREAM is a project inspired by Compound and they are offering airdrops of CREAM token to those supply / borrowing from the protocol. Currently, the project’s code is up on GitHub but is pending formal audits. This means there will be potential smart contract risks with farming here.

    UPCOMING:

    Serum IEO (Friday 7th): https://boxmining.com/serum-srm-first-look/
    Interview with Binance CEO CZ (Wed 12th). Ask questions and win prizes: https://boxmining.com/ask-a-question-to-cz-binance/
    CURVE.FI expected to launch a new token in the coming weeks.

    Subscribe to the newsletter!

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