日期: 2021-05-09

Coming every Saturday, Hodlers Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

Altcoins rally as bulls pile into large-cap tokens and layer-one projects

Were well and truly in the throes of altseason now, with Bitcoins dominance showing no signs of diminishing.

Ether delivered a stunning surge that took its price above $3,000 for the very first time, breaking new records throughout the week. On Saturday, ETH remained in uncharted territory after racing to highs of $3,800.

Among those celebrating ETHs spike will be Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who has officially become a crypto billionaire. Excitement is continuing to build ahead of a long-awaited upgrade that will overhaul the networks gas fee structure in July.

ETH is in good company, too. EOS rallied by more than 100% this week following a recent protocol that increases the projects inflation rate. Litecoin has hit a one-year high against Bitcoin, with many analysts predicting extended upside momentum. And Bitcoin Cash jumped 68% amid rumors that a looming hard fork could boost the networks user base.

Even Ethereum Classic, the hard fork sparked by disagreements after a devastating 2016 hack, has pumped 130% in the past week.

Of course, theres one altcoin in particular that continues to steal the show

 

May 8 day to watch for Dogecoin amid warning it can suffer an XRP-style crash

DOGE has seemed unstoppable in recent weeks. It hit unprecedented highs of $0.7376 early on Saturday. To put into context how bonkers the joke cryptocurrencys surge really is, $1 invested on Jan. 1 would now be worth $139 at current prices.

Mania over the financial homage to Shiba Inus everywhere may be about to reach a climax when DOGE enthusiast and mega-billionaire Elon Musk hosts Saturday Night Live. Its inevitable that his appearance will feature endless sketches about Dogecoin, and that could pump prices even further.

But not everyone is finding DOGEs surge to be a cause for celebration. Lowstrife, a popular account on Twitter, believes the end is nigh, with the crypto trader spotting eerie similarities between DOGEs current charts and XRP in the heady days of 2018.

Back then, XRP had hit all-time highs of $3.20 that remain true to this day, but then slowly faded to lows of $0.14 a loss of 95.6%.

Warning of an impending apocalypse for DOGE, Lowstrife wrote: Each of DOGEs major rallies this year has been smaller and less aggressive. What took 18 hours at first has been ongoing for 2 days now. I suspect this is the final push before its all over for good. May 8th is the day to watch.

Even Musk himself has been cooling the hype, reminding followers that crypto investments remain speculative.

 

Squares Bitcoin revenue up 1,000% in 12 months

A flurry of earnings results this week powerfully illustrated the impact that Bitcoins sensational first quarter has had.

Square blew analysts expectations by delivering earnings of $0.41 per share between January and March far beyond the $0.16 forecast. Revenue came in at $5.06 billion, dwarfing predictions of $3.36 billion.

Bitcoin alone drove $3.5 billion in revenue, an astonishing increase of 1,000% in just 12 months. Overall, the crypto-friendly companys gross profit also surged 79% year on year to hit $964 million.

Squares also sitting on paper profits of $250 million after making two high-profile Bitcoin purchases one in February and one in October.

PayPal has also been heralding the great results it has been receiving from its crypto service. The platforms earnings and revenue also exceeded predictions in Q1.

 

Coinbase stock plunges to record low, further decoupling from crypto

The celebratory atmosphere isnt universal. Coinbase shares tumbled to fresh lows on Thursday as Wall Street investors continued to cycle out of high-flying tech stocks.

COIN bottomed at $255.15, where it was in danger of breaching the $250 reference price set on the eve of its public listing in April. All of this comes despite the total market cap of all cryptocurrencies surging beyond $2.4 trillion.

FBB Capital Partners director of research, Mike Bailey, told Bloomberg: We saw a mini-bubble in SPACs, IPOs, crypto, clean-tech and hyper-growth in late 2020 and early 2021 and many of these asset classes are nursing bad hangovers.

(That said, his assertion that crypto is nursing a bad hangover is misplaced.)

Coinbases woes may be linked to increasing competition among crypto exchanges, which has left retail investors spoiled for choice. Theres a danger that this could eat into the revenues it derives from transaction fees, which make up most of its income.

 

Comedian Bill Maher excoriates environmental impact of crypto

Elon Musks stint on the box this weekend serves as a powerful counterweight to comedian Bill Maher, who didnt leave crypto enthusiasts in stitches during a recent segment.

On Mahers program, he compared the industry to a virtual game and talked about mining in a derisive tone. Maher also implied that investing in tokens was a childish endeavor, and illustrated his point with quotes from Warren Buffett.

He said: There is something inherently not credible about creating hundreds of billions in virtual wealth with nothing ever actually being accomplished and no actual product made or service rendered. […] Unfortunately, what is real is the unfathomable amount of electricity those massive supercomputers suck up for their mining.

Maher even quipped that Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym used by Bitcoins inventor, is the Japanese term for Monopoly money.

Anthony Pompliano shared the clip along with this caption: Never ask a comedian for investment advice.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao replied, writing: Very sad to watch. Feel really hopeless for him. Jokes going to be on him. Time will show.

 

Winners and Losers

 

 

At the end of the week, Bitcoin is at $58,366.32, Ether at $3,811.20 and XRP at $1.56. The total market cap is at $2,433,633,423,933.

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Shiba Inu, Bitcoin Diamond and Telcoin. The top three altcoin losers of the week are Harmony, Huobi Token and Filecoin.

For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraphs market analysis.

 

 

Most Memorable Quotations

 

Looks like Uniswap v3 is more gas expensive than v2, roughly as expected.

Haseeb Qureshi, Dragonfly Capital managing partner

 

With cryptocurrencies already creating incredible worldwide wealth, its real estate that will sustain that wealth and provide buyers with a legacy.

Alex Sapir, Sapir Corp chairman

 

We saw a mini-bubble in SPACs, IPOs, crypto, clean-tech and hyper-growth in late 2020 and early 2021 and many of these asset classes are nursing bad hangovers.

Mike Bailey, FBB Capital Partners director of research

 

It definitely can go much higher, I think we can see the price go to $10,000, where a lot of ETH bull price targets begin to kick in and people take profits.

Nikhil Shamapant, retail investor

 

Weve committed to having no HQ, and its important to show our decentralized workforce that no one location is [more] important than the other.

Coinbase

 

Each of DOGEs major rallies this year has been smaller and less aggressive. What took 18 hours at first has been ongoing for 2 days now. I suspect this is the final push before its all over for good. May 8th is the day to watch.

Lowstrife

 

DeFi may lead to a paradigm shift in the financial industry and potentially contribute toward a more robust, open, and transparent financial infrastructure.

Federal Reserve of St. Louis

 

Volatility is everywhere [] It is not unique to crypto.

Changpeng Zhao, Binance CEO

 

Of course I hate the Bitcoin success, and I dont welcome a currency thats so useful to kidnappers and extortionists and so forth.

Charlie Munger, billionaire investor

 

There is something inherently not credible about creating hundreds of billions in virtual wealth with nothing ever actually being accomplished and no actual product made or service rendered.

Bill Maher, comedian

 

Prediction of the Week

They see ETH rollin: Why did Ether price reach $3,500, and whats next?

Ethers booming price has prompted feverish talk about a long-fabled flippening where ETH overtakes BTC as the worlds largest cryptocurrency.

Although thats fanciful right now, there are a number of bullish predictions when it comes to where Ethers price is headed next.

One of them comes from Nikhil Shamapant, a retail investor who recently published a research report where he argued ETH could be worth $150,000 by 2023.

He told Cointelegraph: It definitely can go much higher. I think we can see the price go to $10,000, where a lot of ETH bull price targets begin to kick in and people take profits. I think well head up to that $10,000-to-$25,000 range, hit a lot of supply and could see some big drawdowns and consolidation at that point.

 

FUD of the Week

 

The fees sting, but Uniswap v3 sees more volume on launch day than v2s first month

Data suggests that Uniswap v3 had a successful first 24 hours processing more than twice the volume that v2 did in its first month.

But not everyones been enamored with the latest iteration of the worlds most popular decentralized exchange, with some users complaining about the costs associated with using it.

One person wrote on Twitter: Even more expensive to make mistakes now. Tried to migrate my UNI/ETH liquidity to V3, failed and paid 108.09 usd worth of gas.

Dragonfly Capitals managing partner, Haseeb Qureshi, also wasnt impressed. On Twitter, he wrote: Looks like Uniswap v3 is more gas expensive than v2, roughly as expected. […] Specifically, its about 28% more expensive for single-hop transactions it looks like. For larger transactions that cross multiple ticks/buckets, the gas costs should be slightly larger.

 

New York bill proposes ban on crypto mining for three years over carbon concerns

A Democrat senator in New York, Kevin S. Parker, is proposing a three-year ban on crypto mining.

Data centers would only be allowed to operate if they pass an environmental impact review, amid concerns that BTC mining could cause the state to miss ambitious targets designed to tackle climate change.

New York Senate Bill 6486 said: A single cryptocurrency transaction uses the same amount of energy that an average American household uses in one month, with an estimated level of global energy usage equivalent to that of the country of Sweden.

The bill is yet to receive widespread backing from other senators. However, the Democrats do control the lower house and senate.

 

Employer paid worker in crypto, then demanded it back when price rose

A United States-based business development specialist has claimed that a company that paid them for contract work using cryptocurrency now wants them to return the tokens following a significant rally in the assets price.

The unnamed employee, known only as Crypto Confused, wrote to MarketWatch and said: I am not really sure what to do. I have worked with this person for many years, and he has a tendency to try to change the terms of payment after agreeing on a certain way of operating.

Columnist Quentin Fottrell replied: If the value of the cryptocurrency had fallen by 100% since August 2020, would he want to pay you in dollars? If it suddenly dipped by that amount today, would he follow up with his employees?

 

Best Cointelegraph Features

DOGE as internet money? TikTokers and sports fans see a use case for Dogecoin

As experts pinpoint various groups as Dogecoins vanguard, the coins potential base seems to be a wide coalition.

From nay to yay: JPMorgans path to crypto could shake up finance

After bashing Bitcoin back in 2017, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon seems to have softened his stance on crypto, and so has the firm itself.

As Bitcoins payment options grow, BTCs true future role up for debate

Declaring BTC a store of value gold 2.0 but not a medium of exchange, defies logic. It must first have a use case.

The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust continues to trade at a discount compared to BTC, a situation that presents a unique challenge to Grayscale and investors.

Since 2013 the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust Fund (GBTC) has offered its investors exposure to Bitcoin (BTC) through a publicly quoted private instrument. However, the trust’s convertibility and liquidity vastly differ from an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF).

Trusts are structured as companies, at least in regulatory form, and are ‘closed-end funds’ which can initially only be sold to accredited investors. This means the number of available shares is limited, and retail traders can only access them via secondary markets. Furthermore, a GBTC share cannot be redeemed for the underlying BTC position.

Historically, GBTC used to trade above the equivalent BTC held by the fund, which was caused by the retail crowd’s excess demand. The common practice for institutional clients was to buy shares directly from Grayscale at par and sell at a profit after the six-month lock-up period.

During most of 2020, GBTC shares traded at a premium to its Net Asset Value (NAV), which varied from 5% to 40%. However, this situation drastically changed in March 2021. The approval of two Bitcoin ETFs in Canada heavily contributed to extinguishing the GBTC premium.

ETF funds are less risky and cheaper compared to trusts. Moreover, there is no lock-up period, and retail investors can attain direct access to buy shares at par. Therefore, the emergence of a better Bitcoin investment vehicle seized much of allure that GBTC once possessed.

Can DCG save GBTC?

In late February, the GBTC premium entered adverse terrain, and holders began desperately flipping their positions to avoid getting stuck in an expensive and non-redeemable instrument. The situation deteriorated up to an 18% discount despite BTC price reaching an all-time high in mid-March.

On March 10, Digital Currency Group (DCG), Grayscale Investments’ parent company, announced a plan to purchase up to $250 million of the outstanding GBTC shares. Although the conglomerate did not specify the reason behind the move, the excessive discount certainly would have pressured their reputation.

As the situation deteriorated, DCG announced a roadmap for turning its trust funds into a U.S. ETF, although no specific guarantees or deadlines have been informed.

On May 3, the firm announced that it had purchased $193.5 million worth of GBTC shares by April. Moreover, DCG increased its GBTC shares repurchase potential to $750 million.

Considering the $36.3 billion in assets under management for the GBTC trust, there’s reason to believe that buying $500 million worth of shares might not be enough to ease the price discount.

Because of this, some important questions arise. For example, can DCG lose money by making such a trade? Who’s desperately selling, and is a conversion to an ETF being analyzed?

Looking forward

As the controller of the fund administrator, DCG can buy the trust fund’s shares at market prices and withdraw the equivalent Bitcoin for redemption. Therefore, buying GBTC at a discount and selling the BTC at market prices will consistently produce a profit and there’s no risk by doing this.

Apart from a few funds that regularly report their holdings, there’s no way to know who has been selling GBTC below net asset value. The only investors with 5% or more holdings are BlockFi and Three Arrows Capital, but none have reported reducing their position.

Therefore, it could be potentially multiple retail sellers exiting the product at any cost, but it is impossible to know right now.

While buying GBTC at a 10% or larger discount might seem a bargain at first, investors must remember that as of now, there’s no way of getting out of those shares apart from selling it at the market.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Rari’s RGT token is plummeting on the news.

After a $11 million attack earlier today, Rari Capital is the latest decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol to fall victim to a high-priced exploit 

The platform, which builds optimized yield vaults and boutique lending pools, confirmed the attack in a Tweet and said that a full postmortem is forthcoming:

There has been an exploit in the Rari Capital ETH Pool related to our @AlphaFinanceLab integration.

The rebalancer has removed all funds from Alpha in response.

We are currently investigating the situation and a full report will be shared once everything is assessed.

— Rari Capital (@RariCapital) May 8, 2021

Per whitehat hacker Emiliano Bonassi, the exploit appears to be an “evil contract” exploit, in which an attacker ‘tricks’ a contract into thinking a hostile contract should have access or permissions. Alpha Finance announced in a Tweet that the hack was related to Rari’s interest-bearing ibETH vault, but that no Alpha funds were at risk:

Funds are SAFE on #AlphaHomora.

We are notified that @RariCapital has suffered from an exploit that was due to the incorrect assumption when using HomoraBank contract, as they were setting up an ibETH pool on their platform.#Alpha team is here to help.

— Alpha Finance Lab (@AlphaFinanceLab) May 8, 2021

The hacker’s wallet currently holds 4,005 ETH worth over $15,000,000, but a portion of those funds appear to be from a separate exploit. 

Like many before him, the attacker appears to have considered sending a message to the Rari team, but cancelled the transaction. Because he paid a low gas fee, however, observers were able to notice the message as a pending transaction before it was cancelled:

The hacker has left a base64-encoded message saying

rari=REKT
alpha=ok # saved rari 6mhttps://t.co/WQpiPksDOX pic.twitter.com/ruMH8Wam5s

— banteg (@bantg) May 8, 2021

While taking the aborted victory lap, the attacker’s message also seemed to imply that the Alpha Homura team prevented an additional $6 million drain. 

Already users are taking to Twitter to speculate about what form the team’s compensation plan might take. Compensating users affected by hacks and exploits is becoming an increasingly common practice, most recently with EasyFi revealing their compensation plan after a crippling $60 million exploit.

The Rari Capital team has often been a target of both community support and derision. The team is notably young, with one developer reportedly being 15 years old. One of their key investors, Twitter user Tetranode, joked on a recent Up Only podcast that, despite only being middle aged, the team frequently and playfully taunts him as a “boomer.”

As such, while some have criticized the team and attempted to blame youthful inexperience for the attack, other have noted that security practices in DeFi are continually evolving and have been quick to voice support for the team, including SushiSwap CTO Joseph Delong:

This is a tragedy, we love that team

— Jo-sofa De-lounge (@josephdelong) May 8, 2021

$RGT, Rari’s governance token, is down 23.24% to $13.35 on the news. 

As the world waits for Elon Musk’s Saturday Night Live appearance — and a possible nod to crypto’s best friend — an exchange listing proves that real news can also propel DOGE to new heights.

What can you say about Dogecoin that hasn’t been said before? How about this: Elon Musk’s tweets aren’t the only thing that let the DOGE out.

This week, right in the middle of the retail trading frenzy that has turned everyone’s favorite cartoon puppy into a rabid bull-doge, Cointelegraph Markets Pro subscribers had the opportunity to chow down on a NewsQuake™ from Bitfinex, which can be seen as further exciting a rally all the way from $0.48 to $0.68.

Dogecoin (DOGE) Analysis

In the chart below you can see where the news was delivered to Markets Pro members via Discord and their mobile notifications (the red circle) and the immediate and dramatic price rise that followed.

NewsQuakes™ are sourced from a real-time aggregation engine, collated from over a thousand primary sources every minute and analyzed by an AI algorithm to determine the historical significance of the news. NewsQuakes™ are trained on staking announcements, exchange listings and key partnerships, and because they are delivered without human intervention, they can often be the fastest way for market participants to learn about major events in the cryptocurrency space.

In this case, everything seems to have worked as if it was a regular coin: A listing on a big exchange resulted in immediate price action that began to recede after roughly a day. Yet, when dealing with Dogecoin-related news, it doesn’t hurt to exercise caution and remember that this asset’s relationship with the news cycle is unlike any other.

iExec (RLC) Analysis

On the subject of NewsQuakes™ there was another perfect example this week of how the early trader gets the profits.

iExec (RLC) was hit by two consecutive NewsQuakes™, helping the asset add around 70% of value over the week. On May 4 came the announcement of a Coinbase listing – traditionally a very powerful type of news (first red circle in the chart below).

A similar announcement from Bithumb came in just 36 hours after the first, compounding the coin’s momentum (second red circle).

At this point, it becomes challenging to attribute the price dynamic to one of the two events, since the Coinbase announcement’s effects hadn’t yet expired (the system looks at 72-hour returns) when Bithumb’s kicked in.

Those Markets Pro subscribers who quickly acted on either of the NewsQuakes™ are likely fine with not knowing the exact contributions of each listing, however. In both cases, the value of being first to the news is clear from the immediate positive price action.

Telcoin (TEL) Analysis

This analysis wouldn’t be complete without a word about Telcoin (TEL), which rallied dramatically to ascend from just $0.11 to over $0.48 shortly after a Markets Pro member suggested adding the cryptocurrency to the platform.

While VORTECS™ Scores can take time to generate, they still look at the entire trading history of the newly-listed asset — thus when Telcoin’s first VORTECS™ Score was displayed, the algorithm already had clear confidence in bullish conditions for the token.

As seen in the chart below, VORTECS™ continued to identify strong bullish momentum even as the price rose, peaking at an almost-unprecedented score of 95 around 48 hours before the final push towards the $0.48 price spike.

The VORTECS™ Score is available exclusive to Cointelegraph Markets Pro members, and includes sentiment analysis, tweet and trading volume, and price action as components of the algorithm — which are then weighted according to a proprietary formula based on how similar these are to historical conditions. If there is a similarity in these factors, the score will be higher when historical precedents have most consistently led to higher prices.

VORTECS™ Score returns since January 3

The Markets Pro team has been tracking 42 sample strategies since January 3 2021, based on entering a position when the VORTECS™ Score crosses a threshold, and exiting it either when another score is reached or after a set period of time. The following data is taken from a snapshot on May 8th 2021 at 1pm ET. The full methodology is available here.

Holding Bitcoin: 79% return

Holding Top 100 altcoins: 485% return

Best-performing time-based VORTECS™ strategy (Enter 80 / Exit 24 hours): 2,467% return

Best-performing score-based VORTECS™ strategy (Enter 80, Exit re-crossing 80): 2,800% return

Cointelegraph Markets Pro is available exclusively to subscribers on a monthly basis at $99 per month, or annually with two free months included. It carries a 14-day money-back policy, to ensure that it fits the crypto trading and investing research needs of subscribers, and members can cancel anytime.

Important Disclaimer

Cointelegraph is a publisher of financial information, not an investment adviser. We do not provide personalized or individualized investment advice. Cryptocurrencies are volatile investments and carry significant risk including the risk of permanent and total loss. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Figures and charts are correct at the time of writing or as otherwise specified. Live-tested strategies are not recommendations. Consult your financial advisor before making financial decisions. Full terms and conditions.

链闻消息，Cryptopunks 开发团队 Larva Labs 推出的 NFT 项目 Meebits 在其社群中宣布已暂停智能合约中铸造和交易的功能，团队表示智能合约是安全的，所有的 Meebits 也是安全的，但是铸造功能中存在漏洞，未被铸造出的 Meebits 的身份被泄漏了。团队表示几乎所有人都已经完成了他们的铸造，而对于没有完成的人，将提供一个表格，用户用地址签署信息证明所有权后，团队将会使用 devMint 功能替用户铸造 Meebits。团队称将于周一完成所有的铸造，同时将解除合约的暂停功能，交易将恢复。

原文链接：Cryptopunks 开发团队 Larva Labs 新项目 Meebits 铸造合约存在漏洞，已暂停交易