Week in review: Bitcoin sinks below $20,000 as Pavel Durov announces blockchain marketplace on Telegram

Bitcoin fell below the $20,000 level after the speech by the head of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Pavel Durov announced a domain-name marketplace based on TON, Hodlnaut reported a ‘hole’ in its balance sheet of $193 million due to the Terra collapse, and other events of the week.

Bitcoin price sinks below $20,000

On August 26, the head of the Fed Jerome Powell stated that to control inflation the central bank would need to hold interest rates at a high level for some time. Bitcoin reacted to the official’s remarks by dipping below $21,000, and then fell through the $20,000 level.

At the time of writing, the leading cryptocurrency was trading near the aforementioned psychological level.

The flagship asset typically pulled the rest of the market along — all top-10 by market cap closed the week in the red. The worst performers were Solana (-9%) and Dogecoin (-7.6%).

Combined market capitalization stood at $1.01 trillion. Bitcoin’s dominance index fell to 37.9%.

Pavel Durov announces launch of a blockchain marketplace in Telegram

Telegram founder Pavel Durov stated that a marketplace built on the TON blockchain could be launched to sell usernames, links to channels and groups within the messenger.

He noted that he is ‘impressed’ by the TON team’s recently held domain-name auctions. Subsequently, the messenger’s marketplace could also host other ecosystem elements, including channels, emojis and stickers.

Hodlnaut reports a ‘hole’ in its balance sheet of $193 million

The capital deficit of the crypto lending platform Hodlnaut as of 8 August 2022 stood at $193 million, according to bankruptcy court documents in Singapore. Creditors number 17,513 people.

The platform converted $317 million into the collapsed stablecoin TerraUSD to earn high yields through the Anchor protocol, which led to the loss.

Hacker attacks Rainbow Bridge; 5 ETH lost

The cross-chain Rainbow Bridge successfully repelled an attack by an unknown hacker, said Aurora Labs CEO Alex Shevchenko. According to him, 31 seconds later the system automatically rejected a forged NEAR block, for which a deposit of 5 ETH was required.

Nike earns $185 million from NFT sales

Fashion brands Dolce & Gabbana, Tiffany, Gucci, Adidas and Nike together earned $260 million from non-fungible token sales.

Half of Nike’s $185.3 million NFT revenue came from royalties on secondary turnover, the volume of which was $1.29 billion. The other half of the income came from primary sales. CloneX and MNLTH lead Nike’s NFT collections with the highest royalty payouts — $39.9 million and $24.2 million respectively.

What’s going on with Tornado Cash?

In the Netherlands a judge remanded Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev in custody and set a 90-day period for the first hearing. The hearing took place on August 24 in private. Pertsev’s lawyers could not secure his release on bail. According to the report, the developer has not yet been formally charged.

Kharon researchers said that Pertsev’s arrest stemmed from cooperation with the Russian company OOO ‘Digital Security’. The company allegedly provided material and technical support to the FSB of the Russian Federation, and Pertsev was a cybersecurity specialist and smart-contract developer.

This week support for the project expressed by Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson. In his view, developers cannot always control open-source code and how users will interact with it.

Tether declines to block Tornado Cash addresses without government requests

The issuer of the USDT stablecoin — Tether — refused to freeze addresses linked to the Tornado Cash transaction-mix service, without proper requests from law enforcement agencies.

Unilateral address blocking is viewed as reckless and destructive by the company.

What to discuss with friends?

• John McAfee’s former girlfriend denied his death.
• Eminem and Snoop Dogg will perform a track at the MTV Video Music Awards in collaboration with NFT BAYC.
• The SBU blocked a crypto wallet used to donate to the war in Ukraine.
• Argentine presidential candidate was accused of promoting a crypto scam.

Ronin hackers converted assets to Bitcoin and used mixers

The hackers behind the March Ronin sidechain breach (for the Axie Infinity game) moved most of the $625 million stolen into Bitcoin. To conceal their tracks, the attackers used the mixers ChipMixer and Blender, as well as the wrapped version of Bitcoin, RenBTC.

Court allows Three Arrows Capital creditors to inspect hedge-fund assets

The High Court of Singapore granted a request by the creditors tied to Three Arrows Capital for inspecting assets held in the jurisdiction by the hedge fund. The consultancy firm received the ability to request all financial data, including bank accounts, cryptocurrencies, stakes in companies and real estate.

Elliptic: scammers stole NFT worth more than $100 million in a year

In the 12 months from July 2021, attackers stole NFTs worth more than $100 million as a result of fraud, Elliptic found. The most productive month was May — $24 million.

Looking across collections, hackers focused on the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT series — $43.6 million. Mutant Apes, Azuki, Otherside and CloneX also feature among hackers’ favorites.

23% of stolen NFTs were obtained through compromising social networks (mainly Discord) and phishing there. Other methods included creating malicious sites, phishing in emails and wallet hacks.

Forbes: more than 50% of BTC trades on exchanges are fictitious

More than half of centralized BTC trades have little economic meaning and are fictitious, according to Forbes analysts in a study. They concluded that as of June 14, 2022, daily global trading volume in BTC pairs stood at $128 billion — 51% below the $262 billion figure that would be obtained by adding the volumes reported by the platforms themselves.

Hetzner provider bans running nodes on its servers

The major German hosting provider Hetzner stated that using its servers to run software for mining cryptocurrency violates the company’s rules.

“The use of our products for any applications related to mining, even remotely, is not permitted. Including Ethereum. […] Even if you simply run one node, we will consider this a breach of our rules,” said the official representative of the cloud provider.

Also on ForkLog:

• ForkLog magazine turned eight.
• The average fee for a Bitcoin transaction fell below $1 for the first time since July 2020.
• Binance blocked the account of Baking Bad from the Tezos ecosystem.
• Vitalik Buterin stated that cryptocurrencies outperform other payment tools.

What else to read and watch?

As The Merge approaches, discussions are heating up about the likely price movement of the second-largest cryptocurrency, the viability of a potential ETHW fork and the prospects for Ethereum Classic. We found out whether the upgrade could restart the market to new highs.

Educational cards explained what Ethereum Classic, VeChain and the Powell multiplier are. They also explained why price slippage occurs in crypto trading and how NFT staking works.

A new special report on Ethereum’s biggest upgrade — The Merge. The guest of the issue is Anton Bukov, co-founder and CTO of 1inch.

Read ForkLog Bitcoin news in our Telegram — cryptocurrency news, prices and analysis.