Bitcoin and Ethereum reached new all-time highs, Apple’s chief disclosed personal investments in cryptocurrencies, Binance blocked Dogecoin holders’ accounts after the software update, and other events from the week gone by.
Bitcoin and Ethereum hit fresh all-time highs
On November 10, the price of the first cryptocurrency reached the level of $69,000. The Ethereum price also hit a new all-time high above $4,860. Earlier, the market capitalization of digital assets exceeded $3 trillion for the first time in history.
The subsequent correction was linked to fears of a potential default of the Chinese developer Evergrande. In the evening of November 10, there was also an auction of 30-year U.S. government bonds. Weak demand triggered a price plunge and a sharp rise in yields, as the dollar strengthened notably — this put pressure on risk assets, as well as gold and BTC.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading near $64,080, Ethereum around $4,580.
The majority of top-10 digital assets by market capitalization finished the week in the green. Solana and Polkadot were the exceptions. The price of the former fell by nearly 9%, the latter by 11.5%.
According to Messari, over the week the token of the decentralized messenger Skrumble Network rose the most among digital assets. The SKM price increased by more than 468%, and its market capitalization stood at $13.16 million.
Ampleforth was the biggest loser. The AMPL price fell by more than 46%, and its market capitalization dropped to $13.12 million.
The market capitalization of the cryptocurrency market stood at $2.95 trillion. Bitcoin’s dominance index fell to 41.1%.
Taproot upgrade activated on the Bitcoin network
The soft fork, designed to increase privacy, efficiency and scalability of the network, occurred on block 709,632, mined by the F2Pool mining pool on November 14 at 08:15 MSK.
This is the largest upgrade to Bitcoin’s blockchain since the activation of the Segregated Witness (SegWit) protocol in August 2017. Taproot includes several important technical improvements, the main of which is the implementation of the Schnorr signature scheme and the concept of MAST.
Crypto exchange Chatex was sanctioned by the US and blocked user funds
The U.S. Treasury and Justice Department added the Telegram bot addresses used for crypto exchange Chatex to the sanctions list, as well as affiliated entities Izibits OÜ, Chatextech SIA and Hightrade Finance Ltd.
Chainalysis found that, starting in September 2018, Chatex processed Bitcoin transactions totaling at least $77.5 million, including more than $17 million in criminal assets, including funds from the darknet marketplace Hydra, scam projects Finiko, QubitTech and others, as well as operators of several ransomware programs.
On Wednesday, November 10, Chatex announced a suspension of operations, halted withdrawals and blocked user funds in connection with the investigation.
Binance blocked Dogecoin holder accounts after software update
On November 8, Dogecoin developers released a new software version 1.14.5. In addition to general security and performance fixes, the release contemplates lowering the recommended transaction fees to 0.01 DOGE.
On November 10, due to a software update glitch, the cryptocurrency exchange Binance repeatedly processed an unknown number of user Dogecoin transactions made several years ago. After the funds moved from the exchange’s cold wallet to third-party accounts, the platform demanded that the senders of the original transactions reimburse losses at the current rate and blocked their balances.
Apple CEO discussed personal cryptocurrency investments
Apple CEO Tim Cook stated that he personally owns cryptocurrencies, using digital assets to diversify his investment portfolio. He said he has been interested in digital assets for a while and has studied the topic.
Cook stressed that the company does not plan to invest in these instruments or launch related services. He explained the CEO’s position by noting that Apple shareholders bought shares not to gain exposure to cryptocurrencies.
Russian authorities back idea to classify mining as entrepreneurship
Representatives of the Ministry of Economic Development, Ministry of Energy and the State Duma supported regulating mining as a form of entrepreneurial activity for taxation purposes.
In the LDPR, they stated they are preparing a corresponding bill.
The Bank of Russia did not endorse the idea and stressed that it is opposed to any initiatives that encourage the appearance of monetary surrogates. The regulator, however, is inclined to implement a digital ruble project. Thus, early this week there was information that the CBDC will receive a separate legal framework.
BoR head Elvira Nabiullina stated that the digital ruble will become a full substitute for cryptocurrencies for Russians. The head of Sberbank, German Gref, pointed to the need to refine the project.
Discord chief hints at Ethereum integration, but backs down under community pressure
Discord founder and CEO Jason Citron hinted in a Twitter post that the messenger is considering connecting to the Ethereum blockchain.
He posted a screenshot of the app’s Integrations tab with the option to connect an Ethereum account. The screen also shows MetaMask and WalletConnect wallet buttons.
The community reacted negatively to Citron’s tweet. A few days later he stated that the company has no plans to pursue this integration.
Thanks for all the perspectives everyone. We have no current plans to ship this internal concept. For now we’re focused on protecting users from spam, scams and fraud. Web3 has lots of good but also lots of problems we need to work through at our scale. More soon.
— Jason Citron (@jasoncitron) November 11, 2021
Robinhood reports a data breach. Later, the data was put up for sale
The online broker Robinhood acknowledged a data breach of users’ personal information. The incident occurred on November 3. Hackers obtained a list of email addresses for about five million people and full names for another group of about two million users.
Additionally, 310 accounts had further personal data exposed, including name, date of birth and postal address. The hackers obtained a larger set of data for 10 users from this group.
Later the database was put up for sale on a darknet forum. The seller noted that the 310-user category is not currently offered.
Russian Interior Ministry calls blocking 10,016 ETH from WEX premature
The Investigative Department of the Russian Interior Ministry refused to block funds totaling 10,016 ETH that were withdrawn from the failed exchange’s wallet in September.
Earlier, a Russian court dismissed a claim for the return of 16.6 BTC from unlawful possession. The dispute concerns the cryptocurrency that the plaintiff Boris Bashilov transferred to his acquaintance Igor Tukan in trust management.
Also on ForkLog:
- Journalists revealed Coinbase salaries.
- SEC rejected VanEck’s application to launch a spot Bitcoin ETF.
- Unknown actors moved 750 BTC from the Finiko pyramid’s wallet.
- Joseph Lubin hinted at the possibility of MetaMask having its own token.
What else to read and watch
In October, Polkadot developers announced the first parachain slot auctions. The community has shown considerable interest in the upcoming event — Gavin Wood’s ambitious project and its ecosystem are developing rapidly, attracting multi-million investments.
ForkLog took a closer look at what parachain auctions are and how to profit from them.
In traditional digests we have gathered the week’s main events in cybersecurity cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.
The blockchain technology remains one of the hottest trends among financial, governmental and commercial organisations worldwide. ForkLog has prepared an overview of the most interesting latest initiatives.
On Monday, November 8, ForkLog’s live broadcast was devoted to the Harmony project. Together with its representatives they discussed metaverse development prospects and the latest industry news.
Guests included:
- Menaskop — IT entrepreneur, Web 3.0 researcher, co-founder of DAO Synergis & advisor to DAO ENVELOP.
- Nick Vasilich — visionary leader of ONEruDAO, Harmony protocol.
Read Bitcoin news from ForkLog on our Telegram — crypto news, prices and analytics.