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At press time bitcoin is about $87,900, down roughly 0.5% over the week.<\/p>\n
The rest of the crypto market was equally subdued. Ethereum stayed near $3,000.<\/p>\n Among the ten largest assets by capitalisation, XRP and DOGE fell the most, losing 3.3% and 5.8% respectively over the week.<\/p>\n Amid worsening sentiment and ebbing demand, CryptoQuant analysts suggested<\/a> the market could be entering a bear phase.<\/p>\n They expect a bottom near the realised price\u2014around $56,000\u2014implying a 55% drawdown from the all-time high. Interim support sits near $70,000.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the popular market sentiment index<\/a> is stuck in the \u201cextreme fear\u201d zone. It has been there since 13 December.<\/p>\n By week\u2019s end, total crypto-market capitalisation stood at $3.06trn. Bitcoin\u2019s dominance was 57.3%, Ethereum\u2019s 11.6%.<\/p>\n Late on 25 December, reports began to surface<\/a> of hacks targeting Trust Wallet users.<\/p>\n On-chain sleuth ZachXBT was among the first to flag the incident, naming the latest update to the Chrome extension as a possible cause.<\/p>\n A cybersecurity specialist going by Akinator found a malicious script in the upgrade that covertly transmitted wallet data to a phishing resource.<\/p>\n The TrustWallet team confirmed the incident. Hundreds of users were affected and losses totalled about $7m.<\/p>\n “I was coming back from a family holiday. I wanted to check the markets, maybe find opportunities in the New Year dip. Instead, I opened the wallet and saw that $300,000 were gone. [\u2026] Everything I had worked for. Stolen right at Christmas,” one victim said. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Lookonchain analysts identified the hacker\u2019s addresses; $4.2m had already been transferred to ChangeNOW, FixedFloat, KuCoin and HTX.<\/p>\n Binance founder and TrustWallet owner Changpeng Zhao assured that the project would reimburse losses in full.<\/p>\n Prediction platform Polymarket also experienced<\/a> a security incident this week. Users complained about unauthorised login attempts and zeroed balances.<\/p>\n Project representatives pointed to a vulnerability at a third-party provider, without specifics. Judging by comments online, the problem affected customers who used Magic Labs for authentication.<\/p>\n On 25 December, mining difficulty<\/a> for the leading cryptocurrency rose by a marginal 0.04% to 148.26 T\u2014yet the uptick broke a six-week decline.<\/p>\n After hitting an all-time high of 155.97 T on 29 October, difficulty posted three consecutive declines: 2.37%, 1.95% and 0.74%<\/a>.<\/p>\n Even so, hashrate during the drawdown held above 1 ZH\/s. According to Glassnode, the seven-day moving average sits around 1.06 ZH\/s.<\/p>\n In TheMinerMag\u2019s view, the muted rise in difficulty suggests recent reductions in network computing power have not materially affected miners\u2019 operations.<\/p>\n Bitcoin\u2019s hashrate decline proved temporary, although VanEck analysts even declared a miner capitulation<\/a>, with operators switching off unprofitable equipment.<\/p>\n By TheMinerMag\u2019s estimates, the network\u2019s difficulty has corrected by roughly 4% from the peak. Over the same period, the coin lost about 20%. Historically, such a divergence has tended to flush out weaker players.<\/p>\n “So far such a capitulation has not materialised. The limited decline in difficulty and the stability of hashrate indicate that the network is coping with economic stress without large-scale shutdowns,” the experts stressed.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Meanwhile, hashprice remains low at around $38 per PH\/s per day, pressuring mining economics.<\/p>\n This week tensions flared within the Aave community over control of the brand, domains and public channels.<\/p>\n The fight pits the project\u2019s DAO<\/a> against the centralised developer Aave Labs. The conflict began<\/a> with a contentious deal in early December.<\/p>\n Ave Labs announced a partnership with CoW Swap purportedly to improve swap pricing and protection. It later emerged, however, that fees from the updated swap contracts were being sent to a wallet controlled by the developer.<\/p>\n The decentralised organisation thus lost most of its revenues.<\/p>\n Marc Zeller, the largest delegate and a community activist, called the situation a covert privatisation of the project. By his calculations, the DAO potentially lost about $10m in annual revenue due to the firm\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n On 16 December, former Aave Labs CTO Ernesto Boado presented a proposal that favoured the DAO.<\/p>\n Aave Labs put the initiative to a preliminary community vote starting 23 December. It listed Boado as the sole author, though he did not participate in the coordination.<\/p>\n In the end, Aave ecosystem participants rejected<\/a> the proposal. Voting ended on 26 December: 55.29% against, 41.21% abstained and only 3.5% in favour.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Aave co-founder Stani Kulechov faced<\/a> criticism after buying $10m worth of the project\u2019s tokens. He was suspected of manipulating the vote.<\/p>\n Researchers also found that the three largest addresses controlled more than 58% of the vote. The leading wallet held 27% (333,000 AAVE), and the address linked to the Aave Chan Initiative\u201418.5%.<\/p>\n Amid the discord, AAVE lost 12% on the week. The token briefly fell from $176 to $148, before recovering to $155.<\/p>\n Also on ForkLog:<\/strong><\/p>\n ETHZilla, a crypto treasury backed by Peter Thiel, sold 24,291 ETH for $74.5m ($3,068 per coin) to meet debt obligations. The proceeds will go towards buying back outstanding convertible bonds.<\/p>\n The firm retains about 69,800 ETH worth $206m.<\/p>\n This is the second sale of tokens by the DAT<\/span> company since late October. The first time, the firm sold<\/a> $40m worth of assets.<\/p>\n According to ETHZilla representatives, the company intends to keep selling coins until mNAV<\/span> stabilises.<\/p>\n Amid the Ethereum \u201cdump\u201d, the firm\u2019s shares fell 8.7% in a day. Since the start of the year, the price has plunged by more than 65%.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the largest corporate holder of Ethereum\u2014BitMine\u2014kept accumulating, buying 13,412 ETH for $40.61m this week. The company\u2019s treasury already exceeds 4m ETH ($12bn).<\/p>\n “BitMine continues to steadily build its Ethereum reserve; over the past week the company added 98,852 ETH, and now its holdings exceed the critical threshold of 4m ETH. This is a tremendous milestone, achieved in just five and a half months,” said chairman Tom Lee. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n![\"image\"](\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/img-e362c04293c3f68a-2151242336147613-1024x488.png\")
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Trust Wallet\u2019s troubles<\/h2>\n
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What to discuss with friends? <\/h2>\n
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Mining difficulty stabilises<\/h2>\n
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AAVE\u2019s \u201ccivil war\u201d<\/h2>\n
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An uneasy DAT firm<\/h2>\n
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What else to read?<\/h2>\n