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| Hey Insider! Welcome to the Inside Cryptocurrency newsletter! The week has kicked off in the shadow of several cybersecurity incidents causing millions of dollars of losses for crypto investors. Today's issue covers these breaches as well as some of the other most prominent stories in the crypto market, including Coinbase's attempts to buy FTX Europe, Google Cloud's support for 11 new blockchains, MicroStrategy's new Bitcoin purchases, and more. Enjoy your reading, and if you find this newsletter useful, please do not forget to share it with your friends and colleagues! Doğa
p/dogayurduneri | |
| 1 | | The U.S.-based crypto exchange Coinbase has attempted to acquire the bankrupt crypto exchange FTX's Switzerland-headquartered European arm, FTX Europe, twice, according to a recent report from Fortune citing internal documents. The report has pointed out that Coinbase decided not to go forward with the deal, and the acquisition talks never reached a late stage. More: - The acquisition talks were held in November 2022 following the exchange's collapse and in September 2023 before the deadline for the unit's sale expired on Sept. 24.
- A spokesperson for Coinbase has confirmed the report, saying that the company regularly evaluates opportunities to strategically expand its business.
- Crypto exchange Crypto.com and crypto firm Trek Labs also reportedly showed interest in acquiring FTX Europe.
- Coinbase's efforts to buy the European arm aimed to expand the firm's derivatives operations through the unit's highly profitable derivatives business and growing customer base.
- FTX Europe operated under the registration with the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), and it was the only firm offering some popular crypto derivatives products until its bankruptcy.
- Coinbase has accelerated its efforts to expand its derivatives business over the past months, mainly due to the decrease in its revenue from spot trading.
- The platform currently offers crypto derivatives services through its main app, the dedicated Coinbase Derivatives Exchange, and its Bermuda-based international exchange.
Zoom Out: - FTX, previously the third-largest crypto exchange, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November 2022, with all the 130 entities under the roof of FTX Group.
- The downfall followed the claims that the former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), used customer funds in FTX to compensate for losses at the sister company Alameda Research.
Q: Do you think it would be a smart move for Coinbase to acquire FTX Europe in terms of its European expansion plans? Join the conversation here. |     | |
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What the numbers say: Decentralized peer-to-peer (P2P) transactional network Mixin's native token, XIN, declined to as low as $180.29 within the day. The figure represents an over 13% drop from the $207 level seen a day earlier. The token has yet to see any major recovery, though it has experienced slight ups and downs. Relevance: The plummet in the XIN token's price came shortly after Mixin Network suffered a cybersecurity incident resulting in a $200M loss in crypto assets. The team behind the project said the hack was caused by a cyberattack targeting the database of the network's third-party cloud service provider. Following the incident, Mixin temporarily suspended all deposits and withdrawals, stating that it would announce the solution regarding how to deal with the lost assets later. The project team added that it would resume the suspended services once the vulnerabilities are fixed. Mixin founder Feng Xiaodong said just half of their users' assets remained safe after the hack. The incident caused a 13% decrease in the price of the network's native token. Brands that should care: Over the last several months, many other blockchain protocols and crypto-related platforms have fallen victim to cyberattacks from hackers, including CoinEx, Stake, Nansen, and Kroll. Most of these attacks similarly caused millions of dollars of losses in crypto. | | | |
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| 3 | | Seychelles-based crypto exchange HTX, formerly known as Huobi, has recently experienced a cybersecurity incident, losing 5,000 Ether (ETH) worth nearly $8M from one of its hot wallets. The hack was confirmed by the platform's adviser, Justin Sun, on his official social media account. More: - Sun said HTX identified the breach immediately and fully covered the losses incurred from the hack, adding that all funds are safe.
- HTX adviser also underlined that the $8M loss accounts for a relatively small portion of the $3B of assets held by users on the platform and is equal to HTX's two-week revenue.
- Besides, Sun assured that they successfully resolved all related issues, and trading operations continued as usual without any delay.
- On the other hand, HTX offered the hacker a $400,000 bug bounty to receive the stolen funds and even the role of security white hat advisor at HTX.
Zoom Out: - Huobi was recently rebranded as HTX to celebrate its 10th anniversary.
- At the time, the new branding faced backlash, especially on social media, since it reminded many users of the bankrupt crypto exchange FTX.
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| 4 | | A recent filing submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has shown that business intelligence firm MicroStrategy purchased another 5,445 Bitcoin (BTC) for nearly $147.3M from Aug. 1 to Sept. 24. The move brought the company's total Bitcoin reserves to 158,245. More: - The mass purchase cost MicroStrategy an average of $27,053 per token.
- The company issued shares to raise an equivalent amount of money for the latest purchases.
- The firm's Bitcoin stockpile is worth around $4.1B based on the current market prices.
- Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, increased by almost 60% in value since the beginning of the year.
Zoom Out: - MicroStrategy, co-founded by crypto advocate Michael Saylor, began its Bitcoin purchases in 2020 and boosted its reserves especially this year.
- The company is currently known as the largest corporate Bitcoin holder.
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| 5 | | Coinbase, the largest U.S. crypto exchange, has obtained an anti-money laundering (AML) compliance license, registering with the Bank of Spain, the country's central bank, as a crypto exchange and custodian wallet provider. The move will allow the company to offer its crypto services to retail and institutional clients in Spain in compliance with local regulations. More: - The new license will also let Spanish users buy and sell crypto in euro (EUR) and retain custody of their digital assets on Coinbase.
- Also, the latest registration aims to boost Coinbase's expansion efforts across Europe.
- Within the past year alone, the company registered as a virtual asset service provider in several other European countries, such as Italy, Ireland, and the Netherlands.
- The platform's European expansion plans intensified shortly after the firm was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) through a 101-page complaint in its home country, the U.S., over alleged securities law violations.
Zoom Out: - On the other hand, the Bank of Spain opened registrations for crypto service providers in 2021, offering necessary guidelines.
- For registration, the crypto firms must undergo a comprehensive review of their commitment to preventing illegal financial activities, including money laundering and terrorism financing.
- Several other crypto exchanges, such as Crypto.com, Binance, and Bitstamp, have also registered with the country's central bank so far.
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| 6 | | Tech giant Google's cloud computing arm, Google Cloud, has added support for 11 new blockchains to its serverless data warehouse, BigQuery. The new supported networks in the service include Avalanche, Arbitrum, Cronos, Fantom, Near, Optimism, Polkadot, Polygon, Tron, Polygon's Mumbai testnet, and Ethereum's Goerli testnet. More: - The move will allow users to make complex on-chain queries across these networks, such as assessing the number of NFTs minted on a certain blockchain and contrasting transaction fees of different blockchains.
- Before the integration, BigQuery only supported Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Dash, Dogecoin, Ethereum Classic, Litecoin, and Zcash networks.
- The recent addition brought the number of supported networks on BigQuery to 19 from eight.
- The data warehouse service also supports some public data sets, including Google Trends, Google Analytics, and the American Community Survey's demographic information.
Zoom Out: - BigQuery, launched in 2010, is a data analytics service where enterprises can store their data and make queries of vast datasets.
- The platform first introduced its blockchain data services in 2018 with the integration of a Bitcoin data set to offer developers access to on-chain data from the leading network.
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- South Korean crypto exchange Upbit has temporarily suspended its deposit and withdrawal services after mistakenly confusing a scam token with legitimate Aptos (APT) tokens.
- The Miss Universe Organization has denied claims that the Miss Universe Coin project was associated with it in any way.
- Peter Marton, the deputy superintendent at the virtual currency unit of the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), has stepped down from his role.
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INSIDE CRYPTOCURRENCY LEADERBOARD (ALL-TIME) |
 | Staff Writer | | Doga is a tech and science editor who has been writing news for nearly 10 years. She worked for leading tech platforms and mainstrem media channels as an editor and presenter throughout his career. Then, she carried her know-how to more than one platform. She is a part-time cat lover and binge-watcher, and also fond of science, space, and emerging tech. She always has a story to tell. She is a bit addict to the laughter and -unfortunately- the '90s culture. | | This newsletter was edited by Aaron Crutchfield | |
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