This Week in Crypto: Markets Settle

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies continued their predictable movements throughout the week, with the world’s largest cryptocurrency stabilising around the US$19,000 range after last week’s volatility in the aftermath of the hotter-than-expected CPI report.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading at US$19,100.98 (+0.21%)while Ethereum (ETH) is trading at US$1,289.98 (+0.65%). Major altcoins such as Solana (SOL), Avalanche (AVAX) and Polkadot (DOT) have also been trading in green within the same period.

Investors remain skittish about a recession, but it appears that nerves are somewhat settled for now after last week’s market turmoil.

“In global macro, we’ve seen better risk-on tones this week. Equities picking up slightly on good bank earnings and better sentiments toward tech stocks”, said trading firm QCP capital in note Wednesday.

“With little calendar events till the next FOMC in early November, crypto continuing to lag behind equities, and skews near flat, protective downside structures are the cheapest levels they have been since June”, it added.

Is Binance controlling Uniswap?

Uniswap founder Hayden Adams has alleged that centralised crypto exchange Binance is using their users’ token holdings to vote on the decentralised protocol’s governance.

On October 18, Binance distributed 13.2 million UNI tokens from its own books, which account for 5.9 per cent of Uniswap’s voting power, and just second to venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which controls 6.7%.

Read more: SG Sovereign Fund Not Deterred By MAS, Backs Uniswap Labs

The amount allotted is approximately 1.3 per cent of the entire supply of UNI, which means that Binance will be able to propose governance votes, as it exceeds a 0.25% threshold, but still falls short of the 4% quorum requirement to pass votes.

Binance has since denied these allegations, after Adams called on Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) to explain the development.

“Binance doesn’t vote with user’s tokens. In this case, there has been a misunderstanding of what happened during the transfer of a large balance of UNI (around 4.6 million) between wallets,” a Binance spokesperson told CoinDesk on Thursday.

“We’re currently in discussions to improve the process to prevent any further misunderstandings from happening again,” they added.

In a tweet on Thursday, CZ said that the delegation is “part of their [Uniswap] protocol”, and that “tokens come to popular platforms #Binance”.

JPMorgan appoints ex-Celsius executive

JPMorgan Chase & Co has appointed former Celsius executive Aaron Iovine as its executive director of digital assets regulatory policy, just days after CEO Jamie Dimon lambasted cryptocurrencies as “decentralised Ponzis”.

Iovine was previously the head of policy and regulatory affairs at Celsius before leaving in September after eight months with the company.

The development comes after Celsius halted all withdrawals for users in June and filed for bankruptcy in July. The crypto lending platform currently owes its users US$4.7 billion.

Earlier this month, Celsius filed a Statement of Financial Affairs to the court, providing a rundown of the withdrawals of former CEO Alex Mashinsky, former strategy chief Daniel Leon, technology chief Nuke Goldstein and other top executives.

The new statement revealed that Goldstein withdrew US$13 million, while Leon, who resigned from his position yesterday, withdrew US$7 million. The pair also took out US$7.8 million and US$4 million in CEL tokens, respectively, with each denoting these tokens as “collateral.”

In September, Mashinsky resigned from Celsius, stating that his continued role as CEO has become an “increasing distraction”.

Ethereum’s Alarm Clock hacked

Ethereum’s Alarm Clock service, which allows users to schedule future transactions, has been hacked for US$260,000 worth of gas fees.

According to blockchain security and data analytics firm PeckShield, the hackers exploited a smart contract bug which allowed them to cancel their scheduled transactions and then receive a refund of gas fees that they paid but at a greater value.

Crypto crime appears to be trending higher this year. Data from Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis indicates that US$718 million has been stolen from DeFi protocols across 11 different hacks so far in October alone, taking the gross tally for the year past US$3 billion and putting 2022 on course to be the biggest year for hacking on record.

Trading Volume

According to data from CoinMarketCap, the global crypto market cap stands at US$913.97 billion, a 0.22% decrease since yesterday. The total crypto market volume over the last 24 hours is US$44.10 billion, a 78.50% decrease.

Fear & Greed Index

Risk appetites are sapped – the Crypto Fear and Greed Index currently stands at 23 indicating extreme fear. The index uses 5-6 measurements to assess the current sentiment of the market and then rates that level of emotion on a scale of 1-100 – 1 is extreme fear and 100 is extreme greed.