Banks had feared being drained of liquidity under the original concept for the digital currency.
Thorchain’s native token RUNE gained 30% in the last 24 hours after crypto venture firm Multicoin Capital revealed that it has accumulated a large position in the asset.
RUNE was trading at roughly $3.90 on Feb. 23 before Multicoin announced their investment, which sent prices soaring to new all-time highs at $5.61.
THORChain’s token was largely unaffected by the Feb. 22 crash that saw BTC and many altcoins dip significantly, with RUNE up 34% in the past seven days. This announcement comes off the back of a strong year for RUNE, with the price up almost 62,000% since it launched 18 months ago.
The rally has pushed RUNE up the market cap rankings to now rank as the 60th-largest crypto asset, with a total capitalization of $1.24 billion.
THORChain started in 2018 and is a decentralized cross-chain automated market maker (AMM)…
Bitcoin
Opinion
Policy & Regulation
Tech
Exchange demands users return Bitcoin bought for $6K during tech glitch
One of Southeast Asia’s biggest crypto exchanges is blaming a technical glitch for the price of Bitcoin dropping down to 300,000 PHP, roughly $6,100, on Feb. 16.
An unknown number of customers of the Philippine Digital Assets Exchange, or PDAX, managed to buy thousands of BTC from the exchange at a massive discount, making them local currency billionaires on paper — at least for a few hours.
A number of PDAX customers withdrew their purchased Bitcoin, up to the exchange’s limit on individual accounts of one BTC per 24 hours. PDAX is reportedly demanding these users refund BTC obtained during the crash under the threat of potential legal action.
The tech glitch led to a 36 hour closure, and several users continue to report remaining locked outside of their accounts.
Still unable to…
According to a new report from crypto market data aggregator, Glassnode, Bitcoin whales offloaded massive amounts of BTC during February.
Glassnode defines any address that holds between 1,000 BTC and 10,000 BTC as a “whale”, while “humpback whales” hold more than 10,000 BTC. The report found that the number of whales increased by more than 14% in the year to Feb. 5, 2021.
Whales and humpbacks’ buying spree peaked in January as they snapped up 80,000 BTC, worth $3.84 billion at today’s prices.
But since February, whales and humpbacks appear to have taken heavy profits, offloading 140,000 BTC — equal to $6.72 billion since the start of the month.
The data shows an inverse-correlation between the trading activities of whales to smaller, but still very wealthy investors. Glassnode noted that “dolphins” and “sharks” — wallets that hold between 100 BTC and 1,000 BTC — shed 95,000 BTC worth $4.56…
Ethereum fees are at record level but even so, one Uniswap user paid well over the going rate with a gas fee of $36,000 for a single transaction.
Crypto twitter has been flooded with complaints about the unsustainable fees for using the Ethereum network but the rates only exacerbated one DeFi user’s fat fingered mistake.
The exorbitant transaction was tweeted by co-founder and CTO of Groundhog Network, Andrew Redden, who confirmed it was Uniswap related.
Presenting: The most expensive approve https://t.co/WQvgjZWFug
— Andrew Redden ️ (@androolloyd) February 23, 2021
The ludicrous fee turned out to be a typing error as the user manually entered two prices in gwei together. The fee of 500,801 gwei should have been one (500 gwei) or the other (801 gwei) but not both.
It came to a whopping 24.94 ETH, or approximately $36,000 at the time it was made.
Average transaction fees have
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has lost his crown as the world’s richest man following a sharp correction in Bitcoin and a slump in his company’s stock that some analysts believe are correlated.
Tesla stock (TSLA) has dropped 21% from its high of $890 on January 26, accelerating those losses over the past two days in a fall to $698. Shares of the electric vehicle maker dipped as much as 13% on Tuesday, Feb. 23, the stock’s worst day since early September.
Fox Business has blamed this week’s stock drop on the company’s association with Bitcoin, citing analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush, who also noted he believes the move was a strategic one for the long-term.
“Investors are starting to tie Bitcoin and Tesla at the hip. While Tesla on paper made roughly a $1 billion on Bitcoin in a month that exceeded all its EV…
Bitcoin
Policy & Regulation
Congress worries crypto used to fund domestic terrorism, Capitol insurrection
A U.S. Congress subcommittee is investigating if domestic extremists are turning to cryptocurrency as a source of funds for their activities.
On Feb. 25, the Subcommittee on National Security, International Development, and Monetary Policy will hold a hearing titled “Dollars Against Democracy: Domestic Terrorist Financing in the Aftermath of Insurrection.” A committee memorandum ahead of the hearing stated that “as scrutiny by traditional banks and payment platforms increases, extremists are turning to solicitations of cryptocurrencies.”
The memorandum lumps cryptocurrencies with other potential avenues for illicit activity financing including crowdfunding, charities, and social media platforms. Two main incidents are used to suggest crypto may have helped fund the Capitol insurrection.
Specifically, on Dec. 8 a French extremist who committed suicide sent 28.15 BTC (worth $522,000 at the time of transfer) to 22 addresses with many belonging to known far-right activists and internet personalities.
More than $250,000 of the BTC…