1. Market Wrap: Bitcoin Drops to $36.3K as DeFi Jumps to $32B on Ether FOMO
Bitcoin has had an up-and-down day and ether has performed similarly. But decentralized finance hit a new milestone.
Bitcoin (BTC) trading around $37,616 as of 21:15 UTC (4:15 p.m. ET). Gaining 1.4% over the previous 24 hours.
Bitcoin’s 24-hour range: $36,207-$38,731
BTC above the 10-hour and the 50-hour moving average on the hourly chart, a bullish signal for market technicians.
2. Meet the Technician Who Unlocks Your Forgotten Crypto Wallets
Bitcoin, while down from its all-time high, is still well above its previous highs over the past few years. And with any exponential rise in the price of BTC, the number of frantic people with bitcoin stashed somewhere in a crypto wallet protected by a password they’ve long since forgotten — well, that’s increased exponentially as well.
This where “Dave Bitcoin,” comes in. The pseudonymous co-founder of Wallet Recovery Services helps people recover access to password-protected wallets, and with each bitcoin bull run, his inbox starts to fill up.
“These days because of the price rise and just the increased interest, we get around 50 to 70 requests daily,” he said. (For our interview we connected over a web chat service that doesn’t require user accounts, just a unique URL. Dave cares about his privacy and prefers an “ephemeral WebRTC conversation.”)
3. Yearn Finance DAI Vault ‘Has Suffered an Exploit’; $11M Drained
Yearn Finance has suffered an exploit in one of its DAI lending pools, according to the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol’s official Twitter account.
At 5:14 p.m. ET, banteg, from the Yearn team, posted in Discord: “Attacker got away with 2.8m, dai vault lost 11.1m.”
An Aave flash loan was used to trigger the vault draining, according to an Ethereum address presumed to be associated with the exploit.
4. Ethereum Transaction Fees Hit Record Highs as Ether, DeFi Coins Soar
Fees for transacting on the Ethereum network breached previous records, passing above $20 for the first time Thursday.
As of 05:45 UTC (12:45 a.m. ET), the average and median transaction fee on Ethereum reached as high as $23.43 and $11.77, respectively, data from Blockchair indicates.
Ethereum last broke its transaction fee record a month ago on Jan. 11, hitting an average $19 per transaction. Current values double the peak transaction fees recorded during the “DeFi summer” of 2020.
The increase in fees correlates with the general price run ether (ETH, -3.34%) has enjoyed since the New Year. The CoinDesk 20 places year-to-date returns on the digital asset at 130%.
The increase in the cost of transacting on the Ethereum network also reflects growing demand for ERC-20 based tokens, particularly stablecoins and the red-hot decentralized finance (DeFi) sector.
Led by tokens like uniswap (UNI) and aave (AAVE), DeFi’s total market capitalization is up 16.37% in 24 hours, according to Messari.
Ethereum miners have been a primary beneficiary of the fee spike. The industry earned some $830 million in ether last month with 40% attributed from fees alone.
5. Following GameStop, South Korea Financial Regulator Extends Ban on Short Sales
South Korean retail investors pointed to the U.S. GameStop saga to pressure local regulators to extend the country’s ban on short-selling stocks. They succeeded, at least for now.
South Korea’s Financial Services Commission announced Wednesday that it has extended its ban on short-selling, where investors bet that a stock will fall in value, until May 2. According to Bloomberg, South Korea’s ban is now the world’s longest such restriction on short sales.
Financial regulators in South Korea initially placed a local ban on short sales in March 2020 along with other countries like Malaysia, Thailand, France, Spain, Italy and Belgium. Economies around the world decided to curb short-selling as the COVID-19 pandemic began destabilizing markets. While most countries quickly lifted the bans, South Korea decided in August 2020 to extend, but only until March 2021.
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February 05, 2021
