By James Davis
Although most crypto assets are now in the green, they were in losses for the better part of last week. The market downturn was triggered by the US Consumer Price Index report and the Hamas attack on Israel.
Hamas, a Gaza-based terror group, attacked the Jewish nation on October 7, leaving thousands of Israelis wounded and killing over 1,200 people. The criminal organization is now holding hostage more than 120 individuals.
Yogi Says Hamas is Using Binance to Collect Contributions
Last Monday, DeFi proponent Yogi took to X to warn Binance that the Hamas terrorists were using the crypto exchange to receive donations. He shared a Hamas-controlled wallet address that had received $50,000 worth of USDT.
That day, crypto journalist @Cryptadamus published a list of exchanges he believed were hosting Hamas-owned accounts. Poloniex, Bittrex, Bitfinex, Huobi, and CexIo were among the trading platforms mentioned.
ChartAlerts founder @devchart noticed an X user attempting to capitalize on the Hamas attack. They had created a $HAMAS token and pumped its price to lure investors. However, the crypto asset is now valueless, according to data from DexTool.
Ethereum L2s Process More Transactions Than Mainnet
In other crypto-related stories, last Tuesday, Messari reported a significant growth in transactions processed on Ethereum layer-2 networks. Per the report, these scaling solutions accounted for over 60% of all Ethereum transactions in the third quarter. Coinbase’s Base processed most of the transactions.
Meanwhile, crypto analyst Bill Morgan wrote that the XRP gains achieved in July when Ripple defeated the United States Securities and Exchange Commission in a legal battle were now wiped out completely. XRP trades at $0.49194 as of this writing after declining from its July monthly peak price of $0.786522.
On Wednesday, Coinbase Director Conor Grogan noted that Alameda Research minted 47% of the circulating USDT tokens. For starters, Alameda Research is the sister company of the fallen crypto exchange, FTX.
That day, @MaryParty noticed something interesting on the Tesla website’s code. According to the X user, the electric carmaker had copied a line of code from Dogecoin to build the website. But that’s not a surprise considering that the company’s owner, Elon Musk, is a huge supporter of the memecoin.
Main Reasons People Want to Own Crypto
Do you ever wonder why people are contemplating stepping into crypto? Well, John Koning has the answers. The financial markets analyst shared findings of research conducted by the Federal Reserve. The top reasons people are looking forward to owning crypto are curiosity about the technology and price appreciation. Surprisingly, no one mentioned payments, remittances, or distrust of banks.
On Thursday, Crypto journalist Matthew Lee wrote a long thread of a conversation between FTX founder Gary Wang and an interrogator during Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial. Wang admitted that Bankman-Fried lied about FTX being liquid when it experienced a bank run last November.
That day, Alameda Research’s former employee Aditya Baradwaj revealed what caused FTX and its sister firm to lose so much money through hacks. According to her, Bankman-Fried ignored putting in place proper security measures. She said there were no regular code audits to identify vulnerabilities.
Tether Appoints New CEO
Meanwhile, stablecoin issuer Tether announced a new boss. The firm’s Chief Technology Officer, Paolo Ardoino, will become the CEO starting in December. He will be taking over from Jean-Louis van der Velde, who is set to become Tether’s advisor.
On Friday, crypto fan Zack Voell wondered how cryptocurrency exchange Nexos was offering a 16% APR on USDT while several crypto lending companies, including Celsius and BlockFi, could not continue doing business.
Genesis Halts Withdrawals Again
Speaking of crypto lending companies, reports emerged last week that the fallen cryptocurrency lender Genesis had once again suspended withdrawals. The Digital Currency Group subsidiary started collapsing last year after being exposed to FTX.
Finally, Investment company Ark Invest took to X to inform its followers that it had resubmitted its Bitcoin spot ETF to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Yesterday, Cointelegraph raised investors’ hope after claiming that the commission had approved BlackRock’s spot ETF filing. The agency has since denied the report.