By James Davis
For those who like monitoring the prices of cryptocurrencies, the market has remained relatively stable over the last seven days, with Bitcoin and Ethereum recording small gains of 2.43% and 1.76%, respectively. Stellar has seen the most losses (11.7%) among the top altcoins.
On September 5, Stellar Organization wrote on its X account that XLM users should expect a big announcement after ten days. At the time, the token rose by 10.63%. Last Tuesday, Stellar revealed a commercial featuring popular actor Idris Elba, which left many unimpressed. X user and crypto fan @Milan_D said Stellar wasted his time.
In another crypto story on X, Bitcoin enthusiast Udi Wertheimer alerted users of Swan last Monday to withdraw their funds after noticing a hack targeting the Bitcoin exchange’s wallet managed by crypto custodian Fortress Trust. Wertheimer claimed that customer funds were lost and that Ripple had resorted to acquiring Fortress Trust to cover the losses.
Meanwhile, the crypto custodian said no funds were lost. That statement prompted Casa’s Chief Technology Officer, Jameson Lopp, to comment on the matter. He said there was a gap between Fortress Trust’s narrative and Ripple’s. While the former denied loss of funds, the former admitted that the hackers had made away with some customer funds.
On Tuesday, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao announced a $3 million donation to Moroccan users. The donation will be distributed in BNB, the exchange’s native token. Morocco suffered a devastating earthquake earlier last week, leaving several people homeless. This is not the first time Zhao has donated funds to Binance users in areas affected by crises. Last year, he airdropped BNB tokens to Ukranian Binance users when Russians evaded their country.
Court Hands OneCoin Co-Founder a 20-year Jail Term
That day, Journalist Matte Russell Lee wrote a long thread explaining how Karl Sebastian Greenwood’s sentencing went down. Greenwood co-founded OneCoin, a scam crypto project that left investors $4 billion short. Lee said Greenwood was dressed in the Metropolitan Detention Center’s uniform when he arrived at the court. Prosecutors requested a 30-year jail term, but Judge Ramos reduced the sentence to 20 years.
On Wednesday, Bloomberg ETF expert James Seyffart announced another Ethereum exchange-traded fund (ETF) filing. He reported that crypto asset manager Hashdex had filed an Ethereum spot ETF, joining the likes of 21Shares, VanEck, and ARKInvest. Seyffart said the United States Securities and Exchange Commission had now received 15 Ethereum futures ETFs, 4 Ethereum spot ETFs, and 12 Bitcoin spot ETFs.
On the same day, Sam Padilla, a Google Cloud engineer, shared exciting news regarding the company’s collaboration with LayerZero, an interoperability protocol. He said Google Cloud had become a default oracle operator of LayerZero, meaning transactions of decentralized applications built on the protocol will be verified automatically using Google Cloud.
Is Binance in Trouble?
On Thursday, cryptocurrency analyst Adam Cochran wrote that he had some intel suggesting the largest crypto exchange, Binance, might be falling apart. However, Cochran said he needed to verify the story before publishing it.
Binance was recently accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of supporting the sale of unlicensed securities. Last week, the CEO of its American entity, Brian Schroder, left his role as rumors of layoffs circulated on the internet. Norman Reed was the man who replaced Schroder.
Seyffart also expressed concerns over the departures of other top Binance executives. He said the resignations of Binance head of legal Krishna Juvvadi and the firm’s chief risk officer Sidney Majalya were not good signs for the crypto exchange.
On Friday, SuperRare boss John Crain announced his firm had let go of several employees. In the statement shared on his X account, SuperRare cut its workforce by 30%. The CEO said they overhired during last year’s bull run and that the current market downturn had made it difficult to pay salaries. Crain added that he takes full responsibility for the mistake and promised to help the outgoing employees transition to new opportunities.