The similarity in the short forms of the two banks — SVB and SVC Bank — caused a mixup among a few Indian citizens as they took up the concern with the Mumbai-based bank.

The shockwaves caused by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) were felt by countless businesses, including a bank from India with no connection to the California-based banking institution. 

Soon after reports of SVB’s imminent shutdown surfaced on March 10, panic spread across the globe as investments tied to one the biggest banks in the United States depicted an uncertain future. However, a Mumbai-based 116-year-old cooperative bank — Shamrao Vithal Co-operative Bank (SVC Bank) — got caught in the line of fire.

The similarity in the short forms of the two banks — SVB and SVC Bank — caused a mixup among a few Indian citizens as they took up the concern with the Indian bank.

Important announcement#HumSeHaiPossible #SVCBank #Banking #SVC #Importantannouncement pic.twitter.com/p05lHBJm9w

— SVC Bank (@SVC_Bank) March 11, 2023

Clarifying all doubts, SVC Bank issued an announcement distancing itself from the failed American bank now managed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The statement read:

“SVC Bank is completely unrelated to Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) that was based in California. SVC Bank reserves the right to take due legal action on rumor mongers for tarnishing its brand image.”

Furthermore, the Indian bank advised its members, customers and stakeholders to avoid the ongoing rumors of its shutdown. The announcement also disclosed the bank’s profitability in the last year.

Related: Silicon Valley Bank collapse: Everything that’s happened until now

On March 13, U.S. President Joe Biden announced his plan to help the fallen traditional banks, SVB and Signature Bank, “at no cost to the taxpayer.”

Thanks to actions we've taken over the past few days to protect depositors from Silicon Valley and Signature Banks, Americans can have confidence that our system is safe.

People’s deposits will be there when they need them – at no cost to the taxpayer.

— President Biden (@POTUS) March 13, 2023

On the other hand, Biden’s followers on Twitter highlighted that “everything you do or touch costs the taxpayer!”

BTC price faces pullback risks thanks to bearish on-chain movements and formidable technical resistance levels.

Bitcoin (BTC) received a substantial boost this week as the U.S. inflation levels for February came along the lines of market expectations. On March 14, the BTC/USD pair surged to a new 2023 peak at $26,550 after the news.

But while the macroeconomic conditions mat currently be favoring risk-on buyers, certain on-chain and market indicators hint at a potential correction in the near term.

Glassnode’s exchange flow data recorded the largest inflow to exchanges on March 13 since May 2022. This means more supply on exchanges and a potentially higher amount of selling pressure.

The Coin Days Destroyed indicator, which measures the time-weighted transfers of Bitcoin, also shows a small spike, indicating that old hands are moving coins. The indicators might signal profit booking by long-term holders, which can lead to a correction.

Moreover, the funding rate for Bitcoin perpetual swaps is now also elevated with the latest CPI print. In other words, more traders are betting on upside with leveraged positions, increasing the risk of a correction.

The sharp price movement has also recorded a significant spike in the Relative Strength Index (RSI), a technical momentum indicator, with a reading of as high as 82. This means that BTC/USD is generally considered "overbought" in the short term.

BTC price is currently forming a broadening wedge pattern, which depicts the heightened level of volatility. Both buyers and sellers are pushing the price beyond support and resistance levels with the reversals coming quickly.

Buyers failed to stage a pattern breakout on March 14 and are now facing resistance at its ceiling of $26,700 level. At the same time, there is a chance that the price will correct back toward the bottom of the pattern around $19,500 in the coming days.

On the contrary, if Bitcoin price break above the top trendline, the bulls will likely pile in to push the price higher toward $30,000. There are potentially welcome signs for the bulls for this to happen, namely in the BTC options and futures markets.

As Cointelegraph reported, there's still room to run as the indicators have yet to reach previous peak levels.  

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

The post EUR/USD Price Analysis: USD Gains as Bank Concerns Reduce appeared first on Forex Crunch.

The DOJ disagrees with the legal protections given to those involved in the Voyager-Binance.US sale saying the court “improperly” exceeded its authority.

United States officials want to remove a provision included in bankrupt lender Voyager Digital’s plan to sell its digital assets to crypto exchange Binance.US that would prevent them from legally pursuing anyone involved with the sale. 

In a motion filed on March 14 in a New York Bankruptcy Court, U.S. Trustee William Harrington and other government attorneys argued: “the court improperly exceeded its statutory authority" in approving a the pardoning.

They requested the court's approval of the sale be delayed for two weeks to allow them to file an appeal.

Tomorrow just got interesting. #Voyager #VGX #Binance #Bankruptcy #DOJ pic.twitter.com/23bqIWpX2M

— VGX Heroes (@VGX_Heroes) March 15, 2023

The provision protects those involved in carrying out the sale from being held personally liable for its implementation, which the court approved on March 7 after it was found that 97% of Voyager customers favored the plan, according to a Feb. 28 filing.

While U.S. officials are not objecting to other parts of the proposed sale, they argue the provision would impede the government's “ability to enforce its police and regulatory powers.”

Notice of Expedited Motion for Stay Pending Appeal filed by US Department of Justice in @investvoyager Bankruptcy

Looks like the exculpation provisions (legal protections for certain individuals) is the main thing holding up the dealhttps://t.co/a40FyPcoLa pic.twitter.com/zplip3eJob

— Shingo Lavine (@shingolavine) March 15, 2023

On March 6 the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also objected to the plan, particularly the “extraordinary” and “highly improper” exculpation provision, arguing the repayment token would constitute an unregistered security offering and that Binance.US is operating an unregulated securities exchange.

Related: Binance.US, Alameda, Voyager Digital and the SEC — the ongoing court saga

A hearing on the issue is set to occur on March 15 at 2:00 pm local time.

Based on the latest estimates, the plan is expected to result in Voyager creditors recovering approximately 73% of the value of their funds.

The hacker committed a $196 million flash loan attack on the Ethereum-based lending protocol on March 13.

Ethereum-based noncustodial lending protocol Euler Finance is trying to cut a deal with the exploiter that stole millions from its protocol, demanding the hacker returns 90% of the funds they stole within 24 hours or face legal consequences.

Euler Labs sent its ultimatum to the flash loan attacker who exploited the platform for $196 million by transferring the hacker 0 Ether (ETH) with an attached message on March 14:

“Following up on our message from yesterday. If 90% of the funds are not returned within 24 hours, tomorrow we will launch a $1M reward for information that leads to your arrest and the return of all funds.”

euler just sent an on-chain message to the hacker pic.twitter.com/0wKIW51NjM

— 0xngmi (llamazip arc) (@0xngmi) March 14, 2023

The threat of law enforcement comes as Euler sent the hacker a much more civil message the day before.

“We understand you are responsible for this morning’s attack on the Euler platform,” it read. “We are writing to see whether you would be open to speaking with us about any potential next steps.”

The request for a 90% fund return would see the hacker send back $176.4 million while holding onto the remaining $19.6 million.

However, many observers have noted that the hacker has very little to no incentive to follow through with the deal.

Look over your shoulder for the rest of your life, or take a $20m deal. No brainer.

Although, they could easily be state actors and aren’t really worried about low levels feds. https://t.co/i5zUSDqFca

— drnick ️² (@DrNickA) March 15, 2023

“If I was the hacker I’d simply say ‘to anyone who manages to track me down, I will give you $2 million not to tell Euler,’” one observer said.

“Yeh he has 200 Million they have 2 Million. He wins in a bidding war,” another Twitter user wrote in response.

Euler Labs said it was already working with law enforcement in the United States and the United Kingdom, along with engaging blockchain intelligence platforms Chainalysis, TRM Labs and the broader Ethereum community, to help track down the hacker.

An update on our work today to recover funds for Euler protocol users.

Here are a few actions we took immediately:

1. Stopped the direct attack as soon as possible by helping disable the EToken module, which blocked deposits and the vulnerable donation function

2. Engaged TRM… https://t.co/6ZClE9uGoH

— Euler Labs (@eulerfinance) March 14, 2023

Related: DeFi protocol Platypus suffers $8.5M flash loan attack, suspect identified

The lending platform added it was able to promptly stop the flash loan attack by blocking deposits and the “vulnerable” donation function.

As for the exploited code, the team explained that the vulnerability “was not discovered” in the audit of its smart contract, which had existed on-chain for eight months until bei exploited on March 13.

Euler Labs works with various security groups to perform audits of the Euler Finance protocol.

While the vulnerable code was reviewed and approved during an outside audit, the vulnerability was not discovered as part of the audit.

The vulnerability remained on-chain for eight… https://t.co/M3PYSOwHhL

— Euler Labs (@eulerfinance) March 14, 2023

It's unclear whether Anchorage Digital’s layoffs relate to the current turmoil in the U.S. banking sector.

Crypto bank Anchorage Digital announced it would be letting go of 75 employees, representing approximately 20% of its workforce, citing regulatory uncertainty in the United States as a factor in its decision.

In a March 14 statement Anchorage labeled the layoffs as “a strategic realignment to better focus our resources,” and pointed to “broad macroeconomic challenges, and crypto market volatility” as other factors contributing to its shift in strategy.

It said the market conditions had boosted demand for its product and client assets under custody "are at an all-time high," but added:

"These same macroeconomic, market, and regulatory dynamics are creating headwinds for our business and the crypto industry.”

Anchorage — which became the first U.S.-based crypto firm to be granted a national trust bank charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in January 2021 — expressed continued confidence in the digital asset landscape and its ability to build “regulated solutions for digital asset holders.”

The layoffs come at a time when the banking system in the U.S. is in a state of disarray after three regional banks went under in just one week.

Related: Banks collapsing; stablecoins depegging — What is happening? Watch The Market Report live

Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Silvergate Bank, and Signature Bank have all gone under since March 8, prompting the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to take the extraordinary step of guaranteeing all customer deposits in excess of the standard $250,000 it normally guarantees for SVB and Signature.

@federalreserve @USTreasury @FDICgov issue statement on actions to protect the U.S. economy by strengthening public confidence in our banking system, ensuring depositors' savings remain safe: https://t.co/YISeTdFPrO

— Federal Reserve (@federalreserve) March 12, 2023

It’s unclear if the recent developments regarding SVB, Signature, and Silvergate contributed to Anchorage’s decision to cut staff.

Anchorage did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.

Layoffs within the crypto industry have considerably slowed since the beginning of the year after the nearly 3,000 positions cut by crypto firms such as crypto exchanges Coinbase and crypto.com in January were followed by a more muted 570 layoffs for February.

GPT-4 completed many of the tests within the top 10% of the cohort, while the original version of ChatGPT often finished up in the bottom 10%.

GPT-4, the latest version of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot, ChatGPT, can pass high school tests and law school exams with scores ranking in the 90th percentile and has new processing capabilities that were not possible with the prior version.

The figures from GPT-4’s test scores were shared on March 14 by its creator OpenAI revealing it can also convert image, audio and video inputs to text in addition to handling “much more nuanced instructions” more creatively and reliably.

“It passes a simulated bar exam with a score around the top 10% of test takers,” OpenAI added. “In contrast, GPT-3.5’s score was around the bottom 10%.”

The figures show that GPT-4 achieved a score of 163 in the 88th percentile on the LSAT exam — the test college students need to pass in the United States to be admitted into law school.

GPT4’s score would put it in a good position to be admitted into a top 20 law school and is only a few marks short of the reported scores needed for acceptance to prestigious schools such as Harvard, Stanford, Princeton or Yale.

The prior version of ChatGPT only scored 149 on the LSAT’s putting it in the bottom 40%.

GPT-4 also scored 298 out of 400 in the Uniform Bar Exam — a test undertaken by recently graduated law students permitting them to practice as a lawyer in any U.S. jurisdiction.

The old version of ChatGPT struggled in this test, finishing in the bottom 10% with a score of 213 out of 400.

As for the SAT Evidence-Based Reading & Writing and SAT Math exams taken by U.S. high school students to measure their college readiness, GPT-4 scored in the 93rd and 89th percentile respectively.

GPT-4 excelled in the “hard” sciences too, posting well above average percentile scores in AP Biology (85-100%), Chemistry (71-88%) and Physics 2 (66-84%).

However its AP Calculus score was fairly average, ranking in the 43r to 59th percentile.

Another area where GPT-4 lacked was in English Literature exams, posting scores in the 8th to 44th percentile across two separate tests.

OpenAI said GPT-4 and GPT-3.5 took these tests from the 2022-2023 practice exams, and that “no specific training” was taken by the language processing tools:

“We did no specific training for these exams. A minority of the problems in the exams were seen by the model during training, but we believe the results to be representative.”

The results prompted fear in the Twitter community too.

Related: How will ChatGPT affect the Web3 space? Industry answers

Nick Almond, the founder of FactoryDAO told his 14,300 Twitter followers on March 14 that GPT4 is going to “scare people” and it will “collapse” the global education system.

Assessment theory was a big chunk of my life for several years. I was banging on about this day coming many years ago. I literally sounded like the resident crank at the time.

But… really this means that anything but invigilated assessment is over from this point on.

— drnick ️² (@DrNickA) March 14, 2023

Former Coinbase director, Conor Grogan, said he inserted a live Ethereum smart contract into GPT-4 and instantly pointed to several “security vulnerabilities” and outlined how the code can be exploited:

I dumped a live Ethereum contract into GPT-4.

In an instant, it highlighted a number of security vulnerabilities and pointed out surface areas where the contract could be exploited. It then verified a specific way I could exploit the contract pic.twitter.com/its5puakUW

— Conor (@jconorgrogan) March 14, 2023

Earlier smart contract audits on ChatGPT found that its first version was also capable at spotting out code bugs to a reasonable degree too.

Rowan Cheung, the founder of AI newsletter “The Rundown” shared a video of GPT transcribing a hand drawn fake website on a piece of paper into code.

I just watched GPT-4 turn a hand-drawn sketch into a functional website.

This is insane. pic.twitter.com/P5nSjrk7Wn

— Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) March 14, 2023

The pro-crypto bank was reportedly under dual investigations to uncover if it was taking proactive measures to stop money laundering.

The cryptocurrency-friendly Signature Bank was reportedly being investigated by two United States government bodies prior to its collapse.

According to a March 15 Bloomberg report citing people familiar with the matter, investigators with the Justice Department were examining whether Signature took adequate measures to detect potential money laundering by its clients.

It was noted the regulator was particularly concerned as to whether the bank was taking preemptive measures to monitor transactions for "signs of criminality" and properly vetting account holders.

A separate probe by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was also “taking a look” at the bank according to two anonymous sources. Details regarding the nature of the SEC's probe were not reported.

It's unclear when the investigations began and what effect, if any, they had on the recent decision by New York state regulators to close the bank.

It's reported Signature and its staff are not accused of wrongdoing and the investigations may be finalized without any charges or further action taken by the SEC or the Department of Justice.

This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.

The investigations are separate from one another but will both look into Silicon Valley Bank's collapse and stocks sold by executives prior to its fall.

The United States Justice Department and the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) have reportedly launched inquiries into the sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) — which was shuttered by regulators last week amid a historic bank run. 

According to “people familiar with the matter,” — cited in a March 14 report from The Wall Street Journal — the probes will look into events that led to the bank collapse, along with the stock sales SVB financial officers undertook in the weeks leading up to the closure.

Securities filing show the bank’s CEO Greg Becker and CFO Daniel Beck sold shares two weeks before the bank's failure, sparking outrage from some observers.

Becker sold $3.6 million worth of shares on Feb. 27, while Beck sold $575,180 in stocks that same day, according to Newsweek. Altogether, SVB executives and directors cashed out $84 million worth of stock over the past two years, CNBC reported.

The probes are however in the early stages and may not lead to charges or allegations of wrongdoing, the people said.

Another person with direct knowledge of the situation, quoted by NPR, said a formal announcement from the Justice Department is expected in the coming days.

Cointelegraph contacted the SEC and the Justice Department but did not receive an immediate response.

We must get a full accounting of what happened and why so those responsible can be held accountable.

In my Administration, no one is above the law.

— President Biden (@POTUS) March 13, 2023

Only two days after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, SEC chairman Gary Gensler made a stark warning that the regulator would be on the lookout for violators of U.S. securities laws.

“Without speaking to any individual entity or person, we will investigate and bring enforcement actions if we find violations of the federal securities laws,” said Gensler.

Related: Silicon Valley Bank was the tip of a banking iceberg

The U.S. Federal Reserve is also looking into the collapse of the bank in its own way — namely, how it supervised and regulated the now-collapsed financial institution.

Meanwhile, SVB Financial Group, along with two executives have been reportedly sued by shareholders on March 13, accused of failing to disclose how rising interest rates would leave the bank “particularly susceptible” to a bank run.

The lawsuit seeks damages for SVB investors from June 16, 2021, to March 10, 2023.

Circle’s earlier disclosure that $3.3 billion worth of USDC reserves were held with Silicon Valley Bank resulted in it losing market share to its competitor USDT.

Circle CEO and co-founder, Jeremy Allaire, confirmed that, as of March 13, the stablecoin issuer has been “able to access” its $3.3 billion of funds held with the collapsed bank, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).

Speaking with Bloomberg Markets on March 14, Allaire said that he believed that “if not everything, very close to everything was able to clear” from the failed lender.

USD Coin (USDC) — the stablecoin issued by Circle — briefly de-pegged following news that $3.3 billion of its cash reserves were stuck on SVB.

The stablecoin’s dollar peg has since recovered, but mass redemptions of USDC have resulted in the market cap of the stablecoin dropping by nearly 10% since March 11 according to TradingView.

Meanwhile, throughout the same timeframe, USDC peer Tether (USDT) has recorded a slight increase in its market cap since March 11, climbing by over 1% to $73.03 billion.

Related: USDC depegged because of Silicon Valley Bank, but it's not going to default

The temporarily locked funds had a significant effect on USDC given the $3.3 billion represented less than 8% of the token’s reserves according to its January reserve report released on March 2.

Can never be sure in crypto but, it looks to be ok.

8.25% of Circle’s reserves are stuck… leaving 91.75% of their funds liquid. Even in the case that funds are totally lost, Coinbase will step in to sure up #USDC

Market reaction seems to be just total panic led by recency… https://t.co/vs1junbFys

— tedtalksmacro (@tedtalksmacro) March 11, 2023

The report asserted USDC was over 100% collateralized with over 80% of the reserve consisting of short-dated United States Treasury Bills — highly liquid assets which are direct obligations of the U.S. government and considered one of the safest investments globally.

The platform said "things are back in order" after it identified and fixed an internal systems issue that took its website offline for almost six hours.

Social media platform Reddit is back online after it identified and implemented a fix for a "major outage" that made browsing impossible for desktop and mobile users for almost six hours.

The platform first noted it was offline at 7:18 pm UTC, according to Reddit Status, and said it was working to identify the issue.

About 30 minutes later at 7:56 pm UTC, it said it had identified an internal systems issue and is working to determine a fix, finding a confirmed fix around two hours later, stating:

"We’ve identified a fix which may take some time to implement, in the meantime ready your bananas  (or eat them!)."

In an update four hours after its initial announcement, Reddit said it had "implemented our fix" and was "slowly allowing things to ramp back up" and later confirmed "things are back in order" after a nearly six-hour outage.

Users who visited the website when it was offline saw blank boxes in some places where threads and comments would normally be shown. As of writing the website pages now show content and it appears to be functioning normally.

Reddit is a popular platform for cryptocurrency investors and enthusiasts, with some of the more popular subreddits including r/CryptoCurrency, r/Bitcoin and r/CryptoMarkets.

According to APE Wisdom, the top trending cryptocurrencies on Reddit (by the number of mentions) in the past 24 hours include Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and USD Coin (USDC).

Ethereum validators are now one step away from being able to unstake their Ether from the Beacon Chain

The Shapella hard fork has been executed on the Goerli testnet — the last test run before Ethereum validators will be able to withdraw their Ether (ETH) from the Beacon Chain.

There were however issues with the hard fork. Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko noted that while deposits were being processed it didn't run as smoothly as it could have because several testnet validators didn't upgrade their client software before the Goerli fork.

Deposits are being processed (https://t.co/CxYtPcGMCp), but it seems like several validators haven't upgraded. Looking into it

One challenge with testnet validators is that given the ETH is worthless, there's less incentive to run a validator/monitor it.

— timbeiko.eth (@TimBeiko) March 14, 2023

He blamed it to testnet validators having "less incentive" to make the upgrade given that the "ETH is worthless" but expects validators to make proper adjustments ahead of the fork on the Ethereum Mainnet.

Through Ethereum Investment Proposal EIP-4895, staked ETH from the Beacon Chain will be "pushed" to the execution layer.

While the Shapella upgrade comprises of five different EIPs, EIP-4895 has been by far the most anticipated one as it move Ethereum one step closer to a fully functional proof-of-stake system.

Shapella is expected to take effect on the Ethereum Mainnet in April

The execution on Goerli was shared in a live stream by EthStaker on YouTube on March. 15.

We're going LIVE in ~10 minutes to discuss the Goerli Shapella Upgrade

Watch here https://t.co/PDFvmqyFGM

— r/EthStaker (@ethStaker) March 14, 2023

This is a developing story and more will be added when new information is revealed.

The “big four” Australian bank is the second to issue a stablecoin and hopes to support transactions by corporate clients by the end of the year.

National Australia Bank (NAB) announced March 14 that it had executed the first-ever cross-border stablecoin transfer on a layer 1 public blockchain. The intrabank transfer used the bank’s fully backed AUDN stablecoin tied to the Australian dollar (AUD). 

The transaction was conducted on the Ethereum blockchain and used smart contracts for seven currencies, according to a statement released by the bank. Those currencies were Australian, New Zealand, Singapore and United States dollars, as well as euros, Japanese yen and British pounds, according to a statement released by Fireblocks.

The stablecoins were freshly minted as bank liabilities on the ERC-20 standard. NAB partnered with the Fireblocks platform and BlockFold professional services consultants on the project. NAB executive general manager for markets Drew Bradford commented:

“We believe that elements of the future of finance will be blockchain enabled and we’re already witnessing rapid change in the tokenisation market. The stringent governance frameworks we have in place ensures we can support the creation of a safe and reliable digital financial system.”

The pilot showed the technology’s potential to cut transaction times from days to minutes and was part of NAB’s focus on simplifying international banking protocols, the bank said. It added that it expected to support corporate and institutional clients transacting in digital assets by the end of the year.

NAB’s stablecoin, the AUDN, deployed for instant cross-border payments.https://t.co/5gCUFm9ptJ

— Blockchain Australia (@BlockchainAUS) March 13, 2023

NAB is the second major Australian bank to issue an Australian dollar-backed stablecoin. Its AUDN coin was designed with an eye to cross-border transfer and carbon credit trading, according to an announcement made in January. In February, NAB was listed as one of nine founding banks making up the international Carbonplace blockchain carbon credit transaction network.

Related: Digital assets could add $40B a year to Aussie GDP: Tech Council report

NAB competitor Australia and New Zealand Banking Group issued the first AUD-linked stablecoin, A$DC, in March 2022.

The new features allow a user to manage which servers are able to receive their IP address.

Web3 wallet app Metamask has introduced a number of new features aimed at enhancing privacy and giving users more control, according to a March 14 blog post by the developer. The new features come after Metamask had previously been criticized for allegedly intruding on users’ privacy.

MetaMask Mobile v6 is now available to everyone! Our biggest release yet fixes issues around slow load times and provides a new and improved UX that gives users more control over their funds and digital identities.

Upgrade to the latest version todayhttps://t.co/tGtA4GUXR1

— MetaMask (@MetaMask) March 14, 2023

Previously, Metamask used its Infura RPC node to connect to Ethereum automatically, whenever a user first set up the wallet. Although the user could change the settings later, this still meant that the user’s public address was transmitted to Infura before they had a chance to change their node, according to a report from Ethereum node operator Chase Wright.

Infura is owned by Metamask’s parent company, Consensys.

Under the new version of Metamask extension, labeled “10.25.0,” users are prompted with the option to use an “advanced configuration” during setup. Choosing this option reveals a number of settings that can be configured, including one that allows the user to choose a different RPC node than the default Infura one.

In addition to letting the user enter their own node details, the “advanced configuration” dialogue box also allows them to turn off incoming transactions, phishing detection, and enhanced token detection. These features require data to be sent to third-parties such as Etherscan and jsDeliver, according to the app’s UI. Users concerned about privacy can now turn off these features during setup if they want to.

According to the post, the new mobile version of Metamask also includes privacy enhancements. Previously, the app did not allow users to connect one account to a Web3 app while leaving another account disconnected. The user only had the option of connecting all of them or none at all.

However, the new version allows users to select which particular accounts they want to connect to an app, without disclosing the other addresses they control.

In its post, Metamask stated that it has always intended to preserve privacy for users and that it believes these new features align with these values, stating:

“Data exploitation goes against MetaMask core values. Instead, we believe in equipping our community with the founding principles that guide our development—true ownership and privacy[…]We are committed to protecting the privacy of our users so that you will not, and ultimately, cannot be exploited by yet another centralized entity.”

On November 23, Metamask became heavily criticized in the crypto community for releasing a privacy policy that stated it would collect IP addresses from users. Consensys responded to the criticism on Nov. 24 by saying that RPC nodes have always collected IP addresses and that the substance of the privacy policy was not new, although the language used in it had changed. On Dec. 6, Consensys announced that IP addresses collected through Infura would no longer be stored for more than 7 days.

A three-judge state appeals panel in California ruled late Monday that these services don't have to continue to categorize people as employees. Further, it allows Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and others to bypass state laws requiring worker protections and benefits.

The ruling pertains to California Proposition 22, approved by voters in November. Proposition 22 says drivers for companies like Uber and Lyft are independent contractors with no benefit entitlements such as paid sick leave and unemployment insurance.

A lower California court ruled Proposition 22 illegal, but Monday's ruling reversed that decision. An appeal to the California Supreme Court could take months.

Uber stock jumped as high as 5.8% in afternoon trading to 32.36, but reversed and closed at 32.32, down o.1% on the stock market today. Lyft climbed o.6% to 8.51, while DoorDash jumped 5.9% to 56.99.

"Today's ruling is a victory for app-based workers and the millions of Californians who voted for Prop 22," Tony West, Uber's chief legal officer, said in a written statement. "We're pleased that the court respected the will of the people."

But the ruling is a defeat for labor unions.

"Today the Appeals Court chose to stand with powerful corporations over working people, allowing companies to buy their way out of our state's labor laws and undermine our state constitution," Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation and a former state assemblywoman, said in a written statement. "It would be an understatement to say we are disappointed by this decision."

Uber stock is up 18% this year.

Please follow Brian Deagon on Twitter at @IBD_BDeagon for more on tech stocks, analysis and financial markets.

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The post Uber, Lyft Shares Rise As California Court Rules Drivers Can Be Independent appeared first on Investor's Business Daily.

For the quarter ending Jan. 31, Mountain View, Calif.-based SentinelOne reported an adjusted loss of 13 cents a share vs. a 17-cent loss a year earlier. In the SentinelOne earnings report, revenue rose 92% to $126.1 million.

Analysts expected SentinelOne to report revenue of $124.7 million and a loss of 16 cents a share.

Annual recurring revenue from subscription-based services rose 88% to $548.7 million versus estimates of $545.7 million.

For the current quarter ending in April, SentinelOne predicted revenue of $137 million, in line with estimates.

SentinelOne earnings were released after the market close Tuesday. Shares fell 2.8% to near 14 in extended trading on the stock market today. SentinelOne stock had retreated nearly 4% in 2022.

The cybersecurity firm's software detects malware on laptops, mobile phones and other "endpoints" that access corporate networks. Also, it's building a broad, threat-detection cybersecurity platform.

Follow Reinhardt Krause on Twitter @reinhardtk_tech for updates on 5G wireless, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and cloud computing.

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The post SentinelOne Earnings Beat Estimates, Stock Falls On Outlook appeared first on Investor's Business Daily.

NatWest’s head of fraud protection emphasized the importance of self-custody in crypto amid the bank imposing new crypto restrictions.

NatWest, a retail and commercial bank in the United Kingdom, is taking measures to protect customers from potential crypto losses amid Bitcoin (BTC) hitting multi-month highs.

On March 14, NatWest introduced major restrictions on payments to cryptocurrency exchanges, imposing daily and monthly caps for such transactions.

According to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph, NatWest has set a 1,000 British pounds ($1,216) limit for daily transactions involving crypto exchanges. The bank has also imposed a 30-day payment limit of 5,000 GBP ($6,080).

The latest restrictions by NatWest aim to help protect customers from losing “life changing sums of money,” the bank said, adding that crypto investments are risky due to a significant amount of scams in the industry.

“We have seen an increase in the number of scams using cryptocurrency exchanges and we are acting to protect our customers,” NatWest’s head of fraud protection Stuart Skinner said. The executive emphasized the importance of self-custody in crypto and cautioned crypto investors against delegating storage of their assets to a third party, stating:

“You should always have sole control of your cryptocurrency wallet and nobody else should have access. If you didn’t set the wallet up yourself or can’t access the money then this is likely to be a scam.”

According to NatWest, crypto scammers have been increasingly capitalizing on the ongoing cost-of-living crisis due to promises of high returns.

“Criminals play on a lack of understanding of how cryptocurrency markets work and their unpredictability, to encourage investors to transfer money to exchanges, which are often set up in the customer’s own name by the criminal or by the victim, under duress from the criminal,” the bank said. Men over 35 are most at risk due to them being more willing to take the risk on their investments, the announcement notes.

In the statement, NatWest also shared a few steps to help avoid falling victim to cryptocurrency scams, including recommendation to never share one's private keys with others. The bank also advised crypto investors to read all information at a slow pace to avoid rushed investments and fake websites. NatWest also recommended investors to beware of giveaways as one of the most widespread scams in crypto.

Related: Binance to lose its British pound on- and off-ramp provider in 9 weeks

NatWest is known for cutting all credit and debit card payments to Binance crypto exchange in 2021. At the time, the company referred to a high level of crypto investment scams as well.

The news comes amid Bitcoin surging above $26,000 as the United States Consumer Price Index (CPI) data indicated that inflation climbed 6% year-on-year and 0.4% month-on-month. BTC price growth is also likely to be attributed to the ongoing uncertainty around failures of major banks in the United States, including Silicon Valley Bank, Silvergate and Signature Bank.

The crypto exchange says in its amicus brief that the accused inside traders can’t answer for its listing decisions in the current regulatory uncertainty.

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase filed an amicus brief in support of a motion to dismiss the case brought by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against former Coinbase product manager Ishan Wahi and other for insider trading. Coinbase condemns the defendants conduct, it said in the brief, but supports the defendants’ motion because of the SEC’s assumption that the exchange listed securities on its platform.

Coinbase stated in its amicus (“friend of the court”) brief that it had fully cooperated with the investigation of Wahi, his brother and their friend and it implied that it was under judgment in the case as well:

“The SEC asks this Court to adjudicate issues at the heart of Coinbase’s listing decisions […] in litigation against unsympathetic individual defendants who stole Coinbase’s nonpublic information.”

The exchange denied selling securities, but stated that it would like to sell digital asset securities, were it not for the “state of uncertainty” in regulation:

“Coinbase would like to expand its platform to include digital-asset securities (such as tokenized stocks), but no U.S. company can do so until the SEC provides a clear regulatory framework.”

It also noted that the Justice Department did not press securities law charges against the defendants in its case. Ishan Wahi pleaded guilty in that case, and his brother also pleaded guilty.

Arguing that it does not sell securities, Coinbase said the SEC approved its public share listing in 2021 without saying the exchange’s business model could allow the sale of securities or that it sold securities. Further, Coinbase argued, its listing do not pass the often-cited Howey test, established by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1946, as they are neither investments nor contracts under it.

Related: US authorities arrest former Coinbase manager, alleging insider crypto trading

Coinbase also cited the major questions doctrine, reconfirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court last year in the case of West Virginia v. EPA, which set the boundaries for agencies’ overreach. Industry advocacy groups the Digital Chamber of Commerce and Blockchain Association have made similar points in their own amicus briefs.

Last week I testified to Congress about Coinbase’s futile effort to register with the SEC so we can begin to offer digital asset securities. Today we filed an amicus brief in SEC v. Wahi that explains why this misguided suit only makes things worse. 1/5https://t.co/9iWYrWwpiI

— paulgrewal.eth (@iampaulgrewal) March 14, 2023

Finally, the brief held that the SEC’s actions violate “fundamental principles of fair notice and due process and raises serious concerns under the APA [Administrative Procedure Act]. “Coinbase seeks more engagement by the Securities and Exchange Commission with the cryptocurrency industry, not less. But that engagement must take the right form,” it concluded.

Silicon Valley Bank, under the SVB Financial Group (SIVB) umbrella, was the bank of choice for many early biotech companies. Its failure shows the cracks in the fundraising model for early-stage biotech companies, says Robert Cote, founder and chief executive of Cote Capital. Now, many of those companies are on the brink of defaulting on their loans, he said in an interview.

Mina Tadrus, founder and chief executive of Tadrus Capital, says these firms will need to find alternative sources of cash — all while competing against other companies in the same straits.

"The increased competition for funding could lead to higher valuations and more stringent terms, making it harder for smaller startups to access capital," Tadrus said in an email to Investor's Business Daily. "The fewer investment opportunities could mean fewer exit opportunities (initial public offerings or acquisitions) and lower returns for investors in venture-backed businesses."

Meanwhile, biotech stocks are trying to claw back from a dive last week amid SVB's demise. In midday trades on the stock market today, IBD's Medical-Biomed/Biotech industry group had climbed 1.7% after a 2.1% jump on Monday.

SVB's failure is largely a communication problem, says Aaron Rafferty, chief executive of community investing outfit Standard DAO.

The bank saw fewer deposits and increasing withdrawals early this year. SVB tried to shore up its liquidity by selling some $21 billion of its longer-term securities. But given the interest rate, that sale was at a $1.8 billion loss. Later, SVB planned to raise additional capital to cover that loss.

Further, SVB made those moves around the same time crypto-focused lender Silvergate Capital (SI) failed. Things quickly spun out of control as companies scrambled to withdraw their money from SVB.

The U.S. government stepped in to secure the deposits. But the whole debacle shows the issue with the early-stage model of investing in biotech companies, says Cote.

These companies are often living "paycheck to paycheck" — that is, fundraising round to fundraising round. Each time they hit a milestone, they announce another round. But those rounds aren't taking off due to low valuations. So, those companies are unable to pay the interest on their loans.

Meanwhile, more mature biotech companies aren't able to exit the market through an acquisition or by filing an initial public offering and joining the ranks of publicly traded biotech stocks. Without either of those, the companies can't pay the principle when their loans become due.

"It's a double whammy," Cote said. "That's why Silicon Valley has a problem. The collapse revealed that the venture capital model is broken. It's broken in a lot of ways."

For most biotech stocks, the impact is minimal. Axsome Therapeutics (AXSM) and Rhythm Pharmaceuticals (RHTM) have disclosed cash deposits with SVB. Vir Biotechnology (VIR) has about $220 million with the bank.

Mizuho Securities analyst Graig Suvannavejh sees the collapse as a buying opportunity. Across the board, the exposure for biotech stocks appears limited. Plus, the federal government is covering the deposits that SVB can't.

"We suggest taking advantage of the recent volatility — not only more broadly across the biotech sector, but also within our coverage universe," he said in a recent note to clients.

Meanwhile, William Blair analysts are more cautious. For publicly traded biotech stocks, the demise of SVB demonstrates the low level of cash available within the industry. Out of 358 biotech stocks the investment bank tracks, 12.5% have just one year of cash on hand and 21.2% have one-and-a-half years of cash on their balance sheets.

"While we know expenses in the sector can vary greatly quarter to quarter as clinical (studies) are initiated and wound down, we believe this estimate highlights that many companies in the sector may experience pressure following the SVB event, and we continue to approach the sector with a stock-picking view," they said in a recent note.

Still, early-stage biotech companies will feel the brunt of the SVB fallout, says Tadrus from Tadrus Capital. That pain is still being felt among biotech stocks. The Spdr S&P Biotech (XBI) exchange-traded fund has climbed for the past two days, but still remains below its 200-day moving average, according to MarketSmith.com.

While scrambling to find alternative sources of funding — or face defaulting on their loans — they will also need to keep their research in mind. SVB, Silvergate and newly shuttered Signature Bank (SBNY) in New York were all major lenders for the venture capital and startup ecosystem, Tadrus says.

"Their closure could affect the ability of these companies to access the necessary funding and cash flow they need to continue their research projects," he said. "The impact will depend on how much of a disruption is caused by the closure and if alternative sources of financing can be found."

Follow Allison Gatlin on Twitter at @IBD_AGatlin.

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The post Biotech Stocks And The SVB Collapse — Here's What We Know appeared first on Investor's Business Daily.

The raised 83 Relative Strength Rating means SolarEdge stock is among the top 17% of all stocks for price performance this past year. Additionally, the upgrade puts it in an elite group of stocks. Market research shows that the best stocks to buy and watch, stocks that go on to make the biggest gains, tend to have an RS Rating of above 80 in the early stages of their moves. Watchlist candidate SolarEdge just climbed up into that group.

Among its other key ratings SolarEdge stock boasts a near-perfect 97 Composite Rating, out of 99. Its 87 Earnings Per Share Rating puts it in the top 13% of companies for recent and long-term profit growth. It also has an outstanding A- Accumulation/Distribution Rating on an A+ to E scale. Likewise, its SMR Rating (sales + profit margins + return on equity) is a bullish A.

See How IBD Helps You Make More Money In Stocks

SolarEdge stock advanced Tuesday afternoon to above 318.  It recently formed a long cup-with-handle base but hasn't broken out yet. While the stock is not near a proper buy zone right now, see if it is able to form and break out from a proper chart pattern.

The company saw both earnings and sales growth rise last quarter. Earnings per share soared 160% to $2.86. Revenue rose 61%, up from 59% the prior quarter, to $890.7 million. EPS growth has been a bit erratic with EPS up in two of the last four quarters and down in the other two. However, sales have zoomed higher during that time, ranging from 52% to 62% growth every quarter during that time.

SolarEdge stock holds the No. 1 rank among its peers in the Energy-Solar industry group. Canadian Solar (CSIQ), which makes solar cells and other solar energy products, is No. 2. Array Technologies (ARRY), which makes devices that turn solar panel arrays to always be facing the sun during the day, is No. 3.

IBD's proprietary Relative Strength Rating measures market leadership with a 1 (worst) to 99 (best) score. The rating shows how a stock's price behavior over the last 52 weeks stacks up against all the other stocks in our database.

Please follow James DeTar on Twitter @JimDeTar 

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The post SolarEdge Stock Shines At The Top Of Solar Energy Group appeared first on Investor's Business Daily.

With its elegant pond and fountain, timeless half timbering, towering Tudor-style chimneys, and lush enveloping greenery, this 14,532-square-foot estate might easily be mistaken for a manor nestled in the English countryside. This classical refinement, however, belies the fact that the home is a distinguished 21st-century residence—created with expert craftsmanship, superior construction, and every modern convenience—near the attractions in Connecticut’s most coveted address, mid-country Greenwich. Impressive in scale, and easily livable, it offers every amenity expected in a home of such caliber.

Listed with Jon Harper of Towne Lake Custom Sales, LLC

LOCATION: 3 Steeldust Court, Tomball, Texas

SQUARE FOOTAGE: 12,000

BEDROOMS & BATHROOMS: 8 bedrooms & 10 bathrooms

PRICE: $4,950,000

This newly built Mediterranean style home is located at 3 Steeldust Court in Tomball, Texas and is situated on 2 acres of land.

It features approximately 12,000 square feet of living space with 8 bedrooms, 9 full and 1 half bathrooms, 2-story foyer with floating double staircase, formal dining room with wet bar & glass-enclosed wine room, 2-story great room, gourmet kitchen, office, 6-car garage and more.

Outdoor features include 2 gated entrances, motor court, balcony, patio, kitchen/BBQ and a swimming pool with spa.

It is listed at $4,950,000.

FIS stock rose 7.4% to 53.50 on the stock market today. FISV stock climbed 5.7% to 110.21. GPN stock advanced 4% to 99.86.

The fintech companies have exposure to Silicon Valley Bank, a subsidiary of SVB Financial (SIVB) as well as Signature Bank (SBNY).

Amid the bank crisis, federal regulators have taken steps to protect depositors at Silicon Valley Bank of Santa Clara, Calif., and Signature Bank, the latter of which was closed on Sunday.

Signature Bank connected crypto firms to the traditional finance system. Silicon Valley Bank still operates under a slightly different name, Silicon Valley Bank N.A.

Amid the bank crisis, FIS shares had tumbled 21% while Fiserv stock retreated 11%. GPN stock plunged nearly 14%.

"The primary reason for the weakness in FIS stock and Fiserv stock is investor concern that the current crisis will cause a prolonged — or even permanent — shift in deposits out of small- and medium-sized banks (FIS's and Fiserv's core customers) and into large banks," SVB MoffettNathanson analyst Lisa Ellis said in a note to clients.

She added: "If customer deposits shift en masse to larger banks (as has been happening over the last couple of days), this shift will pressure both FIS's and Fiserv's core bank processing and issuer processing businesses."

SVB MoffettNathanson's parent company, SVB Securities Holdings, is a separate entity. It has not directly impacted by the events at Silicon Valley Bank.

Meanwhile, merchant acquirers serve as middlemen between banks and retailers. They have contracts with retailers to handle the processing of credit cards and other transactions. Merchant acquirers face growing competition from the likes of privately held Stripe, Adyen (ADYEY) and Checkout.com.

At Mizuho Securities, analyst Dan Dolev said in his note to clients: "While FISV stock does have some exposure to SIVB and SBNY, it appears to be minimal and unlikely to impact 2023 growth."

Fintech stocks have generally underperformed the S&P 500 in 2023 even before the bank crisis hit last week, Jefferies analyst Trevor Williams said in a note.

Williams said that 2023 "was already expected to be a more challenging year for core processing, with elongated sales cycles (particularly on deals with larger banks) as a headwind to growth."

Williams added: "Though we in no way pretend to know what the fallout on the broader banking industry is likely to be from recent events, we believe it's safe to assume that demand for solutions from core processors/bank technology providers is likely to come under incremental pressure as banks grapple with higher funding costs/compressing net interest margins."

With Tuesday's gain, FISV stock has gained 9% thus far in 2023. FIS stock is down 20%. GPN stock has edged up 1%.

Rising interest rates have pressured fintech stocks as well as fears over a U.S. recession.

Fintech companies belong to a few IBD groups, including financial software and finance-investment management. The biggest IBD group of fintech stocks ranks only No. 85 out of 197 industry groups tracked.

Follow Reinhardt Krause on Twitter @reinhardtk_tech for updates on 5G wireless, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and cloud computing.

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The post Is The Worst Over For These Fintech Stocks, Hard Hit By Bank Crisis? appeared first on Investor's Business Daily.

Bank forecasting needs to become more than a “check-the-box” motion for regulatory compliance. It needs to be treated as a strategic decision-making tool.

Traditional financial institutions take deposits from customers and use them to make loans. But they loan out much more than what they have in store at a given point in time — a concept known as fractional banking. On one hand, the difference between the interest on the loans and the interest paid to depositors is referred to as the net interest margin and determines a bank’s profitability. On the other hand, the difference between the assets and liabilities is referred to as their equity and determines the bank’s resilience to external shocks.

Before the latest run on the bank, SVB was viewed as not only a profitable banking institution but also a safe one because it held $212 billion in assets against roughly $200 billion in liabilities. That means they had a cushion of $12 billion in equity or 5.6% of assets. That’s not bad, although it is roughly half the average of 11.4% among banks.

The problem is that recent actions by the United States federal reserve reduced the value of long-term debt, to which SVB was heavily exposed through its mortgage-backed securities (roughly $82 billion). When SVB flagged to its shareholders in December that it had $15 billion in unrealized losses, wiping out the bank’s equity cushion, it prompted many questions.

Related: USDC depegged, but it’s not going to default

On March 8, SVB announced it had sold $21 billion in liquid assets at a loss and stated that it would raise money to offset the loss. But that it announced a need to raise more money — and even considered selling the bank — concerned investors significantly, leading to roughly $42 billion in attempted withdrawals from the bank. Of course, SVB did not have sufficient liquidity, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation took over on March 17.

The macro-finance literature has a lot to say about these situations, but a good summary is to expect highly non-linear dynamics — that is, small changes in inputs (the equity-to-asset ratio) can have substantial changes on output (liquidity). Bank runs may be more prone during recessions and have large effects on aggregate economic activity.

To be sure, SVB is not the only bank that has higher and risky exposure to macroeconomic conditions, such as interest rates and consumer demand, but it was just the tip of the iceberg that hit the news over the past week. And we’ve seen this before — most recently during the 2007–2008 financial crisis with the collapse of Washington Mutual. The aftermath led to a surge in financial regulation, largely in the Dodd–Frank Act, which expanded the authorities of the Federal Reserve to regulate financial activity and authorized new consumer protection guidelines, including the launch of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Of note, the DFA also enacted the “Volcker Rule,” restricting banks from proprietary trading and other speculative investments, largely preventing banks from functioning as investment banks using their own deposits to trade stocks, bonds, currencies and so on.

JUST IN: SEC launches investigation into Silicon Valley Bank $SIVB executives stock sales made days before the collapse.

— Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) March 14, 2023

The rise of financial regulation led to a sharp change in the demand for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) workers, or “quants” for short. Financial services are especially sensitive to regulatory changes, with much of the burden falling on labor since regulation affects their non-interest expenses. Banks realized that they could reduce compliance costs and increase operational efficiency by increasing automation.

And that’s exactly what happened: The proportion of STEM workers grew by 30% between 2011 and 2017 in financial services, and much of this was attributed to the increase in regulation. However, small and mid-sized banks (SMBs) have had a more challenging time coping with these regulations — at least in part due to the cost of hiring and building out sophisticated dynamic models to forecast macroeconomic conditions and balance sheets.

The current state-of-the-art in macroeconomic forecasting is stuck in 1990 econometric models that are highly inaccurate. While forecasts are often adjusted at the last minute to appear more accurate, the reality is that there is no consensus workhorse model or approach to forecasting future economic conditions, setting aside some exciting and experimental approaches by, for example, the Atlanta Federal Reserve with its GDPNow tool.

Related: Lawmakers should check the SEC’s wartime consigliere with legislation

But even these “nowcasting” tools do not incorporate vast quantities of disaggregated data, which makes the forecasts less germane for SMBs that are exposed to certain asset classes or regions and less interested in the national state of the economy per se.

We need to move away from forecasting as a “check-the-box” regulatory compliance measure toward a strategic decision-making tool that is taken seriously. If the nowcasts do not perform reliably, either stop producing them or figure out a way to make them useful. The world is highly dynamic, and we need to use all the tools at our disposal, ranging from disaggregated data to sophisticated machine learning tools, to help us understand the times we’re in so that we can behave prudently and avoid potential crises.

Would better modeling have saved Silicon Valley Bank? Maybe not, but better modeling would have increased transparency and the probability that the right questions would be asked to prompt the right precautions. Technology is a tool — not a substitute — for good governance.

In the aftermath of Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse, there has been a lot of finger-pointing and rehashing of the past. More importantly, we should be asking: Why did the bank run happen, and what can we learn?

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Crypto trader Zoran Kole joined Cointelegraph’s Crypto Trading Secrets podcast for an interview for the show’s seventh episode.

Episode 7 of Cointelegraph’s Crypto Trading Secrets podcast is now live. This week’s episode features an interview with crypto trader Zoran Kole, who goes by @Captain_Kole1 on Twitter. Kole shared his opinions in response to a number of questions asked by host Benjamin Pirus during the episode’s recording on March 1 — including his views on what he thinks has most impacted the price of Bitcoin (BTC) so far in 2023 (as of the show’s recording), and whether or not that may remain the case for the remainder of the year. 

Bitcoin started off 2023 trading between $16,000 and $17,000, according to Cointelegraph’s BTC price index. The asset found itself up near $24,000 toward the end of January and surpassed $25,000 in February. The coin subsequently dropped back down below $20,000 in March, but has since moved up past $26,000. 

“There have been murmurs that Binance is buying up a lot of the Bitcoin using their BUSD,” Kole said. Binance USD (BUSD) is a stablecoin under the Binance brand but issued by Paxos Trust Company, and it faced regulatory uncertainty in February. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has asserted that Paxos wholly owns and oversees BUSD. Kole, however, thinks 2023’s price action so far may be the result of prolonged price suppression and people’s desire to gain back their 2022 losses:

“To phrase it more simply, in 2023, I think the allure of making it back in one trade is kind of the reason that prices have propelled up since the beginning of the year.”

However, Kole doesn’t exactly think that rationale will remain in play for the whole year. He explained:

“I do expect a lot of range-bound behavior to occur. So, all the buyers that were able to buy $15,000, $16,000, $17,000 are probably going to look to distribute somewhere in the upper $20,000s, lower $30,000s. So, I do think we’re going to see quite a bit of chop going into the end of the year.”

Kole also answered several other questions during the episode, including giving his thoughts on potential future cycles for BTC.

Check out this and other episodes from Cointelegraph’s Crypto Trading Secrets podcast on Cointelegraph’s podcast page, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or TuneIn.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Piper Sandler analyst Harsh Kumar on Tuesday reiterated his overweight, or buy, rating on Impinj stock after meeting with company executives. He has a price target of 140 on the stock.

In morning trades on the stock market today, Impinj stock rose 4.6% to 130.59.

"The company is on a strong path to growth as more supply comes online and use cases for RFID chips continue to expand," Kumar said in a note to clients.

Seattle-based Impinj makes tiny tracking chips that can connect items to the internet cloud for customers in retail, transportation, logistics and other industries. The company uses a wireless technology called Rain RFID, which stands for radio-frequency identification. The Rain flavor of RFID also derives its name from radio-frequency identification.

Its chips are used mostly for inventory management now. But the company is expanding the capabilities of its chips to services such as retail self-checkout, loss prevention and anti-counterfeiting.

Wafer supply has been driver for Impinj over the last several quarters, Kumar said. Demand for its products continues to outpace its ability to produce them.

"A critical choke point has been the availability of wafers," Kumar said. "We remain confident that Impinj should see increased wafer supply both in March as well as the June quarters. We also continue to expect further upside to wafer supply in the second half of the year."

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM) is the company's sole chip supplier, Kumar said.

NXP Semiconductors (NXPI) is the primary competitor to Impinj, but Impinj has a superior cost structure, Kumar said.

On Jan. 18, Impinj stock broke out of a cup base at a buy point of 129.12, according to IBD MarketSmith charts. Since then, it has seesawed in and out of the buy zone, but has found support at its 50-day moving average line.

Impinj stock notched an all-time high of 144.90 on March 6. The company reported fourth-quarter earnings on Feb. 8.

Further, Impinj stock is on the IBD Tech Leaders list.

Follow Patrick Seitz on Twitter at @IBD_PSeitz for more stories on consumer technology, software and semiconductor stocks.

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The post Tracking-Chip Maker Impinj Sees Improved Outlook With Better Wafer Supply appeared first on Investor's Business Daily.

On this week’s episode of The Market Report, Cointelegraph’s resident experts explain what is going on with banks collapsing, stablecoins depegging and what you should do to stay safe.

This week on The Market Report, the resident experts at Cointelegraph discuss all the details regarding the latest bank collapse and the USD Coin (USDC) depeg.

We kick things off with this week’s top stories

Silicon Valley Bank collapse: Everything that’s happened until now

The sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) has quickly unfolded over the last week, depegging stablecoins, leading regulators in the United States and the United Kingdom to prepare emergency plans and raising fears among small businesses, venture capitalists and other depositors with funds stuck at the California tech bank. Our experts here at Cointelegraph Markets & Research break down everything that has happened so far, so you’re up to date with all the latest developments. 

‘Nobody left to bank crypto companies’ — Crypto Twitter reacts

Crypto companies could find it harder to access traditional banking partners with the loss of two major crypto-friendly banks in less than a week, according to some in the crypto community. These banks were seen as important banking pillars for the crypto industry. According to insurance documents, Signature Bank had $88.6 billion in deposits as of Dec. 31. Crypto Twitter believes that there is no one left to bank crypto companies in the U.S., but is that really the case? Are there no other banks willing to work with crypto companies? Our experts break it down for you.

Bitcoin price nears $25K as analysts place bets on CPI impact

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD making monthly highs of $24,917 on Bitstamp overnight. The pair remained buoyant after the impact of multiple U.S. bank closures sent crypto markets skyrocketing. Now, all eyes were temporarily on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) print for February when it came to short-term BTC price action. A classic crypto volatility catalyst in itself, last month, CPI showed an unwelcome slowdown in inflation abating; this, in turn, gave rise to fears that the Federal Reserve would keep interest rates higher for longer. However, as the banking crisis has overshadowed the inflation debate, expectations are starting to pivot to the Fed abandoning rate hikes altogether. How will Bitcoin (BTC) and the crypto market as a whole react if that were to happen?

Our experts cover these and other developing stories, so make sure you tune in to stay up-to-date on the latest in the world of crypto.

Lastly, we’ve got insights from Cointelegraph Markets Pro, a platform for crypto traders who want to stay one step ahead of the market. Our analysts use Cointelegraph Markets Pro to identify two altcoins that stood out this week, so make sure to tune in to find out which ones made the cut.

Do you have a question about a coin or topic not covered here? Don’t worry — join the YouTube chat room and write your questions there. The person with the most interesting comment or question will have a chance to win a one-month subscription to Markets Pro worth $100.

The Market Report streams live every Tuesday at 12:00 pm ET (5:00 pm UTC), so be sure to head on over to the Cointelegraph Markets & Research YouTube page and smash those Like and Subscribe buttons for all our future videos and updates.

Bad social media habits can do damage not only to your project and company’s reputation, but also to the burgeoning crypto industry as a whole.

Businesses across industries invest a lot of time and resources into building and cultivating their social media presences because of the big potential ROI. Social media marketing is a tool crypto and blockchain companies are quick to leverage — social media platforms offer a variety of audiences, prebuilt communities and global reach. 

Still, it’s all too easy to make missteps in social media outreach, and an ill-considered post can go viral (in a very bad way) in an instant and cause lasting damage to a brand. Below, 10 members of Cointelegraph Innovation Circle discuss some social media practices that crypto and blockchain companies should avoid and why they’re so problematic.

Having a solid following on Twitter has been considered proof of the potential of a project. This has led to many projects buying thousands of fake followers so they can look more trustworthy. Investors now know about this practice, and they check engagement too. Plus, by buying fake followers, you are reducing your reach a lot — bots don’t engage, so it’s likely your real fans won’t see your posts. – Bogomil Stoev, Seasonal Tokens

Making incorrect or deceptive claims can undermine trust in the cryptocurrency and blockchain industries, which can make it challenging to attract new investors, partners and engineers. It’s crucial for businesses to communicate openly and honestly and to give serious thought to the information they post on social media. – Brad Spannbauer, Currency Hub

Do not tag influencers who aren’t related to your project to get exposure — you will most likely get the opposite when they report your posts as spam and block you. Focus on quality, not quantity; your audience follows you to learn about you and what you do, not to see your ads and promos. Use a social media professional, preferably in-house, to make sure you look like a pro. – Tomer Warschauer Nuni, Kryptomon

One of the biggest mistakes crypto and blockchain companies make on social media is that they try to target too many audiences. Often, they abandon the crypto and blockchain crowd and try to target another industry. This leaves crypto supporters feeling forgotten and can create haters, and you may not only get no results — you might even get negative results that come back to bite you. – Brian D. Evans, BDE Ventures Ventures

Join the community where you can transform the future. Cointelegraph Innovation Circle brings blockchain technology leaders together to connect, collaborate and publish. Apply today

Web3 companies should avoid focusing on low-quality engagement. While “Like and Retweet” contests may temporarily boost your numbers on social media, these new followers will likely be airdrop hunters rather than long-term supporters. Concentrate instead on promoting interesting content and activities that help ignite a conversation around your products. – Wolfgang Rückerl, ENT Technologies AG

Avoid promoting your project indiscriminately on social media without considering the context, audience and goal. Spamming posts and launching hashtag campaigns can be ineffective and repel potential followers, investors and consumers. It is essential to provide content that is personalized to your target audience and reflects your company’s vision, values and objectives. – Theo Sastre-Garau, NFTevening

Social media is often criticized for being a source of misinformation, and it’s important for crypto companies to avoid contributing to the problem by making inflated promises. Rather, leaders in the space should seek to mainstream new, forward-looking technologies without enticing participants with unrealistic yields. Traders have enough to focus on without needing to weed out financial fiction. – Oleksandr Lutskevych, CEX.IO

Dangling a big prize that is almost impossible to win just to get people’s attention is not a good way to create trust. Instead, if you want to give something to people who sign on, make it something small that they have a high probability of winning in exchange for their time, as opposed to something that’s certainly going to be perceived as fake bait. – Zain Jaffer, Zain Ventures

Crypto companies should avoid pumping their projects. What you need to do is focus on providing value to your social media communities by creating and posting content that will actually benefit them. For example, your posts should update your community on how your product will actually make life easier for them. Once you provide value, others will share your content and praise you on their own. – Ayelet Noff, SlicedBrand

Web3 organizations should refrain from overusing multiple channels, as this may dilute and even separate their communities across many different platforms. Instead, choose a few popular platforms in the Web3 space and grow a fellowship there. – Sheraz Ahmed, STORM Partners

This article was published through Cointelegraph Innovation Circle, a vetted organization of senior executives and experts in the blockchain technology industry who are building the future through the power of connections, collaboration and thought leadership. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Cointelegraph.

Learn more about Cointelegraph Innovation Circle and see if you qualify to join.

While Signature’s Barney Frank referred to the recent events with SVB as an “anti-crypto message,” Trezor’s Josef Tetek says they are “definitely good” for Bitcoin.

The ongoing crisis of banks in the United States has many positive implications for Bitcoin (BTC), according to an executive at the hardware wallet firm Trezor.

On March 14, Bitcoin broke $26,000, a price level not seen since June 2022, posting the biggest gains this year so far. The multi-month high followed a series of shocking events in the U.S. banking industry, with banks like Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Silvergate and Signature shutting down operations.

According to Trezor’s Bitcoin analyst Josef Tetek, the current sharp rise of Bitcoin price — which is the fastest rise in price so far in 2023 — appears to be a direct result of the “apparent fragility of the banking system.”

Tetek said that the current banking crisis could potentially make Bitcoin emerge as a safe-haven and risk-off asset. He emphasized that Bitcoin was created soon after the world encountered the financial crisis of 2008 and was “likely a response to the unfairness of bailouts.”

“The current events are a timely reminder of why we need Bitcoin,” Tetek said, adding that the current events are not so good for many crypto businesses and assets that are centralized, referring to Circle’s USD Coin (USDC). The analyst stated:

“The current demise of certain banks is definitely good for Bitcoin as such, but not a good environment for custodians of any kind, and once again we reiterate that one the safest environments is to self-custody assets.”

According to Tetek, the recent events with Silvergate and SVB clearly show that counterparty risk in the banking system is a “serious problem,” though it is sometimes well hidden. He added:

“Banks no longer actually hold our money, but lend it out and buy volatile assets with it. Depositors are, in fact, the banks' creditors. Understandably, people are looking for alternatives such as Bitcoin."

Tetek also suggested that Silvergate’s collapse was a “direct result of its business relationship” with the bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, while SVB’s collapse was a result of “poor risk management.” He went on to say that SVB had a large exposure to long-term treasuries, which tanked in price as a result of the abrupt interest rate hikes, while the bank failed to have hedges in place. “SVB had little connection to the crypto industry,” Tetek added.

Related: SVB crisis: Here are the crypto firms denying exposure to troubled US banks

Tetek’s remarks come amid Barney Frank, Signature Bank board member and former U.S. Congressman Barney Frank, arguing that the latest U.S. banking events are connected to crypto.

“I think part of what happened was that regulators wanted to send a very strong anti-crypto message,” Frank stated, claiming that issues at Signature were “purely contagion from SVB.”

In the first reporting period following its launch, Amylyx's amyotrophic lateral sclerosis drug, Relyvrio, brought in $21.9 million in sales. That was far above even the most bullish expectations for $14 million to $15 million in sales. Analysts polled by FactSet expected only $4.7 million.

Also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. Patients experience worsening muscle weakness over time. The Food and Drug Administration approved Relyvrio in September.

"There has been a ton of noise and confusion heading into the print, but Amylyx has and continues to launch extremely well," Evercore ISI analyst Umer Raffat said in a note to clients. "By my math, Amylyx could perhaps even come fairly close to a break-even in the first quarter (i.e., second quarter of launch)."

In morning trades on today's stock market, AMLX stock vaulted 20.7% to 37.63. Shares topped their 50-day moving average, according to MarketSmith.com. Amylyx stock has a strong Relative Strength Rating of 95 out of a best-possible 99, IBD Digital shows. This puts shares in the top 5% of all stocks in terms of 12-month performance.

There were about 1,300 patients on Relyvrio at the end of the fourth quarter, Raffat said.

"Company expects to double that in the first quarter," he said. "I think they will do better than that."

Some $7 million of the fourth-quarter sales are due to two weeks of inventory buildup, he noted. This suggests the ALS treatment could pull in $3.5 million a week. That puts Relyvrio at a run rate of $42 million for the first quarter. But Raffat expects Relyvrio to top that at $60 million.

He has an outperform rating on AMLX stock.

SVB Securities analyst Marc Goodman says a third of commercial policies in the U.S. now reimburse for Relyvrio. The drug also is approved in Canada under the brand name Albrioza, and Amylyx expects a regulatory decision in Europe by midyear with an approval decision in the third quarter.

Meanwhile, Amylyx is still running final-phase testing of the ALS treatment to examine whether it has a benefit on patients' survival long term. Goodman expects that final survival data won't be available until 2025, at the earliest. That gives Relyvrio a strong commercial start while those results are pending.

"We believe (this) should be viewed as positive news to investors as we believe that management will probably wait to see the survival data before determining success of the study (i.e., the product probably has another year to ramp before management determines what to do with the asset)," he said in a note.

He has an outperform rating on AMLX stock.

Follow Allison Gatlin on Twitter at @IBD_AGatlin.

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The post Amylyx, A Top 5% Biotech Stock, Just Scored A Huge Win In ALS Treatment appeared first on Investor's Business Daily.

Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in an email to staff that the company would in the coming months conduct multiple rounds of job cuts. It also plans to cancel some projects as part of what he previously called a "year of efficiency."

The company is aiming to striving make its organization flatter by removing multiple layers of management, Zuckerberg said in a written  statement.

Meta stock jumped 5.5% to 191 during morning trading on the stock market today.

The company's reductions come on top of the 11,000 employees laid off in November.

Meta, like other social media companies have been hit hard by a sharp slowdown in advertising, where they get the vast majority of revenue. This is happening as Meta is investing billions of dollars on the metaverse.

More to follow.

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The post Meta Continues To Slash Thousands Of Jobs As It Aims To Stop Hemorrhaging Red Ink appeared first on Investor's Business Daily.

NFT application endures demanding fees on the Apple App store for the convenience of iOS payments and a broad user base.

Apple’s continued enforcement of in-app purchases to sell services remains a trade-off for NFT applications looking to tap into the convenience of streamlined in-app purchases for iPhone users and a massive user base around the world.

As previously reported, Apple maintains strict rules for nonfungible token (NFT) apps, enforcing a 30% commission on the sale of NFTs through in-app purchases.

The enforcement of this 30% commission has been a sore point, with Coinbase Wallet seeing an update to its application blocked by Apple in December 2022. This was due to Apple suspending the latest app release until Coinbase Wallet disabled the ability to send NFTs through the application.

Apple may have to permit third-party app stores on its devices by 2024 in the European Union in response to the recently drawn up Digital Markets Act. This is expected to allow developers to install alternative payment systems within non-Apple apps, but would not apply to countries outside of the EU.

Related: ‘Grotesquely overpriced’ — Apple’s App Store wants 30% cut on NFT sales

Cointelegraph reached out to Nodle CEO Micha Anthenor Benoliel to unpack the implications for NFT apps that continue to operate through the Apple Store. Nodle’s app rewards users for participating as nodes in a proprietary decentralized IoT network, in addition to allowing users to mint NFTs from their smartphones.

Benoliel notes that Apple has clear guidelines enforcing NFT apps to use the in-app purchase to sell any services similar to minting of an NFT, in an effort to prevent users from purchasing NFTs from mobile applications outside of the Apple App store and its in-app purchase function:

“It may take some time for them to fully grasp the implications of Web3 principles, but for now, it looks like they are trying to safeguard their business and customers by enforcing these guidelines.”

This is in clear contrast to Android, where app developers have freedom to experiment and are not boxed into using the Play Store in-app purchase mechanism to mint or sell NFTs. Nevertheless Benoliel believes there are a myriad of benefits that balance out the trade-off of Apple’s current terms and conditions.

He notes that iOS holds a commanding position in the U.S. mobile market, while its in-app purchase functionality removes payment friction for iPhone users:

“The company has gone to great lengths to simplify the purchasing process and make it easier for developers to support transactions without managing sensitive credit card information.”

The App Store also provides a centralized service that handles various currencies and exchange rates that developers would have to manage when implementing a credit card payment solution.

Related: Robinhood Wallet rolls out on iOS with Android support to follow

Nodle intends to provide infrastructure to creators to enable app users to mint unique creations. In order to provide this service to iOS users under Apple’s current conditions, the platform has had to shift costs towards its users:

“There's a catch. Apple charges up to 30% of the sale price for minting an NFT. Nodle includes this fee in its customer-facing price.”

Nodle’s NFT minting process allows a user to make use of camera photos or images from their galleries before paying for minting costs using Apple’s in-app purchase. The ‘Minting as a Service’ component features a centralized service that receives and checks images before minting the NFT using the Polkadot NFT pallet upon payment confirmation.

Benoliel told Cointelegraph that Apple could benefit in the long run from the free exchange and trading of NFTs in apps, which could incentivize users to opt for alternative solutions:

“When you read about incoming EU laws that will force Apple to permit alternative app stores and apps without the need to go through its App Store, one can wonder if this could not happen soon in the US as well.”

Up until that point, Benoliel believes that there is still a valid argument for NFT app developers to consider supporting iOS, citing the in-app purchase feature’s convenience for transactions. A massive user base also presents a ‘valuable opportunity’ for developers to reach a broad audience of potential users.

Cryptocurrency wallet applications are also grappling with specific requirements to launch on the Apple App store. Decentralized exchange Uniswap intended to launch its iOS app in December 2022 but has not been given the go-ahead by Apple.

Web3 gaming is the future, and mainstream veteran Peter Bergstrom reveals how the ecosystem can expedite the inevitable.

The crypto ecosystem has spent over a decade proving it can disrupt the status quo as crypto and blockchain technologies like cryptocurrencies, nonfungible tokens (NFTs), and blockchain-based games go head-to-head against their mainstream counterparts.

While Bitcoin (BTC) has managed to shoulder its way closer to mainstream adoption, the same cannot be said for other crypto subsectors. In the gaming world, blockchain games were afforded hype and passion similar to their mainstream competitors over the years.

However, challenging the status quo of an established industry is no easy feat. As a result, the blockchain gaming industry is tasked with delivering everything mainstream games offer, exceeding gamers’ expectations with new features and experiences.

Considering the potential of crypto innovations to disrupt the mainstream, the crypto community has not given up on GameFi — the fusion of gaming and finance. Building on the foundation laid by crypto entrepreneurs, mainstream gaming veterans have taken up the challenge to deliver a highly-anticipated comeback for the blockchain gaming industry.

For over 25 years, Peter Bergstrom worked at mainstream gaming publishers, including Microsoft Game Studios and Sony Interactive Entertainment. As a producer of Age of Empires, he saw what it takes for a game to make an impact across generations. Bergstrom has now stepped into the Web3 world to help bring blockchain gaming up to par with traditional video games.

In an interview with Cointelegraph, Bergstrom dives into the factors that make or break a game title. He shares his take on why blockchain games haven’t taken off, and what needs to be done to change that.

Cointelegraph: Despite evident setbacks over the years, both gamers and capital investors continue to bet big on the success of blockchain gaming and the GameFi ecosystem. Looking back and comparing it to the traditional gaming industry, what do you think is missing? Is there a need for rebuilding the ecosystem from scratch, or can we build on the existing winning formula known to the gaming industry for decades?

Peter Bergstrom: The traditional game business has had decades to invent and fine-tune what players find exciting:

1. A compelling challenge and conflict 
2. The balance between player strategy and how to deal with chance events 
3. Aesthetics 
4. Compelling themes and story 
5. Rewards that are not just money based 

The GameFi ecosystem has not had time to come close to making items 1–4 compelling or competitive with traditional games. In regard to rewards, it seems GameFi has primarily relied on earning money/crypto and little else — very complex systems and not compelling to many players.

Besides, there are no GameFi publishers that can come close to competing with the online (or retail) distribution systems of iOS, Android, Steam, Xbox, Playstation and Nintendo. Additionally, too little effort has been made to make onboarding to a GameFi game user-friendly or to play the game easy. Ease of use has largely been ignored.

CT: Will mainstream titles eventually make their way into blockchain/Web3 gaming?

PB: Eventually, AAA game developers will integrate Web3 [...] and make hit titles. By using non-traditional forms of distribution, perhaps through evolved social media, a new artificial intelligence (AI)-driven distribution platform, or an acquisition of an established Web2 publisher — Web3 gaming will eventually find a solid audience

CT: In your experience working for one of the most iconic titles — Age of Empires (AOE) — what was the most crucial factor that helped the AOE franchise develop a relationship with fans and gamers that spans generations?

PB: Age of Empires was and is great because you were allowed to choose your own pace of gameplay. The games begin with you expanding a civilian populace; then, you build a military force to protect them, expand the civilian populace to support the military, and gradually build your empire over the course of a match. Some Age of Empires skirmishes can last for hours because the series places more control in your hands by giving you more options, which results in a slower, more considered and strategic play style.

Age of Empires games come in three basic modes: single-player campaign, single-player skirmish and multiplayer. The campaign and skirmish modes are all about playing against the computer and trying to win a scenario. Multiplayer is a more frantic affair because players are craftier and focused more on total military domination than the computer.

In Age of Empires, you can win peacefully by building and defending a wonder, like the Great Pyramid or the Colosseum, keeping it standing for 5–10 minutes, or by capturing relics, artifacts, and ruins and holding them for a set period of time. These win conditions have a lot in common with games like Civilization, emphasizing more than just military dominance.

CT: What’s more important for mass adoption — a good gaming experience or more rewards?

PB: Both — There are no black-and-white answers in game design. What makes the game business so successful is that brilliant game designers continually design new and different ways of gameplay and incorporate this into the rest of what’s already there seamlessly. This will surely happen with GameFi Web3 games as well. Not everything will happen at once but a little at a time by different game designers and developers.

CT: Many believe that gameplay, not payments, attracts gamers. Who is the primary target audience for the GameFi industry — crypto investors, gamers, or both?

PB: Obviously, gamers are the primary target — GameFi is about adding a new dimension of compelling gameplay to Web2 games. Crypto investors are the new Web3 financiers of games, venture capitalists (VC) and individual investors alike — as opposed to the traditional Web2 publishing funding model that is primarily controlled and monopolized by large tech companies.

CT: What are your thoughts on the claim that, unlike NFTs, the GameFi ecosystem has lower dependence on the price of cryptocurrencies?

PB: Because the GameFi tokens and its ecosystem is part of a proven business model that has experienced growth for 35 years, there are 3.09 billion gamers globally, generating $185 billion as of 2022. Some of these gamers will likely become early adopters of Web3 gaming (as we already have seen in the Philippines with Axie Infinity). Even a 1% slice of the game business amounts to 31 million players. Most business analysts look at the huge consumer installed base and likely incorporate that in their investment recommendations — thus incentivizing investors where they should put their investments.

CT: In your experience, what can blockchain games do to mend their reputation and come up to par with mainstream publishers?

PB: Players don’t care about the technology behind a good game. Drop the blockchain/NFT/play-to-earn (P2E)/metaverse/Web3 talk. Make a good game and invisibly incorporate blockchain, NFTs, play and earn, AI, G5, or whatever to make a better game, and gamers will buy. They don’t care if it’s a Unity or Unreal engine in the game — as long it’s a good game. They just want to have an entertaining playing experience — not a science lesson.

CT: What is the fastest way to GameFi adoption — Mobile, PC, consoles, virtual reality (VR)? And what does the full potential of GameFi look like to you?

PB: When it comes to expedited GameFi adoption, PC takes the cake because it is the least monopolized by tech giants that oppose Web3 gaming. It is also not hardware sales-dependent like VR. However, your guess is as good as mine when it comes to predicting the future. That is for our brilliant game designers and developers out there to create.

CT: Finally, what is your advice for the GameFi ecosystem entrepreneurs and developers?

PB: After the investment boom in 2021 and 2022, 2023 is about cutting costs and lengthening your financial runway, then building your game and inventing new, more attractive solutions to the gameplay while you wait for the VC money to reappear. Also, network for connections, alliances and partnerships with companies that are synergistic for you in your space. Exchanges, Tier 0,1,2,3 blockchains, metaverse builders, avatar plugins, Web3 game publishers, middleware providers etc., and, of course, never stop looking, and make friendly contacts with VCs and other investors.

Bergstrom ended the discussion by highlighting that gaming will be the single biggest consumer application of blockchain in 2023, bar none — given the size of the total gaming market and current momentum.

While two of the crypto industry’s biggest backers have fallen, crypto firms are not at a loss with a number of alternative and crypto-friendly support options available.

Over the last week, the collapse of three of the largest banks backing the crypto scene — Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Silvergate Bank and Signature Bank — has many industry pundits wondering how United States-based crypto companies will fare after such losses.

While it has been said that there is “nobody left to bank crypto companies,” some in the crypto space have already highlighted the remaining options.

One Twitter user called out another after they said there is “basically no one left to bank crypto companies in the U.S.” by listing off some banks with crypto clients.

This is false. United Texas Bank, Western Alliance Bank, JP Morgan Chase, and Bank of New York Mellon all have crypto businesses as customers, and there are probably more. https://t.co/Q27bkzq2n8

— yuga.eth (@yugacohler) March 13, 2023

Along with that rebuttal, various users began to compile lists of banks that still could be long-term options for smaller crypto operations. Although the situation surrounding banks, crypto and stablecoins is fragile, there remain mainstream options for those working in the space. 

On Oct. 11, 2022, BNY Mellon announced the official launch of its digital custody platform for institutional clients to hold Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH).

BNY Mellon reports having $43 trillion in assets under custody, though it has not disclosed how much of that total includes BTC and ETH holdings. In March 2022, Circle chose BNY Mellon as one of its custodians for its USD Coin (USDC) reserves.

On Feb. 9, during a cryptocurrency panel at Afore Consulting’s 7th Annual FinTech and Regulation Conference, the bank’s head of advanced solutions, Michael Demissie, said digital assets are “here to stay.”

In light of the recent events involving SVB, Circle also announced it was working on “expanded relationships” with existing partners, including BNY Mellon.

JPMorgan launched its Onyx Digital Assets platform back in November 2020, which has since processed over $430 billion in transactions.

Recently, the firm began exploring “deposit tokens” as an alternative to privately issued stablecoins and central bank digital currencies on commercial bank blockchains.

Recent: Crypto industry may escape lasting damage from Silvergate liquidation

Deposit tokens, in theory, can exist on both public and permissioned blockchain environments for uses, including peer-to-peer payments, support smart contract programmability or serve as cash collateral.

JPMorgan has also piloted blockchain usage, including collateral settlement, repurchase agreement trades and cross-border transactions.

Cross River, a U.S.-based financial services firm, offers crypto solutions to fintech companies. It has served clients both inside and outside of the crypto space, including cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and financial services giants Visa and Mastercard.

On March 13, days after the USDC depegging, Circle announced Cross River as its new commercial banking partner to produce and redeem USDC.

The British bank offers a custody solution for BTC and ETH wallets and has served the likes of Coinbase and Bitstamp since it was approved to provide digital services by the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority in late January 2020.

After the SVB fallout, Oliver von Landsberg-Sadie, CEO of BCB Group, tweeted that the group has no ties with SVB or Signature and no “material amount of its own” in USDC.

1/ .@BCBcrypto holds no material amount of its own funds in USDC, however BCB’s services relating to USDC include trading and custody through BCB Prime Services (Switzerland).

— Oliver von Landsberg-Sadie (@OliverBCB) March 11, 2023

The bank offers instant payments for business-to-business transactions and instant settlement for cryptocurrency trading firms, exchanges, liquidity providers, over-the-counter desks, market makers and institutional investors on its “TassatPay” platform.

TasatPay has processed over $1 trillion worth of transactions since it launched in 2019, including $150 billion alone in January, according to recent reports.

Shortly after the fall of the former cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Customers Bank announced that it had no ties with FTX and that its “CBIT related deposit balances” are stable at $1.85 billion. It claimed to have over $20 billion in assets.

The Singaporean bank offers its own custody platform, DBS Digital Custody, to customers who can purchase BTC, ETH, XRP (XRP), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Polkadot (DOT) and Cardano (ADA) from the DBS Digital Custody exchange.

DBS also offers a separate financial tool, which it calls the DBS Digital Exchange and is backed by the bank. DBS DDEx operates “members-only exchanges,” through which users have access to digital assets, including security tokens and cryptocurrencies.

Customers banking with OCBC cannot directly purchase crypto assets from the platform. However, OCBC bank accounts can be connected to a licensed trading platform that it is partnered with, such as eToro, to buy digital assets.

Mercury Bank boasts in its offering of banking services for Web3 startups, decentralized autonomous organizations and funds. However, it explicitly states it cannot work with “money service businesses” or exchanges.

While cryptocurrencies themselves cannot be held in a Mercury account, in its FAQs section, it says it does not “express restrictions” on buying crypto through a Mercury account.

The company has been active on Twitter since the string of U.S. banks went under, saying it is ready to onboard clients affected by the incident.

Our onboarding teams are working hard to make sure your applications are getting approved this weekend.

If you’re looking to submit an application, a priority signup link is below. https://t.co/NqOuuDgCt4

— Mercury (@mercury) March 11, 2023

Another crypto-friendly bank, Axos began offering its commercial banking clients access to TassatPay back in May 2022. TassatPay is a digital payments alternative on a private and permissioned blockchain-based platform that allows for around-the-clock real-time payment capabilities, approved by a primary bank regulator. It has processed over $400 billion in transactions to date.

Axos also offers access to multiple crypto-related exchange-traded funds (ETFs), including Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund (BITW), Bitwise Crypto Industry Innovation ETF (BITQ), ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) and the ProShares Short Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITI), among others.

According to a recent Reuters report, banks in Switzerland are seeing an influx of interest from American crypto companies after the recent events.

Crypto-focused SEBA Bank said it has experienced a “pronounced uptick” in traffic on its website by visitors from the United States.

Arab Bank, based in Switzerland, reported an increase in U.S. firms, mostly in the crypto space, looking to open accounts after Silveragte doubts mounted. According to the report, 80% had been Silvergate customers.

The Swiss bank Sygnum is also a crypto-friendly bank with self-made claims of being “the world’s first digital asset bank.” Although, it has a policy not to take on clients from the U.S. due to unclear regulations.

While this list of options available to crypto firms is not exhaustive, it highlights that there could still be a light at the end of the tunnel.

Recent: Former Age of Empires producer talks blockchain game adoption and GameFi

Other banks that could be of potential interest to the crypto industry include Jewel, Series, State Street Bank, Goldman, Capital Union, First Digital and others.

Jake Chervinsky, chief policy officer at the Blockchain Association, tweeted that with the fall of SVB, Silvergate and Signature, there is now a huge gap in the space for “crypto-friendly banking.”

The closures of Silvergate, SVB, and Signature create a huge gap in the market for crypto-friendly banking.

There are many banks that can seize this opportunity without taking on the same risks as these three.

The question is if banking regulators will try to stand in the way.

— Jake Chervinsky (@jchervinsky) March 12, 2023

He to say that, given that crypto firms will need new accounts, this is an “opportunity” for banks to seize but without the same risks as the three that failed. 

Bitcoin NFTs have taken the crypto world by storm in a blink of an eye. Here’s all you need to know about Bitcoin Ordinals and how to create and sell them.

Bitcoin nonfungible tokens (NFTs) have captured the crypto world’s attention fast, opening new opportunities for the oldest blockchain and digital art enthusiasts. Since their explosion in 2020, NFTs have been typically minted and traded on Ethereum-based platforms, besides other blockchains, such as Cardano and Solana. 

However, a new protocol known as Ordinals was launched in January 2023 by former Bitcoin Core contributor Casey Rodarmor, who exploited the 2021 Bitcoin Taproot upgrade to expand the cryptocurrency capability and enable on-chain Bitcoin-native NFTs.

Taproot offered a way to expand the base layer’s block capability by condensing the size of transactions requiring less data usage and encouraging the use of smart contracts on Bitcoin. The upgrade considerably increases the types of transactions possible on Bitcoin, including decentralized finance (DeFi) and NFT applications.

By February 2023, the world’s largest issuer of NFTs, Yuga Labs, had already announced the creation of TwelveFold, a new NFT collection issued on Bitcoin, thereby endorsing Bitcoin NFTs and avouching their success.

Here’s what you need to know about Bitcoin NFTs, how they differ from the most popular Ethereum-based alternative, and how to create and sell them.

Ordinals are serial numbers imprinted in a single, unique satoshi (sat), the smallest unit of Bitcoin (BTC), through the ordinal theory that assigns them in the order in which they are mined. The first satoshi in the first block has the ordinal number 0, the second has the ordinal number 1, and the last satoshi of the first block has the ordinal number 4,999,999,999.

Colored coins were the first representation of such a concept back in 2012, being crypto assets repurposed to represent something of value by adding metadata information. Counterparty is another attempt to embed data into regular Bitcoin transactions. However, it has its own XCP token, required for some functionality, making it officially like an altcoin and not an extension or second layer for Bitcoin.

The ordinal theory rewards satoshis with numismatic value, allowing them to be collected and traded as rarities. Satoshis are given individual identities to be tracked, transferred and ingrained with meaningful arbitrary data, such as pictures, text or videos, through a Bitcoin transaction that remains permanently part of the blockchain. Such data can be viewed in Ordinals-compatible wallets, such as the Sparrow wallet, and online explorers.

The process of assigning assets to individual satoshis is called inscription. Inscriptions are digital artifacts native to the Bitcoin blockchain, the digital equivalent of physical artifacts.

They are fully on-chain, do not require a sidechain or a separate token, and use the Ordinals protocol to inscribe sats with content on ord, an index, an explorer and a wallet that relies on Bitcoin Core for private key management and transaction signing.

Ord allows tracking the location of specific satoshis and their ordinal numbers and can be viewed with the Ordinals explorer. In contrast with traditional NFTs that rely on off-chain content stored on the interplanetary file system (IPFS), inscriptions are gifted with Bitcoin’s immutability and security. They are permissionless and uncensorable digital artifacts since they can be sold without a royalty.

The Ordinals ecosystem is in full development, but its accessibility is still restricted to two primary ways to mint an ordinal NFT.

The first method to inscribe Bitcoin Ordinals requires some technical skills, running a full Bitcoin node and then installing Ord on this node to inscribe satoshis into an Ordinals wallet and make Bitcoin Ordinals NFTs. Two types of Bitcoin wallets can process Ordinals; they both must be Taproot-compatible and have a “coin control” capability to avoid spending Ordinal satoshis as network fees or sending them accidentally in another transaction.

• The Sparrow wallet is only recommended for receiving Ordinals to avoid sending Ordinals sats inadvertently. However, using it does not require running a full node. Here’s how to set up a Sparrow wallet.
• An Ord wallet requires running a full node on 500GB capacity. Unlike the Sparrow wallet, an Ord wallet allows you to create inscriptions and freeze the inscribed sats to prevent accidental spending. Here’s how to set up an Ord wallet.

Regardless of the wallet you’re using, make sure to have some Bitcoin available to pay for the transaction fee.

The second method is more straightforward and involves using a no-code tool, such as Gamma or Ordinalsbot.com, to inscribe your ordinal NFT. Here’s how to mint your Ordinal on Gamma:

• Select the type of file you’d like to use to mint your Bitcoin NFT.

• Upload the necessary file from your computer.
• Set up the transaction fee depending on how long you’d like to wait for your Ordinal to be minted.
• Copy and paste the Bitcoin address where to send the digital artifact, which needs to be an Ordinal-compatible address or a Taproot address.
• Wait for the NFT to be minted. Such a wait depends on the fee you paid for the process to be completed and may be hours or even days. You’ll be able to track the minting status through a link you’ll receive by email.
• View your minted Ordinal on OrdinalsViewer.

While proper infrastructure and marketplaces to trade Bitcoin Ordinals are being built, the digital artifacts are traded peer-to-peer over-the-counter (OTC) in dedicated Discord servers, with escrows as intermediaries and tracked on Google sheets.

Compared to the more popular NFTs traded via Ethereum and other blockchains, Bitcoin Ordinals trading appears to be an obsolete method. Yet this hasn’t contained people’s interest in Bitcoin NFTs, with hundreds of thousands of newly minted digital artifacts emerging within only a few weeks from launch.

The Ordinals market is entirely trustless, using the secure, partially signed Bitcoin transactions (PSBT) technology, which allows users to easily sign transactions in cold storage, and atomic swaps with no intermediary and a market fee of 2.7%. A system to verify creators is being developed to include creator royalties of 4.2%.

Taproot-compatible wallets must be used to buy Bitcoin Ordinals, such as the Ordinals wallet, the Xverse and Hiro wallets. The Ordinals wallet is very straightforward to use, and the others are also similar:

• Create an account, secure your seed phrase, and deposit funds into the wallet.
• Select the Ordinals you wish to purchase and click “Buy Now.”
• Once the transaction has been executed, the Ordinals will be added to your wallet.

Similar to buying a Bitcoin NFT, you’ll need to pick a Bitcoin Taproot-compatible wallet and download it.

• Create an account, secure your seed phrase, and upload your inscription. The fee will depend on the file size and how fast you’d like the transaction completed.
• Once your file has been inscribed onto the blockchain, you can view it on the Ordinals.com inscriptions page.
• You can freeze the Ordinals to make sure you do not spend them.
• You’ll need to use a peer-to-peer OTC market, usually, the Bitcoin Ordinals Discord server, to sell your inscription.

It is recommended that particular attention is placed on these trades. Being in an unregulated peer-to-peer OTC market, platforms are full of scammers trying to catch the latest Bitcoin NFT craze.

A few differences distance Ethereum-based traditional NFTs from Bitcoin Ordinals, although they both tend to be grouped under the same umbrella of digital art. The creator of Bitcoin Ordinals, Casey Rodarmor, defines Bitcoin NFTs as authentic digital artifacts because they are on-chain and enjoy all of the good properties Bitcoin holds. Here are the main differences:

• Bitcoin inscriptions are always immutable, while Ethereum-based NFTs can technically be changed or deleted by the contract owner. Traditional NFTs must be audited to become immutable, which requires deep knowledge of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and Solidity.
• Bitcoin inscriptions always have on-chain content, making it impossible to be lost. It is durable and scarcer because inscription creators must pay fees proportional to the size of the content. In contrast, Ethereum NFT content can be off-chain and stored on platforms such as IPFS and could be lost.
• Bitcoin inscriptions are more secure because the blockchain is the most secure. Inscriptions can be sold with PSBT without needing a third party, such as an exchange or marketplace, to transfer them on the user’s behalf. On the other hand, Ethereum NFTs tend to grant intermediary platforms unlimited permission over a user’s NFT, and the use of complex smart contracts may be challenging to interact with for the regular non-techie who wants to trade digital art.

Unlike NFTs, which are minted as completely new tokens, Ordinals have the raw file data inscribed directly onto the sats on the Bitcoin blockchain.

The new Ordinals protocol has raised an important question and sparked a heated debate among the NFT community. Should Bitcoin just be money, or should it expand its functionality to other use cases? Is the Ordinals protocol an attack on the Bitcoin network?

The Bitcoin blockchain has traditionally been used only for payment transactions due to its limited block size and network architecture. Such infrastructure favors solutions built on top of the blockchain as additional layers to increase the network’s programmability and scalability.

The latest Ordinals craze has raised many eyebrows among the BTC community. Some are concerned it could distract from Bitcoin’s primary use case as a medium of exchange and whether Ordinals make good use of block space. Ordinals can be images, audio clips or even games inevitably requiring space that is subtracted from the financial data, significantly slowing down on-chain confirmation times.

Bitcoin’s fungibility — one of the main properties of money — is also challenged by Ordinals. This is because inscriptions are imprinted in one satoshi, making it a rare unit, just like numismatic coins are rare physical objects used for collections.

Ordinal satoshis become individual identities that can be tracked, transferred and imbued with meaningful information, such as text or an image, making the sat unique and turning it into a de facto NFT. On the other hand, the traditional stance views all satoshis as equal, or they begin to lose a significant trait of money.

A few weeks after the project was launched, a record-breaking-sized block of 4MB was created, raising concerns among the community about the future efficiency and costs of the blockchain and its full nodes. The average size of a Bitcoin block had never exceeded 1.5MB until the launch of Ordinal NFTs.

Inscription contrarians fear that increasing the Bitcoin blockchain size due to the big transactions and blocks would raise the requirements and costs for devices running a full node. The counterargument is that for the Bitcoin blockchain to be securer, its blocks must be full, which would justify users paying a higher fee.

The debate will unfold in the future as the Ordinals market takes a more robust shape and new opportunities arise. Ultimately, Bitcoin’s true spirit and value reside in its resilience to guide the market in the direction the people want.

Polygon ecosystem users will be able to create .polygon Web3 domains through a new partnership with Unstoppable Domains.

Polygon has launched the ability to create Web3 .polygon domain names in partnership with Unstoppable Domains. The offering will allow users to log into Web3 applications, make use of human-readable wallet addresses and create decentralized websites.

The service will be available to an estimated 180 million users and 40,000 services across the Polygon blockchain ecosystem. Unstoppable Domains makes use of Polygon to mint decentralized domains with zero gas fees. Over 2.7 million domains have been registered on the Polygon blockchain to date.

Users will be able to use .polygon domains to create digital identities that are compatible across 750 applications, games and metaverse platforms. These can be used to login to web apps, as cryptocurrency wallet addresses and decentralized websites.

Related: State of play: Decentralized domain services reflect on industry progress

Unstoppable Domains also allows users to create profiles that can be connected to social media channels and act as a digital identity across Web3 platforms and networks.

A statement from Polygon Labs vice president of business development Sanket Shah highlighted the importance of unlocking user-owned digital identity for Polygon users:

"Web3 domains will give our community a digital identity that they fully own, so they can log into dapps without giving away their personal information and transact crypto without lengthy wallet addresses.”

Unstoppable Domains will also offer access to premium .polygon gaming and digit domains from March 16.

Decentralized domain services like Unstoppable Domains and Ethereum Name Service (ENS) have become popular over the past year, seeing considerable growth in domains registered. 

American cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase partnered with Unstoppable Domains offer payments through domain handles instead of cryptographic addresses in August 2020. Coinbase then partnered with ENS in Septmeber 2022 to provide users with free “name.cb.id” usernames in an effort to replace alpha-numeric wallet addresses with human-readable alternatives.

The New York-based fintech said it will provide an API to allow clients to access the new Federal Reserve real-time payment service when it premiers.

Blockchain operator Tassat announced March 14 that it will provide access to the United States Federal Reserve’s FedNow payment system. FedNow, which will launch as a pilot project later this year, will provide real-time, round-the-clock payment service.

Tassat will serve as a business-to-business onramp for FedNow through a client-facing application programming interface (API), CEO Kevin Greene told Cointelegraph. Both the company’s interbank and intrabank services will provide FedNow access.

The FedNow pilot is expected to begin in June or July with a small number of banks. The system will offer real-time gross settlement by funneling commercial bank money from a sender through a Fed credit account to its recipient. It is often seen as a non-blockchain alternative to central bank digital currency (CBDC) and to stablecoin.

FedNow will initially be available only for domestic transfer, which suited Greene. “We have a lot of work to do here in America,” he said. He referred to the U.S. financial infrastructure as “antiquated.”

Fednow… pic.twitter.com/OGRW3kUUBh

— MetaMan X ™️ (@MetaMan_X) March 8, 2023

Tassat has a pipeline of six banks, which include the recently-shuttered Signature Bank. Greene said of the recent bank closures:

"Recent events have illuminated the existential crisis that small, mid-sized and regional banks face, particularly being squeezed out by the mega banks.”

Blockchain adoption is progressing rapidly in the banking system, according to Greene. “Sixteen months ago, most bank CEOs didn’t know much about blockchain at all,” he said, “and today the feeling is […] they have to have some kind of blockchain strategy.” Greene Added that Tassat had doubled its number of employees to 90 in the past 12 months.

Related: FedNow — US Federal Reserve Payment Tool a Threat to Banks, Not Crypto

Greene began as an investor and board member at the company when it was founded in 2017, then moved into the CEO and chairman positions.

Wyoming’s new law ensures that courts won’t overstep their authority in requiring individuals to disclose their private keys.

Governor Mark Gordon of the United States state of Wyoming recently signed a bill preventing the forced disclosure of private keys in a move to protect the privacy of digital asset owners.

The incoming law reads, “No person shall be compelled to produce a private key or make a private key known to any other person in any civil, criminal, administrative, legislative or other proceeding[s].”

To pass as a private key under the law, it must be “held by a person, paired with a unique, publicly available element of cryptographic data, and, associated with an algorithm that is necessary to carry out an encryption or decryption required to execute a transaction.”

From the effective date, courts in Wyoming will no longer compel individuals to provide access to any private keys that grant access to their digital assets, digital identity or any other interests or rights to which the private key provides.

The only exception to this law applies when individuals are required to disclose the ownership or transfer of crypto during any lawful proceeding.

As the U.S. Congress struggles to put reins on crypto, there has been an uptick in the number of cases where courts force the disclosure of cryptographic private keys.

In many of these cases, courts force the disclosure of private keys as part of discovery or other pre-trial motions.

The forced disclosure of private keys by courts fundamentally contradicts how private keys are designed to work.

A private key is an alphanumeric code used to authorize transactions and prove ownership of a blockchain asset. Private keys are encrypted to protect a user from theft and unauthorized access to their digital assets or digital identity.

When a court requests the disclosure of a private key, they ultimately have access to the digital assets and identities protected by the keys.

Jon Callas, the director of technology projects at the Electronic Frontier Foundation — a nonprofit defending digital privacy, free speech and innovation — said the courts “don’t even want the key, they want the data.”

Mary Beth Buchanan, a former federal prosecutor offering her testimony in favor of Wyoming’s private-key disclosure law, said, “the court could order a disclosure or an accounting of all the digital assets that are held.”

Related: DeFi platforms can comply with regulations without compromising privacy — Web3 exec

In an essay, the Blockchain Commons, a nonprofit that advocates for open, interoperable and secure digital asset infrastructure, explained that U.S. courts are not ready to handle private keys.

Blockchain Commons explained that court staff lack the experience to protect private keys. A single private key needing to pass through different hands during a case poses a greater threat to the security of private keys.

U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis, known for her ardent support of Bitcoin and push for clearer digital asset regulation within the country, has in the past said that privacy is a way of life in Wyoming.

Speaking to Cointelegraph on the bill, Senator Chris Rothfuss, co-chair of a digital asset committee in Wyoming, said that the bill aims to provide “clarity on the legal status of a private key and how it should be treated by the courts.”

“The intent [of the law] is to clearly protect the privacy interest and property rights of digital asset holders. It is to provide the right line guidelines for courts on the standing of private keys,” Rothfuss explained.

As a state, Wyoming has taken some of the most crypto-friendly approaches to regulate crypto in the United States. Although having the smallest population in the United States, in 2021, Wyoming became the first jurisdiction to acknowledge decentralized autonomous organizations as limited liability business entities.

Bitcoin sees a major new lift-off thanks to CPI numbers conforming to expectations — reducing the chances of the Fed tightening financial conditions.

Bitcoin (BTC) spiked above $26,000 on March 14 as United States Consumer Price Index (CPI) data showed mixed inflation signals.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView followed BTC/USD as sudden volatility kicked in on the release of February's CPI numbers.

Inflation climbed 6% year-on-year, while the month-on-month figure was 0.4% — both in line with expectations. Items less food and energy increased by 0.5%, slightly higher than forecast.

US #inflation data more or less in line. Feb Overall CPI +6% YoY from 6.4% in Jan, Core CPI 5.5% in Feb down from 5.6& YoY in Jan. pic.twitter.com/k8rzsmdqVA

— Holger Zschaepitz (@Schuldensuehner) March 14, 2023

Bitcoin appeared to react positively to the data, which allowed the Federal Reserve to avoid being trapped between stickier inflation and avoiding interest rate hikes amid an ongoing banking crisis.

Reacting, Venturefounder, a contributing analyst at on-chain analytics platform CryptoQuant, suggested that the market was now anticipating a "pivot" on hikes — a key boon for risk assets more broadly.

"The market: oh yes big victory on fighting inflation! No more rate hikes and Fed is gonna cut rate by 50 BPS before EoY 2023," he tweeted.

"If Powell changes the 2% inflation target it will be the biggest rug move by the Fed since the 1970s taking USD off gold standards."

Trading resource Game of Trades nonetheless argued that CPI was not yet low enough for the Fed to "aggressively" change its stance and echo actions which followed the March 2020 COVID-19 crash.

"Consensus gets it spot on as CPI comes in at 6%. But it's not low enough to give the Fed room to aggressively step in during the ongoing crisis, as it did during C19," a tweet read.

CPI is notorious for sparking unpredictable BTC price moves, and as such, the picture remained unclear at the time of writing as to where BTC/USD would head next.

Related: Bitcoin price nears $25K as analysts place bets on CPI impact

Prior to the CPI release, significant sell-side liquidity was parked at $25,000 and beyond, this the main target of bulls on low timeframes.

Bitcoin's local highs of $26,150 nonetheless marked a new record for 2023 and its bets performance since June last year.

BTC/USD further took out the key 200-period moving average acting as resistance on weekly timeframes.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

ChatGPT, the AI language model, can assist in breaking down complex coding problems and finding efficient solutions.

Here’s how one can use ChatGPT’s abilities to solve coding problems:

• Identify the problem: The first step is to identify the problem that you need to solve. Once you have identified the problem, you can start thinking about how to solve it.
• Break the problem down: The next step is to break the problem down into smaller, more manageable pieces. This will help developers or programmers understand the problem better and make it easier to solve.
• Research: Once you have broken the problem down, you may need to do some research to find out how to solve each part of the problem. So, you can use ChatGPT to search for information about coding algorithms, concepts and programming languages.
• Create a plan: Once developers or programmers have researched the problem, they can create a plan to solve it.
• Write the code: With a plan in place, you can start writing the code to solve the problem. And you can use ChatGPT to generate code snippets, check syntax and help debug the code.
• Test and debug: Once you have written the code, they should test it to make sure it works as expected. In case of any errors, ChatGPT can help them debug the code.
• Refine and optimize: After developers or programmers have tested their code, they may need to refine and optimize it to make it faster or more efficient, for which they can use ChatGPT.

Here are some examples of coding problems that you could solve using ChatGPT.

Various problems that can be solved using ChatGPT are discussed below:

Syntax errors occur when the code violates the rules of the programming language. For example, forgetting to close a parenthesis or quotation mark can result in a syntax error. The following code shows an example of a syntax error:

This code produces a syntax error because the quotation mark is not closed. To solve this error, you can add the missing quotation mark and closing parenthasis as shown below:

Type errors occur when you try to perform an operation on a value that is not of the correct type. For example, trying to add a string to an integer can result in a type error. The following code shows an example of a type error:

This code produces a type error because you cannot add a string to an integer. To solve this error, you can convert the string to an integer using the int() function as shown below:

A name error occurs when the interpreter or compiler cannot find a definition for a particular name (variable, function, class, etc.) that is being used in the code.

This can happen for a variety of reasons, including the name is misspelled or incorrectly capitalized, the name has not been defined yet or has been removed from the code, or the name is defined in a different scope or module than where it is being used. The following code shows an example of a name error:

This code produces a name error because x has not been defined. To solve this error, you can define x and assign a value to it as shown below:

Index errors occur when you try to access an element of a list or array that does not exist. The following code shows an example of an index error:

This code produces an index error because “my_list” only has three elements, and you are trying to access the fourth element (which does not exist). To solve this error, you can access one of the existing elements of the list as shown below:

A reference error occurs due to a variable or function not being declared. The solution is to declare the variable or function before referencing it. For example, let’s say we have the following code that causes a reference error because the variable “myVariable” has not been declared:

To fix this, we need to declare the variable before referencing it:

Bitcoin clears $26,000 as U.S. Consumer Price Index rises by 0.4% in February 2023.

The price of Bitcoin (BTC) saw a sharp uptick over $26,000 as the United States Department of Labor released the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) data for February 2023.

CPI rose 0.4% last month on a seasonally adjusted basis, with the department noting that the all-items index denoting inflation increased by 6% over the last year. The Labor department notes that inflation saw its lowest 12-month increase since the period ending September 2021.

CNBC reported that conventional markets were volatile following the release, while cryptocurrency markets reacted positively. Bitcoin saw a surge in price alongside Ether (ETH), according to data from CoinMarketCap.

CPI measures the average change over time in consumer prices for a basket of goods and services. It’s calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and is used as an indicator of inflation.

CPI reflects the spending patterns of consumers on items such as food, housing, transportation, clothing, medical care and recreation. It’s used to adjust wages, benefits and social security payments for inflation, measure economic performance and set monetary policy.

The U.S. Labor Department’s statement notes that the shelter index was the largest contributor to the monthly all-items increase, accounting for 70% of February 2023’s CPI increase. Indexes for food, recreation, household furnishings and operations also contributed. 

The food index increased 0.4% last month, while the food at home index rose 0.3%. The energy index decreased by 0.6%, while natural gas and fuel oil indexes also declined in February.

NFT wash trading creates a phoney appearance of popularity to push up prices and rip collectors off. But you can learn how to spot the signs.

Wash trading on nonfungible token (NFT) marketplaces is back in the spotlight after critics claimed the fast-growing NFT marketplace Blur has incentivized the practice with its trading rewards scheme.

10% of Blurs total token supply was distributed to users based on their trading activity in its second token reward scheme from Feb. 14. The platform has seen a surge in trading volume in comparison to other leading NFT marketplaces.

Skeptics claim that wash trading played a significant role, with CryptoSlam reporting around $577 million worth of NFTs have been wash traded back and forth in recent months and that 80% of trades on the platform are inorganic. However, opinions vary. 

A new Dune Analytics deep-dive by Hildobby argues that the vast majority of the platforms trading volume is actually above board due to the way it has structured the rewards. But the analysis is far from a clean bill of health for the sector, with the same methodology suggesting that LooksRare and X2Y2, have 98% and 85%, respectively, of volume currently flagged as suspicious.

NFT marketplaces have accounted for a reported $73.8 billion worth of trading volume to date. However, Dune Analytics data suggests that more than 42% of the volume is fake, with $31.2 billion attributed to wash trading. 

The effects are wide-ranging. Inflated prices and manufactured popularity of certain collections have left inexperienced digital collectors as collateral damage. And in some cases, criminals have been using NFTs as a means of money laundering.

There is some good news for more educated collectors, however, in that most wash trading surrounds the type of NFT collections favored by inexperienced or low-information collectors. 

Sure, in absolute terms, there is a lot of wash trading, but it mostly is happening to NFT collections with a poor reputation anyways.

Wash trading itself is not a new phenomenon. The term has its origins in the early 1900s, where the practice of wash sales in the United States was carried out by selling a security prior to the end of the tax year to claim a loss and then buying them back straight after. 

Wash trading in crypto is an offshoot of those early practices, whereby individuals or colluding parties buy and sell a particular financial asset among themselves to create the perception of higher trading volumes or liquidity. Exchanges and projects do it mainly to make themselves look more popular. 

Its important to note that wash trading is illegal in a number of jurisdictions around the world and is prohibited by major regulatory institutions. Considered a form of market manipulation, the practice is harmful to investors and is a threat to the integrity of financial markets.

Given that the cryptocurrency space is still fairly nascent, regulators are still coming to grips with the ins and outs. This leaves crypto and NFT wash trading in a gray area where the practice is unchecked and ungoverned. However, President Joe Biden has proposed closing the loophole that made the practice not illegal for crypto assets in the U.S. in the upcoming budget. 

Research carried out by analysts and insights provided by industry experts to Cointelegraph Magazine suggests wash trading is ongoing across a number of NFT marketplaces.

Hildebert Mouli is one such expert, whose in-depth research brought NFT wash trading into the spotlight in late 2022. By day, Mouli is a data scientist working for cryptocurrency investment firm Dragonfly. In his spare time, Mouli built a data dashboard that has lifted the veil on wash trading in the NFT space.

His popular post on Dune late last year found that around 80% of the total NFT trading volume in January 2022 resulted from wash trading, and that figure averaged around 58% for the totality of 2022. Moulis method for routing out wash trading made use of four specific filters. 

Firstly, addresses that were both the buyer and seller of a specific NFT were flagged. The second filter identified back-and-forth trades between two different wallets. If an address had purchased the same NFT three or more times, it was also identified as potential wash trading. The final filter was used to identify addresses or trades that sidestep the above-mentioned methods by checking if the buyer and seller addresses were funded by the same wallet. 

After applying all these filters, Moulis data reveals that 42% of NFT trading volume is currently driven by wash trading across 29 major NFT marketplaces operating today.

Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis also delved into NFT wash trading in two separate reports in 2022. A key takeaway from its research highlighted 110 profitable wash traders netting $8.9 million in profits last year. The company tells Magazine that government agencies have shown interest in learning about NFT wash trading while declining to provide any specifics.

Chainalysis also keeps tabs on illicit funds moving through the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Its tools identified a rise in funds sent from illicit addresses toward the end of 2021, with around $2.4 million flowing to NFT marketplaces in the final two quarters of the year.

The report concludes that the amount of illicit funds sent to NFT marketplaces associated with money laundering paled in comparison to the $8.6 billion worth of cryptocurrency-based money laundering that Chainalysis monitored in 2021. Nevertheless, the practice is an option for cybercriminals.

Moulis research highlights LooksRare and X2Y2 as the two worst offenders, with 94.7% of LooksRares trading volume and 85% of X2Y2s trading volume allegedly attributed to wash trading. This is significant, given that the two platforms have processed $27.6 billion and $4.2 billion in total trading volume, respectively.

OpenSea still ranks as the largest NFT marketplace by volume, but it has a cleaner track record, with just 2.35% of the total $33.1 billion of trading volume attributed to the practice.

Blur (14%), Sudoswap (11%), Skillet (17%) and BitKeep (12.8%) all have wash trading percentages in the mid-teens, while NFT aggregator Element has the third-highest wash trading percentage, with 63% of its $94.3 million trading volume flagged as wash trading. 

DappRadar shares data with Cointelegraph that corroborates Moulis insights. LooksRare had 20,743 NFTs flagged as likely wash trade sales from January 2022 to March 2023, while X2Y2 had 11,289.

OpenSea had a total of 4,357 NFTs flagged as possible wash trade sales, while Blur has produced 2,285 over the past four months.

DappRadars data shows that the ratio of likely wash trading volume to total volume on LooksRare was 3,361.96%, while X2Y2s ratio was 210.99%.

Mouli tells Magazine that NFT wash trading occurs when a particular NFT is traded between two addresses owned by the same individual, with the goal of it blending into organic trading activity.

There are two primary reasons for this kind of activity. Firstly, trading platforms like LooksRare and X2YX incentivize trading with token rewards. If carried out correctly, traders wash trade NFTs to make a profit by acquiring these token rewards to offset fees.

The second reason is more subversive, as a trader looks to drive up the appearance of high trading volumes of a particular NFT collection in order to attract attention and higher bids from other traders.

If undetected, wash trading could help increase the perceived value of an NFT collection to other traders, which may make them buy/trade it.

However, Mouli believes it is not possible to sustainably simulate organic trading over a long period of time and notes that any collection that is revealed to be heavily wash traded will end up being unattractive to potential collectors. 

Zhong Yang Chan, head of research at CoinGecko, agrees the intention is to manipulate trading volumes and NFT prices while adding that tax loss harvesting is another driver of the practice.

He says that NFT wash trading has diminished some trust and credibility in the market and also played a part in fueling the NFT bubble of 2021 by enabling projects and participants to play the numbers only go up game. 

Chan believes that wash trading undermines the ability to verify NFT ownership history, which is meant to contribute to their value and differentiate collections from other physical and virtual collectibles. The result is collections that experience price distortions and wild fluctuations:

While this does not affect NFT authenticity, it may impact the perceived value and create doubt for an NFT collection that is trying to build a strong community.

Andrew Thurman, an analyst at blockchain analytics platform Nansen, echoes the sentiments of Mouli and highlights the scams connected to wash trading and the negative impact on real users.

Wash trading low-volume collections could potentially help scammers defraud users in a variety of ways. Thurman points to research from Nansen that uncovered instances of scammers creating and wash trading collections to coax users into minting new NFTs.

The scammers either change the mint price mid-mint or lead users to trade against themselves in order to generate trading fees or sell the worthless NFTs.

These NFTs would have no organic value and are briefly made to appear as if they do.

Thurman also notes wash trading also has a detrimental impact on real users of NFT marketplaces or platforms, as it lowers the number of rewards an organic user would earn. 

So, how can the industry combat wash trading? 

Mouli notes that different NFT marketplaces already have varying approaches to reducing wash trading, with fees being a prominent point. Fees hinder wash traders ability to maximize profits by creating an additional cost to trading. 

Marketplace fees and creator royalties are two fee mechanisms that take a share of a traders profits, with Mouli highlighting OpenSea as an example. The platform enforced royalty fees, which other marketplaces have emulated as a result. 

Cutting out the type of rewards that incentivize trading is another means of curbing the practice according to Mouli: 

While platforms airdropping tokens to users such as LooksRare and X2Y2 see plenty of wash trading, Blur found a new solution, rewarding listings and not trading.

The lack of regulation or perceived enforcement around NFT marketplaces is another point to consider according to Chan. Market manipulation and tax loss harvesting are illegal for traditional financial assets, and this looks set to be enforced by regulators in the future as Bidens budget proposals suggest. However, applying the existing standards to the nascent Web3 and NFT space might not be so clear-cut.

DappRadar head of research Pedro Herrera notes that NFT wash trading is a growing concern for regulators and law enforcement around the world, but they have bigger fish to fry right now.

The regulatory focus is in crypto adoption, DeFi and security tokens, he says. There is a major need to first establish the rules for the Web3-based financial layer.

Thurman tells Magazine that platforms, including OpenSea and Blur, have introduced trading throttles as a preventative measure. This inhibits an NFT from being listed if it recently changed addresses but does not completely combat the prevalence of the practice.

Aside from that, preventing wash trading on platforms like LooksRare and Blur is difficult its a subset of the sybil problem, he says.

Sybil attacks pose a particular threat to blockchain and decentralized networks. An attacker looks to gain control or influence of a system by creating and controlling a large number of pseudonymous wallets, addresses or identities.

As Thurman suggests, sybil attacks in the case of NFT marketplaces would allow an attacker to create fake trading volumes of various NFTs by trading using a number of different addresses that they anonymously control.

Apart from the obvious impacts of artificially inflating prices or astroturfing popularity, wash trading also distorts the ability to analyze and monitor cryptocurrency markets. Mouli says when he set out to provide in-depth insights about NFT trading, he first needed to remove the wash trading activity to work out what was actually going on.

Any good analyst will tell you that when you want to start studying a data set, the first step is to clean it up, he says, adding that many NFT data providers now filter for wash trading activity.

Many of the major analytics platforms have wash trading filters, and the way theyre constructed is often industry secret, he says.

Thurman shares Nansens NFT Trends and Indexes section by way of example, with the wash trading filter both on and off. The first image shows marketplace NFT trading volumes with wash trading removed:

The second screenshot includes wash trading and highlights the market distortions created by platforms rewarding trading volume. The likes of LooksRare and Blur have between 10 and 20 times the volume with the wash trading filter turned off:

Chan says analytics platforms are getting better at identifying and filtering out wash trading. The activity shows up as specific transaction patterns, allowing algorithms to detect and filter disingenuous trades from genuine transactions: 

While wash traders are becoming more sophisticated, analytics platforms are also improving their algorithms to detect new wash trading patterns.

Despite their best efforts, Thurman agrees that wash trading invariably still distorts analytical insights to some extent.

A key takeaway is that collectors and NFT traders need to be aware of wash trading and its effect on prices and trading volumes of collections and collectibles. As Thurman says:Actual collectors, meanwhile, simply need to be wary of classic scam vectors.

Vlad Hategan, a cryptocurrency expert at dappGambl, highlights useful tips to spot potential NFT wash trading.

The first port of call is research. Look up an artist or artwork and inspect market demand. Sudden spikes in trading volume or price are potential red flags. Patterns that seem out of the ordinary, including spikes or consistently low trading volumes over an extended period, bear the hallmarks of manipulative trading action. There are a variety of wash trading dashboards on Dune that may help.

Stick to reputable marketplaces that enforce robust vetting processes for sellers and listings and avoid platforms that allow anonymous or unverified users to trade NFTs.

Low or discounted prices are another potential sign of a wash trading scheme to lure in unwitting traders.

Lastly, ask for help if youre in doubt. Financial advisers and traders who are well-acquainted with NFT markets can provide good guidance to identify dodgy-looking NFTs or trading data.

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Listed with Tony Funari of Funari Realty, LLC

LOCATION: 5042 Legends Drive, Braselton, Georgia

SQUARE FOOTAGE: 14,342

BEDROOMS & BATHROOMS: 8 bedrooms & 9 bathrooms

PRICE: $4,200,000

This 3+ acre estate is located at 5042 Legends Drive in Braselton, Georgia and overlooks the private Legends Golf Course at Chateau Elan.

It was built in 2001 and features approximately 14,342 square feet of living space with 8 bedrooms, 8 full and 1 half bathrooms, foyer with staircase, 2-story great room, formal dining room, kitchen, family room, rec room with kitchen/bar, wine cellar, home theater, gym, 3-car garage with full guest apartment above and more.

Outdoor features include terraces/patios, swimming pool, 2 spas, fire pit, playhouse and a detached workshop/garage.

It is listed at $4,200,000.

The post USD/JPY Price Analysis: JPN Yields Fall Amid Safe-Haven Demand appeared first on Forex Crunch.

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Some of the biggest firms in crypto have denied exposure to any of the failed banks in the United States.

Amid the ongoing United States banking crisis, several major cryptocurrency firms have denied exposure to dissolved U.S. banks like Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).

As potential implications of the SVB crisis for the crypto market , Cointelegraph highlighted several major crypto firms that have declared to be unaffected by the issues so far.

Tether, the operator of the eponymous U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin, Tether (USDT), was one of the first companies to deny exposure to SVB and other troubled U.S. banks as of mid-March.

On March 12, Tether chief technology officer Paolo Ardoino took to Twitter to announce that the stablecoin company has zero exposure to Signature Bank. The tweet came soon after Signature officially shut down operations the same day.

Ardoino previously said that Tether had no exposure to SVB on March 10. The chief technology officer posted a similar tweet about Silvergate on March 2, declaring that Tether did not have “any exposure” to the bank.

Tether’s USDT is the largest stablecoin by market capitalization, with a market value of $73 billion at the time of writing. Its biggest rival, USD Coin (USDC), briefly lost its 1:1 peg with the U.S. dollar after its issuer, Circle, could not withdraw $3.3 billion in reserves from SVB.

Kris Marszalek, CEO of major cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com, provided similar statements on the company being unaffected by the ongoing issues in U.S. banking.

In subsequent tweets on March 10 and March 12, Marszalek declared that Crypto.com had zero exposure to Signature, Silvergate and SVB.

https://t.co/pFc4Pz9nFR has $0 exposure to Signature Bank. https://t.co/TG2h7HyXE9

— KrisCrypto.com (@kris) March 13, 2023

Other major exchanges, including Gemini and BitMEX, have also denied any exposure to the dissolved U.S. banks.

Despite having a partnership with Signature, Winklevoss brothers-founded Gemini exchange has zero customer funds and zero Gemini dollar (GUSD) funds held at the bank, the firm announced on March 13.

Gemini emphasized that all customer U.S. dollars and its GUSD reserves are held at banks like JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and State Street Bank.

2/ All Gemini customer U.S. dollars are held at JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and State Street Bank.

— Gemini (@Gemini) March 13, 2023

BitMEX exchange also took to Twitter on March 13 to announce that the company had “no direct exposure” to Silvergate, SVB or Signature. “All user funds continue to be safe and accessible 24/7/365,” BitMEX added.

Related: Ripple CEO assures ‘strong financial position’ despite SVB collapse

Exchanges like Binance and Kraken have partly denied exposure to the dissolved banks, with Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao stating that Binance does not have assets at Silvergate, and former Kraken CEO Jesse Powell also denying exposure to SVB.

Bitcoin mining firm Argo Blockchain issued a statement on March 13, declaring that the company has no direct or indirect exposure to SVB and Silvergate Bank.

However, the company said that one of Argo’s subsidiaries holds a “portion of its operating funds in cash deposits” at Signature. “These deposits are secure and are not at risk,” Argo noted, citing a decision by the U.S. Treasury and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to rescue customer deposits at the bank.

A number of other firms, including Animoca Brands, Abra and Alchemy Pay, have partly denied exposure to the troubled U.S. banks, stating that they had no assets at SBV and Silvergate.

Some companies, like crypto custodian BitGo, declared it holds no assets at SVB while being “not impacted” by issues at Silvergate, USDC and Signature Bank.

Euler is working with law enforcement agencies and blockchain security firms to contact the exploiter and recover the funds.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol Euler Finance became a victim of a flash loan attack on March 13, resulting in the biggest hack of crypto in 2023 so far. The lending protocol lost nearly $197 million in the attack and impacted more than 11 other DeFi protocols as well.

On March 14, Euler came out with an update on the situation and notified its users that they had disabled the vulnerable etoken module to block deposits and the vulnerable donation function.

The firm said that they work with various security groups to perform audits of its protocol, and the vulnerable code was reviewed and approved during an outside audit. The vulnerability was not discovered as part of the audit.

One of our auditing partners, @Omniscia_sec, prepared a technical post-mortem and analysed the attack in great detail. You can read their report here:https://t.co/u4Z2xdutwe

In short, the attacker exploited vulnerable code which allowed it to create an unbacked token debt… https://t.co/FGnPqvYUGB

— Euler Labs (@eulerfinance) March 14, 2023

The vulnerability remained on-chain for eight months until it was exploited, despite a $1 million bug bounty in place.

Sherlock, an audit group that has worked with Euler Finance in the past, verified the root cause of the exploit and helped Euler submit a claim. The audit protocol later voted on the claim for $4.5 million, which passed, and later executed a $3.3 million payout on March 14.

In its analysis report, the audit group noted a significant factor for the exploit: a missing health check in “donateToReserves,” a new function added in EIP-14. However, the protocol stressed that the attack was still technically possible even before EIP-14.

Related: More than 280 blockchains at risk of ‘zero-day’ exploits, warns security firm

Sherlock noted that the Euler audit by WatchPug in July 2022 missed the critical vulnerability that eventually led to the exploit in March 2023.

Similarly, Sherlock stands behind every auditor who reviewed Euler.

Sherlock initially worked with @cmichelio to audit the first version of Euler in Dec 2021, then with @shw9453 to audit a very small update in Jan 2022, and finally with @WatchPug_ to audit EIP-14 in July 2022.

— SHERLOCK (@sherlockdefi) March 13, 2023

Euler has also reached out to leading on-chain analytic and blockchain security firms, such as TRM Labs, Chainalysis and the broader ETH security community, in a bid to help them with the investigation and recover the funds.

Euler notified that they are also trying to contact those responsible for the attack in order to learn more about the issue and possibly negotiate a bounty to recover the stolen funds.

While the federal government’s proactive approach to minimizing damage was appreciated, many pointed out that taxpayers would ultimately suffer the depositors’ bailout.

The overnight collapse of two major traditional banks — Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank — triggered a series of events that impacted millions of businesses, venture capitalists and bottom-line investors alike. However, United States President Joe Biden assured taxpayers that they would not feel the burn as the federal government takes action to protect depositors.

On March 11, major stablecoins, including USD Coin (USDC), USDD (USDD) and Dai (DAI), depegged from the U.S. dollar after Circle announced that $3.3 billion of its $40 billion reserves were stuck in SVB.

Knowing that numerous other entities tied to the collapsing banks may suffer irreparable damage, Biden announced, on March 12, his commitment to hold the responsible people accountable for the event.

While the federal government’s proactive approach to minimizing damage was appreciated, many pointed out that it’s the taxpayers that would ultimately suffer the depositors’ bailout. On March 13, Biden addressed concerns through a tweet:

Thanks to actions we've taken over the past few days to protect depositors from Silicon Valley and Signature Banks, Americans can have confidence that our system is safe.

People’s deposits will be there when they need them – at no cost to the taxpayer.

— President Biden (@POTUS) March 13, 2023

Biden assured American citizens that the traditional financial system was safe after the federal intervention. He further stated that taxpayers would not be burdened for saving SVB and Signature Bank depositors:

“People’s deposits will be there when they need them – at no cost to the taxpayer.”

However, Biden’s followers on Twitter were not completely sold on this idea, as many pointed out that “everything you do or touch costs the taxpayer!”

Related: Biden wants to double capital gains and clamp down on crypto wash sales: Reports

In parallel, the U.S. Federal Reserve is closely investigating the factors that led to the failure of SVB, including how it supervised and regulated the now-collapsed financial institution.

@federalreserve announces that Vice Chair for Supervision Michael S. Barr is leading a review of the supervision and regulation of Silicon Valley Bank, in light of its failure. The review will be publicly released by May 1: https://t.co/wQ39KLiwHE

— Federal Reserve (@federalreserve) March 13, 2023

As previously reported by Cointelegraph, SVB was shut down by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation on March 10, with no specific reason offered for the bank’s forced closure. However, it is suspected that SVB was on the edge of collapse due to severe liquidity troubles relating to major losses on government bond investments and unprecedented cash withdrawals.

JOMO is that "I-was-right-about-the-market" joyful feeling after narrowly escaping a bad trade and potentially catastrophic losses.

JOMO stands for the joy of missing out — particularly when a cryptocurrency trader refuses to follow the crowd. This is the opposite of FOMO, or fear of missing out, and it's the counterbalance to price rallies driven by hype and frenzy.

In crypto trading, JOMO stems from not following the herd, which is often wrong, and ultimately avoiding a potentially big loss.

For example, the recurring bullish calls in the Bitcoin market during the 2020-2021 bull run likely prompted many people to buy at the top in expectation of more upside. 

Many market commentators, including analysts at Standard Chartered and JPMorgan & Chase, predicted in 2021 that BTC price would reach $100,000 by the end of the year. The widely-tracked Stock-to-Flow (S2F) model further boosted the bullish argument, given its accuracy through most of Bitcoin's bull and bear cycles.

However, Bitcoin price fell short of its popular $100,000 target after peaking out in November 2021 at $69,000, and is currently down 60% since.

Thus, the JOMO traders who either sold or didn't buy into the rally at the time came out on top. Moreover, they also retained the capital to get in at lower levels when FOMO is nonexistent, such as in June 2022 that marked Bitcoin's latest price bottom. 

One of the few JOMO traders who didn't buy into the overly-optimistic Bitcoin predictions in late 2021 was market watcher Michael Gogol. He reduced his crypto exposure a month before Bitcoin's peak, expressing his relief in May 2022.

Called the top in 2021 and 2022.
Not bad not bad. I’m proud. pic.twitter.com/ZZe5E445Sz

— Michael Gogel (@mgogel) May 3, 2022

On the other hand, one trader confessed that he had bought Bitcoin at $60,000 in October 2021 after getting convinced by the market's anti-inflation narrative. He said:

"The whole inflation thing finally clicked. I panicked and entered almost at ATH of 69k. Feels bad. Went down the rabbit hole, hours of research."

FOMO originates from the objective of making money quickly. Many gullible traders believe they can double or triple their investments within the matter of days, weeks, or months by investing cryptocurrencies. 

Usually, traders with FOMO syndrome may open or close their trades multiple times a day without putting considerable thought or strategy behind them. These high-risk trades also impact traders mentally, even leading to stress and sleep deprivation.

Here are four steps that a trader can take to turn FOMO into JOMO:

1. Develop a trading plan.
2. Keep a trading journal to monitor your trading patterns. 
3. Analyze potential trades using multiple metrics, including fundamental and technical analysis.
4. Ignore emotions, follow your plan and adjust accordingly. 

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

Bitcoin lines up a fresh charge at multi-month resistance, but BTC price action is already facing calls for a comedown triggered by CPI.

Bitcoin (BTC) eyed key resistance near $25,000 on March 14 as markets awaited key economic data from the United States.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD making monthly highs of $24,917 on Bitstamp overnight.

The pair remained buoyant after the impact of multiple U.S. bank closures sent crypto markets skyrocketing.

Now, all eyes were temporarily on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) print for February when it came to short-term BTC price action.

A classic crypto volatility catalyst in itself, CPI last month showed an unwelcome slowdown in inflation abating, this in turn giving rise to fears that the Federal Reserve would keep interest rates higher for longer.

Risk assets had little time to worry, however, as the banking crisis subsequently overshadowed the inflation debate. On the day, expectations already pointed to the Fed abandoning rate hikes altogether — regardless of CPI trends.

“Bitcoin sweeping the highs here as it's testing range high at $25K,” Cointelegraph contributor Michaël van de Poppe, founder and CEO of trading firm Eight, told Twitter followers.

“You'd preferably want to see some period of consolidation (CPI day today) before continuation. If markets sweep range high at $25.2K, make a bear. div and fall back, I'd be looking for shorts to $23K.”

On-chain monitoring resource Material Indicators pointed to a potential shake-up in order book composition thanks to CPI.

Should the data outpace expectations, bid support could “rug,” it warned, opening up the path for a deeper BTC price correction.

“Asia may continue to eat ask liquidity and clear a path for volatility before the CPI Report,” it commented about moves on the BTC/USD pair on Binance.

“If CPI is hot, I expect support to rug. If it's cold, and another bank doesn't go under before lunch, a bigger short squeeze.”

An accompanying chart from co-founder Keith Alan showed $23,600 and $25,000 as the principal areas of bid and ask liquidity, respectively.

Material Indicators added that in order for Bitcoin’s overall rally to have legs, it would need to deliver multiple weekly closes above its 200-week moving average (WMA).

“Need full candles above the 200 WMA to consider a breakout,” it confirmed.

Lower-than-expected CPI readings would boost the case for the Fed to lay off further rate hikes and loosen finanicial conditions.

Related: Fed starts ‘stealth QE’ — 5 things to know in Bitcoin this week

For his part, U.S. President Joe Biden last week appeared to have no concerns that inflation was on the right track, even before the banking crisis fully erupted.

In a White House press conference, Biden said that he was "optimistic we’re going to get the — the CPI next week. Hopefully, we’ll be in — in some solid shape."

Among analysts, however, there were suspicions. A surprise drop in CPI would be most useful for a Fed currently backed into a corner by recent events, popular trader xTrends implied.

"I believe tomorrows CPI will be manufactured to prevent a market crash , and it will be silently revised weeks later like they did with the last few CPI numbers," he revealed in part of Twitter commentary.

A starker warning on macro meanwhile came from Cathie Wood, CEO of ARK Invest, who issued a grim forecast for the consequences of any further rate hikes.

In a dedicated Twitter thread on March 13, Wood, under whose leadership ARK continues to increase crypto exposure, called for a Fed "pivot" on rates.

"If the Fed continues to focus on lagging indicators like the CPI, and does not pivot in response to the deflationary forces telegraphed by the inverted yield curve, then this crisis will devour more regional banks and further centralize, if not nationalize, the US banking system," she wrote.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

The technology advisory committee aims to assist the CFTC in “identifying and understanding the impacts and implications of technological innovation in financial services and markets.”

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has signaled receptiveness to the crypto and blockchain sector after including several executives from the space as part of its new Technology Advisory Committee (TAC).

CFTC commissioner and TAC sponsor Christy Goldsmith Romero announced the updated membership via a public statement on March 13, with the inaugural meeting of the new committee set to take place on March 22.

The TAC itself was formed in 1999 and aims to assist the CFTC in “identifying and understanding the impacts and implications of technological innovation in financial services and markets.”

“The TAC may inform the Commission’s consideration of technology-related issues in support of its mission to ensure the integrity of derivatives and commodities markets and the achievement of other public interest objectives,” the announcement reads.

Today @CFTCcgr announced the membership of the newly constituted Technology Advisory Committee, its Chair, and Vice Chair. Learn more: https://t.co/9sYxiLiiJE

— CFTC (@CFTC) March 13, 2023

The TAC also has the potential to provide advice on tech investments that “could support the Commission in meeting its surveillance and enforcement responsibilities.”

Former White House official Carole House will serve as the chair, with Ari Redboard, the head of legal and government affairs at blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs serving as the vice chair.

Other crypto-related members include Ava Labs founder and CEO Emin Gün Sirer, Circle vice president of global policy Corey Then, digital asset platform FireBlocks co-founder and CEO, Michael Shaulov, digital asset analytics firm Inca Digital CEO Adam Zarazinski and blockchain auditor Trail of Bits co-founder Dan Guid.

I'm thrilled to have been appointed to the CFTC's Technical Advisory Board. I'll do everything I can to move the space forward, inform regulators about the latest developments in crypto, and bring the benefits of blockchains to our financial system.https://t.co/5RpC1pb8Sd

— Emin Gün Sirer (@el33th4xor) March 13, 2023

Outside of crypto, executives from major companies such as IBM, Amazon, the CME Group and Cboe Global Markets have also been included in the TAC. While there is also a strong showing of professors from university law schools such as Cornell and the University of Michigan.

As part of the announcement, Goldsmith Romero emphasized the importance of working with members from private tech and other organizations to regulate and protect the commodities/futures market:

“To protect our markets from increasingly-sophisticated cyber attacks, to ensure responsible development of digital assets in a way that protects customers, and to ensure that the implications of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence are well understood, the Commission requires advice from technology experts.”

“These experts can provide us foundational knowledge about the technology, as well as the complex and nuanced impacts and implications of technology on financial markets,” she added.

Related: Biden vows to hold accountable those responsible for SVB, Signature collapse

The collaborative approach from the CFTC appears to be in stark contrast to that of the other U.S. agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which has reportedly acted frostily towards crypto firms behind closed doors.

Executives such as Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, Kraken co-founder Jesse Powell and Custodia Bank CEO Caitlin Long have all highlighted issues with trying to proactively work with the SEC and the government over the past couple of years.

BTC’s market cap has climbed to the 11th spot amongst top assets by market cap and now sits behind electric vehicle maker Tesla.

Despite a turbulent week for crypto following the downfall of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank, Bitcoin (BTC) market cap has managed to flip that tech giant Meta.

At the time of writing, data from Companies Market Cap shows Bitcoin's market cap has reached $471.86 billion, surpassing that of Meta’s market cap of $469 billion.

Companies Market Cap provides real-time monitoring and ranking of market caps for cryptocurrencies, public companies, precious metals, and ETFs.

Only 24 hours earlier, BTC’s market cap was nearly $37 billion below Meta’s market cap, sitting at $433.49 billion compared to Meta’s market cap of $469 billion.

However, Bitcoin’s market cap rose 9.7% in the past 24 hours, pushing the cryptocurrency to sit in the 11th spot among top assets by market cap, just below electric vehicle maker Tesla.

On Feb. 20, Cointelegraph reported that BTC had flipped the market cap of payment processing giant Visa for the third time in history, putting it just ahead of the payments company.

Related: Bitcoin on-chain data highlights key similarities between the 2019 and 2023 BTC price rally

The gap between the two market caps is now more than $20 billion, though it still is quite a distance from Gold, which sits in first position with a $12.59 trillion market cap, followed by Apple in second place with a $2.380 trillion market cap.

BTC’s price has risen 8.72% in the past 24 hours, currently sitting at $24,441 USD.

Debtors jumped on the opportunity to grab a discount on their loan repayments when USDC and DAI de-pegged from the dollar.

The depegging of USD Coin (USDC) and Dai (DAI) from the United States dollar prompted a frenzy of loan repayments over the weekend, allowing debtors to save a total of more than $100 million on their loans.

Following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) on March 10, the USDC price dropped to lows of $0.87 on March 11 amid concerns about its reserves being locked at SVB.

MakerDAO’s stablecoin DAI also de-pegged briefly, going as low as $0.88 on March 11, according to CoinGecko.

The depegging, in the backdrop of broader crypto turmoil, led to more than $2 billion in loan repayments on March 11 on decentralized (DeFi) lending protocols Aave and Compound — with more than half made in USDC, according to a report by digital assets data provider Kaiko. 

Another $500 million in debts were paid in DAI on the same day, it noted.

This tapered off as both USDC and DAI started heading back toward their peg. The following days did not have anywhere near as many repayments, with a rough total of only $500 million in loan repayments across Tether (USDT), USDC, DAI and other coins on March 12, and roughly half of that on March 13.

Overall, blockchain analytics firm Flipside Crypto estimates that USDC debtors saved $84 million as a result of paying back loans while the stablecoin was de-pegged. While those using DAI saved $20.8 million.

"Overall, DeFi markets experienced two days of huge price dislocations that generated countless arbitrage opportunities across the ecosystem, and highlighted the importance of USDC," the Kaiko report said. 

Related: USDC depegged, but it's not going to default

The depegging of USDC also led MakerDAO to reconsider its exposure to USDC, after crypto projects incorporating DAI in their tokenomics suffered losses due to a chain reaction.

Circle’s USDC began its climb back to $1 following confirmation from CEO Jeremy Allaire that its reserves are safe and the firm has new banking partners lined up, along with government assurances that depositors of SVB will be made whole.

According to CoinGecko data, USDC is sitting at $0.99 at the time of writing.

Dogecoin, Zcash and Litecoin have already patched the “critical” vulnerability, but hundreds of others may not have, risking billions' worth of crypto.

280 or more blockchain networks are estimated to be at risk of “zero-day” exploits that could put at least $25 billion worth of crypto at risk, according to cybersecurity firm Halborn.

In a Mar. 13 blog, Halborn warned of the vulnerability it dubbed “Rab13s” — adding it has already worked with some blockchains, such as Dogecoin, Litecoin and Zcash, to institute a fix for it.

Halborn discovered massive #ZeroDay impacting Dogecoin and 280+ networks including Litecoin and Zcash, putting over $25 Billion of digital assets at risk!

...

— Halborn (@HalbornSecurity) March 13, 2023

Halborn was contracted by Dogecoin in March 2022 to conduct a security review of its codebase and found “several critical and exploitable vulnerabilities.”

It later determined those same vulnerabilities “affected over 280 other networks” that risked billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrencies.

Halborn outlined three vulnerabilities, the “most critical” of which allows an attacker to “send crafted malicious consensus messages to individual nodes, causing each to shut down.”

3/ The most critical vulnerability discovered is related to peer-to-peer (p2p) communications where attackers can craft consensus messages and send it to individual nodes, taking them offline.

Halborn researchers, led by @safe_buffer, have code-named this vulnerability #Rab13s.

— Halborn (@HalbornSecurity) March 13, 2023

It added these messages over time could expose the blockchain to a 51% attack where an attacker controls the majority of the network’s mining hash rate or staked tokens to make a new version of the blockchain or take it offline.

Other zero-day vulnerabilities it found would allow potential attackers to crash blockchain nodes by sending Remote Procedure Call (RPC) requests — a protocol allowing a program to communicate and request services from another.

7/ Secondly, attackers can execute code through the public interface (RPC) as a normal node user. Since a valid credential is required to carry out the attack, the likelihood of this exploit is lower.

— Halborn (@HalbornSecurity) March 13, 2023

It added the likelihood of RPC-related exploits was lower as it requires valid credentials to undertake the attack.

“Due to codebase differences between the networks not all the vulnerabilities are exploitable on all the networks, but at least one of them may be exploitable on each network,” Halborn warned.

Related: Jump Crypto and Oasis.app ‘counter exploits’ Wormhole hacker for $225M

The firm said at this time it’s not releasing further technical details of the exploits due to their severity and added it made a “good faith effort” to contact all affected parties to disclose the potential exploits and provide remediation for the vulnerabilities.

Dogecoin, Zcash and Litecoin have already implemented patches for the discovered vulnerabilities, but hundreds could still be exposed according to Halborn.

Binance has also had problems with its banking partner for United States dollar transfers over the last few months.

Binance is scrambling to find a new service partner to process British pound transfers on its trading platform after its current partner, Skrill Limited, announced it would soon cease providing services to the crypto exchange. 

Binance explained in a March 13 email to “Binancians” that Skrill would stop processing pound deposits and withdrawals via bank transfer with its “Faster Payments Service” and card on May 22.

“We regret to inform you that our GBP fiat partner, Skrill Limited, has informed us that it will stop offering GBP fiat services, namely deposits and withdrawals via Faster Payments and card, to Binance users,” the statement read.

The trading platform added that they are “working hard to find an alternative provider” to provide Britis pound on- and off-ramp services to users as soon as possible.

It has about nine weeks to find an alternative before Skrill terminates its services.

Binance however confirmed that the change would not impact Binance Accounts or any Binance.com products or services.

A Binance spokesperson told Cointelegraph that pound transfers were suspended on March 13 for new users and that users will still be able to access their pound balances in the meantime:

“This change affects less than 1% of Binance users. However, we know that these services are valued by our users and our team is working hard to find an alternative solution for them.”

“In the meantime, all methods of depositing and withdrawing other fiat currencies as well as buying and selling crypto on Binance.com remain unaffected, including bank transfer using one of the other fiat currencies supported by Binance, and buying and selling crypto directly via credit or debit card,” the spokesperson added.

This isn’t the only service provider dilemma that Binance has dealt with of late either.

Binance temporarily suspended USD bank transfers on Feb. 8 but did not provide an explanation as to why saying just that it would work to restart the feature as soon as possible. At the time, the halt did not apply to the U.S.-based independent entity, Binance.US.

On Jan. 21, Binance also announced that its primary banking partner — reportedly now-shuttered Signature Bank — would ban U.S. dollar transfers below $100,000 on the trading platform. This service ceased on Feb. 1.

Related: Binance banking problems highlight a divide between crypto firms and banks

Binance then announced on Jan. 23 that Binance users from 143 countries would no longer have access to the SWIFT U.S. dollar bank deposit and withdrawal channel at all.

The United States, United Kingdom, Australia, France and Germany were some of the few countries that made the cut.

Cointelegraph reached out to Paysafe, the parent company of Skrill, but did not receive an immediate response.

The former CFTC chair argues that AML and KYC measures are outdated and constitutionally questionable and said crypto technology can do better.

The United States should lead the development of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) away from being “surveillance coins” and towards being "freedom coins,” says the former chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

In a Mar. 13 op-ed in The Hill, Christopher Giancarlo, nicknamed "Crypto Dad" for his pro-crypto outlook, said the U.S. "must influence" CBDC development towards protecting "democratic values like freedom of speech and the right to privacy, " leveraging current technology used by some cryptocurrency protocols.

My op-ed in @theHIll with @Jim Harper: the question is not whether #CBDCs can be stopped (they can’t), but whether sovereign AND non-sovereign #digitalcurrency will enslave or liberate citizens of free societies. https://t.co/h1oT14NalK

— Chris Giancarlo (@giancarloMKTS) March 13, 2023

Giancarlo, the co-founder of the Digital Dollar Project that focuses on researching the implications of a U.S. CBDC, elaborated on the privacy considerations in a Mar. 1 report he co-authored for the policy think tank, the American Enterprise Institute (API) with API fellow Jim Harper. 

He said the U.S. must advocate for a "freedom coin" — a CBDC that guarantees a high level of privacy.

Giancarlo and Harper argued in the paper that CBDCs offer an opportunity “to reassess contemporary financial surveillance activities” and could possibly enhance constitutional protections.

To achieve this, a CBDC could take advantage of crypto technology, such as “zero-knowledge proofs, homomorphic encryption, and multiparty computation, that enable parties to prove an encrypted proposition is true without revealing the underlying information," they said.

My report today w/@AEI’s @JimHarper: #CBDC & #stablecoins must preserve privacy & security, economic liberty, free speech & personal autonomy. https://t.co/pB8uaA3KIT

— Chris Giancarlo (@giancarloMKTS) February 28, 2023

These technologies would make “intelligent enforcement” of crime prevention possible, the authors argued.

First, the U.S. would have to reexamine current financial surveillance policies. The authors took issue specifically with one recent document published by the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden:

“The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s (OSTP) recent Technical Evaluation for a U.S. Central Bank Digital Currency System shows that financial surveillance in the West is more like China’s than many would like to admit.”

The OSTP paper showed an “unwillingness to evolve beyond today’s constitutionally suspect financial surveillance system,” they said.

Giancarlo and Harper pointed to the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) measures as problematic, saying they allowed too much surveillance without probable cause.

Related: CBDCs threaten our future, so it’s time to take a stand

If a CBDC's privacy is not guaranteed, there is a risk of it being used as it is in China, they argued.

There, the e-yuan “will allow the Chinese government to link political conformity to individual prosperity and relegate political dissenters to poverty” by making all transactions visible to the People’s Bank of China, they opined.

The authors’ thoughts have much in common with concerns expressed by U.S. Senator Tom Emmer, a vocal opponent of a U.S. CBDC who introduced the CBDC Anti-Surveillance Act in 2022.

Emmer has expressed concern over a CBDC that “tracks transaction level data down to the individual user” and can be programmed “to choke out politically unpopular activity.” Emmer is also co-chair of the U.S. Congressional Blockchain Caucus.

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Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said a "careful and thoughtful" review is needed to understand how the bank collapsed under its watch.

The Federal Reserve is investigating the factors that led to the failure of Silicon Valley Bank — including how it supervised and regulated the now-collapsed financial institution.

In a Mar. 13 announcement, the Federal Reserve outlined that Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr is “leading a review of the supervision and regulation of Silicon Valley Bank, in light of its failure,” with a review set for public release by May. 1.

"The events surrounding Silicon Valley Bank demand a thorough, transparent, and swift review by the Federal Reserve," Chair Jerome Powell stated as part of the announcement.

@federalreserve announces that Vice Chair for Supervision Michael S. Barr is leading a review of the supervision and regulation of Silicon Valley Bank, in light of its failure. The review will be publicly released by May 1: https://t.co/wQ39KLiwHE

— Federal Reserve (@federalreserve) March 13, 2023

"We need to have humility, and conduct a careful and thorough review of how we supervised and regulated this firm, and what we should learn from this experience," vice chair Barr added.

SVB was shut down by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation on Mar. 10, with no specific reason offered behind the bank's forced closure.

However, prior to shutting down SVB was reportedly on the edge of collapse due to severe liquidity troubles relating to major losses on government bond investments and bank runs from spooked depositors.

It marked the second major U.S. bank in the same week to crumble following the bankruptcy of crypto-friendly Silvergate, with its parent company Silvergate Capital Corporation announcing a voluntary liquidation on Mar. 8.

Adding to the chaos, another crypto-friendly U.S. bank — Signature Bank — also went bust on Mar. 12 after the New York Department of Financial Services took over control of the firm.

Related: Fed starts ‘stealth QE’ — 5 things to know in Bitcoin this week

The latest announcement from the Federal Reserve comes just a day after it rolled out the $25 billion Bank Term Funding Program to backstop liquidity troubled banks, curb further collapses and protect depositors.

THE BIG 4 US BANKS just got a $210bn Fed bailout. How? Fed's new BTFP facility allows banks to borrow against the negative collateral value shown on the graph *AT PAR* instead of at market value(!!!). The big 4 have $210bn of these losses...#privatizedprofitssocializedlosses pic.twitter.com/9H73gLH9Uk

— Caitlin Long ⚡️ (@CaitlinLong_) March 13, 2023

The Biden administration has taken swift action in that regard, with the president outlining in a Mar. 13 statement that:

“America can have confidence that the banking system is safe. Your deposits will be there when you need them. […] No losses will be borne by the taxpayers.”

Biden added that the management behind the collapsed banks will be held accountable for their failures, and suggested that those responsible could be prosecuted. He also called for stronger banking oversight and outlined that thorough investigations will take place.

“We must get the full accounting of what happened,” he said.

1) What

— Coin Bureau (@coinbureau) March 13, 2023

Regulators are planning another auction for Silicon Valley Bank after the previous attempt to find a new owner failed.

Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) could be returning to the auction block with United States regulators taking a second attempt at finding a buyer for the now-collapsed bank. 

According to a Mar. 13 report from the Wall Street Journal, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) told Senate Republicans that they now have additional flexibility to sell the bank after regulators declared the SVB collapse a threat to the financial system.

The regulators first attempted an auction of the fallen bank on Mar. 11 — only a day after its closure. Bids were only open for a few hours.

However, the weekend auction reportedly saw no bids from major U.S. banks. There was at least one offer made by another institution — but that was declined by the FDIC.

1/Now that the SVB auction is live, know that we believe them to be a very attractive purchase given relationships and core business.

I expect that both banks and private capital will bid and there will be a lot of bids

— samir kaji (@Samirkaji) March 12, 2023

With SVB declared “systemic,” the FDIC has more leeway to offer incentives for bidders to buy the firm, such as loss-sharing agreements, according to the WSJ. However, a timetable has yet to be set for the second auction.

$SIVB. This is crazy. My understanding is that a lot of these assets have real value. https://t.co/6YgL8FyeoH

— David Adler (@DavidJAdler1991) March 13, 2023

The FDIC is an independent agency of the United States Government created to protect bank depositors from losing their insured deposits when a bank fails; it also helps with the institution's bankruptcy process, selling off any assets and settling debts.

Related: Silicon Valley Bank collapse: Everything that’s happened until now

California's financial watchdog shut down Silicon Valley Bank on Mar. 10 after announcing a significant sale of assets and stocks to raise $2.25 billion in capital and shore up operations.

Global banking giant HSBC has already come to the rescue of the United Kingdom-based branch of SVB, officially announcing on Mar. 13 that its subsidiary, HSBC UK Bank, is acquiring Silicon Valley Bank UK for 1 British pound ($1.21).

The controversial founder of Terraform Labs, Do Kwon is at the center of the investigation, despite believed to be hiding out in Serbia.

The United States Justice Department is reportedly investigating the collapse of the TerraClassicUSD (USTC) stablecoin which contributed to a $40 billion wipe out in the Terra ecosystem last May.

Two agencies within the department — the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Southern District of New York (SDNY) have interrogated former staff at Terraform Labs in recent weeks, according to a Mar. 13 report by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

The probe covers similar ground to a lawsuit filed against Terraform Labs and its founder Do Kwon by the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission on Feb. 16, according to people familiar with the matter.

Among topics that investigators have asked about was the relationship between Chai, a South Korean-based payment platform and the Terra blockchain on which USTC operated.

The SEC alleged in its filing alleged that Kwon misled investors into believing that Chai transactions were processed on the Terra blockchain.

The SEC in its lawsuit also accused Kwon of misleading investors about the risks of the algorithmic-based stablecoin, which is designed to be pegged 1:1 to the U.S. dollar.

It is unclear what specific charges the Justice Department is potentially pursuing. The investigation does not necessarily mean that charges will be filed. 

Related: Do Kwon had the right idea, banks are risk to fiat-backed stablecoins — CZ

Since the collapse, Kwon reportedly left South Korea for Singapore, Dubai, and now Serbia, where he is now believed to be, according to South Korean officials. Two South Korean authorities were recently sent to Serbia to find Kwon but were unsuccessful in their search attempts.

Kwon however claims he is not “on the run” despite the South Korean prosecutors issuing Kwon an arrest warrant on Sept. 14 and a red notice filed by Interpol, a global law enforcement agency on Sept. 26.

However, Kwon claims that he hasn’t seen a copy of the South Korean arrest warrant, according to an October interview on the Unchained Podcast with Laura Shin, and he continues to deny fraud allegations on social media.

I am not “on the run” or anything similar - for any government agency that has shown interest to communicate, we are in full cooperation and we don’t have anything to hide

— Do Kwon (@stablekwon) September 17, 2022

Meanwhile, New York prosecutors are understood to be investigating a series of chat-group investigations from former members at Jump Trading, Jane Street and Alameda Research, which filed for bankruptcy alongside FTX, according to a Mar. 13 report by Bloomberg.

The investigation is reportedly looking into whether market manipulation tactics were involved in the TerraUSD stablecoin project.

Cointelegraph reached out to Terraform Labs but did not receive an immediate response.

The short-lived NFT features were first launched in May 2022, but Meta's financial technology lead said it's "winding down" the tools to focus elsewhere.

Big Tech firm Meta is scrapping its nonfungible token (NFT) feature across its social media platforms Facebook and Instagram just under a year after it launched.

Stephane Kasriel, Meta's head of commerce and financial technologies, tweeted the news on Mar. 13, saying Meta is "winding down" its NFT support as it wishes to "focus on other ways to support creators, people, and businesses."

Some product news: across the company, we're looking closely at what we prioritize to increase our focus. We’re winding down digital collectibles (NFTs) for now to focus on other ways to support creators, people, and businesses. [1/5]

— Stephane Kasriel (@skasriel) March 13, 2023

Kasriel added the firm is still prioritizing ways for users to "connect with their fans and monetize" and will focus on such as building payment rails on its platform and through its messaging apps and monetizing Reels — the company's short form video tool.

The product was relatively short-lived as testing began in May 2022 with select United States-based creators on Instagram before it expanded to Facebook that June. It expanded again in July as Instagram made NFT tools available to over 100 countries.

This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.

The company disclosed that it has approximately $142 million in cash deposits at Signature Bridge Bank, which was set up by the FDIC after the shutdown of Signature Bank.

Crypto mining firm Marathon Digital Holdings has assured investors that the firm's cash deposits at Signature Bank are secure and available for use as of Mar. 13.

In a statement following the closure of New York’s Signature Bank, Marathon disclosed that it has approximately $142 million in cash deposits at Signature Bridge Bank.

The Signature Bridge Bank was set up by the United States Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to manage customer accounts at the recently shut-down Signature Bank. The bridge bank is aimed at ensuring the flow of funds is not interrupted while the regulator searches for a buyer to acquire the assets of Signature Bank.

Marathon Digital Holdings' deposits that were held at Signature Bank, New York, NY are secure and available for use as of Monday, March 13, 2023. Read the full update here: https://t.co/H5R6wpmB7Q

— Marathon Digital Holdings (NASDAQ: MARA) (@MarathonDH) March 13, 2023

Marathon also confirmed that it has access to its funds for treasury management purposes, and is conducting its usual business transactions and paying all invoices as usual. Moreover, Marathon still holds over 11,000 Bitcoin (BTC), which the company views as a financial asset that provides flexibility beyond the conventional banking system.

The company also clarified that it has no direct business ties with Silicon Valley Bank, which shut down on Mar. 10. 

Signature Bank, a crypto-friendly bank based in New York closed down on Mar. 12 and was taken over by the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS).

@federalreserve @USTreasury @FDICgov issue statement on actions to protect the U.S. economy by strengthening public confidence in our banking system, ensuring depositors' savings remain safe: https://t.co/YISeTdFPrO

— Federal Reserve (@federalreserve) March 12, 2023

The Federal Reserve, in a statement released on Mar. 12, explained that the decision to close the bank was made in collaboration with the FDIC to protect the U.S. economy and bolster public confidence in the banking system.

Related: Gemini says no funds at Signature Bank backing GUSD

Former U.S. Representative and Signature Bank board member Barney Frank has since suggested that the closure of Signature Bank by New York regulators was part of an anti-crypto message, a Mar. 13 CNBC report revealed.

According to Frank, there was no indication of problems at the bank beyond a deposit run of over $10 billion, which he attributed to contagion from the fallout of Silicon Valley Bank.

Signature Bank's shut down by New York regulators makes it the third bank with ties to crypto to collapse in a week. Frank said regulators may have wanted to show an anti-crypto message, and claims that Signature and Silvergate Bank was solvent at the time.

On March 8, Euler had over $311 million in crypto locked inside its smart contracts. Its total value locked has since fallen to $10.37 million.

Contagion from the Dec. 12 flash loan attack against Euler has spread far and wide, resulting in frozen or lost funds for 11 different decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, according to Dec. 13 reports from each of them on Twitter. Balancer, an Ethereum protocol with over $1 billion total value locked (TVL), is among the affected protocols. Below is a rundown of the major exploits and what we know so far.

Balancer reported on March 13 that the Euler Boosted USD (bb-e-USD) pool had been affected by the exploit. Approximately $11.9 million worth of tokens from this pool were sent to Euler during the exploit. The balancer emergency subDAO reacted by pausing the pool and putting it into recovery mode. However, over 65% of the pool’s TVL had already been lost by the time it was paused.

At 10:00 UTC Balancer contributors became aware of an exploit on Euler. It was determined the best course of action was to pause and put into recovery mode bbeUSD (Euler Boosted USD) and all pools containing bbeUSD. This was executed by the emergency subDAO at 11:00 UTC.

— Balancer (@Balancer) March 13, 2023

As a result of a bug in the app’s user interface (UI), liquidity providers cannot retrieve the remaining funds left in the pool. However, a new UI will be offered “in the near future” that will allow the remaining funds to be withdrawn, Balancer said. No other pools have been affected, Balancer clarified.

Angle Protocol released a preliminary report on its exposure to the attack. It may have lost over $17 million worth of USD Coin (USDC). This may have caused the agEUR stablecoin, which is pegged to the euro, to become undercollateralized. The team is still investigating and attempting to prepare a detailed balance sheet. All minting and redemption of agEUR is currently paused, but borrowers can still repay their debts to the protocol as normal, the team said.

Idle Finance has provided a detailed list of its losses due to the Euler exploit. It seems to have lost around $5.9 million worth of tokens in total, based on March 13 Ether (ETH) and euro prices. The team has paused all Best Yield vaults and Yield Tranches related to Euler to prevent further losses.

Yearn Finance has over $423 million in TVL, according to DeFi Llama. It reported indirect exposure to Euler, through Angle Protocol and Idle Finance. It has lost approximately $1.38 million. However, the team said that any bad debt not covered by Idle and Angle would be covered by the Yearn Treasury.

Yield Protocol is another protocol affected by the exploit. Its "mainnet liquidity pools are built on Euler," according to the team's announcement regarding the attack. The company has disabled the mainnet app, paused borrowing, and is investigating the attack. Its mainnet liquidity pools appear to have been affected, with a possible loss of “less than $1.5 million.”

The Euler hack has affected our mainnet liquidity pools. Yield liquidity pools hold two assets: Euler eTokens and Yield fyTokens. We do not yet have accurate figures for the value of the eTokens held before the attack but believe the total value to be less than $1.5 million USD.

— Yield Protocol (@yield) March 13, 2023

InverseFinance reported that it was hit as well. It's DOLA Fed for the DOLA-bb-e-USD on Balancer lost over $860,000. The team said it is communicating with Balancer in an attempt to get these funds returned to depositors.

Related: Euler Finance hacked for over $195M in a flash loan attack

SwissBorg reported that “a small portion of [its] Smart Yield Program was impacted” by the exploit. However, “the extent of the damage is minimal thanks to our Risk Management Procedure.” The team said that it would compensate all losses from its funds, and its users “will not suffer any loss from this event.”

In a Telegram conversation with Cointelegraph, SwissBorg founder Cyrus Fazel clarified that the protocol ranks yield strategies based on risk, time, and APY. Since Euler was rated Risk 2- Adventurous, SwissBorg users “had a limited amount” invested in Euler. This mitigated against losses to the protocol, he explained.

Opyn, Mean, Sense and Harvest also reported they might have been affected by the exploit, though none have provided details on how much has been lost. This brings the total number of affected protocols to 11, with $37.6 million in cumulative losses. 

Euler Finance is a crypto borrowing and lending protocol that runs on Ethereum. It became popular thanks in part to its support for using liquid staking derivatives (LSDs) such as Coinbase Staked ETH (cbETH) or Lido Staked ETH (stETH) as collateral for loans. On March 8, Euler had over $311 million in crypto locked inside its smart contracts. Since the exploit, its TVL has fallen to $10.37 million.