Autor Cointelegraph By Editorial Staff

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

Starting in early 2023, Coinbase’s payment service, Coinbase Commerce, will facilitate crypto payments for customers purchasing Google’s cloud services thanks to a deal between the two companies. Google will only allow certain crypto assets for payment, including Bitcoin. Initially limited to certain participants, the option to pay with crypto will eventually be expanded to other customers, an executive at Google Cloud told CNBC. Google Cloud has taken several other steps toward crypto and blockchain industry involvement in 2022. 

BNY Mellon, America’s oldest bank, launches crypto services

Banking giant BNY Mellon has entered the crypto custody field, offering certain customers Bitcoin and Ether custody services via a new platform. The 238-year-old bank will provide bookkeeping for clients’ crypto in a similar fashion as it does for traditional assets, while also handling clients’ private keys. BNY Mellon’s CEO of securities services and digital, Roman Regelman, said: “With Digital Asset Custody, we continue our journey of trust and innovation into the evolving digital assets space, while embracing leading technology and collaborating with fintechs.”

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FTX partners with Visa, BNB Chain suffers exploit and Elon Musk returns to $44B Twitter deal: Hodler’s Digest, Oct. 2-8

SEC rejects WisdomTree’s application for a spot Bitcoin ETF… again

Following multiple delays, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has denied WisdomTree’s spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) proposal, which the firm filed in January. The SEC cited fears of market manipulation and fraud as the rationale for its decision, which is consistent with its previous rationale for denying spot Bitcoin ETFs. The SEC also denied a spot Bitcoin ETF proposal from WisdomTree in 2021.

PayPal says policy to punish users for misinformation was ‘in error’

PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy was set to change in early November to include a $2,500 fine for any platform users that promote, post, send or publicize so-called “misinformation.” PayPal has since claimed that the policy provision was added in error. “PayPal is not fining people for misinformation and this language was never intended to be inserted in our policy,” said PayPal. The fiasco has reignited concerns about centralized platforms among crypto users who view self-custody as an important pillar of self-sovereignty and financial inclusion.

Blockchain games and metaverse projects raised $1.3B in Q3: DappRadar

Data from DappRadar revealed that $1.3 billion worth of venture capital flowed into metaverse projects and blockchain games in Q3 — a bright spot amid crypto bear market darkness. While venture capital funding for these sectors was down 48% compared with Q2, the Q3 figure was still more than double the amount invested in all of 2021.

Winners and Losers

At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $19,665, Ether (ETH) at $1,329 and XRP at $0.50. The total market cap is at $938.70 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Huobi Token (HT) at 87.06%, TerraClassicUSD (USTC) at 63.33% and Quant (QNT) at 22.07%.  

The top three altcoin losers of the week are Klaytn (KLAY) at -20.36%, Internet Computer (ICP) at -15.04% and eCash (XEC) at -14.48%.

For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.

Read also

Features
Attack of the zkEVMs! Crypto’s 10x moment

Features
FTX partners with Visa, BNB Chain suffers exploit and Elon Musk returns to $44B Twitter deal: Hodler’s Digest, Oct. 2-8

Most Memorable Quotations

“Ethereum is the ‘Hotel California’ of cryptocurrencies. You can check in, but you can’t check out.

Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano

“Elon Musk quotes posts about Dogecoin, you get seven times daily signups.

Alex Harper, co-CEO and co-founder of Swyftx

“If we [the crypto industry] want to achieve internet scale, we need a solution for AML/CTF compliance.

John Henderson, partner at Airtree Ventures

“A bear market is the best time to start working in crypto and find a job.

Raman Shalupau, founder of Crypto Jobs List

“There is protection in gold. But in my opinion, Bitcoin is far superior. It’s got math and code. It’s defended by a decentralized protocol. You don’t mess with math.

Greg Foss, executive director of strategic initiatives at Validus Power Corp

“It’s incredibly important not to ever forget that we have an immense responsibility that influencers do not. They have their own risks in terms of their followers’ trust, but we have our responsibility to keep our integrity as journalists.

Kristina Cornèr, editor-in-chief of Cointelegraph

Prediction of the Week 

BTC price hits 3-week lows on US CPI as Bitcoin liquidates $57M

For most of the week, Bitcoin traded sideways, slightly favoring the downside, according to Cointelegraph’s BTC price index. The asset sustained a fair bit of price volatility on Oct. 13, however, in line with the release of September’s U.S. inflation data. Bitcoin’s price dropped down near $18,200 following the news but subsequently rebounded above $19,000.  

In an Oct. 13 post, pseudonymous Twitter user il Capo of Crypto tweeted about the possibility of Bitcoin’s drop being a bear trap, noting a potential subsequent rally to $21,000, followed by a stark drop.

FUD of the Week

US Treasury’s OFAC and FinCEN announce $29M in enforcement actions against Bittrex

Crypto exchange Bittrex faces charges from two different United States regulators: the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). The regulatory authorities have essentially alleged that Bittrex did not conduct proper due diligence on its customers and transactions between 2014 and 2018, which allowed users from sanctioned regions to use the platform. Bittrex confirmed it would settle with OFAC for around $24 million, which may also be applied as a credit toward its $29 million settlement owed to FinCEN. Looking to move forward from the situation, Bittrex stated that it has been up to date with expected standards since 2018.

$100M drained from Solana DeFi platform Mango Markets, token plunges 52%

Mango Markets, a decentralized finance platform running on the Solana blockchain, reportedly bled around $100 million from its treasury thanks to an exploit. Someone manipulated price data for the platform’s native MNGO asset, letting them borrow crypto worth far more than the value of the MNGO they put up as collateral. MNGO suffered a roughly 50% price drop following news of the event. Later reporting saw the hacker coming forward, demanding a $70 million bug reward and other terms to return exploited funds.

CNN to shut down its NFT marketplace and issue 20% refund

After about four months, media outlet CNN has decided to discontinue its nonfungible token (NFT) endeavor, seemingly another bear market casualty. The media company’s NFT project, known as Vault by CNN, essentially offered tokenized memories of historical news events spanning multiple decades through CNN’s history. The project’s roadmap projected six months of development, although the media outlet has since claimed the project was a “6-week experiment,” according to an announcement from the Vault by CNN Twitter account. NFT buyers will get a 20% reimbursement of the price they paid to mint their NFTs, according to a CNN staffer on Discord.

Best Cointelegraph Features

Attack of the zkEVMs! Crypto’s 10x moment

zkEVMs are launching this month and offer a path to infinite scaling for Ethereum. But who will win the race between Polygon, zkSync, Scroll and StarkWare?

Mass adoption will be terrible for crypto

From reversible transactions to increased regulation and a rising tide of censorship, mass adoption is going to make crypto look more like the systems we’re trying to escape.

Crypto’s downturn is about more than the macro environment

The global economic downturn should not have a long-term negative effect on cryptocurrency prices, even if it is influencing crypto in the short term.

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The most engaging reads in blockchain. Delivered once a
week.

Editorial Staff
Cointelegraph Magazine writers and reporters contributed to this article.

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

Musk’s deal for Twitter looks set to go with original $44B price tag

Elon Musk is back on track to buy Twitter. The billionaire originally decided to buy the social media network back in April 2022, settling on a price tag of roughly $44 billion. He subsequently attempted to cancel the agreement, claiming inadequate transparency from Twitter regarding the firm’s financial health as well as fake account and spam bot prevalence on the platform. Musk now intends to complete the original $44 billion deal, according to a legal filing.

EU regulators ban cross-border payments from Russian crypto accounts

In light of recent escalations in the Ukraine-Russia war, the European Union has banned crypto activity between member regions and Russia, no matter how small the transaction. The ban covers “all crypto-asset wallets, accounts, or custody services, irrespective of the amount of the wallet,” according to an Oct. 6 statement from the European Commission. Russia, on the other hand, has taken the opposite stance, evident in its approval of cross-border crypto activity in recent weeks.

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Get your money back: The weird world of crypto litigation

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Wall Street disaster expert Bill Noble: Crypto spring is inevitable

SWIFT says it has reached a ‘breakthrough’ in recent CBDC experiments

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a key cog in the global payments system, unveiled a successful test related to central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). In short, the test proved interoperability between CBDCs globally. “For CBDCs, our solution will enable central banks to connect their own networks simply and directly to all the other payments systems in the world through a single gateway,” SWIFT chief innovation officer Tom Zschach said in an Oct. 5 statement. SWIFT’s other test pertained to tokenized assets.

Middle East and North Africa are fastest-growing crypto markets: Data

The Middle East and North Africa, known as the MENA region, took the cake for fastest crypto growth this past year. Between July 2021 and June 2022, the volume of crypto transactions in the region hit $566 billion, a 48% increase from the year prior, according to a Chainalysis report. Crypto usage in the MENA region ranged from capital preservation and remittance payments to institutional activity. Latin America took second in terms of growth at 40%, and North America came in third with 36%.

FTX and Visa partner to permit crypto payments in 40 countries

Crypto exchange FTX unveiled that it has teamed up with Visa to produce a reportedly feeless debit card. Launching such a card has been a long-standing goal of FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. The FTX Visa card will reportedly be available in 40 countries. The card’s website states the card is also free to own.

Winners and Losers

At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $19,604, Ether (ETH) at $1,336 and XRP at $0.49. The total market cap is at $947.07 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Casper (CSPR) at 20%, Elrond (EGLD) at 12.98% and Convex Finance (CVX) at 12.44%.  

The top three altcoin losers of the week are UNUS SED LEO (LEO) at -11.93%, Chiliz (CHZ) at -9.04% and Lido DAO (LDO) at -8.06%.

For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.

Read also

Features
Get your money back: The weird world of crypto litigation

Columns
Wall Street disaster expert Bill Noble: Crypto spring is inevitable

Most Memorable Quotations

“A year ago, nobody’s asking me questions about bankruptcy. A year ago, everybody was asking me questions about DeFi and things like that.

Diogo Mónica, president and co-founder of Anchorage Digital

“NFTs can give you the technical ability to take ownership of a game asset out of the control of the publisher of the game.

Alex Dunmow, CEO of Ninja Syndicate

“This recession is in its earliest stages, and the smarter play is to let the Fed’s monetary policy shifts play out and save capital.

Richard Gardner, CEO of Modulus

“As it stands, owning digital art is still relatively foreign to most people and, at most, it’s a cool concept.

Ted Mui, CEO of Kuma Games

“All financial goods will move across blockchain networks in the future.

Matthew Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise Asset Management

“That’s our mandate: not to make a world with Bitcoin or Ethereum, or not make that world — it’s just to understand what’s going on, set up a system where we […] make sure people have good resources to understand what’s happening.”

Curtis Loftis, treasurer for the U.S. state of South Carolina

Prediction of the Week 

A crumbling stock market could create profitable opportunities for Bitcoin traders

Bitcoin posted another week of largely range-bound price action, trading between $19,000 and $20,500 for the most part, according to Cointelegraph’s BTC price index.

Cointelegraph analyst Marcel Pechman detailed the potential importance of Q3 earnings announcements expected in October from big companies such as Tesla and Apple. If negative, the announcements could lead to a falling BTC price if the asset remains correlated to mainstream markets. In contrast, Bitcoin’s scarcity could appeal to investors if inflation woes continue.

FUD of the Week 

Kim Kardashian pays SEC $1.26 million to settle EthereumMax charge

Kim Kardashian faces legal action from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for not disclosing one of her Instagram posts as being sponsored, according to the regulator. The celebrity accepted $250,000 in exchange for publishing a promotional post about crypto project EthereumMax (EMAX) on her Instagram account. The act will cost Kardashian a total of $1.26 million in fines, which she has agreed to pay despite not confirming or denying the charges.

BNB Chain back online after suspension due to a cross-chain exploit

BNB Chain was paused briefly this week to combat a cross-chain attack related to the BSC Token Hub bridge. The exploit “resulted in extra BNB,” according to an Oct. 6 tweet from Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao. Although the chain was able to freeze $7 million, estimates say roughly $70 to $80 million was stolen, down from earlier estimates of $100 million. BNB Chain successfully resumed activity on Oct. 7.

South Korean judge dismisses warrant for individual involved in Terra collapse: Report

The broad hunt for members of the Terra team has resulted in its first arrest: head of Terraform Labs’ business team Yoo Mo was taken into custody by South Korean police. A Seoul Southern District Court judge dismissed the arrest warrant shortly after, questioning the regulatory claims of the accusations, although Mo is not allowed to leave South Korea. The Terra crypto project collapsed in outlandish fashion earlier in 2022. Project leader Do Kwon remains at large.

Best Cointelegraph Features

Wall Street disaster expert Bill Noble: Crypto spring is inevitable

“It’s 10% up or 10% down each day. I don’t have to wait five years in between crises. As a matter of fact, I only have to wait about 45 minutes.”

What remains in the NFT market now that the dust has settled?

From profile pictures to celebrity endorsements, the NFT space has changed a lot since the market boom in 2021.

Federal regulators are preparing to pass judgment on Ethereum

The Securities and Exchange Commission is moving to take action against Ethereum that reaches far beyond the United States’ borders.

Subscribe
The most engaging reads in blockchain. Delivered once a
week.

Editorial Staff
Cointelegraph Magazine writers and reporters contributed to this article.