Crypto Weekly Roundup: Celsius Drama, Kardashian Fined, And More

The Celsius drama keeps evolving. Recent reports reveal that top Celsius executives withdrew a chunk of crypto just before the company declared bankruptcy. In other news, Visa and FTX have partnered up to enable debit cards in multiple countries. Let’s find out more. 

Bitcoin

Renowned Egyptian-American economist and businessman Mohamed El-Erian acknowledged in an interview that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies play a role that must be respected; however, he also stated that he doesn’t believe it will be the next global currency. 

With the U.S. midterm elections approaching, and world economies in free fall toward recession, there are signs that the Federal Reserve will either reduce future rate hikes or go into pause mode. 

Ethereum

Leading asset management company Fidelity has revealed that its Ethereum Index Fund has raised $5 million in the week and a half since its launch. 

DeFi

MakerDAO has invested $500 million of its reserves in traditional assets to diversify its balance sheet and strengthen the DAI stablecoin backing. 

Asset-management giant GoldenTree has disclosed that it has invested $5.2 million in SUSHI, the governance token of the decentralized finance protocol SushiSwap.

Bitcoin-based decentralized finance protocol Sovryn suffered a major exploit on Tuesday, with a hacker draining $1.1 million from the protocol. 

Blockchain analytics and crypto compliance firm Elliptic has published a report revealing how decentralized exchanges and bridges are being used to launder funds. 

After months of uncertainty and speculation, the SushiSwap community finally elected a new CEO, Jared Grey, who has pledged to help the decentralized exchange move past one of its most tumultuous periods.

Altcoins

According to Tether’s latest portfolio update, the company has further reduced its commercial paper holdings and increased its treasury bill holdings. 

Technology

The Wallet bot on the social messaging app Telegram has launched a feature allowing users to exchange cryptocurrencies. 

Business

Asian crypto exchange Huobi has announced that its controlling shareholder has completed the transaction, selling its entire stake to About Capital. 

Payments leader Visa is teaming up with crypto exchange giant FTX to launch debit cards in 40 countries, focusing mainly on Latin America, Asia, and Europe.

AdAge published an article that claimed that Crypto.com “downsized many of the partnership deals” that had been made in sunnier times.

New court records revealed that former CEO Alex Mashinsky, former CSO Daniel Leon, and CTO Nuke Goldstein withdrew $56.12 million in crypto just before Celsius went bankrupt.

Coinbase suffered a significant outage on October 2, leaving users in the lurch, unable to withdraw their funds for six hours. 

An excerpt from the Chainalysis 2022 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report states that the Middle East and North Africa are the fastest-growing regions for crypto adoption.

Regulation

The European Securities and Markets Authority has just published a report on the perceived risks to financial stability posed by crypto.

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Kim Kardashian with failing to disclose that she was paid to tout the crypto asset EthereumMax on Instagram. 

The Biden administration has urged Congress to speed up the framing of a crypto regulatory framework, especially after the UN warning of an impending Fed-induced recession.

NFT

1inch has announced a partnership with NFT domain name provider and digital identity platform Unstoppable Domains to allow 1inch wallet users to process transactions efficiently by using domain names instead of complex addresses. 

Web 3.0

Japan’s Prime Minister has announced plans to invest in the Metaverse and NFT expansion, continuing calls for further Web 3.0 integration. 

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.