Arbitrum-based lending protocol Lodestar Finance was exploited in a flash loan attack on Dec. 10. According to Lodestar, the attacker manipulated the price of the plvGLP token before borrowing all platform liquidity using the inflated token. In a Twitter thread, Lodestar explained the attack flow. The attacker first manipulated the exchange rate of the plvGLP contract to 1.83 GLP per plvGLP, "an exploit that by itself would be unprofitable", said the company. Then, the attacker supplied plvGLP collateral to Lodestar and borrowed all available liquidity, cashing out part of the funds "until the collateralization ratio mechanism prevented a full liquidation …

Crypto exchange Binance began investigating suspicious behavior on its platform after noticing abnormal price movements for certain trading pairs involving Sun Token (SUN), Ardor (ARDR), Osmosis (OSMO), FUNToken (FUN) and Golem (GLM) tokens. Nearly 40 minutes into the investigation, Binance CEO Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao revealed that the price movements “appears to be just market behavior.” On Dec. 11 at 3:10 am ET, Binance issued a notice about abnormal price movements for some trading pairs. The exchange began an investigation to narrow down suspicious accounts responsible for the issue. To investors’ relief, Binance’s investigation did not point to the possibility of …

The domino effect of FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s actions came full circle as his reputation began impacting the professional lives of his parents — Stanford Law professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried. SBF’s father, Bankman, had to cancel his winter session course on tax policy, which according to The Standford Daily, was at a time when the family was accused of acquiring an FTX-owned $16.4 million vacation home before the crypto exchange’s collapse. On the other hand, SBF’s mother, Fried, was surprisingly not even listed as an instructor for any of the courses. While this event coincides with FTX’s fallout, …

Crypto exchange Binance closed a trader account on Dec. 9 after a user complained about the exchange's response for alleged funds theft. Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said the firm does not want to service "unreasonable" clients. A user by the name of CoinMamba on Twitter started complaining about the lost funds on Dec. 8, claiming that a leaked API key tied to crypto trading firm 3Commas was used "to make trades on low cap coins to push up the price to make profit." The trader claims in a series of tweets that Binance was unable to provide him with …

Crypto price action has been rough over the past few months, but a few green shoots are finally beginning to emerge. While Bitcoin (BTC) remains in a downtrend, its price has recently found support at the $17,000 level, and ping-pong price action in the $16,700–$17,300 range appears to be allowing traders to pursue some interesting setups in a few altcoins. Let’s take a quick peek at some enticing patterns showing up on the weekly time frame. Time for Litecoin’s halving hopium? As a fork of Bitcoin, Litecoin (LTC) tends to turn bullish several months before its reward halving takes place, …

The United States equities markets are headed for a down week as market participants remain cautious ahead of next week's key consumer price index data for November. The CPI report will be followed by the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee meeting on Dec. 13-14 where the central bank is expected to hike rates by 50 basis points, according to the FedWatch Tool. The outcome of the events next week could increase the volatility in Bitcoin (BTC) and result in a trending move. After a terrible year that saw some high-profile cryptocurrency companies go bust, the bulls will expect 2022 …

The developers of bridging platform Ren protocol have warned users to unwrap their tokens and bridge them back to their native chains “ASAP,” or risk losing them, according to a Twitter thread from the team. 1) Important notice ⚠️ As announced previously, the Ren 1.0 network is shutting down due to the events surrounding Alameda As compatibility between Ren 1.0 and 2.0 cannot be guaranteed, holders of Ren assets should bridge back to native chains ASAP, or risk losing them! https://t.co/20vpGBc8W0 — Ren (@renprotocol) December 7, 2022 The team stated that mints on Ren will be disabled “shortly,” meaning that …

Algorithmic stablecoins have had a rough year, starting with UST de-pegging to zero and the subsequent blow-up of Terra’s LUNA token which was used for the asset’s backing. Algorithmic stablecoins are not fully collateralized and rely on different mechanisms to maintain the peg, making them inherently fragile to market conditions. The UST implosion created a domino effect that caused another stablecoin, Magic Internet Money (MIM) to de-peg. Despite the fragility of algorithmic stablecoins, new projects like Djed by Cardano (ADA) are still planning on launching, but that doesn’t mean that the concept has improved since the crises seen earlier in …

A court in South Korea has supported the decision of local exchanges to delist Wemade’s Wemix (WEMIX) tokens, dismissing Wemade’s request to cancel the delisting. The Seoul Central District Court ruled on Dec. 7 to justify the decision of the Digital Asset eXchange Alliance (DAXA) to delist WEMIX from major South Korean exchanges, The Korea Herald reported on Thursday. The DAXA, a crypto exchange group representing South Korea’s largest firms like Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit and Gopax, said that Wemade has failed to properly disclose the number of tokens outstanding. The court has reportedly supported the position of the DAXA, …

Bitcoin (BTC) and crypto are only used by 13.7% of Americans, but they generate more exchange volume than anyone else. The latest data compiled by exchange Huobi confirms that in 2022, the United States is the most “mature” crypto market. U.S., Vietnam lead the way on crypto Despite the heavy drawdowns in price for Bitcoin and altcoins this year, interest throughout the world remains “extremely active,” and the leaders may come as a surprise. In its latest annual report, Huobi Research, an affiliate of Huobi Global, revealed that the U.S. accounts for 9.2% of global centralized exchange (CEX) volume. When …

United States federal prosecutors have reportedly begun investigating whether the collapse of the Terra ecosystem was in fact triggered by market manipulation tactics by former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. According to a Dec. 7 report from The New York Times (NYT), the prosecutors — as part of a broader inquiry into FTX’s own collapse — are investigating whether Bankman-Fried’s empire intentionally caused a flood of “sell” orders on Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin TerraClassicUSD, USTC (formerly UST). The sudden increase in UST sell orders were said to make it difficult to match them with corresponding “buy” orders, which in turn forced more …

Spain’s central bank, the Bank of Spain (BDE) said it intends to launch an experimental program to begin testing wholesale Central Bank Digital Currencies (CDBCs) and is seeking collaboration proposals from local finance and technology institutions. The bank will focus on three main areas with the program that seeks to simulate the movement of funds, experiment with the liquidation of financial assets, and analyze the benefits and drawbacks of introducing a wholesale CBDC to its current processes and infrastructure according to a translated Dec. 5 statement. A wholesale CBDC refers to a digital currency typically for use by banks to …