Crypto payment platform Wyre modified its withdrawal policy to limit users from cashing out up to 90% of their assets just days after two former employees allegedly hinted the possibility of a shutdown. On Jan. 7, 2023, Wyre imposed a withdrawal limit on its platform, citing “the best interest of our community.” Following the policy modification, Wyre users can withdraw up to 90% of their crypto funds as the company explores strategic options to circumvent the prolonged bear market. We are modifying our withdrawal policy. While customers will continue to be able to withdraw their funds, at this time, we …

If 2022 was any kind of template for gauging what the crypto market might offer for investors going forward, it proved to be terribly difficult to predict. The space saw a brutal shock to the global crypto market capitalization, which fell just over 60% from $2.2 trillion to about $797 billion year to date. It also saw the two largest cryptocurrencies by market cap, BTC and ETH, fall by 64% and 67%, respectively, during the same time frame, with the concurrent slide in the alt market too. These price drops, combined with the demise of the FTX exchange, were not …

The team behind y00ts and DeGods were paid $3m to move their collections off Solana and onto Polygon, according to a January 6 announcement from the company. The statement was made on Discord and copied to Twitter by Frank III, founder of the two projects. Here is a screenshot of our latest @y00tsNFT Discord announcement. pic.twitter.com/qWxjBsexv6 — Frank III (@frankdegods) January 6, 2023 The developers had previously announced on Dec. 27 that the projects would be moving to Polygon. This was widely seen as a possible death blow to the Solana network, as the network was already under pressure due …

Immunefi, a bug bounty and security services platform for the Web3 ecosystem, published a report on Jan. 6 revealing that the crypto industry lost a total of 3.9 billion dollars in 2022. According to the report, hacks were found to be the main cause of the losses, accounting for 95.6% of the total, with fraud, scams, and rug pulls comprising the remaining 4.4%. Immunefi also found that decentralized finance (DeFi) was the most targeted sector, suffering 80.5% in losses, compared to centralized finance (CeFi) which suffered a loss of 19.5%. According to the report: “DeFi has suffered $3,180,023,103 in total …

Undoubtedly, 2022 was one of the worst years for Bitcoin (BTC) buyers, primarily because the asset’s price dropped by 65%. While there were some explicit reasons for the drop, such as the LUNA-UST crash in May and the FTX implosion in November, the most important reason was the U.S. Federal Reserve policy of tapering and raising interest rates. Bitcoin’s price had dropped 50% from its peak to lows of $33,100 before the LUNA-UST crash, thanks to the Fed rate hikes. The first significant drop in Bitcoin’s price was due to growing market uncertainty around potential rate hike rumors in November …

Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you significant developments over the last week. The end of 2022 saw the least value of stolen funds from DeFi, with $62 million worth of exploits in December. While the figure might seem a relief given the multiple bridge hacks and hundreds of millions of dollars stolen this year, cybersecurity experts have warned that the ecosystem would see no decrease in exploits, flash loans or exit scams in 2023. Lido protocol overtook MakerDAO to have the highest total value locked (TVL) …

The United States December nonfarm payrolls report showed a growth of 223,000 jobs, above the market's expectation of an increase of 200,000 jobs. While this shows that the economy remains strong, market observers shifted their focus to the slower wage growth of 0.3% for the month, below economists’ expectation of 0.4%. In addition, the euro zone’s headline inflation dropped from 10.1% in November to 9.2% in December. Both economic data boosted hopes that the central bank’s aggressive rate tightening may slow down. This triggered a rally in the U.S. and European stock markets. However, the reaction in the cryptocurrency space …

Cryptocurrency Exchange Huobi has seen over $94.2 million dollars in net outflows within the past week. Within the past 24 hours alone, approximately 60 million dollars flowed out of the exchange, according to a report by crypto analytics company Nansen. In the past 24 hours, Huobi has seen a significant increase in net outflows $60.9M* of the $94.2M* net outflow in the past week occurred in the past day alone *Contains Ethereum, Avalanche, BNB Chain, Fantom, & Polygon flows pic.twitter.com/JV1Tg13QMY — Nansen (@nansen_ai) January 6, 2023 Nansen also reported that a significant portion of withdrawals was mainly in Tether (USDT), …

The crypto market witnessed the DeFi summer of 2020, where decentralized finance applications like Compound and Uniswap turned Ether (ETH) and Bitcoin (BTC) into yield-bearing assets via yield farming and liquidity mining rewards. The price of Ether nearly doubled to $490 as the total liquidity across DeFi protocols quickly surged to $10 billion. Toward the end of 2020 and early 2021, the COVID-19-induced quantitative easing across global markets was in full effect, causing a mega-bull run that lasted almost a year. During this time, Ether’s price increased nearly ten times to a peak above $4,800. After the euphoric bullish phase …

One of the largest Bitcoin mining operations in North America, Marathon Digital Holdings, has shared in an update that it has been experimenting with overclocking to increase its competitive advantage in the Bitcoin mining industry. Overclocking is the practice of increasing the clock speed of a computer’s central processing unit (CPU) or graphics processing unit (GPU) beyond the manufacturer’s rated maximum speed, potentially leading to improved performance in certain tasks. According to the company's press release, it produced 475 BTC in December 2022, bringing its total mined Bitcoins in the fiscal year of 2022 to 4,144 BTC, a 30% increase …

A crypto lobbying group based in Singapore has voiced its opposition to the proposal from the central bank to prohibit crypto firms from lending crypto tokens. On Oct. 26, Singapore's central bank issued consultation papers and proposed to ban digital payment token service providers from offering "any credit facility" to consumers. This includes either lending fiat or cryptocurrencies. However, the Blockchain Association of Singapore (BAS) believes that this may be overly restrictive. In a feedback document sent to the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), BAS reportedly argued that a blanket ban could push crypto users to pursue lending their tokens …

Cathie Wood, veteran investor and CEO of ARK Invest, remains bullish on the cryptocurrency industry and centralized exchanges (CEX) despite the bear market and the crypto crisis. Wood’s investment management firm ARK continues accumulating the stock of the major United States cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase. On Jan. 5, ARK purchased 144,463 Coinbase (COIN) shares for allocation by its financial technology-focused fund, ARK Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF), according to a trade notification seen by Cointelegraph. At the time of writing, the purchase is worth $4.8 million, with COIN closing at $33.5 on Thursday. On the same day, ARK also bought 27,813 COIN …