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. Industry experts are confident in DeFi and believe the sector would continue to see adoption despite its security flaws, primarily due to the mammoth failure of centralized exchanges. Despite the continued growth, however, the decentralized exchanges have lost $30 million on liquidity provider incentives. Popular hardware crypto wallet Ledger introduced a new DeFi tracking feature that pairs with its hardware wallets to monitor performance analytics of over 1,000 protocols. The Lodestar Finance protocol that …

The total cryptocurrency market capitalization dropped 8.1% in the past two days after failing to break the $880 billion resistance on Dec. 14. The rejection did not invalidate the 4-week-long ascending channel, but a weekly close below $825 billion will confirm a shift to the lower band and reduce the support level to $790 billion. The overall investor sentiment toward the market remains bearish, and year-to-date losses amount to 66%. Despite this, Bitcoin (BTC) price dropped a mere 2% on the week, down to the $16,800 level at 17:00 UTC on Dec. 16. A far different scenario emerged for altcoins …

Ether (ETH) price is down on Dec. 16 and the pre-FOMC rally to $1,350 was obliterated after Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell issued hawkish statements following a 0.50% hike in interest rates. The Ether sell-off follows a market-wide decline that has sent Ethereum network fees plummeting by 39.90% in the past 30-days. The total value locked in Ethereum-based smart contracts also decreased by decentralized finance by 4.49% in 24-hours. Following the FTX exchange scandal, regulators are attempting to fast-track new regulations on the cryptocurrency sector. While some analysts believe Ethereum still possesses multiple bullish catalysts that warrant investing in the …

The Russian central bank is ready to consider allowing cryptocurrency use within the country but only as part of a legal experiment, governor Elvira Nabiullina said. “It’s possible to consider transactions through an authorized organization in the country as part of an experimental legal regime, but that would require a relevant law,” Nabiullina stated during a press conference of Bank of Russia on Dec. 16. The Bank of Russia’s only objection has always been that crypto cannot be used as a payment instrument, Nabiullina emphasized. She added that the central bank is also concerned about investor protection because the crypto …

A decentralized social network project called Mithril (MITH) was recently delisted from Binance and in return, the crypto project asked for the 200,000 Binance Coin (BNB) it had to deposit as insurance for listing on the exchange. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao aka CZ responded to MITH’s demand on Twitter with a screenshot of their contract that suggests if the listed token price falls below a certain threshold, the exchange has the right to deduct the insurance fund partially or fully as an additional fee. CZ said that the said project’s token price fell below the trigger threshold on multiple occasions …

Crypto exchange Binance has seen its proof-of-reserve (PoR) audits removed from the auditor Mazars’ website. Mazars’ official website shows they fully discontinued Mazars Veritas, a section dedicated to cryptocurrency exchange audits. The tool was developed by Mazars in order to bring “trust and transparency to the digital asset sector,” using Silver Sixpence Merkle Tree Generating tool to complement PoR reports. The news comes amid Bloomberg reporting that Mazars stopped doing PoR for cryptocurrency companies. Some other auditing firms like FTX’s auditor Armanino have also reportedly stopped working with crypto exchanges like OKX and Gate.io. Mazars is widely known as the …

Over the last year the crypto, and greater Web3 industry has seen a rollercoaster of loss, growth and innovation - and the data shows. In the latest industry report from cryptocurrency exchange Huobi, "Global Crypto Industry Overview and Trends", trends and stats were pulled from the industry on everything from nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and the metaverse, to centralized exchange (CEX) usage and regulations. Despite the turmoil of major events like the FTX collapse, LUNA’s implosion, and 3AC bankruptcy, the industry still accounted for approximately 320 million crypto users worldwide in the last year. While the total amount of investment and …

Amber has completed a new $300 million Series C funding round, led by blockchain-focused venture capital company Fenbushi Capital US, the firm announced on Twitter on Dec. 15. The new funding round comes as Amber has decided to pause its previous Series B funding and proceed with Series C instead due to FTX collapse. Prior to the failure of FTX, Amber was in process of completing an extension of its Series B at a $3 billion valuation. As previously reported, the company was planning to raise $100 million as part of the Series B funding, targeting to complete the round …

The incoming United States House Financial Services Committee chair Patrick McHenry wants the Treasury to delay the implementation of a section of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that deals with digital assets and tax collection. McHenry sent a letter on Dec. 14 to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen with questions and concerns about the scope of Section 80603 of the Act. In the letter he requested clarification over the “poorly drafted” and potentially privacy-compromising Section that deals with the taxation of digital assets, scheduled to go into effect in 2023. He said the section requires the government to treat …

Does the crypto industry’s funding space need an overhaul? This is one of many questions swirling in the wake of FTX’s downfall: When the prominent exchange collapsed, it left behind a long line of helpless creditors and lenders — including many promising projects dependent on funds promised by Sam Bankman-Fried and company. But there is a bigger problem at the heart of the current funding picture, wherein deep-pocketed venture capital firms throw their weight around in the low-liquidity Web3 market, heavily backing early-stage projects before cashing out at a profit once retail has FOMO'd into the market. For all the …

As the coldest days of the crypto winter set in, investors’ speculative interest in the crypto market has fallen to pre-2021 levels, impairing the chance of a substantial directional price move. However, there’s a possibility of a bear market rally akin to the July through August 2022 uptrend. The market enters a state of limbo The FTX implosion impacted over 5 million users globally and adversely affected numerous crypto companies that were exposed to it. The industry is currently in a recovery mode and Cumberland, a U.S.-based crypto market broker, recently echoed this narrative in a tweet. The firm noted …

Cryptocurrency trading firm Amber Group, which had roughly 10% of its trading capital stuck on FTX at the time of the exchange’s collapse, has reportedly acquired cryptocurrency platform, Sparrow Holdings according to an announcement on Dec. 14. The Singaporean crypto platform Sparrow Holdings, which offers digital assets products and solutions, acquired its payments license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore in August, to provide Digital Payment Token (DPT) services in Singapore, under the Payment Services Act (PSA). Founded in 2018, Sparrow works with financial institutions and family offices in designing bespoke digital asset solutions to achieve customer-centric growth objectives, while …