Crypto markets threw a nice head fake this week by rallying into resistance on a “positive” Consumer Price Index (CPI) report, before retracing the majority of those gains right after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell took on a surprisingly hawkish tone during his post-rate-hike presser. The Fed hiked interest rates by 0.50%, which was well within the expectation of most market participants, but the eyebrow-raiser was the Federal Open Market Committee consensus that rates would need to reach the 5%–5.5%+ range in order to hopefully achieve the Fed’s 2% inflation target. This basically threw cold water on traders’ lusty dreams …

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 …

Mike Belshe, the CEO of digital asset custodian BitGo has confirmed that Alameda Research attempted to redeem 3,000 Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC) in the days before FTX’s bankruptcy filing on Nov. 11. During a Dec. 14 Twitter Spaces hosted by decentralized finance (DeFi) researcher Chris Blec, Belshe confirmed the firm knocked back the redemption request because the unknown Alameda representative involved didn’t pass Bitgo’s security verification process and seemed unfamiliar with how the wrapped-Bitcoin burning process worked. Full convo here. This part starts at 1:09:30. https://t.co/0KQg6bzd8k — Chris Blec (@ChrisBlec) December 14, 2022 “[The security details] didn't match the process. So …

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has again labeled Ether (ETH) as a commodity in a Dec. 13 court filing — in contrast to statements from chief Rostin Behnam on Nov. 30 suggesting that Bitcoin was the sole cryptocurrency that should be viewed as a commodity. According to the CFTC, as per their filing today, ETH is a commodity. This really should put any security designation to rest. pic.twitter.com/PkHWredNK4 — Hal Press (@NorthRockLP) December 13, 2022 In its lawsuit against Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX, and sister company Alameda Research, the regulator on multiple occasions referred to Ether, Bitcoin (BTC) and Tether …

Ether (ETH) rallied 6.3% to $1,350 on Dec. 13, mimicking a similar failed attempt that took place on Nov. 10. Despite reaching the highest level in 33 days, the gains were not enough to instill confidence in traders according to two key derivatives metrics. Bulls' frustrations can partially be explained by Binance exchange facing a near-record $1.1 billion in withdrawals over a 24-hour period. The unusual behavior comes as Binance attempts to put out multiple disputes about its proof of reserves and overall solvency on crypto Twitter. According to Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao, the social media posts amount to nothing …

The consumer price index (CPI) data on Dec. 13 and the outcome of the Federal Reserve meeting on Dec. 14 could influence the United States stock markets and the cryptocurrency markets in the near term. Traders are likely to play it safe and not take large directional bets until the CPI print because any nasty surprise could produce a sharp knee-jerk reaction. Some analysts believe that Bitcoin (BTC) could fall further before it hits a bottom, but Arthur Hayes, the former CEO of crypto derivatives platform BitMEX, thinks that Bitcoin may have passed its worst phase for this cycle. While …

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 United States regulators want to take a closer look at money laundering and terror financing laws by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), as it asked banking sector players for feedback on DeFi’s crime risks. Ethereum developers are targeting the last week of March for Ethereum’s Shanghai hard fork and some additional improvement upgrades by June of next year. Ankr protocol has deployed $15 million to buy back the bad debt resulting from …

A survey sample of working Americans suggests that millennial and Generation Z workers are far more in favor of joining decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and working remotely in the post-Covid-19 world. Over 1,100 Americans took part in a survey conducted by MetisDAO Foundation which explores trends in remote working preferences and the emergence of DAOs in recent years. A key consideration is the effect that Covid-19 has had on worker sentiment and the growth of DAOs in corporate governance. Citing a research report on DAOs published by the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, the results of the survey …

Ethereum core developers have opted to prioritize the enabling of staking withdrawals via the Shanghai upgrade first before implementing The Surge-related Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP)-4884. As reported by Cointelegraph, the next key milestone on Ethereum’s roadmap is the Shanghai upgrade, which will enable withdrawals for ETH stakers/validators from the Beacon Chain — among other things. EIP-4884 is also important and was initially expected to be packaged in with Shanghai, introducing “proto-danksharding” to significantly enhance Layer 2 rollup scalability (The Surge) ahead of the full implementation of the major Sharding upgrade late next year. However, according to Ethereum core developer Tim …

The crypto markets have been in decline since the start of the second quarter of 2022. Each time it seemed like the apparent crypto winter would experience a minor thaw, another notable collapse happened: Celsius, Three Arrows Capital, and more recently, FTX. Approaching the end of 2022, it appears that the same negative sentiments are likely to remain. While some analysts say that Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) derivatives are currently flashing positive signals for the market due to their high volatility, that same volatility is impacting the sentiment of other areas, including regulation, mining, nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and crypto …

Web3 investment firm Paradigm has released a Rust implementation of Ethereum, according to a Dec. 7 announcement from the company’s chief technology office, Georgios Konstantopoulos. The new software, called “Reth,” allows Ethereum validators to launch their nodes using Rust instead of Go, Java, or other languages. A previous Rust implementation had been released by Erigon in June, but the Erigon team stopped supporting it in November when they learned that Reth was under development, according to a post by the Erigon team. In the announcement, Konstantopoulos stated that the software has been released in order to “[contribute] to Ethereum’s stability …

According to a discussion at the 151st Ethereum Core Developers Meeting on Dec. 8, core programmers set a tentative deadline of March 2023 for the Shanghai hard fork. In addition, developers will aim for May or June 2023 to launch Ethereum Improvement Protocol (EIP) 4844 upgrade that will introduce proto-danksharding to the network. Although the much-anticipated proof-of-stake Merge upgrade was completed on Sept. 15, staked Ether (stETH), are currently locked on the Ethereum Beacon Chain. The token is created by decentralized finance protocol Lido with close to 3.5 million stETH ($4.48 billion) in circulation. After the Shanghai upgrade, stETH users …