The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has started ramping up its crackdown on the crypto industry and recent enforcement actions had a negative impact on crypto prices last week and at the start of this week. The SEC is focusing on stablecoin issuers. The most recent SEC stablecoin crackdown was on Feb. 13 through the issuance of a Wells Notice to Paxos Trust Company, the issuer of Binance USD (BUSD). While Paxos denies that BUSD is a security, which would place it outside the SEC’s jurisdiction, some lawyers say the answer is not so simple, which creates fear …

Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and the crypto market had a rough 2022 from a price perspective, but traders are hopeful that 2023 will include bullish developments that push crypto prices higher. Despite the market-wide downturn, a handful of altcoins continued to make a positive contribution to the crypto space and thanks to Ethereum, the term altcoin is no longer a derogatory term. Let’s explore the top altcoins that made a difference in 2022. Ethereum fundamentals shone in 2022 Ether’s price hit a yearly high at $3,835 on Jan. 2 and has struggled to regain footing amidst the bear market and …

Digital asset market maker Keyrock has raised $72 million in a Series B round of funding, according to an announcement on Nov. 30. Ripple, SIX Fintech Ventures, and Middlegame Ventures are among the investors in the round. Funds are planned to be used on Keyrock infrastructure development, scalability tools, as well as regulatory licensing across Europe, the United States and Singapore. Keyrock CEO Kevin de Patoul said the company has been focused on a long-term perspective for its business in the past five years. He also noted that: “The new round of funding allows us to expand on that and …

Governance tokens are a type of cryptocurrency that allow tokenholders to vote on the direction of a blockchain project. The primary purpose of governance tokens is to decentralize decision-making and to give holders a say in how the project is run. Governance tokenholders are usually more invested in the project’s success as they stand to gain or lose more, depending on the outcome. Community members can use tokens to influence the direction and features of a blockchain protocol directly. As such, it is possible to implement changes related to the user interface, vote on fees and reward distribution, or even …

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 TranitSwap hacker that got away with $23 million has returned 70% of the stolen funds. The return was possible due to quick actions from on-chain data analytic firms who managed to find the hacker’s IP address and other personal details. Another research report from Elliptic suggests that DeFi bridges and decentralized exchanges (DEX) have become a new frontier for crypto laundering. Bitcoin.com CEO Dennis Jarvis believes that Bitcoin can be a bridge that …

In light of the recent discussions around depegging its native token from USD Coin (USDC) amid sanctioning of Tornado Cash, MakerDAO co-founder Rune Christensen reached out to the community explaining why free-floating DAI may be the only choice for the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). In his blog post, “The Path of Compliance and the Path of Decentralization: Why Maker has no choice but to prepare to free float Dai,” Christensen disclosed miscalculating the risks related to risk-weighted assets (RWA). He stated: “Physical crackdown against crypto can occur with no advance notice and with no possibility of recovery even for legitimate, …

The United States jobs data on Aug. 5 was above market expectations, indicating that inflation has not cooled down. The strong numbers reduce the possibility that the U.S. Federal Reserve will slow down its aggressive pace of rate hikes. After the release, the likelihood of a 75 basis points hike in September has risen to 68%, according to CME Group data. However, analysts at Fundstrat Global Advisors have a different view. They highlighted that three out of six times, the S&P 500 bottomed out six months before the Fed’s last rate hike. Therefore, the firm anticipates the S&P 500 to …

Celsius (CEL) has repaid a substantial amount of its outstanding debt to Maker (MKR) protocol since the beginning of the month, signaling that the troubled crypto lending platform was trying to stave off a complete collapse amid credible rumors of insolvency. Since July 1, Celsius has repaid $142.8 million worth of Dai (DAI) stablecoins across four separate transactions, according to data from DeFi Explorer. The crypto lender still has $82 million in outstanding debt owed to Maker. Out of $1.8 billion in lifetime investments, the firm's losses currently stand at $667.2 million. With the loan repayments, Celsius’ liquidation price on …

MakerDAO has voted to cut off lending platform Aave’s ability to generate Dai for its lending pool without collateral as the risks of Celsius’ liquidity crisis loom large over the entire crypto ecosystem. The decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) made the decision as a means of mitigating the Maker protocol’s exposure to the beleaguered staking and lending platform in case Celsius goes belly up and implodes the staked Ether (stETH) peg as well. stETH is a token representing an amount of ETH that is staked on the Lido staking platform. Its peg to Ether (ETH) has been wavering for several weeks, …

Co-founder of MakerDAO Rune Christensen has issued a new monumental proposal to push the project into its final form called The Endgame Plan. Across 3,000 words including 35 detailed infographics, Christensen explained that the current model of governance at Maker creates a deadlock, making it difficult for the protocol to effectively process “complicated real world financial deals” and compromising its competitiveness with financial institutions. Central to Christensen’s Tuesday plan is the formation of MetaDAOs designed to tackle specific governance issues within the Maker ecosystem and alleviate congestion on the “slow and single threaded decision making process” that exists now. Each …

Its been a rough couple of weeks for the cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin (BTC) price is nowhere near the price estimates of most analysts, multiple stablecoins lost their peg and the demise of one of the top decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms sparked an event that resulted in $900 billion vanishing from the total crypto market capitalization. In the midst of the widespread fallout, MakerDAO (MKR) managed to turn crisis into opportunity and the collapse of TerraUSD (UST) has brought renewed attention to DAI, the longest-running decentralized stablecoin. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that as the collapse of Terra …

Bitcoin (BTC) has been relatively calm during the weekend as crypto traders try to rebuild the markets after the Terra LUNA debacle. With macro factors not supportive, several analysts expect the recovery to be a slow grind. Crypto research firm Delphi Digital said in a recent report that the rally in the United States dollar index (DXY) had pushed its 14-month relative strength index “above 70 for the first time since its late 2014 to 2016 run up.” Historically, 11 out of 14 such instances had resulted in the DXY rising about 5.7% over the following 12 months. If the …