August 8, 2022 / Unchained Daily / Laura Shin
Daily Bits✍️✍️✍️
- Crypto wallet Slope announced a bounty program to recuperate assets lost in Solana’s attack.
- North Korean hackers from Lazarus were associated with the deBridge attack.
- Huboi announced that it will list ETH forks on its platform as long as they meet certain requirements.
- Poloniex enabled trading for ETHW (Ethereum’s Proof of Work Chain).
- Stablecoin protocol Beanstalk announced the relaunch of the platform after suffering a $182 million exploit.
- NEAR protocol disclosed a data breach, but said no harm was done.
- Indian authorities froze WazirX’s bank balances for lax KYC norms, and its CEO is now arguing with Binance over responsibilities.
Today in Crypto Adoption…
- The Bank of Thailand will launch a pilot phase for retail CBDCs by the end of this year.
- UK Parliamentary Group opened an inquiry to investigate crypto in order to produce a report and make recommendations to the government.
The $$$ Corner…
- Bitget, a crypto exchange based in Singapore, established a $200 million protection fund.
What Do You Meme?
What’s Poppin’?
Voyager to Enable Cash Withdrawals
Troubled crypto exchange Voyager Digital will restore access to cash deposits on its platform next Thursday, August 11.
Voyager’s account had been frozen because it is currently going through Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The firm had been hit very hard by the crypto bear market and a huge exposure to Three Arrows Capital, which failed to repay a $660 million loan and strongly debilitated Voyager’s financials.
The U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York gave Voyager approval to return $270 million in USD that was being held in a custodial account at the Metropolitan Commercial Bank (MCB).
Customers will be able to withdraw up to $100,000 via ACH, and will receive their funds in 5-10 business days after making the request. “The reinstating of cash withdrawals is the first step in returning value to our customers,” said Voyager.
Though this might be good news for some Voyager users, it only serves those who had cash in US dollars on the platform. As a matter of fact, when the company issued the filing for bankruptcy, it had $1.3 billion in crypto assets, more than 4 times the amount of cash held in the bank.
Customers showed their frustration on Twitter after the announcement. “Stop stealing from us upon all eyes …give our coins back it’s not yours …I know not ur keys not ur coins ..guess what it’s not yours either,” said one user. “Give us our crypto coins back that you stole from us!!,” added someone else.
Recommended Reads
- “Max bidding” by Arthur Hayes
- Jag on the future of the Ethereum ecosystem
- Curious J on Atom 2.0
On The Pod…
Kevin Zhou, cofounder of Galois Capital, comes to talk about the possibility of a Proof of Work chain on Ethereum after the Merge, the LUNA death spiral, how he plans to play the Merge, and much more… Show highlights:
- how Kevin got started in crypto
- what Galois Capital is and what its investment thesis is
- why Kevin was more vocal than most about the possibility of the LUNA death spiral
- whether Kevin made money out of the Terra collapse and what was his strategy
- what the difficulty bomb in Ethereum is
- the potential scenarios that could arise after the Merge
- whether the public is not considering the risks of the Merge
- how the fact that everybody was telling the same narrative about ETH made Kevin suspicious
- how Chandler’s statement about forking Ethereum made it a lot more likely that it would happen
- the groups behind the encouragement of a proof-of-work Ethereum chain
- whether there is a value proposition for a Proof of Work chain
- how Kevin used The Cryptopians to remember how the DAO fork went
- what replay protection is and why it is important when forking a chain
- why anyone would want to keep the difficulty bomb in a potential proof of work chain
- Kevin’s predictions about the market cap of the potential Ethereum forks
- how a proof of work chain of Ethereum would function without the biggest stablecoins like USDT and USDC
- whether Tether is going to support Ethereum 2
- why Kevin writes using metaphors related to history and gaming and how those analogies relate to Ethereum
- how Kevin wanted to “stick it” to the Ethereum Foundation by offering his services
- whether Vitalik trolled Kevin on Twitter
- whether Kevin will apply the same strategy he used with ETC after the DAO fork
Book Update
My book, The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze, which is all about Ethereum and the 2017 ICO mania, is now available!
You can purchase it here: http://bit.ly/cryptopians
