Blockchain Bites: Bitcoin’s Run, Uniswap’s Hemorrhaging Value, Anchorage’s Banking Bid

Bitcoin is approaching the all-time highs in price and market capitalization set three years ago. Anchorage has applied to the OCC for a national banking statute. Community members have proposed a vote to restore Unsiwap’s cash-extraction program.

15% less
Bitcoin traded over $ 17,000 on Tuesday at 12:00 UTC for the first time since January 7, 2018, according to the CoinDesk 20 price index. This move places the cryptocurrency 15% below its all-time high of $. 20,000 established in December 2017 and almost 130% in the year. The increase also pushes bitcoin’s total market capitalization to over $ 315 billion, just short of its all-time high of $ 335 billion. Despite BTC’s strong performance, exchange trading volumes remain relatively insignificant. Take Coinbase’s BTC / USD trading pair, for example, which has experienced stable monthly volumes since June.

Unknown origin
The Stablecoin Origin Dollar (OUSD) project lost nearly $ 7 million in cryptocurrency in the latest sophisticated exploit of a decentralized finance protocol (DeFi). At 00:47 UTC on Tuesday, an unknown attacker used a flash loan and flaws in OUSD contracts to initiate what is known as a “rebase,” according to the protocol team. The attack artificially inflated the supply of OUSD tokens within the protocol before trading the newly printed tokens on SushiSwap and Uniswap for USDT. The team has since disabled deposits and the project’s native token price has dropped 85% on the news.

Crypto-native bank
Cryptocurrency custodian Anchorage is looking to convert part of its business into a nationally established bank. In a November 9 notice, Anchorage applied to the U.S. Office of the Currency Controller for a national card to become, if approved, the first federally regulated crypto-native bank. Nathan McCauley, co-founder and CEO of Anchorage, told CoinDesk that the company is trying to “meet the emerging needs of large banks looking to integrate cryptography” with the license, which would give Anchorage clear authority to act. as a “qualified custodian” for institutional investors in all 50 states.

Galaxy background
Crypto investment bank Galaxy Digital will launch a bitcoin fund in Canada, called the CI Galaxy Bitcoin Fund. According to a press release on Monday, the fund’s preliminary prospectus has been approved by the national securities regulator for a public offering. Designed in collaboration with CI Global Asset Management, the “closed-end” investment fund will invest directly in BTC and will be aimed at institutional investors. Last week, Galaxy revealed it had acquired two cryptocurrency businesses in an effort to become the “go-to” company for such investors.

Chump change?
Providing information on a proposed rule change that would lower the threshold for reporting crypto transactions to the international regulatory body, a policy specialist from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) said criminals are conducting cross-border payments using smaller amounts of cryptocurrency. Last month, authorities presented a proposal to change the “Travel Rule” which requires banks and digital asset service providers to collect and store information related to cryptocurrency or fiat transfers of at least $ 250 ranging in excess of outside the United States (down from $ 3,000). That said, FinCEN is seeking feedback “from the industry as we are looking at all the different technologies and business models operating in this space, be it decentralized exchanges or related applications,” the agency’s expert said.

Shining gold
Bitcoin outperforms gold by a significant margin. While the top cryptocurrency by market value rose 22% to surpass $ 17,000 this month, the precious metal only rose 0.5% to its current price of $ 1,890 per ounce.

Turn ‘digital silver’
Litecoin jumped to a nine-month high early Tuesday, replacing bitcoin cash as the seventh-largest cryptocurrency by market value. The cryptocurrency, sometimes called “digital silver,” rose about 10% to $ 75.77 during Asian trading hours, a level last seen on February 24, according to CoinDesk 20. With the leap, Litecoin now has a market cap of $ 4.90 billion, higher than bitcoin cash – which was hard fork on Sunday – at $ 4.67 billion.

Vote on governance
Uniswap, the decentralized market maker at the center of this year’s DeFi boom, has ended its cash-extraction subsidy.

Established in September in an effort to regain market share from the SushiSwap upstart protocol, Uniswap has awarded around 20 million UNI to four mining pools: ETH / USDT, ETH / USDC, ETH / DAI and ETH / WBT.

SushiSwap, a genetic clone of Uni, exploded onto the scene as a fully decentralized (read: not venture capital-backed) market maker, offering the one thing Uniswap lacked: a governance token.

Sushi planned to attract Uniswap users by offering high rewards to those who had migrated to its platform. Uniswap responded to the threat by distributing approximately 1 billion UNI governance tokens to community members, team members and investors and establishing the cash-extraction program.

Since launch, the Uniswap token has been an experiment in community governance. Recently, a popularly backed proposal to further spread UNI tokens to those who were kept out of the initial airdrop was less than 2.5 million “votes”.

Now, the community is facing another vote to restore the cash-extraction program. On Monday, strategy leader Audius Cooper Turley and the pseudonym “monet supply” on Monday presented a proposal to restore the program on a smaller scale.

The proposal will have to pass a series of governance surveys before agriculture resumes on December 4. Uniswap’s total value under lock and key (TVL) broke $ 1 billion for the first time in September after introducing UNI awards. The AMM peaked at just over $ 3 billion on TVL on November 13.

Now, faced with a tough vote on governance, the total value on the platform has dropped nearly 55% to $ 1.4 billion at press time, according to DeFi Pulse.