Friday, 7th of October. As the week comes to an end, we can focus on the highlights of the crypto industry over the past few days.
Wallet Telegram bot added new feature to buy Bitcoin and TON
The developers of the Wallet bot have just launched a P2P exchange that allows direct buying and selling of Bitcoin and Toncoin (TON) between users.
To complete a transaction, users select advertisements in the app with the appropriate conditions. The service itself acts as a guarantor of the transaction. In case of disagreement between the seller and the buyer, the administration will resolve the dispute.
US dollars, euros, hryvnas, Belarusian rubles and tenge are accepted as a form of payment. The commission fee for crypto sellers will be 0.9% of the transaction amount.
The service is positioned as an “anonymous P2P transaction,” but users must provide the bot with their cell phone number to deposit, exchange or buy cryptos.
The project intends to increase the list of available cryptocurrencies in the future.
According to Ton’s DA/DS statistics, the number of accounts registered on the network exceeds 1.3 million.
The TON community Telegram group has 630,000 subscribers.
At the time of writing, the TON token is trading at $1.41 with a market cap of over $1.7 billion and a total supply of 1.22 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.
Recall that in May 2020, Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced the closure of the Telegram Open Network (TON) project due to a legal conflict with the SEC and a ban on token distribution.
After TON shut down, several independent teams continued to work on the blockchain based on the project code. Among them is Free TON (renamed Everscale), a Chinese project from the TON community and NewTON.
Bloomberg revealed Elon Musk’s plan to proceed with the Twitter deal
Elon Musk sent a letter to Twitter’s executives suggesting that he resume the process of taking over the company. This writes Bloomberg, citing knowledgeable sources.
According to the news agency, the billionaire had outlined the initial terms of $54.2 per share. In April, the social network’s board approved a deal totaling about $44 billion.
Twitter shares responded to the news with a sharp surge. At the moment, the price reached $50 per share, but then fell back to near $48.
Reports of the deal’s revival also boosted the Dogecoin (DOGE) meme cryptocurrency.
In early April, Musk became Twitter’s largest shareholder after purchasing a 9.2 percent stake for $2.89 billion.
On April 14, Musk offered to buy the social network for more than $43 billion. He explained this by the intention to create an “inclusive arena for free speech”, and not by the desire to make money.
As you may remember, on May 13 the head of Tesla announced the suspension of the Twitter acquisition deal after the media reported that the audience figures for the platform had been inflated. He also accused the algorithms of the social network of manipulating users.
Twitter shareholders sued Musk over the company’s “chaotic process” of takeover. The latter also filed claims against the billionaire, demanding that he fulfill his obligations and finalize the purchase.
On July 29, the businessman filed a counterclaim. At the same time, he said that he was ready to make a deal on the original terms, if Twitter would disclose the method of sampling 100 accounts and the way to verify their authenticity.
In early August, Twitter’s lawyers subpoenaed Binance’s division over its funding for the Elon Musk’s takeover. Financial consultants, investors and potential creditors of the businessman also received the subpoena.
According to papers for the court, the FTX head Sam Bankman-Fried was “potentially interested” in sponsoring Musk’s purchase of Twitter.
The Fed notes the risks of stablecoins to financial stability
Stablecoins add “new vulnerabilities” to the crypto market and financial stability in general. That is found in a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The document talks about the mounting risks of mass conversion of stablecoins like USDC into fiat amid the rapid development of the DeFi sector.
But the door swings both ways – forced sales of debt instruments issued by the U.S. Treasury could weaken the collateral of the Stablecoins. In particular, these reliable assets have recently shown significant volatility.
Experts touched upon the situation of USDT capitalization decrease by $7 billion on the background of Terra ecosystem collapse. They said that some of the money was deposited in the USDC ($4 billion).
“This substitution from tether into USDC illustrates a bigger concern – namely, that resilient stablecoins can amplify run risks from more fragile ones as they provide a convenient instrument to run to,” the report said.
Analysts pointed to the “negative feedback loops” that stem from the tight integration of stablecoins with DeFi-protocols.
“Because stablecoins are supposed to be the safest asset in the crypto ecosystem… problems with them pose the greatest systemic risk within crypto,” said the paper.
Experts suggested that regulators “should have authority to implement standards to promote interoperability among stablecoins.” As an example to implement the latter, they cited the use of bridges, which at the same time can become a “channel for the transmission of market stress” and a target for cyber attacks.
Crypto industry lost $428M due to hacks and scams in Q3 2022
For the third quarter of 2022, the Web3 ecosystem’s cumulative losses from hacking and fraud totaled $428.7 million, experts at Immunefi bounty platform have estimated.
There were 39 incidents during the period, including 30 cyberattacks amounting to a total of $399 million worth of damage. The remaining $29.8 million loss was caused by nine scams, including rug pull schemes.
Two major hacks accounted for most of the sum: the Nomad crosschain protocol ($190 million) and the Wintermute market maker ($160 million).
DeFi projects remain the number one target of hackers and scammers, representing 98.8% of total losses compared to 1.2% for CeFi.
It is believed that this is related to the better protection of centralized platforms like Binance and Coinbase, which also allocate more resources to security. Another factor Immunefi cited was the multiplicity and diversity of decentralized projects, which provides more opportunities for attacks.
As for blockchains, most of the protocols involved in the incidents are based on BNB Chain (16 attacks and 28.6% of the damage) and Ethereum (13 and 23.2%, respectively).
Since the beginning of the year, the crypto industry has suffered losses of about $2.33 billion, reported the company. By quarter, the amount has consistently decreased.
Only a small part of the total value of the attacked projects was recovered – $93.8 million, or 4%. Among the largest hacks, Axie Infinity ($30 million out of $325 million) and Nomad ($36.4 million out of $190 million) received notable refunds.