Friday, 26th May. As the week comes to an end we can focus on the highlights of the crypto industry over the past few days.
Ripple acquires Pantera’s stake in Bitstamp
Ripple, a fintech startup, has taken a minority stake in crypto exchange Bitstamp. Pantera Capital acted as the seller, according to Galaxy Digital, which, in turn, brokered the deal.
An agreement was reached in Q1 2023, according to the venture company.
No terms of the deal are disclosed.
On May 9, 2023, Galaxy Digital indicated in a press release about its first-quarter financial perfomance that it had stepped in to advise Pantera Capital on the potential sale of its stake in Bitstamp to Ripple Labs.
Back in March 2014, a VC firm invested $10 million in the bitcoin exchange. Share size and value remain unknown.
As you may remember, in May 2023, the fintech startup revealed the takeover of Metaco, a Swiss provider of digital asset custody. By purchasing it, Ripple can offer customers the tools to store, issue and settle with tokenized assets.
A month earlier, Bitstamp introduced a crypto lending service targeting some markets in Europe, Hong Kong and the UAE.
Tornado Cash hacker moves stolen tokens
A malicious user who attacked the Tornado Cash crypto mixer completed a series of transactions after hijacking the protocol.
As per Etherscan, the attacker transferred 100 ETH (~$178,000 at the time of writing) to the Tornado Cash Router, which is used in the mixing process.
The second transaction involved 38,302.57 TORN (~$164,000), the mixer’s DAO governance tokens. These assets the hacker withdrew to an unidentified address.
As of May 20, some unidentified user seized control of Tornado Cash’s governance mechanism. According to a Paradigm analyst, the hacker injected a malicious proposal with the code that included emergencyStop function triggering to update the logic after it was accepted. Thanks to the malware, the hacker achieved control of 1.2 million votes.
The intruder managed to undo the blocked tokens, transfer assets to the governance smart contract, as well as shut down the router.
What PeckShield experts note is that the hacker so far has exchanged most of the withdrawn tokens for ETH and sent the stolen crypto to Tornado Cash and the Bitrue platform.
Based on EmberCN data, the crook totaled 483,000 TORNs out of the Tornado Governance vault.
Binance suspends deposits of 10 tokens amid Multichain delays
A renowned exchange has temporarily halted deposits of POLS, ACH, BIFI, SUPER, AVA, SPELL, ALPACA, FTM, FARM, and DEXE tokens due to failures in the Multichain crosschain protocol network.
The freeze applies only to the abovementioned assets issued on Ethereum, BNB Chain, Avalanche and Fantom networks. Deposits of the same tokens, yet from other blockchains, are still available.
Platform officials explained that they are seeking clarification from the Multichain team.
It was back on May 21 when users started to complain about delayed transactions. The developers said that the fault occurred during technical work on crosschain router nodes.
Multichain team then promised compensation to users who suffered from a “force majeure.” As stated by the Multichain, most of the internetwork “are functioning well.” Nevertheless, some are still inaccessible, and “the time for service to resume is unknown.”
Amid the malfunctions in Multichain, the network’s native MULTI token collapsed by nearly 30%. As a result, numerous large investors decided to sell their assets. One of them transferred 494,200 MULTI (~$2.75 million) to the Gate.io exchange.
Fantom Foundation grew concerned about the situation as well and thus withdrew 450,000 protocol tokens (~$2.4 million) from the liquidity pool on the SushiSwap, a decentralized exchange.
Andre Cronje, the president of the company, said that the foundation withdrew the funds for security reasons.
Circle launches euro-based stablecoin on Avalanche
Circle, a member of the Centre consortium, introduced the Euro Coin (EUROC) on the Avalanche network.
According to the firm, developments based on the new blockchain would empower users with more efficient solutions for sending, spending, lending and borrowing funds in a “fully reserved” asset.
“By launching Euro Coin on Avalanche’s fast and efficient platform, we can help developers and their users experience near-instant, more cost effective financial transactions and unlock new possibilities for payments, remittances and 24/7 FX,” the company said.
Avalanche’s integration is dut to the “growing demand for stablecoin diversification” by various networks.
Circle went on by adding that a number of platforms, including Benqi, Curve, Dexalot, GMX, Pangolin, Shift Markets and Trader Joe’s, are keen to integrate the new stablecoin.
To recap, Circle released Euro Coin on the Ethereum blockchain last summer.
As reported by CoinGecko, the EUROC market cap amounts to $51 million.
Prior to that, Société Générale, a financial conglomerate, announced the launch of CoinVertible, a euro-denominated stablecoin.