Here comes Friday, May 10th. As the ongoing week elapses, we can focus on the industry highlights over the past few days.
FTX to return 118% of claims to creditors
The executives at the notorious exchange FTX, which filed bankruptcy back in November 2022 due to fraudulent actions, have unveiled a new plan to refund creditors and customers. Under the initiative, 98% of those affected will recover at least 118% of their claims within 60 days after the Delaware Circuit Court approves the paper.
Borrowers with claims up to $50,000 are to be paid 118%. FTX expects roughly 98% of users to fall into this category The remaining ones will receive 100% of the claims.
In fact, the project still provides for recovery of assets as of the value which was during bankruptcy filing period, rather than at current prices as many creditors have insisted on earlier. Since the exchange collapse, the Bitcoin price skyrocketed by more than 200% and the total market cap capitalization of the crypto market soared by more than 150%.
Memecoin season wraps up
According to the latest data from CoinGecko, we see that the total market capitalization of meme tokens sank in the last 24 hours, dropping 2.7% to $55.48 billion.
Bonk (BONK) slided the most, losing 6% of its market value over the last 24 hours. Floki (FLOKI) followed with a 3.3% drop while Memecoin (MEME) ranked third here by declining 3% over the same timeframe.
DOGE – the top-cap meme token – saw a 2.1% price decline, bringing it to the $22.74 billion mark. Notably, the Musk-led coin still accounts for roughly 41% of the memecoin sector total market share.
Its rival, SHIB, was also correcting on May 6, down 2.4% on the day, making its market cap take a tumble to $14.29 billion, thus cementing its position as the second most popular memecoin.
It is also revealed that memecoin transaction flows across all blockchains have nosedived collectively by 81% from its recent top in March.
Meet USDh, the first Bitcoin-backed synthetic dollar
The team at Hermetica, a DeFi protocol, has announced the launch of the pioneering Bitcoin-backed synthetic dollar (USDh). This brand new cryptocurrency is scheduled to be released in June and will offer users returns of up to 25%.
As per CEO Hermetica Labs Jakob Schillinger, the new synthetic dollar will empower Bitcoin holders to hold their dollars and earn yield with no need to trust the banking system or have exposure to non-Bitcoin related products.
That said, not everyone is excited by a 25% returns per annum. Back in May 2022, the TerraUSD stablecoin, whose developers promised 20% returns per annum for providing liquidity, crashed terribly. Likewise, the ETH-backed stablecoin, USDe, was launched earlier this year. So the annual percentage for providing liquidity is even higher now, standing at 27%.
Chainalysis now helps Tether to crackdown on illicit activity
The company behind the renowned USDT stablecoin boasts new solutions to gain market insights and identify wallets that may be tied to illicit or sanctioned addresses. There are actually four tools in the spotlight: Sanctions Monitoring, Illicit Transfer Detector, Categorization, and Largest Wallet Analysis.
Not only does Tether have the technical ability to freeze wallets, but they rigorously put it into practice. Therefore, keeping your funds in stablecoins is not such a good idea.
All the benefits of crypto that we used to value would be lost, meaning no growth, no resistance to censorship. So the use cases of Tether are limited to solving some local tasks involving the funds flow and/or trading, all while understanding the potential risks and following precautions. But as for now, it’s not for storing funds only.