...and is definitely not an enormous grift that's pouring lighter fluid on our already smoldering planet.
Created by Molly White. Subscribe to her newsletter for weekly recaps.
In December, the largest Bithumb shareholder, Park Mo, was found dead outside his home in an apparent suicide after he was named as a suspect by prosecutors in an investigation into embezzlement and stock manipulation.
Korean prosecutors had previously charged the former chairman of Bithumb over an alleged $100 million in fraud, though he was acquitted for lack of proof.
The thief also stole an Autoglyph NFT, which rarely change hands, but which have most recently sold for around 200 ETH ($312,000). Rose had been offering his Autoglyph for sale for 345 ETH ($539,000), but had yet to find a buyer.
Fortunately for Rose, the hacker was apparently unable to steal a CryptoPunk NFT he owned that resembles a zombie. The rare zombie variant of the already pricey NFT have fetched millions — albeit in periods of stronger interest in NFTs.
Now, the FBI has accused two groups of North Korean hackers — Lazarus and APT38 — of perpetrating the Harmony hack. The groups then used Tornado Cash and RAILGUN to launder the funds.
Unfortunately for them, things didn't quite go as planned, with collectors balking at the high pricetag. Mints slowed to a crawl far before the 7,500 limit was reached, and the NFTs quickly began trading at a discount on secondary markets (meaning it was cheaper to buy a resold NFT than mint a new one).
Porsche decided to pump the brakes on the mint when fewer than 2,000 had sold. However, they botched that too — they announced they had stopped the mint before they actually did so, which caused the collection's secondary floor price to rise back above the mint price in anticipation of higher scarcity. Observant traders who noticed this were able to arbitrage the price difference, minting new NFTs and immediately flipping them for a profit on secondary markets.
NFT collectors criticized Porsche for appearing to try to jump into web3 without knowing the space, and asking for an exorbitant mint price without a clear plan.
Ultimately, the Wormhole hacker became the third-largest holder of stETH as a result. The size of the swaps was so large that it moved the stETH market, increasing trading volume by 3000% and temporarily causing the asset to move above its usual 1:1 peg with Ethereum.
The move, which many crypto enthusiasts took as an indication that the Wormhole hacker was a "crypto degen", is unlike the activities of many crypto hackers, who typically try to launder the money and exit into fiat rather than keep it within the crypto ecosystem.
Gemini has been having a rough time lately, trying to recoup $900 million of their customers' funds from Genesis, and facing charges from the SEC that their Earn product was an unregistered securities offering.
Signature Bank has suggested it intends to step back somewhat from the crypto industry. It is one of the relatively few US banks that services crypto clients, and provided services to FTX among others.
Patrick McKenzie speculated that the change might have been related to AML/KYC, and Binance's "Bond villain compliance strategy".
In a spin attempt rivaling those of Olympic gymnasts, Nexo wrote that the large fine was good, actually: "Nexo believes that the company has been recognized for what it truly is - a pioneer, like Uber and Airbnb, providing disruptive solutions in a fast-paced environment," they wrote.
In February, following similar action against BlockFi, Nexo stopped offering their interest program to new customers in the US. Now, Nexo will also stop offering its lending product to US customers as part of the settlement agreement.
It remains to be seen what the impact of a Genesis bankruptcy may have on its parent company, Digital Currency Group (DCG). DCG owes Genesis more than $1.65 billion, according to bankruptcy filings, including a $1.1 billion promissory note created to absorb Genesis losses in the Three Arrows Capital collapse.
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