Headlines
Goldman Sachs said that we expect the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates by 25 basis points between November 2024 and June 2025, and the final interest rate range will reach 3.25%-3.5%; it is expected that the European Central Bank will cut interest rates by 25 basis points in October, and will continue to cut interest rates by 25 basis points until the policy rate reaches 2% in June 2025.
Radiant Capital posted on X at around 3:30 am today: “We are aware of issues with the Radiant lending market on BNB Chain and Arbitrum. We are working with SEAL 911, Hypernative, ZeroShadow, and Chainalysis to resolve and will provide updates as soon as possible. Base and mainnet markets are suspended until further notice.”
Earlier news, according to a security company, Radiant Capital was suspected of being attacked and suffered losses of more than 51 million US dollars.
Radiant Capital Hacked, Losing Over $51 Million on Arbitrum and BNB Chain
According to security company Ancilia, the full-chain currency market Radiant Capital was hacked and lost more than $51 million. The attack initially occurred on Arbitrum and then transferred to BNB Chain. The attackers wallet currently holds more than $32 million in Arbitrum assets and about $18 million in BNB Chain tokens, with its largest holdings being ETH derivatives wstETH and weETH. According to Ancilia, a backdoor contract was deployed around 17:09 UTC on Wednesday, allowing the attacker to gain unauthorized access and begin transferring tokens.
“The Ethereum and Base deployments appear to be secure, but we caution anyone interacting with these contracts to exercise caution at this time,” Tony Ke, head of security research at Fuzzland, said in an interview.
Ke said Radiant uses a multi-signature setup to control smart contracts, but it seems that it has been compromised internally. The attack profile shows that someone was phished, or the computer was hacked, or an internal attacker caused Radiants private key to be leaked. Users are advised to revoke all relevant contract authorizations immediately.
Radiant lost about 1,900 ETH, worth $4.5 million, in a flash loan attack earlier this year.
According to the data of US Ethereum and Bitcoin ETF monitored by Lookonchain on October 16, the following is shown:
1. The nine US Ethereum ETFs had a total net inflow of 684 ETH, equivalent to $1.78 million, of which Fidelity received 1,000 ETH, equivalent to $2.61 million. Fidelity currently holds 153,250 ETH, equivalent to $399.98 million.
2. The ten US Bitcoin ETFs had a total net inflow of 5,693 BTC, equivalent to US$386.39 million, of which BlackRock received 4,323 Bitcoins, equivalent to US$293.41 million. BlackRock currently holds 375,169 Bitcoins, equivalent to US$25.46 billion.
Industry News
Radiant hackers converted the stolen $53 million into ETH and BNB and stored them in two addresses
According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin, Radiant Capital project had $53 million of assets stolen 7 hours ago. The hacker exchanged the stolen Arbitrum chain assets for ETH and the BSC chain assets for BNB and stored them in the following two addresses:
0x 8 b 75 e 47976 c 3 c 500 d 0148463931717001 f 620887 (12,834 ETH, $33.66 million);
0xcf47c058cc4818ce90f9315b478eb2f2d588cc78 (32,112 BNB, $19.39 million).
Funding rates for Ethereum perpetual futures contracts have risen to their highest levels since the global liquidation event in August, when major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum fell more than 20% as stocks fell. Derivatives trader Gordon Grant warned that the cryptocurrency perpetual futures market remains vulnerable to similar over-leveraged position-driven sell-offs, which could be driven by a combination of technical and macroeconomic factors.
Coinglass data shows that the funding rate for Ethereum contracts’ open interest is currently 0.0116%, the highest level since July 29, when Ethereum was trading at $3,316, and its price plummeted 22% in early August. The sudden rate hike by the Bank of Japan caused the yen carry trade to unwind, triggering a global stock market crash, which largely triggered that crash. While the initial shock was exogenous in nature, Grant explained that the highly leveraged crypto linear derivatives futures market may have amplified the effect.
A new research report released by a16z crypto pointed out that the number of active cryptocurrency addresses and usage rates reached an all-time high this year. The report estimated that the number of global cryptocurrency holders reached approximately 617 million as of September, with 60 million monthly active users.
Monthly active crypto addresses will rise to over 220 million in 2024, with Base topping the list among Ethereum EVM chains with 22 million addresses, while Solana dominates non-EVM chains with over 100 million addresses. Mobile wallets also have the most users this year, with the United States accounting for 12% of global users.
Flipside Crypto: The number of Ethereum validators has increased by more than 30% in the past year
According to a research report released by Flipside Crypto, the number of Ethereum validators has increased by more than 30% over the past year, from 824,300 in September 2023 to more than 1 million for the first time in June 2024. Carlos Mercado, a data scientist at Flipside Crypto, said the increase in the number of validators is attributed to growing institutional interest, driven by developments in the re-staking and liquidity staking sectors.
Asset management company Quantify Funds launches BTGD ETF combining Bitcoin and physical gold
Asset management company Quantify Funds launched the STKD Bitcoin Gold ETF (BTGD), an exchange-traded fund that combines Bitcoin and physical gold, striving to invest 100% in its Bitcoin and gold strategies. It is reported that the Bitcoin strategy strives to obtain Bitcoin price returns by investing in Bitcoin futures and ETPs, while the gold strategy also strives to obtain gold price returns by investing in gold futures and gold ETPs.
Cryptorank releases September crypto app download rankings, Binance ranks first
CryptoRand, a crypto market data aggregation and analysis platform, released the global crypto app download rankings for September, with Binance ranking first with 9.9 million downloads. Bitget Wallet, Bybit and Bitget ranked second, third and fourth respectively.
Tether: As of Q3, 330 million on-chain wallets and accounts have received USDT
Tether released a disclosure that USDTs adoption rate has increased significantly. As of the end of the third quarter of 2024, 330 million on-chain wallets and accounts (equivalent to the number of users) have received USDT, which is equivalent to the population of the United States. Moreover, this does not include users who only use USDT on centralized platforms. According to partner data, there are tens of millions of such users. In addition, the growth of Tethers user base is still accelerating, with more new users each quarter than the previous quarter. The average growth rate in the past four quarters was 9%, and the number of new users in the third quarter of 2024 reached a record high of 36.25 million.
Project News
Starknet: Plans to transform into a fully decentralized PoS network in four stages
Starknet said in a statement that while the first phase of staking has been launched on Starknet Sepolia, it must be emphasized that this is just the beginning of a broader plan to transform Starknet into a fully decentralized PoS network. The vision for this transformation is as follows:
Phase 1: Introducing permissionless staking protocols and staking delegation, validators are expected to run a full node in preparation for the next phase.
Phase 2: Validators will start attesting blocks, i.e. signing blocks when their turn is randomly chosen.
Phase 3: Validators will verify and vote on blocks ordered by the collator, and consensus will be proven to L1.
Phase 4: Validators will be solely responsible for maintaining and securing the network by generating, attesting, and proving blocks.
This phased approach allows Starknet to roll out staking carefully and make adjustments over time to meet the evolving needs of the community. Additionally, the four phases above are not a rigid or static plan and may change based on what is observed during this process.
Rollup deployment platform Conduit announces the release of Conduit G 2, a sequencer
Rollup deployment platform Conduit announced the launch of the sorter Conduit G 2, which can achieve a throughput of up to 100 Mgas/s, which is 10 times the performance of the current sorter.
Game Developer and Publisher Faraway Launches FCHAIN, a Layer 1 Blockchain Powered by Avalanche
Game developer and publisher Faraway has launched FCHAIN, a Layer 1 blockchain powered by Avalanche, which will power the Faraway gaming ecosystem. Faraway’s support for FCHAIN will include not only integration into its game portfolio, but also integration into its creator, business and developer tool sets.
PayPal’s PYUSD stablecoin market value has fallen 40% from its August high
PayPal’s PYUSD stablecoin has fallen 40% from its August high of over $1 billion to a market cap of around $618 million, a trend that DragonFly’s Haseeb Qureshi attributes to lower yields for lenders on platforms like Solana-based Kamino, Drift, and MarginFi.
Fuel mainnet launched and launched Ethereum L2 solution Fuel Ignition
According to official news, Fuel Labs announced the launch of the Fuel mainnet and the launch of the Ethereum L2 solution Fuel Ignition, which can solve the gradual centralization problem affecting the blockchain ecosystem by providing a scalable architecture. The architecture is designed to run on consumer-grade hardware and is open to everyone.
Plume Network Launches $100 Million Solar Asset Tokenization Project
Plume Network, a real asset tokenization startup, announced that it has provided users with $100 million worth of solar assets through a partnership with Projective Finance, and users can earn returns on solar assets by depositing crypto assets (such as stablecoins). Plume Network plans to tokenize approximately $1.25 billion in real assets by the fourth quarter, including mineral rights and Medicaid claims in addition to solar assets.
CNBC: Trump family crypto project WLFI website crash causes token sale to fail to reach early goals
The sale of WLFI tokens, the crypto project of former President Donald Trump, encountered problems when it was launched on Tuesday. The tokens were sold only through the official website of World Liberty, but the website suffered multiple long outages during the day. Blockchain data shows that there are more than 4,300 unique wallet addresses holding the tokens, which accounts for about 4% of the total number of people who registered to buy the tokens. WLF did not immediately respond to CNBCs request for comment.
Investment and Financing
Binance Labs Invests in Bitcoin Liquidity Staking Platform Lombard
Binance Labs invests in Bitcoin liquidity staking platform Lombard. Lombard co-founder and head of strategy Jacob Phillips declined to disclose the valuation in the latest round of financing, but pointed out that the startup’s current total financing amount is around US$17 million. This figure is higher than the US$16 million seed round four months ago, which means that Binance Labs’ investment scale is about US$1 million.
Mento Labs, the development team of Mento, a decentralized EVM platform on the Celo network, announced the completion of a $10 million financing round, with participation from T-Capital, HashKey Capital, Richard Parsons, Flori Ventures, No Limit Holdings, Verda Ventures and w 3.fund.
Mento Labs also announced a stablecoin roadmap, planning to launch the Philippine Peso stablecoin PUSO, the Colombian Peso stablecoin cCOP and the Ghanaian Cedi stablecoin cGHS.
According to the project documentation, the Mento Stability Protocol can be considered an over-collateralized, decentralized, and transparent stable asset mechanism. The protocol uses crypto reserves to allow users to adjust the supply of Mento stable assets as demand changes. Users can swap between Mento stable assets and reserve collateral assets.
The Arena, a social protocol in the Avalanche ecosystem, announced the completion of a $2 million Pre-Seed round of financing, with participation from Blizzard (Avalanche Ecosystem Fund), Ava Labs and Avalanche leadership team members, Balaji Srinivasan, Abstract Ventures, D 1 Ventures, Saron Funds, Alpha Crypto Capital and other angel investors from Galaxy Digital, Fenbushi, Republic, Espresso Systems, Efficient Frontier and Dao 5.
Stablecoin developer Hermetica completes $1.7 million seed round, led by UTXO Management
Stablecoin developer Hermetica has completed a $1.7 million seed round of financing, led by UTXO Management, with participation from CMS Holdings, Ethos Fund, Trust Machines SPV, Newman Capital, Silvermine and a group of angel investors. Hermetica issued yield-generating synthetic US dollars USDh on the Bitcoin network.
Sources familiar with the matter: AI startup Clay seeks financing at a valuation of $1.3 billion
Artificial intelligence startup Clay is seeking to raise funds at a valuation of $1.3 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. Last June, the company completed a $46 million Series B financing round led by Meritech at a valuation of $500 million.
Clay supports revenue operations and growth teams to automate lead generation. Its clients include Anthropic, Notion, Vanta, Ramp, and Intercom.
Double Jump.Tokyo, a Japanese blockchain game development company, announced a strategic partnership with the US Web3 fund Neoclassic Capital. Double Jump.Tokyo intends to strengthen cooperation with Web3 startups in Asia and around the world through LP investment in Neoclassic Capital, accelerating the global adoption of Web3 technology. Neoclassic Capital is a venture capital firm focused on Web3 and digital assets, with a focus on Asia and the entertainment industry.
Regulatory trends
Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that on October 15, 2024, Juan Tacuri, one of the initiators of the cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme Forcount (later known as Weltsys), was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres to up to 240 months in prison. The scam spread all over the world and thousands of victimized investors (victims) were deceived. In the United States, it mainly targeted Spanish-speaking people. Juan Tacuri made millions of dollars from participating in the scam and spent the money on real estate and luxury goods in Florida. (justice.gov)
Ireland to draft new cryptocurrency rules ahead of EU anti-money laundering crackdown
Ireland is about to draft new cryptocurrency rules ahead of a new round of EU laws and regulations to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. According to the Irish Observer, Finance Minister Jack Chambers will draft urgent legislation to update the countrys cryptocurrency regulations. But the minister did not clearly hint at what these rules will include or when they will take effect. The Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism Act, which will come into effect on December 30, 2024, gives EU national financial intelligence units (FIUs) greater investigative powers and the ability to suspend transactions.
Hong Kong Monetary Authority to launch digital bond funding scheme
The Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, John Lee, today delivered his third Policy Address during his term of office. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority announced that it will soon launch a Digital Bond Subsidy Scheme to encourage more financial institutions and issuers to adopt tokenization technology in capital market transactions and promote the development of the digital securities market. In addition, the HKMA also allows potential issuers to test business plans and application scenarios through the stablecoin issuer sandbox, and will work with the Treasury Bureau to submit a draft bill to regulate legal currency stablecoin issuers this year, actively test and explore more technical solutions and scenarios related to cross-border trade settlement on multiple central bank digital currency cross-border networks, and expand the participation of public and private institutions.
Character Voice
The Governor of Bank Indonesia said that the change in expectations for the Feds rate cut is a matter of time, but this will only affect yields. He still expects the Fed to cut interest rates twice more this year, by 25 basis points each time; it is expected that the Fed may cut interest rates 3-4 times next year, by 25 basis points each time.
CME executive: The launch of XRP ETF has taken an important step
Tim McCourt, senior managing director of CME, said that an important step has been taken towards the launch of the XRP ETF. CME has an XRP reference rate and real-time index, which is the first step in building this ecosystem, with more than 50 real-time prices and reference rates. This is crucial for product providers like Bitwise, because they can at least point to a fully regulated benchmark. A week ago, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission received an XRP ETF application from Canary Capital. Canary is the second provider to apply for an XRP ETF after Bitwise Asset Management.
Economist Claudia Sahm, founder of Sahms Rule, said she expects the Fed to continue to steadily cut interest rates, but is unlikely to make a big 50 basis point cut like it did in September. While the Feds efforts to curb inflation have been successful so far, Sahm acknowledged that consumers may not view the economy as positively as experts do.
