DeFi Telegraph (eng) ( ICO reviews)

2022-01-29 14:16:01 JPMorgan lowered its estimate of bitcoin's fair price to 38,000

JPMorgan, one of the world's largest financial institutions, has drastically changed its view on the price bitcoin will reach in the long term. While JPMorgan was optimistic last year when it estimated the number at nearly $150,000, it has lowered its estimates because of the situation the market has faced this year.

The new price of $38,000, about a quarter of the previously calculated number, was estimated in a different context regarding gold and bitcoins and market volatility. JPMorgan stated this in a note:

Our previous prediction that the bitcoin-to-gold volatility ratio would fall by about half later this year seems unrealistic. Our fair bitcoin value, based on a bitcoin-to-gold volatility ratio of about a factor of 4, would be 1/4 of $150,000, or $38,000. Open / Comment

2022-01-29 12:34:00 Anchor Protocol reserves are depleting

According to Terra.Engineer, reserves of Anchor (ANC), the flagship savings protocol of the Terra Luna (LUNA) ecosystem, have declined by 35.7% in the last seven days. Since the beginning of December, the amount of Terra USD Stablecoin (UST) held in the "terra1tmnqqgvg567ypvsvk6rwsga3srp7e3lg6u0elp8" smart contract has fallen by more than 50%, leaving just $35.7 million.

Whenever there is a shortfall between the income generated by borrowers' interest, collateral and income costs paid to depositors, Anchor must use the aforementioned TerraUSD (UST) reserves to make up the difference.

Last July, its creator, Terraform Labs, invested 70 million UST in the reserve protocol, and its value has been relatively stable. But in the last 60 days, total deposits have increased from $2.3 billion to $6.1 billion, and total loans have only increased from $1.2 billion to $1.5 billion. Open / Comment

2022-01-27 18:19:01 Etherscan launched Blockscan Chat messenger

Blockchain observer Etherscan has launched a messenger tied to cryptocurrency addresses called Blockscan Chat

Etherscan has developed a messenger called Blockscan Chat. The company announced this on its Twitter account. In order to test the solution in beta mode, users must synchronize their cryptocurrencies with the site. At the time of writing, the service supports MetaMask and the module Wallet Connect.

However, the messages themselves will be stored on Blockscan servers and not in the blockchain. The developers of the project say it explicitly when trying to synchronize a wallet with the service. Thus, all transactions are performed offchain, and cryptocurrencies act as a kind of analogue of e-mail for authorization. It remains unknown whether the messenger supports end-to-end encryption. Open / Comment

2022-01-27 16:28:01 Increased use of DeFi by criminals

In 2021, criminals laundered $8.6 billion worth of cryptocurrency through decentralized finance (DeFi), a 30% increase over 2020. This was reported on their blog by Chainalysis analysts. Despite the significant increase, the activity of criminals is still lower than in 2019. Then they managed to launder almost $11 billion.

Analysts explain the growth of activity in 2021 by the rise of the entire digital market. At the same time, Chainalysis notes that the figures reflect only the funds received from cryptocurrency crimes. Cybercrime activity like sales on the darknet or ransomware attacks were not taken into account.

Since 2017, cybercriminals have laundered a total of $33 billion in cryptocurrency. Experts note that most of this amount has eventually moved to centralized exchanges. For comparison, according to UN estimates, from $800 billion to $2 trillion in fiat currency is laundered annually, which is 5% of global GDP. Open / Comment

2022-01-27 14:55:08 Reddit tests the use of NFTs as user avatars

Reddit has picked up on the popularity of NFT by testing a feature that allows users to add any NFT they own as a profile image.

The move echoes that of Twitter, which less than a week ago launched a very similar feature with which paid subscribers could add and verify NFTs.

Reddit already has its own Ethereum-based NFT collection called CryptoSnoos, released in limited numbers last year.

This isn't Reddit's first NFT video, as the company has been promoting its own Snoos collection, which has drawn mixed reactions. Many platform users are vehemently opposed to crypto and NFT and have not held back with their stream of swearing in responses to the announcement.

According to the report, Reddit also has a test collection of alien NFTs in OpenSea, which, according to the report, were not for sale. Open / Comment

2022-01-27 12:33:00 Fantom briefly overtook Binance Smart Chain in TVL in DeFi

According to DeFiLlama, Fantom overtook Binance Smart Chain (BSC) yesterday to become the third largest blockchain in decentralized finance (DeFi) in terms of total blocked value (TVL). But BSC quickly regained the third position.

Yesterday, TVL in DeFi applications on Fantom bucked the downtrend of the global cryptocurrency market, showing an increase of more than 60% to $12.2 billion in the last week. However, today, despite bitcoin and the crypto market rising 10%, DeFi applications on Fantom showed a 10% decline in TVL.

Fantom (FTM) is an open-source smart contract blockchain that now accounts for 6.15% of DeFi's roughly $200 billion turnover.

BSC controlled more than 20% of TVL last May because of the rise of DEX PancakeSwap (CAKE), but it has now dropped to 6.05%. Open / Comment

2022-01-25 18:38:01 TVL in DeFi loses $54 billion in 2 weeks

While digital currency markets have lost significant value over the past two weeks, the value locked in in Defi has also dropped significantly. Since the first week of January, TVL in defi has lost $54.29 billion. Today, TVL is $201.55 billion, down 1.19% in the last 24 hours. While defi has fallen significantly in value, overall it has more than doubled its share of the crypto economy.

DeFi's share of the crypto economy has more than doubled from 2.8% to a record high of 6.5% since the beginning of 2021. At the time of writing, Curve Finance has a dominance rating of 9.69% of TVL $201 billion. Curve is active on eight different blockchains and has a TVL of about $19.53 billion. Metrics show that Curve's TVL is down 16.34% in the last seven days. Curve is followed by Makerdao, Convex Finance, Aave and WBTC, respectively. Open / Comment

2022-01-25 16:04:01 JPMorgan Closes Uniswap Founder's Accounts

Big banks shouldn't publicly discriminate against the crypto industry they hate so much, but they can act sneakily by not allowing crypto clients to have accounts with them.

That's exactly what just happened to Uniswap founder Hayden Adams, according to a Jan. 23 tweet.

"This week JPMorgan Chase closed my bank accounts without notice or explanation. I know many people and companies who have also been attacked simply for working in the crypto industry. Thank you for making this personal," Adams wrote.

It would have been the perfect way for banks to crack down on crypto users without too much fuss. It was suggested by former Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) commissioner Brian Quintenz:

"Probably shady crypto debunking by Federal Reserve bank supervisors or the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency at the behest of the top," he reported. Open / Comment

2022-01-25 14:12:01 Bithumb will block withdrawals to unverified wallets

South Korean bitcoin exchange Bithumb will ban users from withdrawing crypto assets to unverified third-party wallets. The innovation will take effect on January 27, 2022, the blog said.

Users will have to undergo additional verification to register their addresses. The restrictions do not affect withdrawals to local or foreign centralized exchanges with strict KYC procedures.

According to Money Today, Bithumb has faced pressure from its partner bank Nonghyup Bank. The latter allegedly demanded changes to the exchange's policies to comply with the FATF "road rule."

The publication claims that the bank urged Bithumb to "block all wallets that do not have their own KYC system. In particular, we are talking about MetaMask and MyEtherWallet. Open / Comment

2022-01-25 12:31:01 Ethereum Foundation dropped the term ETH2

Ethereum developers will no longer refer to the next-generation protocol as ETH2.0. This is announced on the official website of the Ethereum Foundation. According to the published announcement, ETH2.0 will no longer be referred to as the "consensus layer." ETH1.0 will become an "execution level."

According to the developers, the decision to rebrand is driven by a "broken mental model for new users." For example, newcomers to the ecosystem may mistakenly believe that the execution layer will cease to exist with the launch of the consensus layer.

"By removing the term Eth2, we will spare all future users from having to navigate this confusing mental model," the developers said.

The Ethereum Foundation also noted that the confusion over terminology has opened the door to fraudulent schemes. Attackers offer to exchange ETH cryptocurrency for tokens labeled "ETH2. Open / Comment