Category: Bitcoin Wallet

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Coinbase Officially Pulls Support for Bitcoin SV (BSV)

American cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase will no longer support Bitcoin SV (BSV), per a recent post by the firm on X.
BSV No Longer Hosted on Coinbase

Coinbase has announced that it has deprecated support for BSV and effectively immediately, the coin will no longer be available on its trading platform. In effect, Coinbase customers can no longer have access to their BSV holdings and they are also not allowed to withdraw or deposit more of the coin in their wallets. 

For those who previously held BSV on Coinbase and did not move the token even after receiving a warning from the crypto exchange, the assets would have been liquidated and converted to the market equivalent of another coin supported on Coinbase. The exact value of the new crypto will be credited to the user’s account, minus transaction costs. 

Notably, it had been previously declared that the Coinbase and BSV business relationship would be terminated on January 9, 24. Back in November, the crypto exchange notified its users to withdraw their BSV or stand to have it liquidated and converted to another digital asset. Many Coinbase customers who hold BSV were concerned about the additional taxation charges that may follow the conversion.

Coinbase had delisted the BSV token as far back as 2021 after Craig Wright, one of the self-acclaimed inventors of Bitcoin, lost the BTC copyright. At the time, the token had suffered multiple attacks on its protocol, hence, Coinbase was not the only exchange that took a position against the coin. Leading digital asset service provider Binance equally delisted Bitcoin SV at the time.
Delisting Trend in the Crypto Industry

The decision to delist non-performing tokens is fast becoming a crypto industry trend, especially when such assets become overwhelmed by certain challenges. Ripple-associated coin XRP suffered a similar fate more than three years ago and in its case, it was due to regulatory hurdles against the coin. 

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) brought an enforcement action against Ripple for offering XRP as an investment contract. In the regulator’s opinion, XRP is an unregistered securities. The news had a ripple effect on the market outlook of the coin as many exchanges including Coinbase and Binance decided to delist the token. 

The delisting of BSV may push Coinbase users to other platforms where the coin is supported, therefore, impacting negatively on its user base. In a shocking twist, BSV is up 2.7% at the time of writing to $72.74 despite the delisting news, a proof that the new is not impacting its community negatively.

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Coinbase: Uniswap tops 2023 list of protocols

Launched in 2018 by Hayden Adams, a former mechanical engineer at Siemens, the Uniswap blockchain runs on the Solidity programming language, a popular choice for many decentralized finance (Defi) projects on the Ethereum platform.

Uniswap offers users the ability to provide liquidity to pools and trade decentralized tokens in pairs, including native cryptocurrencies and stablecoins. Uniswap is characterized by its open source nature and encourages contributions from a diverse community. The project has since collected more than three million unique senders.

The thread continues and highlights Tether as the second protocol. It recorded 33.6 million sends from 6.2 million unique addresses, making it a significant player in the Ethereum ecosystem, followed by Opensea, Metamask and 1inch.

It is worth noting that aggregator 1inch emerged as the most used project, while recent addition Banana Gun, launching in 2023, recorded 1.5 million swaps in ninth place on the list.
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Michael Saylor Selling $216 Million of Microstrategy’s Shares, Plans to Buy More Bitcoin

Microstrategy’s executive chairman, Michael Saylor, is selling $216 million of his company’s shares, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The pro-bitcoin executive intends to use some of the proceeds to acquire additional bitcoin for his personal holdings.
Michael Saylor Plans to Buy More Bitcoin for Himself

Microstrategy (Nasdaq: MSTR)’s executive chairman, Michael Saylor, plans to sell 315,000 shares of his company’s common stock worth $216 million, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Jan. 2.

Microstrategy previously disclosed Saylor’s plan to sell up to 400,000 shares of company stock over four months. In its November 10-Q filing with the SEC, the Nasdaq-listed firm explained that the pre-arranged 10b5-1 trading plan, triggered by a stock option that expires on April 30, 2024, involves daily sales of 5,000 shares contingent on a minimum price condition.

During Microstrategy’s Q3 2023 earnings call on Nov. 2, 2023, Saylor explained that he plans to use some of the proceeds to buy more bitcoin for his personal account.

“I was granted a stock option in 2014 with respect to 400,000 shares, which is going to expire next April if I don’t exercise it by then,” the executive chairman began. “For almost a decade now at my request, the company has only paid me a $1 salary and I’ve chosen not to be eligible for any cash bonuses.” Saylor continued:

Exercising this option will allow me to address some financial obligations as well as to acquire additional bitcoin for my personal account.

While Saylor has not disclosed how much bitcoin he owns recently, he said in October 2020 that he personally owns 17,732 BTC. Meanwhile, his software intelligence firm publicly reported holdings of 189,150 bitcoin as of December 2023.

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Crypto Market Set to Grow, WazirX VP Predicts Bullish in 2024

Rajagopal Menon, vice president of Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX, anticipates a bull year for the cryptocurrency market. He told Coiningape: “Next year, a very favorable environment is predicted for the cryptocurrency market. With the United States signaling two interest rate cuts, the Bitcoin halving scheduled for April, market liquidity increasing, and regulatory dynamics shaping up, market sentiment is notably bullish.”

The cryptocurrency market has already prepared itself for this optimistic scenario. Several major Bitcoin ETF participants are now well positioned after this week. On Friday, BlackRock, WisdomTree, Fidelity, Bitwise, among other top contenders in the Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) race, filed their revised S-1 filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This flurry of activity signifies a willingness to take advantage of potential regulatory approvals, which will help the market mature and become a little more regulated.

Gold and elections suggest a rise in the cryptocurrency market

Gold, a precious metal, is considered a traditional safe-haven asset, especially when the stock market does not give expected returns. Gold shows stability to investors as a hedge. Reports reveal that the yellow metal is concluding its strongest year since 2020. This performance is supported by expectations that the US Federal Reserve may implement interest rate cuts early next year.

Menon also highlights the possible global impact of political developments on the cryptocurrency sector. “Elections in India and the United States are expected to usher in concrete regulatory frameworks at the national level, coinciding with a long-awaited bull run,” he added.

Meanwhile, in the United States, prominent cryptocurrency companies and investors are stepping up their efforts to influence political and regulatory outcomes surrounding the asset class. The Financial Times revealed this week that companies including Coinbase, Circle and a16z are investing money in pro-crypto lawmakers. This comes at a time when there is a legislative impasse in Congress ahead of the change of power in 2024.

Menon also said: “Analysts project a sustained increase in institutional investment, particularly through Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs. As the market develops in 2024, macroeconomic influences and regulatory changes will have a considerable impact, marking it as a dynamic and transformative period.”

Bitcoin price direction is a complex play of macroeconomic and regulatory developments. But it paints a picture of a cryptocurrency market on the verge of significant transformation. And it looks like 2024 could be the year to watch.

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Canadian Crypto Exchange CatalX Temporarily Suspends Trading and Withdrawals

Catalyx, a Canadian cryptocurrency trading platform, announced a security breach on Thursday. It involves the loss of crypto assets in the exchange’s custody.

Crypto Exchange Security Breach

CatalX CTS Ltd., operator of the cryptocurrency exchange, said in a press release that the security incident is suspected to involve an employee.

The events disrupted normal trading and withdrawal activities on the Canadian platform.

It said: “Due to the loss, all cryptocurrency and fiat currency withdrawals from the Platform and all trading activities on the Platform have been temporarily suspended.”

Termination order details

Based on the December 21, 2023 injunction order, the Alberta Securities Commission announced the confidentiality of the admitted evidence.

The order was granted pursuant to sections 33 and 198 of the Securities Act (Alberta) and requires a 15-day pause in the trading and purchasing of any securities or derivatives by the defendants. The order will expire on January 5, 2024, if not extended by the Commission.

Although the crypto exchange has ceased all trading and withdrawals, it is being audited by Deloitte.

Crypto Losses in 2023

However, this is not the first incident where a crypto company has lost funds due to an internal breach.

In early July 2023, reports revealed that crypto payments provider CoinsPaid suffered a loss of $37 million. The breach reportedly resulted from hackers gaining access to an employee’s computer through a misleading job offer. The employee was later tricked into installing a program that led to the theft of critical data.

In a separate incident, LastPass, a company specializing in password data encryption, faced a security breach in its cloud storage service due to employee credentials being compromised.

According to a recent De.Fi report, the decentralized finance sector faced losses totaling around $1.95 billion in 2023. Meanwhile, Ethereum emerged as the most attacked blockchain, suffering around $1.35 billion in losses in 170 violations.