Uncategorized
Crypto Daybook Americas: LIBRA Fallout Weighs on Crypto Markets While FTX Repayments Are Set to Start
By Francisco Rodrigues (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
While bitcoin (BTC) is little changed over the past 24 hours, down just 0.7%, the broader market is in a bearish mood following the Libra token debacle, which has led to accusations of fraud and calls for the impeachment of Argentina’s President Javier Milei.
The CoinDesk 20 Index is down around 2.3% over the past day, and the near- to medium-term market movement probably hinges on how the U.S.-Russia negotiations in Riyadh go. The talks are focusing not only on ending the conflict in Ukraine, but also on “normalization” of ties between the countries.
An additional layer of uncertainty comes from FTX Digital Markets, the Bahamas-based subsidiary of FTX, which starts repaying creditors today. In total, FTX’s repayment program will be around $16 billion.
The liquidity injection will come in the form of stablecoins. First up are creditors with claims under $50,000, who will receive roughly 119% of their adjudicated claim value, with 9% annual interest accrued since November 2022.
The effect the repayments will have is unclear. While some analysts say the amount being repaid now is “too small to move the needle,” others suggest that FTX’s historic interest in the Solana ecosystem means some of these funds will flow toward it.
Investors have recently turned their attention to ether. U.S.-listed spot ETFs offering exposure to the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization are seeing a cumulative net inflow of $393 million this month. That compares with a net outflow of $376 million for spot bitcoin ETFs.
These inflows come ahead of Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade entering its testing phase on the Holesky testnet. Pectra should bring a number of improvements to scalability and security and will let users pay for gas fees with tokens other than ether.
Elsewhere, individual investors are bearish amid trade-war threats, reduced interest-rate cut expectations, and consistent inflationary surprises. A survey from the American Association of Individual Investors found that bearishness among investors is at a two-year high, the Wall Street Journal reports.
This pessimism, however, is often a contrarian indicator. Institutional investors’ risk appetite has also dropped this month over the potential effects of a potential trade war amid the lowering odds of a Fed rate cut. Stay alert!
What to Watch
Crypto:
Feb. 18, 10:00 a.m.: FTX Digital Markets, the Bahamas-based subsidiary of FTX, will start reimbursing creditors.
Feb. 19: High-performance blockchain Monad’s public testnet starts up.
Feb. 19, 11:00 a.m.: The first official State of Sei (SEI) livestream.
Feb. 19, 1:00 p.m.: Hedera (HBAR) mainnet upgrade to v0.58.
Feb. 21: TON (The Open Network) becomes the exclusive blockchain infrastructure for messaging platform Telegram’s Mini App ecosystem.
Feb. 24: At epoch 115968, testing of Ethereum’s Pecta upgrade on the Holesky testnet starts.
Macro
Feb. 18, 10:20 a.m.: San Francisco Fed President and CEO Mary C. Daly delivers a speech in Phoenix. Livestream link.
Feb. 18, 1:00 p.m.: The Fed’s Michael S. Barr took, vice chair for supervision, gives a speech titled «Artificial Intelligence in the Economy and Financial Stability» in New York. Livestream link.
Feb. 19, 2:00 p.m.: The Fed releases minutes of the Jan. 28-29 FOMC Meeting.
Earnings
Feb. 18: CoinShares International (CS), pre-market
Feb. 18: Semler Scientific (SMLR), post-market
Feb. 20: Block (XYZ), post-market, $0.88
Feb. 24: Riot Platforms (RIOT), post-market, $-0.18
Feb. 25: Bitdeer Technologies Group (BTDR), pre-market, $-0.53
Feb. 25: Cipher Mining (CIFR), pre-market, $-0.09
Feb. 26: MARA Holdings (MARA), post-market, $-0.13
Token Events
Governance
Compound DAO is discussing evolving Compound Sandbox into Compound V4 to introduce streamlined governance, dynamic market parameters, enhance the liquidation mechanism, and improve cross-chain reward distribution.
Aave DAO is discussing expanding the AAVE governance token integration on the platform by adding AAVE collateral option to Base.
Uniswap DAO is discussing funding liquidity incentives for Uniswap V4 on the Unichain network to attract liquidity providers and traders to the protocol.
Unlocks
Feb. 21: Fast Token (FTN) to unlock 4.66% of circulating supply worth $78.6 million.
Feb. 28: Optimism (OP) to unlock 1.92% of circulating supply worth $34.23 million.
Token Launches
Feb. 18: Ethena (ENA) to be listed on Arkham.
Feb. 18: Ronin (RON) to be listed on KuCoin
Conferences:
CoinDesk’s Consensus to take place in Hong Kong on Feb. 18-20 and in Toronto on May 14-16. Use code DAYBOOK and save 15% on passes.
Day 1 of 3: Consensus Hong Kong
Feb. 23-March 2: ETHDenver 2025 (Denver)
Feb. 24: RWA London Summit 2025
Feb. 25: HederaCon 2025 (Denver)
March 2-3: Crypto Expo Europe (Bucharest, Romania)
March 8: Bitcoin Alive (Sydney, Australia)
Token Talk
By Francisco Rodrigues
Donald Trump supporters are set to receive around $50 worth of the official TRUMP tokens if they bought merchandise from the websites associated with the U.S. president.
The token was unveiled just days before Trump took office and have lost more than 70% of their value since then.
Solana-based decentralized exchange Jupiter has started accumulating USDC using 50% of the collected protocol fees to buy back JUP tokens. The buybacks haven’t yet started.
JUP’s price is down more than 12% over the last 24 hours over the protocol’s apparent involvement in the LIBRA cryptocurrency debacle.
Derivatives Positioning
SOL’s price may continue to fall, seeing that perpetual futures open interest has risen by 5% in the past 24 hours, accompanied by a negative cumulative volume delta (CVD). This combination indicates net selling pressure in the market.
The CVD for most major tokens is negative, indicating a bearish sentiment.
BTC and ETH front-dated or short-term puts continue to be pricier than calls on Deribit. The sentiment is bullish after February expiry.
Block flows featured an April expiry bitcoin bull put spread, involving strikes $85K and $100K and outright longs in puts at $94K and $90K strikes. Ether bull call spreads crossed the tape as well.
Market Movements:
BTC is down 0.69% from 4 p.m. ET Monday to $95,802.76 (24hrs: -0.57%)
ETH is down 2.88% at $2,698.31 (24hrs: -1.89%)
CoinDesk 20 is down 2.23% to 3,161.95 (24hrs: -3.03%)
Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 27 bps to 3.18%
BTC funding rate is at 0.0078% (8.5541% annualized) on Binance
DXY is up 0.36% at 106.94
Gold is up 0.97% at $2,922.9/oz
Silver is up 0.70% to $32.99/oz
Nikkei 225 closed 0.25% at 39,270.4
Hang Seng closed +1.59% at 22,976.81
FTSE is up 0.18% at 8,783.43
Euro Stoxx 50 is unchanged at 5,520.7
DJIA closed Friday -0.37% at 44,546.08
S&P 500 closed unchanged at 6,114.63
Nasdaq closed +0.41% at 20,026.77
S&P/TSX Composite Index closed -0.84% at 25,483.2
S&P 40 Latin America closed +2.12% at 2,490.30
U.S. 10-year Treasury rate was up 3 bps at 4.51%
E-mini S&P 500 futures are up 0.1% to 6,151.5
E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 0.21% at 22,282
E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are down 0.15% to 44,676
Bitcoin Stats:
BTC Dominance: 61.17 (0.85%)
Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02813 (-1.71%)
Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 790 EH/s
Hashprice (spot): $53.47
Total Fees: 6.93 BTC / $663,706
CME Futures Open Interest: 174,200 BTC
BTC priced in gold: 32.8 oz
BTC vs gold market cap: 9.31%
Technical Analysis
The chart shows the market dominance of Tether’s USDT, the largest dollar-pegged stablecoin.
Its dominance rate seems to have bounced off the March 2024 low, teasing a bullish double bottom pattern.
In other words, USDT could become more dominant, which usually happens during market-wide price corrections.
Crypto Equities
MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed on Friday at $337.73 (+3.94%), down 0.6% at $335.76 in pre-market.
Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $274.31 (-7.98%)
Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$27.65 (-2.54%)
MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $16.90 (-0.06%)
Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $12.27 (+0.33%)
Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $12.51 (-0.24%)
CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $10.50 (-1.59%)
CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $23.40 (+0.52%)
Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $49.67 (+0.44%)
Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $50.00 (unchanged)
ETF Flows
The data below is as of Feb. 14. U.S. markets were closed on Feb. 17.
Spot BTC ETFs:
Daily net flow: $70.6 million
Cumulative net flows: $40.12 billion
Total BTC holdings ~ 1.180 million.
Spot ETH ETFs
Daily net flow: $11.7 million
Cumulative net flows: $3.15 billion
Total ETH holdings ~ 3.791 million.
Source: Farside Investors
Overnight Flows
Chart of the Day
While bitcoin remains listless below $100,000, Wall Street’s tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 has jumped close to record highs.
If BTC’s historical positive correlation with the tech stock is any guide, BTC could soon pick up a strong bid.
While You Were Sleeping
Bitcoin Is Coiled Like a Spring, a Breakout of This Range Is Coming: Van Straten (CoinDesk): Bitcoin has traded in the $91K–$109K range since late November. According to Glassnode, BTC’s 2-week realized volatility has fallen to just 32% on an annual basis.
Ether ETFs Register $393M in Inflows This Month as Crypto Investors Turn Their Back on Bitcoin (CoinDesk): Data on U.S. spot ETFs shows investors pivoting their attention to ether from bitcoin. Analysts say they expect ETH to rise as Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade draws closer.
Milei Denies Wrongdoing in His First Defense of Crypto Debacle (Bloomberg): Argentina’s President Javier Milei defended his promotion of a memecoin called libra — which spiked before crashing — as an effort to support economic growth.
Investors Haven’t Been This Pessimistic About Stocks Since 2023 (The Wall Street Journal): A survey shows 47.3% of U.S. investors expect stock price declines over six months — the most bearish sentiment since November — amid trade war and inflation concerns.
U.S. and Russia Meet for Talks on Ukraine War (Reuters): On Tuesday, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Saudi Arabia to discuss ending the war in Ukraine and restoring relations between the two superpowers.
Australia Cuts Interest Rates for First Time in More Than 4 Years (Financial Times): Australia’s central bank cut its cash rate by 0.25 percentage points to 4.10%, providing mortgage relief while signaling caution about future rate cuts amidst economic uncertainty.
In the Ether
On Friday, cryptocurrency exchange Bybit was allegedly hacked by North Korea’s Lazarus group, which drained nearly $1.4 billion in ether (ETH) from the exchange.
Following the hack, Arthur Hayes, BitMEX co-founder and claiming to be a major ether (ETH) holder, wrote a post on X to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin on whether he will “advocate to roll back the chain to help @Bybit_Official.” Meanwhile, in an X spaces session, Bybit’s CEO Ben Zhou revealed that his team had also reached out to the Ethereum Foundation to see if it was something the network would consider, noting that such a decision should be based on what the network’s community wants.
Hayes’s post immediately provoked a fierce reaction from the Ethereum community, which was firm in its belief that it wouldn’t happen. Some even questioned whether the BitMEX founder was joking. CoinDesk reached out to Hayes over X to clarify his comments.
Ethereum members, like the core developer teams, are vastly against “rolling back” the network because it would override core elements of decentralization. If Buterin decided on his own that it would happen, then that would be seen as the end of Ethereum’s ethos, which heavily involves various developer teams and other community members when it comes to the health and state of the blockchain.
“Rolling back the chain would give ETH no purpose. What’s the point if you can just change rules,” said user @the_weso in a post on X.
Some outside the Ethereum community pointed to the 2016 DAO hack as an example when $60 million in ETH was stolen. The network went forward with a hard fork, splitting the old network into two, and the new chain continued on as Ethereum.
That hard fork was not a “rollback,” though; it was known as an “irregular state transition.” Ethereum technically can’t “roll back” the network because it relies on an account model, where accounts hold users’ ETH.
At the time of the hack, developers upgraded their nodes to a new client or software. Those who didn’t upgrade their nodes were still on the old chain, which became known as Ethereum Classic.
When the nodes upgraded to the new software, the stolen ETH could move from one Ethereum account address to the next.
“The ‘irregular state change’ that they implemented at the time of the DAO hard fork was this: they airlifted all the ETH in the DAO smart contracts out to a refund contract that would send you 1 ETH for every 100 DAO tokens you sent in,” wrote Laura Shin of Unchained in a post on X.
Major cryptocurrency exchange Bybit has seen total outflows of over $5.5 billion after it suffered a near $1.5 billion hack that saw hackers, believed to be from North Korea’s Lazarus Group, drain its ether cold wallet.
The total assets tracked on wallets associated with the exchange plunged from around $16.9 billion to $11.2 billion at the time of writing, according to data from DeFiLlama. The exchange is now looking to understand exactly what happened.
In an X spaces session, Bybit’s CEO Ben Zhou revealed that shortly after the incident, he called for “all hands on deck” to serve their clients with processing withdrawals and responding to inquiries about what was going on.
During the session, Zhou revealed that the security breach saw the hackers make off with roughly 70% of their clients’ ether, which meant that Bybit needed to quickly secure a loan to be able to process withdrawals. Yet, Zhou found that ether wasn’t the most withdrawn token, with most users instead withdrawing stablecoin from Bybit.
The exchange, Zhou noted, has reserves to cover these withdrawals, but the crisis deepened as, in response to the incident, Safe moved to temporarily shut down its smart wallet functionalities to “ensure absolute confidence in our platform’s security.”
Safe is a decentralized custody protocol providing smart contract wallets for digital asset management. Some exchanges integrated Safe, which allows users to maintain custody of their funds and has multisig functionality to enhance the security of their cold wallets.
While the exchange had reserves to back up users’ withdrawals, $3 billion worth of USDT was in a Safe wallet that had just been shut down as the wallet moved to understand the situation, according to Zhou.
On social media, Safe said that while it had «not found evidence that the official Safe frontend was compromised,» it was temporarily shutting down «certain functionalities» out of caution.
While Zhou and Bybit’s team were figuring out how to securely withdraw their $3 billion, withdrawals were mounting. Within two hours of the security breach, the exchange was facing requests to move over $100,000 off its platform, Zhou revealed.
Responding to the situation, Zhou told his security team to engage Safe to “find a better way to get this money out.” The team ended up developing new software with code “based on Etherscan” to verify the signatures “on a very manual level” to move the stablecoins back to their wallet and cover the withdrawal surge.
The exchange’s team had to remain up all night to be able to fulfill withdrawals, according to Zhou. As the exchange managed to move the $3 billion in stablecoin reserves, it was facing a bank run of “about 50%” of all the funds within the exchange.
Zhou said that since the incident, the exchange has moved a significant amount of funds off of Safe cold wallets and is now determining what system it will use to replace Safe.
Pushing to «Roll Back» Ethereum Was not Off the Table
Since the security breach, Bybit has engaged authorities. During the session, Zhou said that the Singaporean authorities took the issue “very seriously” and that he believes it has already been escalated with Interpol.
Blockchain analysis firms, including Chainalysis, were engaged. Zhou said, “As long as Bybit is there and continues to track [the stolen ether], I hope we can get these funds back.”
Notably, he revealed that pushing to «roll back» the Ethereum blockchain, which was suggested by some industry players on social media, including BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, had been on the table for some time if the community agreed with it.
“I had my team talking to Vitalik and the Ethereum Foundation to see if there’s any recommendations they can offer to help. I do really thank all these guys on Twitter asking if there is a possibility to roll back the chain. I’m not sure what was the response on their side, but anything that would help we would try,” Zhou said.
When asked if «rolling back» the chain is even possible, Zhou responded he doesn’t know. “I’m not sure it’s a one-man decision based on the spirit of blockchain. It should be a work in process to see what the community wants,” he said.
It’s worth noting that a blockchain «rollback» refers to a state change that would allow for the funds to be recovered. While rolling back the Bitcoin blockchain is technically possible, such a state change on Ethereum would be more complex, given its smart contract interactions and state-based architecture.
Nevertheless, any state change would require consensus and likely lead to a contentious hard fork, drawing criticism from the community. This would likely split the Ethereum blockchain into two networks, each with its own supporters.
As for what exactly caused the hack to occur, is still unclear. Per Zhou, Bybit’s laptops have not been compromised. He said the movements of the transaction’s signers have been scrutinized but appear to have been routine.
“We know the cause is definitely around the Safe cold wallet. Whether it’s a problem with our laptops or on Safe’s side, we don’t know.,” Zhou added.
Uncategorized
Binance Research Survey Shows 95% of Latin American Crypto Users Plan to Buy More in 2025
A vast majority of Latin American cryptocurrency users—95%—plan to expand their holdings in 2025, according to a Binance Research survey of more than 10,000 investors in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico.
The findings show that 40.1% of respondents are expecting to buy more crypto within the next three months, 15.3% are looking to do so in the next six months, and 39.7% within 12 months. Only 4.9% have no plans to keep on investing this year.
Latin America led the world in crypto adoption in 2024, growing by 116%, according to research from payments firm Triple-A quoted in the report. The region now has 55 million cryptocurrency users, making up nearly 10% of total cryptocurrency users.
This rapid expansion has been fueled by rising asset prices, regulatory advancements, and new financial products like spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Brazil has just last week become the first country to approve a spot XRP ETF.
Market performance has also bolstered investor confidence. «Latin America is a rapidly expanding region for the crypto sector, and the results of this research reinforce what we have observed in our operations,” Binance’s regional VP for Latin America, Guilherme Nazar, said.
Binance’s research shows that half of those inquired already use cryptocurrencies for over a year, with most entering the space expecting significant returns and searching for financial freedom.
Portfolio diversification, privacy, and protecting their money were also quoted as motives to invest in the space.
Read more: How a $115M Crypto Fund With Big Ambitions Plans to Invest In Latin America
Ethereum ‘Roll Back’ Suggestion Has Sparked Criticism. Here’s Why It Won’t Happen
Bybit Sees Over $4 Billion ‘Bank Run’ After Crypto’s Biggest Hack
Binance Research Survey Shows 95% of Latin American Crypto Users Plan to Buy More in 2025
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