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How $330M BTC Hacker May Have Doubled Down on Monero Derivatives

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There’s something that stands out about Monday’s suspicious transfer of more than 3,520 BTC ($330.7 million) to privacy coin monero (XMR), a conversion that blockchain sleuth ZachXBT said was probably linked to a hack: coordinated activity in the derivatives market.

Monero, which obscures the sender’s and recipient’s addresses to provide an untraceable currency, has limited liquidity on exchanges, which makes it harder for users to transact without affecting the market and exposes them to slippage, the chance of the price changing for the worse before the deal is finalized.

The decision to go through an illiquid cryptocurrency is unusual. Tether’s USDT or ether (ETH) would have provided an easier, less-slippage-prone way of moving the funds about, and mixers such as Tornado Cash could help obscure the transaction path. Of course, stablecoins like USDT are also easier to intercept and freeze.

Trading data, however, suggests there was more going on than a simple case of someone trying to launder stolen funds.

The possible hacker very likely did encounter slippage during the transaction. Combined market depth, which measures order book liquidity over a given price range, was relatively low at around $1 million per 2% on both sides of the book. XRM surged by 45% due to the limited liquidity on exchanges, meaning they could have lost as much as 20% — $66 million — by purchasing XMR rather than a more-liquid token.

For a more complete picture, take a look at derivative markets. While monero was surging, open interest — the number of outstanding futures and options contracts — in XMR on the main centralized exchanges more than doubled to $35.1 million, according to Coinalyze.

A 45% rise in XMR’s price should have boosted open interest only to $24.2 million instead of the figure it ended up at. Taking into account the $1 million in liquidations, someone, or some people, were already long on XMR to the tune of $11 million.

While the price increase on that holding wouldn’t have compensated for the full amount of slippage, it would help soften the blow. Moreover the figure doesn’t take into account any positions that might have existed in decentralized exchanges, and let’s not forget the funds were probably stolen in the first place, so the (assumed) perpetrators are still a couple of million dollars ahead.

This is not the first time bad actors have flooded spot purchases to move the derivative needle. Last month a trader manipulated JELLY prices on decentralized exchange HyperLiquid. They bought JELLY on illiquid exchanges, tricking the pricing oracle to feed an inaccurate price to HyperLiquid and thus generating profit for holders of long positions.

Both cases draw similarities to the $114 million exploit on Mango Markets in 2022, which involved a trader named Avi Eisenberg manipulating MNGO prices by borrowing assets using ill-gotten gains as collateral. Eisenberg was found guilty by a jury in 2024 and faces 20 years in prison.

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SEC Delays Dogecoin and XRP ETF Decisions

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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) delayed approval decisions on spot xrp (XRP) and dogecoin (DOGE) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) late Tuesday, in line with analyst expectations.

The SEC said it will wait until June 15 for the next steps for the Bitwise DOGE ETF and June 17 for the Franklin XRP Fund, separate filings show.

The law says the Commission has 45 days from when a proposed rule change is announced to approve it, reject it, or start a process to decide if it should be rejected. These 45 days can be extended to 90 days if the Commission thinks more time is needed.

«The Commission finds it appropriate to designate a longer period within which to take action on the proposed rule change so that it has sufficient time to consider the proposed rule change and the issues raised therein,» the agency said in the filings.

Bloomberg Intelligence analyst James Seyffart said in an X post that these delays are expected as final deadlines for most filings are in October or later.

XRP and DOGE are little-changed in the past 24 hours alongside flat bitcoin price action.

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Author of Crypto Bills Now Being Rehashed Predicts ‘Wicked Hot Summer’ in Congress

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Two recent shepherds of U.S. crypto oversight — Republican former lawmaker Patrick McHenry and Democrat former Commodity Futures Trading Commission chief Rostin Behnam — shared a view that there’s a tremendous amount of work still to do on U.S. crypto legislation but that now is the moment to do it.

McHenry, in a discussion hosted by Georgetown University’s Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy, said that Senator Tim Scott, the South Carolina chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, and Representative French Hill, the Arkansas Republican who leads the House Financial Services Committee, present the industry an ideal opportunity to establish sound law.

«And I think you should take it,» he said, arguing that solid law will act as a better future defense than regulatory stopgaps that aren’t associated with congressional action. «Let’s ward against bad regulators taking these seats that could try to kill digital innovation.»

Last year, McHenry backed the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21), which has become the foundation for this year’s congressional effort on crypto’s market structure. The former lawmaker, who now advises industry investor a16z, predicted a «wicked hot summer for legislating.»

McHenry also had a direct hand in last year’s stablecoin legislation that’s returned with new versions in the House and Senate. Though they’re mostly aligned with each other, he said a «major brewing battle» is shaping up between U.S. stablecoin issuer Circle (USDC) and the global leader, Tether (USDT), over how non-U.S. issuers would be handled.

Both want to be in business after Congress passes a law, McHenry said, «and they’re both working actively on Capitol Hill to make their point of view heard.» He said he expects a «reasonable landing spot» will be found in a U.S. regime for Tether that allows it to deal with U.S. investors.

«You shouldn’t blow up an international product that desires to be dollar-denominated; I don’t think that’s a rational outcome,» he argued, though the matter may take more months of negotiating among lawmakers. The debates over the meat of highly technical policies will eventually transition from «science to art» as lawmakers do what they can to convert ideas into law, McHenry said.

Meanwhile, the industry keeps going, largely unregulated at the federal level. As Behnam noted: «You can’t stop the industry from doing what it’s doing, whether it’s trading the tokens or developing protocols and whatnot, and that’s been going on for years.»

He was never able to get on the same page with former Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler to initiate crypto policies, and he offered a reality check for those now waiting for laws from a cooperative Congress: They’ll also have to be implemented by the regulators.

«It’s going to take a while,» he said, starting with the market structure legislation that may still be several months away. «But then it kicks over to the harder part, where you’re going to have the market regulators and the bank regulators writing rules, which often can take over a year, even at the quickest clip.»

Read More: U.S. CFTC Chief Benham’s Last Words to Crypto: Protect the Investors

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Trump’s Truth Social Mulls Launching Token for Subscriptions in Latest Crypto Push

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Truth Social, the social media platform owned by Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT), which is majority-owned by U.S. President Donald Trump, is considering launching a cryptocurrency.

«As part of our rewards program, we’re exploring the introduction of a utility token with a Truth digital wallet that can initially be used to pay for Truth+ subscription costs, and later be applied to other products and services in the Truth ecosphere,» the company said in a letter to its shareholders on Tuesday.

DJT barely reacted to the news; the stock is down 0.52% in after-hours trading.

The company is also looking into launching exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that will combine equities with cryptocurrencies, the letter reiterated.

Trump’s entourage has released a panoply of crypto products over the years, including memecoins, NFT collections, and a DeFi protocol.

Read more: Trump Media Wants to Partner with Crypto.Com for ETP Issuance

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