August 24, 2022

Crypto Consolidation The Calm Before The Storm?

Bit of a quiet day and week so far. The lack of volatility isn’t a huge surprise given the time of year. Traders and investors are people, too, and they like to spend time outside and on vacation before school starts like anyone else.

Consolidation is the name of the game for today – but consolidation and quiet are often precursors to explosive moves, so stay on alert!

The total cryptocurrency market cap is stubbornly hanging onto the $1 trillion value area, and there are some signs of volume and interest rising. Today’s Litepaper focuses on a little bit of a spat between two popular crypto YouTubers and another (short) update with the ongoing Celsius and Three Arrows Capital fiasco.

Here’s how the market looked at the end of the trading day.

Cardano (ADA)	$0.47	-0.21%
Binance Coin (BNB)	$298.80	-0.13%
Bitcoin (BTC)	$21,725	0.89%
Dogecoin (DOGE)	$0.07	0.58%
Ethereum (ETH)	$1,678	0.91%
Polkadot (DOT)	$7.67	0.39%
Solana (SOL)	$35.86	0.56%
XRP (XRP)	$0.35	0.81%
Altcoin Market Cap	$605 Billion	0.68%
Total Market Cap	$1.02 Trillion	0.79%

Crypto

Crypto YouTuber Sues Another YouTuber

Controversial crypto influencer Ben Armstrong (BitBoy) is suing another YouTube influencer, Atozy for defamation. According to the filing in the United State District Court for the Norther District of Georgia, Atozy is accused of defamation, infliction of emotional distress, and tortious interference with business relations or potential business relations.

Atzoy was served at his home and took to YouTube. He opened a GoFundMe to help provide for his defense against BitBoy’s lawsuit. So far, $52,124 is raised, with an anonymous $25,000 donation as the biggest.

However, that’s only from the GoFundMe site. Well known crypto trader, Cobie, reportedly donated $100,000 for Atzoy’s defense.

This will be fun to watch.

Crypto

Celsius And Three Arrows Capital Update

If things couldn’t get any more confusing and bleak for Celsius ($CEL.X), they just did. Long story short (you can read the full details here), Celsius alleges that a former money manager lost, misappropriated, or stole a big chunk of customer assets.

Celsius’s attorneys allege that Stone-Keyfi attempted to obfuscate its activity with Tornado Cash by converting some of their (Celsius) assets into NFTs. A bit of an issue considering that Tornado Cash has been black-listed and banned by the US – a seriously contentious issue that we’ll be reviewing soon.

Some kinda-sorta positive news with Three Arrows Capital (3AC) just came out.

Liquidators got a bit of a win today. The Singapore High Court granted Teneo, the petitioner, access to any financial records. Teneo is the advisory firm appointed by a British Virgin Islands court. Teneo wants to see what 3AC is up to and how they are securing its assets through the liquidation process.

We’ll keep you updated as the news develops.

Bullets

Bullets From The Day:

🔊 Not a surprise, but crypto traders in the U.S. are the largest active participation group in the crypto market. Arcane Research’s Twitter account posted data from Similarweb highlighting that U.S. crypto enthusiasts represent 14.4% of the global traffic. See the Tweet here

👨‍⚖️ Congressman Tom Emmer has called out the U.S. Treasury for sanctioning Tornado Cash. Tornado Cash developer, Alexey Pertsev, was arrested by Dutch authorities on August 8 for writing the code that runs Torando Cash. A concern about free speech is being raised across the industry and now in the halls of Congress. Full story from Blockworks

🥮 Yesterday was a big day for Cardano ($ADA.X). The 75% Threshold was met on the testnet, confirming a successful hard fork for Vasil. Another pre-production test is scheduled, and the full Vasil upgrade on the main net will occur once complete. When? Somewhere in mid-September. See the post and further explanation here