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BAYC Team Raises $285M With Otherside NFTs, Clogs Ethereum
BAYC Team Raises $285M With Otherside NFTs, Clogs Ethereum
After much ado, Yuga Labs held its long-awaited digital land sale on Saturday evening – a public debut for its “Otherside” metaverse project.
While the resulting land rush generated roughly $285 million for the company, it also created some of the highest gas fees in the history of the Ethereum network: investors have spent over $176 million on fees alone in the past 24 hours.
Otherside is the biggest product launch yet from the company best known for creating the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT (non-fungible token) collection.
During last night’s sale, traders snapped up a limited supply of 55,000 “Otherdeeds” NFTs, which represent titles to plots of virtual land in a forthcoming 3D social space.
They cost about $7000 each, and were only available for purchase in ApeCoin (APE), Yuga Labs’ official cryptocurrency.
On secondary marketplaces like OpenSea, the cheapest listed price for an Otherdeed was around 7 ETH (roughly $19,000) at publication time.
The night was a win for the firm, which previously raised $450 million from venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz, and a kind of slow-burning disaster for everyone else.
(The Otherside raise was worth even more last night – around $320 million – but the value of APE has since fallen.)
The company issued a public apology in the wake of the fee-related chaos:
“This has been the largest NFT mint in history by several multiples, and yet the gas used during the mint shows that demand far exceeded anyone’s wildest expectations,” reads a statement posted to Twitter.
“We're sorry for turning off the lights on Ethereum for a while.”
Credit: Etherscan
The statement also gestures at the idea of refunding traders' gas fees, though it's not yet clear what that process would look like.
The average fee for an Ethereum transaction typically scales with the overall congestion of the network; when traders scramble for the same tokens at the same time, prices go up for everyone.
It’s a phenomenon known as a “gas war” – users compete to have their transactions processed at the top of the miners’ queue.
Per a bespoke calculator on the blockchain data site Dune Analytics, the average gas price was hovering around 800 Gwei early Sunday morning, with spikes in the realm of 6000 and 7000.
During these waves, a simple transaction (say, sending a few dollars’ worth of crypto to a friend) could cost upwards of $3,000.
The expensive evening threw into question Ethereum’s long-term viability as a host for large-scale NFT projects; Yuga Labs even floated the idea of building its own dedicated blockchain at the end of its apology thread:
“It seems abundantly clear that ApeCoin will need to migrate to its own chain in order to properly scale.
We'd like to encourage the DAO to start thinking in this direction.”
Of course, the firm has taken great pains to assert that they don’t actually control the ApeCoin DAO – maybe they can donate some of last night’s windfall to the cause.
Read more: Please Don’t Buy a 'KYC’d' Wallet for the Bored Apes Team’s Otherside Mint
After much ado, Yuga Labs held its long-awaited digital land sale on Saturday evening – a public debut for its “Otherside” metaverse project.
While the resulting land rush generated roughly $285 million for the company, it also created some of the highest gas fees in the history of the Ethereum network: investors have spent over $176 million on fees alone in the past 24 hours.
Otherside is the biggest product launch yet from the company best known for creating the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT (non-fungible token) collection.
During last night’s sale, traders snapped up a limited supply of 55,000 “Otherdeeds” NFTs, which represent titles to plots of virtual land in a forthcoming 3D social space.
They cost about $7000 each, and were only available for purchase in ApeCoin (APE), Yuga Labs’ official cryptocurrency.
On secondary marketplaces like OpenSea, the cheapest listed price for an Otherdeed was around 7 ETH (roughly $19,000) at publication time.
The night was a win for the firm, which previously raised $450 million from venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz, and a kind of slow-burning disaster for everyone else.
(The Otherside raise was worth even more last night – around $320 million – but the value of APE has since fallen.)
The company issued a public apology in the wake of the fee-related chaos:
“This has been the largest NFT mint in history by several multiples, and yet the gas used during the mint shows that demand far exceeded anyone’s wildest expectations,” reads a statement posted to Twitter.
“We're sorry for turning off the lights on Ethereum for a while.”
Credit: Etherscan
The statement also gestures at the idea of refunding traders' gas fees, though it's not yet clear what that process would look like.
The average fee for an Ethereum transaction typically scales with the overall congestion of the network; when traders scramble for the same tokens at the same time, prices go up for everyone.
It’s a phenomenon known as a “gas war” – users compete to have their transactions processed at the top of the miners’ queue.
Per a bespoke calculator on the blockchain data site Dune Analytics, the average gas price was hovering around 800 Gwei early Sunday morning, with spikes in the realm of 6000 and 7000.
During these waves, a simple transaction (say, sending a few dollars’ worth of crypto to a friend) could cost upwards of $3,000.
The expensive evening threw into question Ethereum’s long-term viability as a host for large-scale NFT projects; Yuga Labs even floated the idea of building its own dedicated blockchain at the end of its apology thread:
“It seems abundantly clear that ApeCoin will need to migrate to its own chain in order to properly scale.
We'd like to encourage the DAO to start thinking in this direction.”
Of course, the firm has taken great pains to assert that they don’t actually control the ApeCoin DAO – maybe they can donate some of last night’s windfall to the cause.
Read more: Please Don’t Buy a 'KYC’d' Wallet for the Bored Apes Team’s Otherside Mint
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LANG_en_whathappenedtothe35bterrareservmp4
What Happened to the $3.5B Terra Reserve?
Where’d that $3.5 billion go?
Unless you’ve been off the grid for the last couple weeks, you likely already know that the $3.5 billion of bitcoin that was created, in part, to defend and support the TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin, which proved to be anything but.
However, while it’s clear that untold billions in value and wealth were lost when those reserves proved inadequate to prevent a depegging, what no one knows is what happened to those reserves and where they are now.
Terra Labs CEO Do Kwon has said via Twitter that documentation regarding the use of the reserves during the depegging event would be forthcoming.
Where the Bitcoin is held and how it was used will be vital for investors seeking to recoup losses suffered through their exposure to UST, according to Tom Robinson, co-founder and chief scientist of Elliptic, a blockchain analytics firm.
While it’s uncertain when Terra will release that documentation, Robinson said his firm has been following the money: some 80,394 BTC, worth $3.5 billion when purchased by the Luna Foundation Guard, the non-profit organization set up to promote the growth of the Terra ecosystem, between January and May this year.
When the value of UST began to drop at the start of last week, LFG announced that it would begin to dispose of its bitcoin reserves and purchase UST.
On the morning of May 9, LFG announced that it would “Loan $750M worth of BTC to OTC trading firms to help protect the UST peg.” Terra creator Do Kwon later clarified that the bitcoin would be “used to trade”.
At around the same time, 22,189 BTC (worth ~$750 million at this time) was sent from a Bitcoin address linked to LFG, to a new address, Elliptic pointed out in a blogpost.
Later that evening a further 30,000 BTC (worth ~$930 million at the time) was sent from other LFG wallets, to this same address.
LFG/ Gemini (Elliptic)
Within hours, the entirety of this 52,189 BTC was moved to a single account at U.S. crypto exchange Gemini, via several bitcoin transactions, according to Elliptic.
The purpose of having a very large reserve of Bitcoin was potentially to purchase UST to push the price back up toward $1, which is probably the reason it was sent to exchanges, but it’s not possible using the blockchain alone to identify whether it was sold to support the UST price, Elliptic’s Robinson said.
This left 28,205 BTC in Terra’s reserves.
At 1 a.m. UTC on May 10, those remaining reserves were moved in their entirety, in a single transaction, to an account at the cryptocurrency exchange Binance.
Again it is not possible to identify whether these assets were sold or subsequently moved to other wallets, Robinson said.
LFG/Binance (Elliptic)
“All we can see is it going into these exchanges,” Robinson told CoinDesk.
“We can’t really see how it’s been used.
It might have been sold, it might be being stored on the exchanges, it might have been withdrawn again, and might be an unhosted wallet.”
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LANG_en_microstrategyreports170mimpairmentchargeonbitcoinholdingsinqmp4
MicroStrategy Reports $170M Impairment Charge on Bitcoin Holdings in Q1
MicroStrategy (MSTR) took a non-cash digital asset impairment charge of $170.1 million in the first quarter, up from $146.6 million in the fourth quarter, according to its latest earnings report.
The company also announced Andrew Kang will take over from Phong Le as chief financial officer, effective on or about May 9, after which Le will continue in his role as MicroStrategy's president.
Kang was previously the CFO of tech company Greensky Inc.
The digital asset impairment reflects the decline in the price of bitcoin (BTC) versus the price at which the bitcoin was acquired.
Under standard accounting rules, the value of digital assets such as cryptocurrencies must be recorded at their cost and then only adjusted if their value is impaired, or goes down.
But if the price rises, that does not get reported unless an asset is sold.
For 2021, MicroStrategy posted total digital asset impairment losses of $831 million, versus $71 million in 2020.
The company's 129,218 bitcoins held at the end of March 31, 2022, were acquired for $3.97 billion, reflecting an average cost per bitcoin of approximately $30,700, the company reported.
At bitcoin’s current price of about $37,662, the value of those holdings is approximately $4.9 billion.
Led by bitcoin maximalist Michael Saylor, MicroStrategy has continued to accumulate bitcoin at a rapid pace.
At the end of March, MicroStrategy secured a $205 million loan from Silvergate Bank (SI) backed by its existing bitcoin holdings to potentially buy more bitcoin.
MicroStrategy's CFO Phong Le said on the company's earnings call Tuesday that bitcoin would need to fall about half from current levels before a margin call would occur on the Silvergate loan.
However, Le added that MicroStrategy could contribute more bitcoin to the collateral package and avoid that scenario.
Between Feb. 15 and April 4, MicroStrategy acquired 4,167 bitcoin for $190.5 million, reflecting an average price of $45,714 per bitcoin.
In January, the software firm said it would stop reporting adjusted results for impairment losses and gains on sales related to bitcoin in response to objections from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
MicroStrategy shares were down about 0.1% to $343.20 in after-hours trading Tuesday.
Shares have fallen around 37% year to date.
Read more: MicroStrategy’s Saylor Lays Out Ways Firm Could Generate Yield From Its Massive Bitcoin Holdings
UPDATE (May 3, 22:24 UTC): Added commentary from the earnings conference call.
Michael Bellusci contributed reporting for this story.
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BITCO
LANG_en_bitcoinimmunetosellinmayadageifhistoryisguidmp4
Bitcoin Immune to 'Sell in May' Adage, if History Is Guide
It's that time of the year again when investors wonder, "should I sell in May and go away."
The famous traditional market adage may not apply to bitcoin (BTC), according to seasonality analysis.
Bitcoin has logged gains in May in seven years out of the past 11 years, per charting platform TradingView's bitcoin index, which records prices from July 2010.
Historically, May has been the fourth-best month for the cryptocurrency, averaging 289% gains over 11 years.
"In terms of seasonality, May is considered a relative success for BTC.
Over the past 11 years, bitcoin has ended the month up seven times and down four times," Alex Kuptsikevich, senior market analyst at FxPro, said in an email.
"The average rise was 27%, and the average decline was 16%.
Under these scenarios, the estimated average range for BTC at the end of May is between $32,000 and $48,000," Kuptsikevich added.
Past performance is no guarantee of future results, more so as bitcoin's market composition has changed significantly since 2020, with institutions and macro traders having more say in determining prices.
These entities treat bitcoin as a risk asset and could liquidate their holdings if bears continue to dominate the action on Wall Street.
The chart below shows the second quarter of the second year of the U.S. presidential cycle is bearish for S&P 500, the Wall Street's benchmark equity index.
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LANG_en_bitcoinstrugglesat27k30ksupportzoneresistanceat35mp4
Bitcoin Struggles at $27K-$30K Support Zone; Resistance at $35K
Bitcoin (BTC) is stabilizing around the $30,000 price level after last week's sell-off.
The cryptocurrency must remain above the $27,000-$30,000 support zone this week in order to generate a positive short-term momentum signal.
BTC was trading around $29,300 at press time and is down by 3% over the past 24 hours.
The relative strength index (RSI) on the daily chart is rising from oversold levels, which could keep buyers active at support.
The RSI is also oversold on the weekly chart, although negative momentum could cap upside moves in price.
Immediate resistance is seen at $33,000 and $35,000, which is where a breakdown in price occurred earlier this month.
That suggests a large number of sell orders could limit a relief rally over the next two weeks.
Further, the recent underperformance of alternative cryptos (altcoins) relative to bitcoin suggests a lower appetite for risk among crypto traders.
Typically, alts decline by more than bitcoin during down markets because of their higher risk profile.
The broader risk-off environment could keep BTC's short-term downtrend intact.
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LANG_en_dokwonpushesonchainproposalliveevenas92votenoinonlinepolmp4
Do Kwon Pushes On-Chain Proposal Live Even as 92% Vote 'No' in Online Poll
Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon on Wednesday morning announced an on-chain governance proposal even as results from a preliminary online poll on a hard fork plan found minimal backing among community members.
"Terra governance prop #1623 to rename the existing network Terra Classic, LUNA Classic ($LUNC), and rebirth a new Terra blockchain & LUNA ($LUNA) is now live," Kwon tweeted.
He added that the proposal had the support of over 15 "Terra builders."
A hard fork means the splitting of a chain on which a certain protocol runs with different rules than the existing one, resulting in two separate blockchains.
One chain then becomes the “main” one, even as both the blockchains continue to exist as long as there is validator and community support.
As per the proposal, the new chain would entirely cut out the failed UST product and instead focus on decentralized finance (DeFi) applications building on Terra, as reported.
The current chain would continue as Terra “Classic,” while holders of LUNA on the “Classic” chain would receive a token airdrop of the new chain’s token under the plan.
At writing time, some 64% of voters on the on-chain proposal supported the fork, while 34% voted against it.
The community, however, is apparently not on board.
Some 92% of over 6,220 voters on a previously held online poll have voted against the change, with the most popular responses calling for “no fork.”
Most have voted against a fork in a preliminary online poll.
(Agora)
Votes to the off-chain, online poll can be made by anyone regardless of if they hold luna (LUNA) tokens, unlike on-chain governance polls that require voters to stake luna before casting votes.
Most comments on the proposal’s discussion are negative.
Some even term it “anti-community,” while others urged legal intervention.
Why are most voting no?
Market observers say a lack of trust in Terra and Kwon could have skewed the online preliminary poll voting towards being overwhelmingly negative.
“The primary challenge the Terra community has against a new fork as proposed by Do Kwon is trust,” said Dmitry Mishunin, founder of DeFi security firm HashEx, in a Telegram chat.
"Should the team choose to proceed with the new fork, there will be a need to increase trust.”
“As such, Terra needs to approach the fork with all responsibility and make additional checks for vulnerabilities,” Mishunin added.
Anton Gulin, a regional director at crypto exchange AAX, seconded the comment: “The overall sentiment towards Luna across the crypto community is exceptionally harmful.
Traders and investors suffered tremendous losses and doubt management’s actions that followed the UST unpegging.”
“Anything incoming from Luna’s team may be treated in the same way as the lack of trust prevails.
It’s rather a speculative asset now than a representation of a tier 1 ecosystem.
The chances of a consensus are very low,” Gulin added.
Meanwhile, some prominent fund managers say Terra’s senior team could fork the blockchain regardless of the community’s sentiment toward the project.
“It's a dilemma for Kwon and Terra’s team as they can technically override the community's consensus by either forking regardless of the decision or using their staked Luna (to prevent the network from being manipulated) to change the voting to support,” Doo Wan Nam, founder of crypto fund Stable Node, in a Telegram chat.
“This will be received very poorly by not only the Terra community but the wider crypto community.
However, Do and his team might not have much choice but to do it to better reflect his vision of the Terra ecosystem,” Doo added.
Although still a proposal, if a majority of network validators and the community were to approve the plan, the new network could be launched as soon as May 27, Kwon said in tweets earlier this week.
Last week, Terra’s LUNA tokens fell 99.7% as its U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin terraUSD (UST) lost its peg and dropped to under 10 cents, causing an outflow of funds from the Terra ecosystem and declining sentiment for the project among the crypto community.
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LANG_en_lunafoundationguardleftwith313bitcoinafterustcrasmp4
LFG Reserves Dwindle to Just 313 Bitcoins From 80K After UST Crash
The Luna Foundation Guard (LFG), official stewards of Terra’s bitcoin (BTC) reserves, released a statement on Monday documenting how it disbursed millions of dollars' worth of crypto in its failed attempt to maintain the peg of stablecoin terraUSD (UST).
In the statement, LFG notes that it has almost entirely depleted its BTC reserves from around 80,000 bitcoins to 313.
The remaining assets, which mostly comprise the crashed UST and LUNA tokens, will apparently be used to compensate investors.
In a subsequent tweet, LFG denied accusations that it bailed out whales with the bitcoin trove: “there was never any deal for ‘insiders’ to exit.
LFG funds were merely used squarely within its mandate to help protect UST peg.”
In one of the most calamitous events in crypto memory, the $40 billion Terra ecosystem collapsed last week when the UST stablecoin, which is supposed to be worth $1, dropped to below 20 cents.
The LUNA token, which is designed to serve as a sort of shock absorber for UST’s “algorithmic” dollar-pegging mechanism, crashed from $80 to below 2 cents.
In a tweet on Monday, LFG said it sold off most of the BTC in its reserves for UST as Terra’s ecosystem was beginning to collapse early last week.
LFG said it transferred more than 50,000 bitcoins “to trade with a counterparty” on May 8, as the UST price was originally starting to slump.
It said the funds were used for “directly executing on-chain swaps and transferring $BTC to a counterparty to enable them to enter trades with the Foundation in large size and on short notice.”
On May 12, LFG said another 30,000 BTC from its reserves were sold off by Terraform Labs, the original company behind Terra, “in a last ditch effort to defend the peg.”
That, however, failed to restore UST’s peg to the U.S. dollar as traders continued to sell the token for other stablecoins, leading to an exodus of capital away from UST and thus lower prices.
LFG confirmed the remainder of its reserves, which once totaled over $3 billion, have sunk almost completely as a result of the unsuccessful effort to defend UST.
LFG says these funds will be used “to compensate remaining users of UST, smallest holders first.”
Monday’s statement from LFG comes amid criticism that Terra’s reserve funds, which were supposed to belong to the “decentralized” Terra community, were handled with a lack of transparency by Terra’s centralized leaders and investors.
It also comes after leading figures in the blockchain sector, including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, have called for Terra to compensate smaller holders of UST and LUNA before its largest investors.
UST’s price plummeted further in response to Monday’s announcement – from 15 cents to 7 cents.
Meanwhile, only about $80 million worth of other cryptocurrencies – apart from UST and LUNA – remain in LFG’s reserves at current prices, a tiny figure compared with its $10 billion target reserve at the start of this month.
UPDATE (May 16, 13:29 UTC): Updates headline, adds additional details in eight and 14th paragraph.
UPDATE (May 16, 15:10 UTC): Adds third paragraph regarding insider allegations.
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LANG_en_firstmoverasiametaverseetfsareunderperforminggamingetfscryptosreturntotheremp4
First Mover Asia: Metaverse ETFs Are Underperforming Gaming ETFs; Cryptos Return to the Red
Good morning.
Here’s what’s happening:
Prices: Bitcoin and most other cryptos return to the red.
Insights: Metaverse ETFs are struggling to keep pace with gaming ETFs.
Technician's take: BTC's upside appears limited despite short-term support.
Catch the latest episodes of CoinDesk TV for insightful interviews with crypto industry leaders and analysis.
And sign up for First Mover, our daily newsletter putting the latest moves in crypto markets in context.
Prices
Bitcoin (BTC): $29,982 -3.4%
Ether (ETH): $2,030 -4.7%
Biggest Gainers
There are no gainers in CoinDesk 20 today.
Biggest Losers
Asset Ticker Returns DACS Sector
Internet Computer ICP −9.4% Computing
Filecoin FIL −8.3% Computing
Cosmos ATOM −7.7% Smart Contract Platform
Bitcoin and other cryptos falter
That didn't last long.
A day after bitcoin broke a week-long losing streak, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap and other major cryptos were in the red again on Monday.
Bitcoin was recently down over 3% over the previous 24 hours and has fallen seven consecutive weeks.
Still, it spent much of the day near or above the psychologically important $30,000 level.
"As far as the last 24 hours, we've seen a consolidation from six to eight weeks of sell-off," 3iQ Digital Asset's Head of Research Mark Connors told CoinDesk.
Bitcoin and other cryptos' performances dovetailed with equity markets, which dropped slightly on Monday and have been tumbling since last fall as inflation and supply chain issues continued to surge and investors became more risk averse.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped more than a percentage point on Monday.
Such growing cautiousness fanned last week by the collapse of the terraUSD stablecoin (UST), and the luna token that supports it, rocked altcoins particularly hard over the past week.
On Monday, AXS and AVAX were recently down 12% and 8%, respectively.
SOL declined more than 6%.
Ether, the second-largest crypto by market cap, fell over 4.6%, although it held fast above $2,000.
"In equities, you've taken almost a year of returns off so [there was] a rapid resetting as the Fed hiked [interest rates] in the first week of May," Connors said.
"You've seen digital assets, bitcoin, ether and the rest of the altcoins fall.
What's happened is there's been a stabilization.
What people are assessing is whether the interest rate hike has been taken out.
In our opinion, it hasn't.
Trading volume rose from the lower levels to which it hewed for the first few months of the year, a sign of a potential, and at least temporary upswing.
But few analysts are predicting a more permanent departure from the the current bear market.
The coming weeks may be particularly hard on stablecoins even as Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon released a “revival plan” to save the Terra network.
Kwon proposed forking Terra into a new chain without UST.
Connors said that investors would likely see three to nine months of "choppy markets," and that prices would likely drop, possibly with support in the $20,000 to $24,000 range.
In this environment, he sees investors focusing more on Bitcoin and Ethereum.
"Bitcoin dominance should and will happen when markets sell off," Connors said.
"People go to quality, but it seems that Ethereium is now building up as a number two quality asset in the ecosystem."
Markets
S&P 500: 4,008 -0.3%
DJIA: 32,223 +0.08%
Nasdaq: 11,662 -1.2%
Gold: $1,824 +0.6%
Insights
Metaverse ETFs are struggling to keep pace with gaming ETFs
Sometimes a fancy new investment vehicle, most recently the metaverse, doesn’t perform as well on the market as last year’s model.
Metaverse exchange-traded funds (ETF) arrived last year shortly after the term entered our lexicon and became a favorite of venture capitalists.
Because the metaverse is simply a mashup of gaming and crypto, these metaverse ETFs look a lot like gaming or eSports ETFs (the two terms are synonymous), which launched a few years ago.
They look like them because the metaverse is an ambiguous term; the shared online experience that is envisioned in Neil Stephenson's science fiction novel "Snow Crash" already exists on many multiplayer gaming platforms.
Metaverse tokens don’t yet have listed proxies, so metaverse ETFs compensate for that by putting in publicly listed crypto companies like Galaxy (GLX.TO) or Block (SQ), the former Square.
And that’s where the problem starts.
Roundhill Ball Metaverse ETF (TradingView)
That association with crypto means that METV, a metaverse ETF from Roundhill, is significantly underperforming ESPO, a gaming/eSports ETF from VanEck.
Gaming tech heavyweights, like GPU designer Nvidia (NVDS) or game engine developer Unity, are in both baskets and haven’t performed well on-year but the inclusion of the likes of Galaxy Digital – down over 60% year-to-date and planning a stock buyback [link] – really sinks the metaverse ETF.
Of course, this metaverse ETF is outperforming the metav
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LANG_en_nearly5505etheror10mofthe625mroninexploitareonthemovmp4
Nearly 5,505 ETH, or $10M of the $625M Ronin Exploit, Is on the Move
Addresses connected to Ronin Bridge’s $625 million exploit show upward of $10 million worth of ether were on the move in Asian morning hours on Wednesday, as per blockchain data.
One address was funded by the Ronin exploiter this morning for 5,505 ether, with the funds coming in from another wallet that was directly funded by the main exploiter address, blockchain data shows.
Starting in the wee hours on Wednesday, the address sent ether in batches of 100 to Tornado, an on-chain privacy exchange.
Over 55 transactions were made, the data shows.
Stolen funds are on the move.
(Etherscan)
The wallet contains just 3.4 ether – valued at over $7,000 – at writing time, suggesting most of the funds were transferred to Tornado and sold.
Tornado enhances the privacy of transactions by breaking the on-chain link between a source and a destination address.
This allows exploiters and hackers to mask their addresses while withdrawing illicitly gained funds.
Wednesday’s moves follow the aggressive selling of stolen ether in early April, when the exploiters moved as much as 21,000 ether over several transactions to Tornado.
The stash was valued at over $65 million at the time.
Ronin Network was hit by a $625 million exploit in March that affected Ronin validator nodes for Sky Mavis, the publisher of the popular Axie Infinity game, and the Axie DAO.
The attacker “used hacked private keys in order to forge fake withdrawals,” Ronin said in a blog post at the time, explaining the exploit.
U.S. officials have previously tied the exploiter address to North Korea’s infamous “Lazarus” group.
CoinDesk independently confirmed the sanctioned addresses were linked to Ronin exploiters, as reported.
Read More: Axie Infinity’s Ronin Network Suffers $625M Exploit
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LANG_en_ohiossenatecandidatesstakeoutcryptopositionmp4
Ohio's Senate Candidates Stake Out Crypto Positions
CLEVELAND – Ohio has a long history of success in the fields of iron and steel, less so in bytes and bits, and its history with cryptocurrencies is short and largely aspirational.
In 2018, Ohio became the first U.S. state to allow businesses to pay taxes in cryptocurrency.
Less than a year later, that program ended when the Ohio Attorney General determined it to be illegal.
Around the same time, Cleveland fostered hopes for renewed economic relevance by turning itself into a blockchain destination.
Those dreams faded as cities like Miami took off.
So when Republican U.S. senator Rob Portman announced in early 2021 that he would retire, creating an open seat in 2022, it seemed an unlikely setting for a crypto-heavy election cycle.
Yet, the contest to succeed him, among the highest profile and most expensive primary races in the country, includes several candidates with ties to crypto, in both parties and among the front-runners.
While crypto policy is unlikely to affect the race’s outcome, the technology’s mindshare among the candidates augurs well for the industry’s clout in Washington.
The Republican field
After Ohio’s historically “purple” electorate swung all the way for Donald Trump in the last presidential election by eight points in 2020, whoever wins the Republican primary Tuesday is likely to take the open Senate seat.
Polling shows JD Vance and Josh Mandel atop a crowded field of candidates.
Mandel is a familiar name to those who have followed Ohio politics or crypto.
He served as a state representative and state treasurer (he implemented the program to pay taxes in crypto), then he secured a footnote in crypto-politics history with a single tweet proclaiming his vision for Ohio: “pro-God, pro-family, pro-bitcoin.” Naturally, supporters can donate to his campaign in crypto.
Vance, while less vocal in his support of crypto in his campaign, owns a sizable amount of BTC (Mandel didn’t report owning any crypto as of an August 2021 financial disclosure).
Vance is also heavily backed by Peter Thiel, who recently stated his views on the moral imperative for bitcoin adoption, and shamed crypto-skeptical financial leaders.
Thiel donated $13.5 million to Vance’s super PAC, $10 million of which came before a recent endorsement by former President Trump.
The venture capitalist and PayPal co-founder’s support likely kept Vance’s chances alive when his campaign was struggling.
Trump’s endorsement made the author of “Hillbilly Elegy” a leading contender.
Jockeying for that endorsement was the race-within-the-race.
Mandel, Vance and others in the Republican field vied for Trump’s favor.
Since receiving it, Vance has seen a rapid rise in the polls.
As president, Trump famously called bitcoin a scam, but this didn’t stop Mandel or Vance (or Thiel) from being publicly pro-crypto, underscoring that crypto is still truly an ancillary issue.
For Vance and Mandel (and Thiel), their interest in crypto appears to be at least as much ideological as financial.
It’s a weapon for repudiating a perceived ruling class.
If current financial controls are rigged by a cabal of elites without allegiance to Ohioans, crypto offers an alternative.
“At the end of the day, the thing that I really do worry about is that we have an economy that is rigged by the government to favor special interests,” Vance told CoinDesk.
“The cryptocurrency world is very new, but it could provide an avenue for creating prosperity that the special interests in Washington won’t control.”
Josh Mandel’s vision for Ohio is “pro-God, pro-family, pro-Bitcoin.” (Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The Democratic field
On the Democrat side, the presumptive winner of the primary is incumbent Rep. Tim Ryan.
Ryan co-sponsored the Keep Innovation in America Act, a crypto-friendly bill designed to maintain reasonable tax reporting requirements.
But he’s had much less visible involvement than his longshot challenger, Morgan Harper.
Harper received a JD from Stanford and worked at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Her level of earnest engagement with crypto is unusual for someone with a background at the regulatory agency.
Her platform touts universal health care, the Green New Deal and debt-free college education.
Harper has done a crypto AMA (ask me anything) session on Reddit, appeared on crypto podcasts, and written several Twitter threads detailing her interest in the space:
Harper’s line on crypto runs parallel to that of Vance or Mandel: We can use crypto to circumvent and obviate the elites who have swindled us.
In a state where household incomes have been roughly stagnant in the 21st century, less conventional solutions might have broader appeal to scorned voters than in other, more optimistic areas of the country.
"If you distrust government, if you’re cynical about politicians, then you should be a strong proponent of bitcoin."
Mandel told the Columbus Dispatch in February.
"It’s one of the stronges
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