zkSNACKs restricts U.S.users access to Wasabi Wallet

🥐 zkSNACKs, the company behind the open-source Bitcoin wallet Wasabi, has indefinitely blocked 🇺🇸 U.S. users from accessing its services, including the wallet, APIs, and RPC interfaces.

The block is enforced through an IP address 🔥 firewall, preventing users in the U.S. and its territories from visiting its websites or downloading its products.

👀 The company cited "recent announcements by U.S. authorities" as the reason for this action. This decision follows the 👮 arrest of the founders of Samourai Wallet, another privacy-focused Bitcoin wallet, which officials claim facilitates money 🧺 laundering.

🤔 The specifics of the policy change were not detailed in zkSNACKs' announcement.

Australia's biggest stock exchange may list approved spot bitcoin ETFs by the end of 2024

The ASX stock exchange in 🇦🇺 Australia is anticipated to list its inaugural batch of approved spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) by the end of 2024 - Bloomberg reported.

✔️ According to a report citing sources familiar with the matter, several issuers, including VanEck and local firms BetaShares and DigitalX, have already submitted their ETF applications earlier this year.

ASX, the leading equity exchange in 🦘 Australia, manages approximately 80% of the local trades and had a domestic market capitalization of $2.7 trillion as of March.

👆 Since 2022, Australian investors have been trading spot bitcoin ETFs, which are currently listed on CBOE Australia.

A solo miner successfully mined a Bitcoin block and earned $218,500.

🙀 On April 29, a solo miner successfully mined Bitcoin block #841,286 using a hardware with a hashrate of 120 PH/s, as reported by CKPool pool administrator Kon Kolivas. This event occurred after the recent halving, which reduced the Bitcoin mining reward from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. From this block, the miner 💰 earned 3.433 BTC, approximately $218,544, including transaction fees.

👀 Kolivas suggested that the miner had switched from pool mining to solo mining because pool mining was not covering his ⚡️electricity costs, and he suggested that the miner consider renting out his hashing power.

🔨 Solo mining a block is a relatively rare event in the 14-year history of Bitcoin’s blockchain, having occurred only 282 times. The average network hash rate currently stands at 591 EH/s, having 📈peaked at 728 EH/s on April 23. The hash rate has ⬆️ surged by over 90% in the past year, making solo mining increasingly challenging.

Experts point to a possible sign of the upcoming altcoin season

⬆️ The decrease in transaction fees on the Ethereum network to a six-month low ($1.12) may indicate the approach of the altcoin season, according to Santiment.

Fees typically 🗻 peak at local market tops and drop to "resting state" minimums during its decline.

🗒 In February 2024, the metric rose to an eight-month high amid a 🌊 wave of interest in the experimental ERC-404 token standard. The current low values could predict an increase in network activity and positive price trends, the experts warned.🧐

"With markets mainly retracing over the past 6 weeks, the lack of demand and strain on the network may help turn $ETH and associated altcoins around sooner than many may expect"

- they indicated.

Peter Brandt suggests the end of the bull market despite the halving

The Bitcoin 🚀 bull market may have already formed its ATH at $73,800 in March, according to technical analyst and head of Factor LLC, Peter Brandt.

👀 The expert referred to the concept of "exponential decay," which describes the process of growth magnitude ⬆️ decreasing by a constant percentage over a certain period.

📝 Historically, Bitcoin has traded within roughly a four-year 🌀cycle, often associated with halvings. Since the initial bull run, there have been three subsequent ones, each 📉 80% less powerful than its predecessor in terms of price growth, Brandt writes.

Thus, if this statistical constant holds true, possible ATH of ~$73,800 on March 14, 2024, 🙀 has already reached its calculated peak. The likelihood of this is 25%, according to the analyst.🤔

🐳 Whale alert!

👌 An Ethereum Foundation-related wallet, inactive for nine years, recently became active and transferred 2,000 ETH (valued at $6.6 million ) to a new address.

👀 This wallet initially received 2,000 ETH from the fund on September 22, 2015, when the price of Ethereum was just $0.9.

Trust Wallet has returned to the Play Store marketplace

😳 On April 29, the team behind Trust Wallet, owned by Binance, announced that the app had been removed from the Google Play Store marketplace.

According to the post, ⏳ a few weeks ago, Google informed the service about possible enforcement actions, after which the team filed an appeal. However, the corporation decided to 🗑 remove the application without completing the review of the appeal.

⚡️Less than an hour later, Trust Wallet reappeared in the Play Store.

✔️ Despite the app's removal, the wallet's installation APK file could still be downloaded from the official website of the service.

❗️The Trust Wallet team also warned about fake apps that began appearing on the marketplace.

The SEC has considered Ethereum a security for a year now!

🚨 Recent court documents reveal that the SEC, led by Chairman Gary Gensler, has considered Ethereum to be an unregistered security since at least last year.

⚡️This insight emerged from an unredacted lawsuit filed by Consensys against the SEC, which is now challenging the agency's attempt to classify Ethereum under federal securities law.

👀 In March 2023, the SEC's Enforcement Division began a formal investigation into Ethereum's status, leading to subpoenas for entities involved with Ethereum transactions.

➡️ This move marks a potential shift from previous SEC stances, contradicting a 2018 assertion that Ethereum was not a security.

👆 Stay tuned as this legal battle could significantly impact the cryptocurrency industry and Ethereum's regulatory status.

USDC has surpassed USDT in monthly transactions

👀 The stablecoin USDC has overtaken the segment leader — USDT from Tether — in terms of monthly transactions, Visa analysts have noted.

📝 According to their data, in April 2024, there were 166.6 million transactions in USDC versus 163.6 million in USDT. The stablecoin from the Centre consortium first pulled ahead in December 2023, with 145 million monthly transactions compared to 127 million for its competitor.

👆 However, USDT is still the largest stablecoin with a market capitalization of $110.3 billion. USDC's market cap is $33.4 billion.

✔️ In terms of total number of users, USDC is also significantly behind USDT. In April, the former was used by 9.57 million unique addresses, while the latter had more than 34.2 million.

The first Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs have officially launched in Hong Kong

According to data from the 🇭🇰 Hong Kong Stock Exchange, six new Hong Kong exchange-traded funds trading in Bitcoin and Ethereum recorded 💰 a trading volume of about 49.4 million Hong Kong dollars ($6.3 million) during the morning session of their first trading day on Tuesday.

👀 Trading will continue today, but so far, the figures are not particularly impressive, considering that when 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs were launched in the 🇺🇸 U.S. in January, their volume on the first day reached approximately $4.6 billion.

💲The price of Bitcoin reacted with a slight increase to $64,500 at the start of trading in Hong Kong, but currently, $BTC is trading again in the $63,000 range.

Lido Finance Reaches 1 Million Validators

👏 Lido Finance has achieved a milestone of one million validators, making it Ethereum's top decentralized finance (DeFi) platform.

💲 Lido Finance represents 28.5% of all staked Ether, in contrast to Coinbase Exchange's 13.6%, based on data from Dune. Currently, more than 27% of the entire Ether supply is staked.

🔒The total value locked (TVL) in DeFi protocols has risen sharply, from $36 billion in the last quarter of 2023 to a high of $97 billion in the first quarter of 2024. As per DefiLlama, the total DeFi TVL now stands at $92.32 billion.

Is Bitcoin set for a sharp rise at the start of summer?

$BTC will close April with a red 🕯candle, following 7 months of growth. Not too exciting, is it? However, crypto analyst TechDev has a somewhat different opinion in his post on X.

📊 Analyzing the two-month growth chart for Bitcoin, he found a possibility that the next candle could be similar to the one we saw in November 2020. It might potentially drive Bitcoin's price up 🚀 to $100,000. Do we believe it?

Coal company mined 425 BTC using its own surplus energy

🇺🇸 American public energy company Alliance Resource, which engages in coal mining, disclosed in its financial reports that it has 425 BTC on its balance sheet.

The company does not purchase the leading cryptocurrency but instead 🔨 mines it using its own equipment and excess energy generated. The coal giant, with a market capitalization of $2.8 billion, began mining in 2020 as a pilot project.

🗒 At the end of the first quarter, the company valued the cryptocurrency on its balance sheet at $30 million. After accounting for net property costs, this valuation increased by $7.3 million.

Coinbase Integrates Lightning Network!

Coinbase has begun supporting the ⚡️ Lightning Network. For this integration, the exchange partnered with Lightspark.

📩 Transfers via Lightning will incur a fee of 0.1%. Initially, there will also be a withdrawal limit of $2000 in BTC.

🤷 Binance founder Changpeng Zhao has been sentenced to 4 months in prison for violating anti-money laundering laws, although prosecutors sought three years. 👀 Did his sincere repentance help?

Amid this news, the price of Bitcoin ⬇️dropped to $59,000, although many had expected it to fall to $56,000. Is more to come? 🤔

🙀 Roger Ver arrested for tax evasion

❗️Roger Ver, also known as "Bitcoin Jesus" and founder of Bitcoin.com, was 👮‍♀️arrested in Spain on U.S. charges of tax evasion, with plans for extradition to face additional charges of mail fraud and filing false tax returns.

😡 Authorities claim Ver hid his cryptocurrency assets from the U.S. IRS, leading to $48 million in damages. He reportedly controlled around 70,000 BTC through two companies, which he sold for about $240 million, misleading his accountant and the IRS in the process.

Ver used legal services to file tax returns that significantly undervalued his companies. Although he renounced his 🇺🇸 U.S. citizenship in 2014 and moved to Saint Kitts and Nevis, the Justice Department asserts he was still required to pay U.S. taxes on specific incomes from U.S.-based corporations MemoryDealers and Agilestar. 🤔

Bitcoin risks collapsing to $50,000 - Standard Chartered

🙀 A breakthrough in the Bitcoin price below the $60,000 mark has again opened the way to the $50,000-52,000 range. This was warned by Standard Chartered.

ℹ️ They cited a combination of cryptocurrency-specific and broader macroeconomic factors as the "new woes" factor.

✔️ By the former, the bank means a five-day outflow from U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs and a weak response to the launch of their counterparts in Hong Kong.

🤔 After the decline in the digital gold quotes below $58,000, there was a risk of liquidations as more than half of the spot ETF positions are "underwater", so the risk of liquidation of some of them should also be taken into account, experts note.

👀 Regarding macroeconomics, experts mentioned the deterioration of liquidity indicators since mid-April, noting their impact on the cryptocurrency market.

Tether's Net Profit Hits Record $4.5 Billion in Q1

💰 Tether, the company behind the USDT stablecoin, reported a record-breaking net profit of $4.52 billion from January to March.

💲The company generated roughly $1 billion in operating profit, largely from interest earned on 🇺🇸 U.S. Treasury obligations, according to the financial report.

💵 Investments in these treasury instruments surpassed $74.2 billion, with the total assets, including cash and other equivalents like those held through repurchase agreements, reaching $92.7 billion.

⬆️ Tether’s equity rose to $11.37 billion, and its excess reserves increased by $1 billion to $6.26 billion.

👀 The issuance of USDT surged by $12.5 billion in the first quarter, bringing the total to $110.3 billion. The audit firm BDO verified that 90% of the tokens are backed by cash or cash equivalents.

Pike Finance suffered nearly $2 million in losses due to two attacks

On April 30, assailants attacked the DeFi protocol ⛰Pike Finance, extracting 99,970 ARB, 64,126 OP, and 479 ETH, amounting to roughly $1.68 million.

🤷 Just a few days prior to this, on April 26, another breach occurred when hackers exploited a different vulnerability to steal about $300,000 in USDC.

🙀Pike developers revealed that the thefts were enabled by a flaw in the initializing smart contract, allowing the thieves to circumvent the external security system without needing administrator`s access, which led to the fund withdrawals.

✔️In response, the protocol team is offering a 20% reward of the recovered assets or for information leading to the identification of the culprits.

Bitcoin remain sideway as Federal Reserve maintains current interest rate

📉 Federal Reserve left interest rate unchanged, maintaining the highest level in over 23 years.

🪑Fed Chair Jerome Powell remains cautious, indicating no imminent rate hikes and suggesting that rate cuts are unlikely until there's greater confidence in achieving a sustainable 2% inflation target.

👀 This decision continues to impact the crypto market, with Bitcoin and Ethereum trading sideways.

Changpeng Zhao is in prison, Roger Ver is arrested. 👀 Should Jack Dorsey get ready?

🇺🇸 U.S. federal prosecutors are examining the financial transactions of Jack Dorsey’s companies—alleging that Square processed thousands of transactions involving sanctioned countries and conducted several crypto transactions for 💣 terrorist groups.

✔️ Previously, U.S. authorities sentenced the founder of Binance to 4 months in prison, and also charged Roger Ver with fraud and tax evasion.