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Crypto Exchange Kraken’s Canada Customer Deposits Rose 25% After Binance Announced Departure

Kraken also saw a fivefold increase in app downloads within a week of OKX saying it was leaving the country back in March.

Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken is reaping the benefits of staying in Canada after rivals such as Binance and OKX said they plan to withdraw.

Kraken’s customer deposits in the country grew by 25% in the weeks following Binance’s announced departure in early May, and it saw a fivefold increase in downloads of its two mobile apps for Canadian clients within a week of OKX saying it planned to leave back in March. A Kraken representative shared the data with CoinDesk via email.

Canada tightened its regulatory framework for digital asset trading earlier this year, resulting in an exodus of some of the largest crypto exchanges. As well as Binance, the largest exchange by volume traded, and OKX, crypto firms Paxos, Blockchain.com and Deribit all announced their departures. The most recent leaver was Bybit, earlier this week.

Like Kraken, Nasdaq-listed exchange Coinbase (COIN) said it was happy to commit to Canada’s enhanced Pre-Registration Undertaking (PRU). When compared with the lack of clarity in the U.S., Coinbase went as far as saying it loved working with a regulator the firm could engage with.

Kraken has been in Canada for over 10 years, has more than 250 staff there and has been a money services business in the country since 2019, the firm’s managing director for Canada, Mark Greenberg, pointed out.

“I think the Canadian regulatory approach works for us,” Greenberg said in an interview with CoinDesk. “There are things we really liked about it; things we’ve been doing forever, like the focus on security on customer assets, for example. And then there are things we don’t like as much about it, such as some of the limits on trading and margin.”

One of the demanding new provisions for crypto exchanges set out by the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) earlier this year, is the requirement that firms hold a large proportion of client assets with a third-party custodian.

“We’ve all committed to using a third-party custodian as part of the commitments we’ve made, and I think we will continue to have that discussion with the regulators,” said Greenberg. “It’s one of those things where there are pros and cons, and I think the regulator is aware of the pros and cons and options around this. At the end of the day, what matters most for us is that our clients’ assets are safe and secure and not open for rug pulls or other types of things.”

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Synthetix Community Approves Plan to Nudge Positions Off Soon-to-Shut Version One of Its Perpetuals Market

The market, which was replaced by a new version, has been in close-only mode for months, but about $150,000 remains on the original platform.

Community members of Synthetix, a liquidity and derivatives trading protocol built on Ethereum, approved a plan intended to get customer money still on the soon-to-shut version one (v1) of its perpetuals market moved over to version two (v2).

Though v1 has been winding down for the past three months, roughly $150,000 worth of positions remain outstanding. The approved plan will gradually increase the margin requirements on existing positions to eventually liquidate all remaining positions on v1.

The change highlights Synthetix’s focus on its v2 perpetuals markets, which had $22 million in volume over the past day, data from a dashboard created by the Synthetix community shows. Synthetix’s v2 perpetuals markets, which launched in December, increases capital efficiency and improves risk management for market liquidity providers, representing a “significant upgrade” from v1, according to a blog post.

The motivation behind the recent governance proposal was to shut down Synthetix’s v1 perpetuals market “in the least intrusive manner,” allowing users to close their positions with enough time, as stated in a Synthetix’s governance discussion forum.

The price of SNX, the native token for Synthetix, has increased 1.7% in the past 24 hours to $2.36, per CoinGecko, while data from DefiLlama shows that the total value locked for Synthetix stands at $417.7 million, a 2% increase since May 1.

Litecoin Starts June Strong as Investors Eye August Halving, Uptick in Activity

LTC has outperformed both bitcoin and ether over the last 30 days.

Litecoin (LTC) has begun the month with a rally, rising 7% over the last 24-hours, with bulls noting the network’s halving in two months and a significant uptick in activity in May.

It continues a period of overperformance for litecoin, which is up 7.5% over the last 30 days, the third-best result among crypto assets over that period, and topping bitcoin, which is down 6.2% and ether, which has edged lower by 0.5%

Litecoin’s network activity has been picking up all year and more intensely since the beginning of April. Data from IntoTheBlock shows that the total of addresses holding a balance has now pushed to nearly 8.5 million.

Litecoin is also approaching a halving in August which analysts are deeming a significant event for both the network and the price of LTC. Similar to the oft-noted bitcoin halving, the litecoin halving will see its block reward (paid in LTC) slashed by half.

Litecoin is a lot cheaper in terms of units compared to bitcoin, which attracts investors looking to position themselves ahead of the halving, according to Charles Storry, head of growth at Phuture, a crypto index platform. “From investors I’m speaking with, they anticipate the halving to push the price of BTC, LTC and the market,” said Storry.

Litecoin might also be benefitting from the congestion that the Bitcoin network has been witnessing due to the recent burst of activity related to the Ordinals protocol, and leading to soaring costs for users.

“Because of Ordinals and BRC20 tokens taking up large shares of transaction volume on Bitcoin of late, fees have increased as well as the time to process transactions on the network,” said Brent Xu, chief executive officer and co-founder of Umee.

“Litecoin, in a sense, is an old-school clone of BTC and in turn serves a similar purpose,” added Xu. “And this is why you’re probably seeing more people transact in LTC at the moment – it’s serving as an outlet of sorts during a time of BTC congestion,” he said, though cautioning that this has happened before and LTC’s outperformance may thus not be sustainable for the long term.

Nauman Sheikh, Head of Protocol and Treasury Management at Wave Digital Assets, agreed that the halving is influencing the current price performance, noting a 30% rise in open interest for litecoin futures and perpetual contracts during the last week of May.

Bitcoin Lingers Under $27K to Continue Its May Sluggishness Amid Inflation Concerns

BTC and ether both lost ground in May, the first monthly decline of 2023. LTC and RNDR were among the month’s big gainers.

May gray turned to June gloom on Thursday as crypto prices veered slightly into the red.

Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, was recently trading at about $26,950, down 0.5% over the past 24 hours and the second consecutive day BTC dropped below $27,000, according to CoinDesk Indexes. The inauspicious beginning to June carried over the downward trend from May when bitcoin’s price dipped almost 4% to break a four-month streak of gains.

Bitcoin soared more than 60% from January, reaching to about $31,000 at one point in mid-April as crypto regained its luster as a safe-haven asset following a string of U.S. bank failures that raised concerns about traditional finance.

“Anytime you have an asset that has a significant volatility such as cryptocurrency, any real monthly move that is under a safe flat fee of 5% is relatively muted,” CoinDesk Head of Index Research Todd Groth told CoinDesk’s “First Mover” program on Wednesday. “The broad CMI was down about 2% to 3%. In the context of how much these assets can move over historical basis, it’s really a bit of a choppy month. Now we’re looking for that next big narrative to move higher.”

Groth noted optimistically that markets had recently priced in a resumption of more hawkish monetary policy after hopes rose in early May amid encouraging signs that inflation was waning enough to allow the U.S. central bank to halt its nearly year-long campaign of interest rate increases.

“We have repriced interest rate expectations to not be so dovish without any sort of big market correction lower, so that has been positive,” Groth said but added that the “repricing interest rates higher” has also been a sort of a headwind.”

Ether, the second largest crypto in market value, was recently trading at about $1,870, up slightly from Wednesday, same time. Other major digital assets were mostly down, albeit not by much, although litecoin was an exception as it recently rose more than 7% with investors seemingly buoyed by the network’s halving in two months and a jump in activity in May.

Groth noted that LTC and RNDR, the token of the Render Network, a provider of decentralized graphic processing units-based rendering solutions, ranked the CoinDesk Indexes biggest gainers for May. LTC and RNDR have risen roughly 20% and 7.5% over the past 30 days. “We’ve seen the narrative of GPUs broadly repurposed to be these big AI (artificial intelligence) clusters and Render is effectively a decentralized AI cluster,” Groth said. “So there’s no surprise that on a relative basis, it outperformed, given the buzz and hype over Chat GPT, all these LLMs. That caught some of that Nvidia bump up.”

The CoinDesk Market Index, a measure of crypto markets performance, recently sank 0.4%.

Meanwhile, stocks rose a day after the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to raise the debt limit ensuring the government could meet its financial obligations at least for the near-term and avoid a shutdown. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500, which has a hefty technology component, both rose about a percentage point. Gold inched up 0.6% to above $1,995, although it remains well below its near record high of nearly a month ago.

In an email to CoinDesk, Leo Mizuhara, CEO of institutional crypto management platform Hashnote, wrote that crypto markets had “dodged a bullet, thanks to the resolution to the debt ceiling crisis and a growing embrace of digital assets in Asia, particularly in Hong Hong, which has been trying to create easier access for retail investors.

But he added that he is “not expecting a huge breakout for Bitcoin at the moment, and compared the current stasis in markets to 2019 when investors were recovering from an extended bear market.

“We’re basically in a builder’s market,” Mizuhara wrote. “A lot of interesting protocols and companies are being launched. Venture funding is creeping back in. So, like in 2019, we’re likely in this build-up phase that sees a lot of positive energy flowing into the space that in turn sets the foundations for the next bull cycle. Despite the difficulties facing the crypto industry in the United States, what’s happening globally makes it hard not to feel optimistic right now.”

Tether Market Cap Climbs to All-Time High of $83.2B, Even as Stablecoin Market Sinks

USDT has reached a $83.2 billion market capitalization, recovering all the losses since the implosion of blockchain project Terra more than a year ago.

Stablecoin issuer Tether’s USDT has regained its previous all-time high market capitalization despite a shrinking stablecoin market.

USDT reached an $83.2 billion market capitalization on Thursday, the company reported, equaling its previous peak little more than a year ago. It has recovered all of the $18 billion it lost since the dramatic implosion of blockchain project Terra in May 2022 and following market rout.

Tether’s milestone is significant as it runs counter to a 14-month stablecoin market decline. Stablecoins are a $129 billion subset of cryptocurrencies and key plumbing in blockchain-based finance, bridging government-issued fiat currencies with digital assets and facilitating trading.

See also: Tether Reports $1.48B Profit in Q1, Reveals Bitcoin, Gold Reserves

USDT has greatly benefitted from the recent woes of its closest rivals. The second largest stablecoin USDC, which is issued by Circle, was hit by the implosion of banking partner Silicon Valley Bank in March, and subsequent wobbles in its price stability are still weighing on the token. The one-time $20 billion Binance USD (BUSD) was essentially given an expiry date when New York state regulators forced issuer Paxos to stop minting new tokens in February.

Tether has been criticized for years for lack of transparency about its reserve assets, including potentially risky loans to undisclosed debtors. Last year, a U.S. judge ordered the firm to produce documents about USDT’s backing as part of a lawsuit that alleged Tether conspired to manipulate the bitcoin (BTC) price with freshly minted tokens. A Wall Street Journal article reported that in the past, the company used falsified documents to get bank accounts.

Stablecoin holders, however, have flocked to USDT during this turbulent period due to its perceived safety from U.S. regulators and banks, propelling its market share to its highest level in at least 22 months.

“Tether’s rise suggests peg stability is far more important for most stablecoin holders than issuer transparency,” Conor Ryder, an analyst at digital asset research firm Kaiko, noted in a report.

A Kaiko report last month raised suspicion about what it termed USDT’s “inordinate” market cap surge because the increase was inconsistent with a plunge in trading volumes to multi-year lows. Other stablecoins’ market cap has generally correlated with trading volumes.

Paolo Ardoino, Tether’s chief technology officer, said in an interview with The Block that the difference comes from USDT’s growing use for payments predominantly in the developing world, which now accounts for about 40% of all token activity.

CoinDesk Apologizes to Alex Grebnev

On 25 May 2023 we published a story headed “Alameda-Backed ‘Samcoins’ CEO Alex Grebnev Sued by Coin Telegraph Owner Gregory Fishman. ” Those individuals are engaged in a lawsuit (a claim and counterclaim) in the High Court in London relating to the …

On 25 May 2023 we published a story headed “Alameda-Backed ‘Samcoins’ CEO Alex Grebnev Sued by Coin Telegraph Owner Gregory Fishman.” Those individuals are engaged in a lawsuit (a claim and counterclaim) in the High Court in London relating to the meaning and effect of a 2020 US$750,000 option agreement. Our account of Mr. Fishman’s claims in that lawsuit was incorrect, and we are happy to set the record straight and to confirm that the claims in the litigation do not allege the misconduct by Mr. Grebnev stated in our story. We apologize unequivocally for our error. We have taken down the article and shall not republish it.

Jimbos Protocol to Work With U.S. Homeland Security to Help Recover $7.5M From Flash Loan Exploit

The team is opening more cases in other jurisdictions and offering a roughly $800,000 bounty to the general public for information on the exploiter.

Developers of Jimbos Protocol, an Arbitrum-based application, said Wednesday they opened up a case with the New York branch of the Department of Homeland Security to arrest the attacker who exploited the protocol for millions of dollars this past weekend.

“We warned you. We’d prefer giving you the bounty so we can focus on our protocol. Instead, we will deal with law enforcement to find you,” the Jimbos team wrote to the attacker on Twitter, after giving them several days to return 90% of the stolen funds. “The door remains open for the hacker to return the funds until they are arrested, at which point the offer will be rescinded.”

The recent move to work with the Department of Homeland Security comes three days after Jimbos faced a $7.5 million flash loan exploit and about two weeks after the protocol’s official launch date.

In addition to collaborating with law enforcement in the United States, the team is currently opening more cases in other jurisdictions and is offering a 10% bounty worth about $800,000 to the general public for anyone who provides information that leads to catching the exploiter and funds being returned.

“We have a good idea who it is,” said blockchain sleuth Ogle, who is part of the recovery process and has helped with the Euler Finance exploit. “I think they end up speaking, keeping their 10%, and returning the rest — it’s a win for everybody and makes the most sense. Only an idiot would try to keep the rest, but risk prison for years and losing all of the money.”

Welcome, Crypto, to the Fiery Cauldron of U.S. Presidential Politics

Before the push for the White House really gets rolling, digital assets – including bitcoins and CBDCs – are being hefted as ideological effigies, but will it matter?

Whether the crypto industry wants the spotlight or not, digital assets are among the earliest talking points in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, with the most prominent of the new candidates even invoking bitcoins in his campaign opener as evidence of President Joe Biden’s missteps.

In an election in which the heaviest fireworks will likely be seen on the side of the Republican challengers, former President Donald Trump – occupying the role as Biden’s leading nemesis – is himself facing an early-days threat from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who immediately staked out crypto as a kind of political shorthand.

“The current regime, clearly, has it out for Bitcoin,” DeSantis said from his campaign’s Twitter Spaces launch pad, using crypto to represent innovation and personal freedom. “Bitcoin represents a threat to them, they’re trying to regulate it out of existence.”

If digital assets keep figuring into presidential politics, they’ll likely feature as a stand-in to illustrate the perceived abuses of the federal government, according to industry insiders and political experts. But the attention may not contribute to the policy progress crypto businesses crave, because the sector is waiting for comprehensive rules, not political sentiments.

So far, Biden’s administration is being accused of squeezing emerging crypto businesses and trying to set up a central bank digital currency (CBDC) to spy on citizens, according to DeSantis and one of Biden’s challengers from his own party, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

For DeSantis, his pro-crypto position also separates him from chief rival Trump. The digital assets views of the Republican frontrunner for the 2024 nomination have historically been rooted in distrust, with Trump having declared in 2019 that he was “not a fan” of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, “whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air.” However, more recently Trump profited from his own series of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), so his position remains murky.

Two weeks before DeSantis opened his campaign beside tech mogul Elon Musk, he sought to make a political moment out of his state’s “ban” of a U.S. CBDC. Experts in the commercial law Florida used to act against a potential digital dollar have said Florida’s effort isn’t a ban at all, but that might not matter for political supporters impressed by DeSantis’ zeal.

“He seems to understand that private solutions being developed in the crypto markets are likely to be superior, in part because they pose fewer risks to the individual liberty of the public,” said Dave Weisberger, CEO of CoinRoutes, a trading tech startup in DeSantis’ home state.

But DeSantis is generally vague about his defense of cryptocurrencies, and his remarks don’t seem to acknowledge they are online instruments that can operate outside the whims of sovereign states. When he says that Democrats – given another four years – will “probably end up killing it,” it seems to suggest the U.S. lawmakers would have more reach than they do, and that crypto won’t find homes in other global jurisdictions, such as in Europe.

“It’s more about how he’s trying to paint himself as a fresh face,” said Ron Hammond, director of government relations for the Blockchain Association in Washington. “He’s trying to say ‘I’m the younger gun here who’s trying to get something done.’”

In the know

A rival Republican candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, has argued the Florida governor doesn’t know the topic well. The biotech entrepreneur told CoinDesk he’s pro-Bitcoin because he sees it as a “decentralized alternative” to the U.S dollar, improving the country’s financial infrastructure by presenting “a source of competition to the existing system.” And he says he understands it much more than DeSantis.

Other notable Republican candidates, such as Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and his state’s former governor, Nikki Haley, have reserved comment on the financial movement. Despite his position on the Senate Banking Committee that could help decide U.S. crypto’s fate, Scott has taken the most neutral possible stance, saying lawmakers should take a “thoughtful, bipartisan and balanced approach” to overseeing the industry in the U.S.

Among the Democratic challengers to standard-bearer Biden, Kennedy – who also holds other views that overlap with Republican positions – is fervently pro-crypto.

“Cryptocurrencies, led by bitcoin, along with other crypto technologies are a major innovation engine,” Kennedy wrote in a tweet earlier this month. “It is a mistake for the U.S. government to hobble the industry and drive innovation elsewhere.”

The most popular of the pro-crypto candidates among voters, DeSantis, still trails well behind Trump in primary polling, but the fact that there are multiple candidates saying nice things about digital assets is a positive for some in the sector.

“We now have three presidential candidates, spanning both political parties, who explicitly support the digital asset industry,” CoinRoutes’ Weisberger said. “While Republicans are trying to make crypto a partisan issue, the industry itself doesn’t believe it should be, which is why the support from RFK Jr. is also potentially important.”

Biden is the only candidate with a federal record on digital assets. So far, his administration hasn’t set down any significant crypto policy, and the financial regulators he picked have taken a staunchly critical view of the industry. His Securities and Exchange Commission chief, Gary Gensler, may be the most antagonistic of the bunch, combating digital assets businesses in courtrooms and with his agency’s rule proposals. And the direct messages from Biden’s Department of the Treasury and his own White House have been increasingly suspicious of the industry.

Though it wasn’t a campaign remark, Biden, who last month formally announced

Bitcoin, Crypto Prices Brace for Downturn in Coming Liquidity Shock, Observers Say

Improving liquidity conditions so far this year have lifted risk assets such as cryptocurrencies, but the trend is poised to turn once the U.S. debt ceiling is lifted and the Treasury along with the Fed resume tightening, analysts say.

Crypto markets are bracing for a downturn as liquidity tightening resumes after the U.S. debt ceiling is lifted, observers said.

The replenishment of the U.S. Treasury general account and the Federal Reserve (Fed) winding down its balance sheet will remove hundreds of billions of dollars from the financial system, weighing on cryptocurrency prices in the coming months.

Thawing liquidity conditions earlier this year helped lift the prices of risk assets, including equities and digital assets. The market-wide crypto rally propelled bitcoin (BTC), the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, to as high as $31,000 before turning into a meme coin speculative frenzy reminiscent of the sugar rush near bull market tops.

The trend, however, is set to turn once U.S. lawmakers approve raising the government’s ability to issue new debt, putting pressure on risky investments.

First, the U.S. Treasury will have to refill its almost completely depleted Treasury General Account (TGA), which means replenishing some $500 billion of cash from the financial system.

“This is likely to especially hit risk assets as they tend to be more sensitive to liquidity conditions than safer plays such as bonds and many groups of equities,” macro analyst Noelle Acheson said.

“The Treasury drawing down its account at the Fed was one of the tailwinds for the market earlier this year, as money that would normally just sit there was put into the economy in the form of government expenditures,” Acheson explained.

“Now, the reverse is likely to happen: the government needs to replenish that account balance by issuing debt which will draw liquidity out of the market and back into the Treasury’s account.”

Refilling the general account coincides with the Fed continuing its quantitative tightening campaign, briefly interrupted in March due to the regional banking crisis, to reduce its bloated balance sheet from propping up the economy during the pandemic.

Macro analyst Lyn Alden called this a “negative double-whammy for liquidity” in a market report.

“The attractiveness of many large liquidity-driven equities is lackluster for the next few months unless or until we get more clarity on forward liquidity conditions,” Alden said. “This is an environment where an investor should know what they own, be prepared for volatility and avoid excessive leverage.”

The debt ceiling resolution bill – if passed in its current form – will also contribute to the negative impact on liquidity, according to Tom Dunleavy, founder of Dunleavy Investment Research.

Some key points of the deal such as curbing non-defense funding, clawing back unspent pandemic relief funds and resuming student loan payments will constrain the available money left for consumers to invest, he explained in a tweet. “Liquidity is going to be very net negative,” Dunleavy added.

The U.S. House of Representatives is poised to vote on raising the debt ceiling Wednesday evening.

Tightening liquidity conditions, decreasing probability of the Fed cutting interest rates this year and the present trading environment with depressed volatility and volumes make crypto markets ripe for a shock, institutional trading platform FalconX wrote in a newsletter.

“This macro scenario (…) makes me believe we could be in a calm-before-the-storm moment for crypto,” David Lawant, head of research at FalconX, said.

First Digital Unveils USD Stablecoin as Hong Kong Crypto Rules Kick In

The stablecoin is issued by a registered trust owned by First Digital.

First Digital Group announced today that it’s launching a USD stablecoin, FDUSD.

The stablecoin is issued on Ethereum and BNB, a spokesperson told CoinDesk, saying that First Digital is in discussions with all major exchanges for a listing.

First Digital says FDUSD is backed by “high-quality reserves” of cash and cash equivalents in regulated financial institutions around Asia, and will be issued by First Digital Trust, a trust company registered under Hong Kong’s Trust Ordinance.

Part of the requirements of Hong Kong’s Trust Ordinance is to keep all reserves in segregated accounts, which prevents co-mingling of assets.

“The launch of this stablecoin represents a major stride forward in our mission to provide a secure and efficient digital currency that can be seamlessly integrated into everyday transactions,” Vincent Chok, CEO of First Digital, said in a release.

But as the stablecoin launches, it won’t be available to retail users in Hong Kong.

Regulators in Hong Kong have said that stablecoins should not be allowed for public trading by retail investors until the proposed rules for this asset class are officially implemented in the territory.

As CoinDesk reported in February, The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), the special administrative region’s central bank, and one of its financial regulators are weighing new regulations for stablecoins, which could mandate local incorporation, require real-world asset backing (disallowing algorithmic stablecoins) and mandating separate operations for issuers and virtual asset exchanges.

It’s not yet clear when these regulations will kick in.