Liquidity Financial News

A restructuring plan for bankrupt Bitcoin (BTC) miner Core Scientific could be finalized by September and it expects to exit proceedings with an additional $46 million due to recent favorable market conditions.

A group of investors has filed a class action suit against the Bancor decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), its operator BProtocol Foundation and its founders in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas. The plaintiffs claim, among other things, that Bancor deceived investors about its impermanent loss protection (ILP) mechanism for liquidity providers and was an unregistered security. 

As the burgeoning blockchain technology paradigm has continued to evolve, a whole host of unique asset classes have started to make their way into the mainstream. Private equity tokens are one such offering, serving as digital representations of ownership in private equity investments powered by a decentralized ledger. 

The decentralized finance (DeFi) space has been in correction mode, its current TVL of $50 billion representing less than a third of its peak in late 2021. The good news is that the market is preparing for another wave of DeFi adoption, primarily thanks to liquid staking tokens (LSTs), which have become the second-largest DeFi sector after decentralized exchanges (DEXs).

New meme-coin Pepe (PEPE) has entered a sharp correction phase after surging by more than 2,000% since its debut a few weeks ago.

Bitcoin's bounce has paved the way for the type of six-figure price projections that peppered the pandemic-era crypto boom. The token's ripening monthly streak puts history on the side of such bold optimists. Bitcoin is set to climb for the fourth month in a row after eking out an April gain, the best such stretch since a six-month advance through March 2021. In the past decade, four-month winning runs foreshadowed an average Bitcoin surge of 260% over the subsequent year, data compiled by Bloomberg shows. A jump of that magnitude would take the largest digital asset to a record $105,000 from about $30,000 currently, the zone where its 77% rebound in 2023 from last year's punishing crypto rout has stalled somewhat. Bitcoin has changed narrative garb like a chameleon during the revival, drawing succor from bets on a Federal Reserve pivot to looser monetary policy, the perceived blow to fiat currency from the US banking crisis and a planned reduction in the supply of new tokens — a so-called halving — due next year. «The biggest thing for crypto is that it's a lightning rod for liquidity,» Christopher Forbes, head of CMC Invest Singapore, said on Bloomberg Television. «And as liquidity returns to the market, and it is and we're seeing that, I think crypto will continue to trade well.»

Liquid staking solutions such as Lido and Rocket Pool now have more total value locked (TVL) than decentralized exchanges (DEXs), making them the top category of DeFi protocols, according to data from crypto analytics platform DefiLlama.

The United States Federal Deposit Insurance Corp’s (FDIC) post-mortem assessment of Signature Bank of New York (SBNY) revealed poor management and inadequate risk management practices as the root cause for its collapse.

Digital assets are typically restricted to their native blockchain networks, and existing methods of transferring tokens from one blockchain network to another are highly vulnerable to hacking or involve using a trusted third party. 

Fintech firm Ripple has launched its liquidity solution for businesses to bridge the gap between crypto and fiat. The liquidity solution called Ripple liquidity hub was launched on April 13 after a successful pilot last year.

The liquid staking sector, with $16.68 billion in TVL, now surpasses DeFi lending and bridges as the second-largest crypto sector according to Defillama data. The upcoming Ethereum Shapella upgrade, scheduled for April 12, has fueled existing interest: Liquid staking tokens, along with Ether (ETH) itself, see an increase in value as the upgrade date approaches.

Trader Joe has risen to the top five decentralized exchanges by trading volume after the launch of its V2 platform on Arbitrum on Feb. 1, 2023. 

Users with funds stuck  on the multi-chain token bridge provided by Allbridge are first in line to receive compensation under a recovery plan posted by the project following a recent exploit. 

bitcoin has been a surprise winner of the banking blowout. Yet investors aiming to amp up their bets face an ominous obstacle: a lack of liquidity that could trigger wild price swings. The price of the No.1 cryptocurrency has jumped 40% to around $27,700 since March 10, when the failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) careered into mainstream markets. On the flip side, though, its liquidity is drying up. Bitcoin's market depth indicates the asset is at its lowest level of liquidity in 10 months, even lower than in the aftermath of the FTX collapse in November, according to data provider Kaiko. The market depth for the two leading trading pairs — bitcoin-dollar and bitcoin-tether — stands at 5,600 bitcoin, the equivalent of about $155 million, Kaiko said.

United States authorities are reportedly deliberating on extending an emergency credit line for banks, “in ways” which may provide First Republic Bank with a time buffer to address its balance sheet concerns, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

Tokenized asset issuance platform Synthetix has secured a $20 million investment through a new partnership with Web3 investment and quantitative trading firm DWF Labs.

DeFiance Capital has reportedly raised $100 million for its liquid token fund.

Silvergate Capital Corp. and Signature Bank — have set off a fresh set of stresses. SVB’s failure triggered a knock-on effect in the crucial market for stablecoins after digital-asset giant Circle Internet Financial Corp., one of the biggest issuers of the widely used tokens known for their perceived safety, revealed it had $3.3 billion of reserves with the bank. The news caused Circle’s token, USD Coin, to slip below its intended 1-for-1 peg with the dollar, sending a shock through the market. On Sunday, regulators in New York closed Signature Bank. As of March 8, the bank still held $16.5 billion in crypto-related deposits. “All depositors of this institution will be made whole,” the regulators said. Against this backdrop, it is still the shutdown of crypto-friendly bank Silvergate — and the shuttering of its electronic payments platform, the Silvergate Exchange Network — that is most weighing on the market.

Bitcoin mining firm Marathon Digital has paid off its term loan and terminated its credit facilities with crypto-friendly Silvergate Bank, just as the bank announced it will be winding down operations.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has gone on a shitcoin selling spree, exchanging nearly $700,000 worth of tokens previously airdropped to him for Ether (ETH).

The world of decentralized finance (DeFi) opened a vast array of new opportunities with its explosion in 2020, but it also brought new challenges and profound risks to crypto users. Due to its decentralized nature and short history, the industry is difficult to regulate and can hardly provide a secure environment for its players.