The Daily Blurt - January 16

Bitcoin and Ether prices remain steady despite signs of inflation peak

Bitcoin and Ether prices remained relatively unchanged during Monday morning trading in Asia, despite several top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies seeing a dip after strong gains over the weekend. This can be attributed to signs of inflation peaking in the United States, leading investors to believe that the Federal Reserve may begin to ease back on interest rate increases. Bitcoin dipped 0.4% to $20,882 in the 24 hours to 8 a.m. in Hong Kong but is up 22% over the past calendar week. The world’s largest cryptocurrency also breached $21,000 for the first time since November, reaching as high as $21,075 on Saturday. Ether added 0.2% to $1,552 for a 20.5% gain on the week, according to CoinMarketCap. However, Solana fell 5.6% to change hands at $22.89, posting the biggest loss on CoinMarketCap’s top 10 list by capitalization.

The total crypto market capitalization over the 24 hours fell 0.13% to $979.6 billion, while trading volume slid 43.1% to $47.1 billion. Meanwhile, U.S. equities rose on Friday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average adding 0.3%, the S&P 500 Index gaining 0.4% and the Nasdaq Composite Index finishing the day 0.7% higher. The U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) released last week showed that inflation rose 6.5% year-on-year, in line with expectations and lower than the 7.1% recorded in November. The Fed will hold its next meeting from Jan. 31 to Feb. 1, with analysts at the CME Group predicting a 94.2% chance of an increase of 25 basis points given the most recent CPI data.

NFT Influencer loses "life-changing" amount in crypto after malware attack

An NFT influencer, known on Twitter as “NFT God” or “Alex”, has lost a significant amount of his net worth in NFTs and crypto after accidentally downloading malware from a Google Ad search result. The influencer posted a series of tweets on January 14th describing how his digital assets came under attack, including a compromise of his crypto wallet and multiple online accounts. Alex had used Google's search engine to download OBS, an open-source video streaming software, but instead of clicking on the official website, he clicked on a sponsored advertisement for what he thought was the same thing. It was only later that he realized that malware had been downloaded from the sponsored advertisement alongside the software he wanted.

Blockchain data shows that at least 19 ETH worth nearly $27,000 at the time, a Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) NFT with a current floor price of 16 ETH ($25,000) and multiple other NFTs were siphoned from Alex’s wallet. The attacker moved most of the ETH through multiple wallets before sending it to the decentralized exchange (DEX) FixedFloat, where it was swapped for unknown cryptocurrencies. Alex believes that the mistake that allowed the wallet hack was setting up his hardware wallet as a hot wallet by entering its seed phrase “in a way that no longer kept it cold,” or offline which allowed hackers to gain control of his crypto and NFTs.

Hong Kong's SFC to release list of approved crypto assets for retail traders

Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) is preparing a list of crypto assets that will be open to retail traders, according to the CEO Julia Leung Fung-yee. She stated that the whitelisted crypto tokens will be highly liquid ones deemed safe enough for non-professional investors, adding that the SFC will not allow retail investors to trade in all of the 2,000 products available on virtual assets platforms. The SFC will also be publishing a consultation paper and introducing new licensing protocols for crypto exchanges and other virtual asset service providers in the coming months, in an effort to protect investors. The move is part of a broader crypto regulatory push by Hong Kong, which is aiming to become a crypto hub in the next bull run.

VeChain releases new roadmap for 2023-2024, highlighting planned updates

VeChain has recently released its new roadmap for 2023-2024, which highlights the planned updates for the network in the coming months. Some of the major updates include the launch of a wallet for the ecosystem and NFT marketplace in the first half of 2023, and the development of product NFT for the metaverse and tokenization for sustainability in the second half of the year. The roadmap also mentions that the team will be working on the algorithmic stablecoins community and DAO operating system in the first quarter of the next year.

These updates look promising for VeChain, as it has a lot of potential to grow in the new year. Additionally, the network has achieved a lot in 2022, with new addresses reaching 304,355, annual total transactions crossing 12.9 million, and over 50 NFT projects. CoinMarketCap's data also revealed that VET registered over 24% weekly gains, and at the time of writing, it was trading at $0.0205 with a market capitalization of more than $1.4 billion.

Republicans create new subcommittee to regulate digital assets

The Republicans have formed a new subcommittee in the House of Representatives focused on digital assets, called the Subcommittee on Digital Assets, Financial Technology and Inclusion. The subcommittee will be chaired by Congressman French Hill (R-AR), who is also the full committee’s vice-chairman. The panel aims to provide “rules of the road” for federal regulators of the digital asset ecosystem and to develop policies that reach underserved communities through the promotion of financial innovation. This comes as multiple pieces of crypto-related legislation work their way through the legislative process, such as the Lummis-Gillibrand Responsible Financial Innovation Act and The Stablecoin TRUST Act. This is expected to be an opportunity for Republicans to establish regulatory clarity for the digital assets industry.