CoinMarketCap chose winners and sent them tokens. As a result, they only made it to a few wallets and were sold, collapsing prices for those projects. Crypto-Upvotes expert review.

Cryptoprojects claim that advertising campaigns from CoinMarketCap (CMC) were scamming and caused their token prices to fall. The developers accuse CMC of foul play in promoting their airdrops. And they claim that cryptocurrencies ended up in only a few wallets, indicating that the system could be manipulated.

CoinMarketCar is one of the largest aggregators of cryptocurrency market data, launched in 2013. This service collects information from most trading venues, tracking key metrics of tokens and crypto exchanges. In 2020, Binance bought this platform.

Blockchain project SaTT reported that a promotional campaign on SMS was paid for in December 2022. It ended with 84% of the issued tokens reaching just 21 wallets. As part of this promotion, 25,000 winning addresses were to receive 4,000 SATT each.

SaTT said that shortly after Airdrop, 20,900 addresses “automatically transferred tokens to 21 wallets.” Which sold those tokens a few days later, generating about $142k. As a result of this sale, the SATT price fell 70% in 10 days – from the end of Airdrop on December 1 until those wallets sold their tokens on December 10.

Other projects also faced a problem with Airdrops on CoinMarketCap

The TokenBot project faced a similar problem. Its founder Shaun Newsum said that he also held an airdrop on CMC. According to him, the platform identified 30,000 winners of the airdrop. TokenBot sent out its tokens to a batch of 4,000 winners to begin with. And about 3,300 of them ended up sending funds to a single wallet. Newsum said TokenBot lost about $20k as a result of the incident.

“Obviously, some person figured out how to play on CoinMarketCap. <…> If we had sent a big batch, this whole airdrop would have been a complete disaster,” said the head of TokenBot.

However, Newsum said he had received an apology from CMC. And he was told that the company was investigating the situation and would return with an updated list of project winners.

The SaTT project team claims to have uncovered 18 other token and NFT eirdrop projects totaling $6.6 million, which have been held at CMC since July 2022, and were also allegedly “infected with scams.” These included projects such as TopGoal, OwlDAO and AgeofGods. SaTT suggested that either hackers had created multiple fake accounts on CMC, or that these were internal actions of this platform.

Explanations from CoinMarketCap

A CMC official responded to the allegations by saying that at least four of the projects named by SaTT had not yet distributed awards. And therefore, it is “impossible” that they have encountered “malicious” activity. He also noted that other than SaTT, AgeOfGods and TokenBot, no one else had complained about such problems.

However, a CMC official admits that there is a bot problem. According to him, the platform team is constantly working to improve its systems to limit this problem. To prevent bots from participating, CMC uses CAPTCHA verification and email verification. It also plans to integrate two-factor authentication.

Huobi Korea intends to sever ties with its parent exchange Huobi and continue to operate as a local company in South Korea

The South Korean division of cryptocurrency exchange Huobi will separate from the global platform, according to News1. The Huobi Korea platform intends to sever these ties and continue operating as a local company in South Korea.

Huobi, founded in 2013, is registered in the Seychelles and has offices in Hong Kong, the United States, Japan and South Korea. The platform recently announced plans to move its headquarters to the Caribbean. Huobi remains one of the largest crypto exchanges by trading volume. According to CoinMarketCap, the daily figure on the platform exceeds $373 million.

On Jan. 9, Huobi Korea began preparations for a stock buyback. More than half of Huobi Korea is owned by Leon Lin, founder of Huobi Global (which was renamed Huobi in November 2022). Major shareholders also include Huobi Korea chairman Cho Kuk Bong and Korea Land Trust. Cho will acquire a controlling stake from Lin, increasing his stake to 72 %.

Separation of companies takes place because of the conflict between Huobi Korea and Huobi. The Korean platform has suffered from the image of a foreign platform. And especially from associations with the “Chinese exchange.” The Huobi Global platform was founded and was based in China until 2017.

Huobi Exchange has been experiencing difficulties over the past few weeks. Amid news of the layoff of 20% of staff and a reduction in reward, its users began to withdraw assets from the platform in droves. They fear even the minimal risk of crypto exchange insolvency.

Our experts noticed that the CEO of CryptoQuant analytics platform Ki Jung Ju pointed out. That over the past year, Bitcoin reserves at Huobi have fallen by 90%. According to him, the platform has the dirtiest reserves compared to, for example, Binance.

The collapse of FTX put the brakes on venture-backed activity, but analysts expect funding for blockchain startups to grow this summer. Crypto-Upvotes expert review

Venture capital investment in the cryptocurrency industry fell to its lowest level in nearly two years in the fourth quarter of 2022. According to PitchBook analysts, $2.3 billion was invested in crypto startups in the last three months of last year. And that’s 75% less than the same period last year.

The last time less money was invested in the crypto industry was in Q4 2020. At that time, it was $1.4 billion. Since then, investments in the crypto industry have been growing, from Q1 2021 ($3.5 billion) to Q1 2022 ($12.1 billion). Between April and June of last year, $7.4 billion was invested in the industry. Аnd between July and September, $4.9 billion.

In all, a record $26.7 billion was invested in blockchain startups last year. Аnd most of that came in the first half of the year. Ventures then began to slow their investment activity. But the collapse of FTX in November prompted them to slow down even more, according to PitchBook crypto analyst Robert Le. According to him, investors are trying to figure out what will happen next and are in no hurry to place capital.

FTX Group’s departure from market, which lacked strict controls and due diligence when investing, also changed the situation for investing in the crypto business. According to Le, FTX had a reputation for making deals and writing big checks. While asking founders only a few questions during the quick approval process. And it often crowded out other venture capitalists.

Immediate prospects

Not having FTX will make for a better market for other crypto investors. Because now they can get back to properly evaluating projects and the necessary prudence. The analyst still expects venture capital investment in the crypto sector to grow in the summer of 2023. That’s partly because many crypto funds are required to use the capital they raised during the digital asset boom.

Opening of National Exchange of Indonesia is scheduled for this year. And it should take place before the change of transfer of crypto-assets supervision to the new regulator. Review by Crypto-Upvotes experts

The Indonesian government plans to launch a national cryptocurrency exchange as part of financial sector reform. The project is to be completed in 2023, before the authority to oversee cryptocurrencies in the country is transferred to a new regulator.

The local Commodity Futures Trading Regulatory Agency (BAPPEBTI) now regulates crypto-assets in Indonesia. According to a spokesman for the agency, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) will take over oversight of cryptocurrencies over the next two years. A national cryptocurrency exchange should already be up and running by the time regulators switch powers.

In 2021, Indonesia’s Central Bank Governor Perry Warjiyo announced the regulator’s intention to issue its own national digital currency (CBDC). Currently, Indonesian law prohibits the use of cryptocurrency as a payment instrument. However, trading in digital assets in Indonesia is allowed.

In 2018, Tokocrypto crypto exchange was officially launched in the country. The platform became the first cryptocompany in Indonesia approved by BAPPEBTI. Since 2020, Binance has been one of the investors of the exchange. The size of Changpeng Zhao’s stake has not been disclosed, but last December the media twice reported on the leading Binance’s plans to gradually increase its stake in Tokocrypto to 100%. Each of the news was accompanied by a sharp rise in the platform’s native token (TKO).

Our experts note that Asian market is probably important to Binance as a whole. And the exchange is entering it by acquiring stakes in local trading venues. In late November last year, the exchange acquired a stake in Japan’s Sakura Exchange (SEBC), a platform officially regulated by the Japan Financial Services Agency (JFSA). On January 2, local media reported on Binance’s plans to buy one of Korea’s leading cryptocurrency exchanges, Gopax.

ENS registrar reported that more than 80% of all addresses appeared in the past year. Crypto-Upvotes expert review

Last year, users registered more than 2.2 million addresses in the Ethereum Name System (ENS). This was reported by representatives of the ENS registrar in its official Twitter account. According to ENS Domains website, the number of .eth addresses exceeds 594,000.

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of the Ethereum ecosystem, called ENS-domains the most successful application of NFT technology in an interview with WIRED.

An ENS domain is technically an NFT on a particular wallet. To make a transfer to this wallet, you can specify not its address in the usual format. And replace it with a conveniently readable address such as “vitalik.eth”. Such a wallet address can also be used for authorization in decentralized applications (dApps) and searches in blockchain browsers such as Etherscan.

Domains in the form of NFTs can be traded on leading marketplaces such as Looks Rare or OpenSea. However, the largest marketplace by volume is ENS.Vision, which specializes in ENS domains. According to the platform, the most expensive addresses were “333.eth” and “metaverse.eth,” sold for 100 and 99 ETH, respectively.

Domains are becoming a form of identification in the crypto community. And this provokes demand for short and easily recognizable addresses. Floor price for domains in the “999 Club” category, that is, three digit addresses consisting of numbers, is at 20.22 ETH.

Satoshi Nakamoto mined a Bitcoin genesis block on January 3, 2009

Bitcoin turned 14 years old. January 3, 2009 can be considered the real birthday of Bitcoin. That’s when the genesis block was mined with the date and a short excerpt from The Times article: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”.

On October 31, 2008, the creator of Bitcoin, known as Satoshi Nakamoto, published a white paper. Titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. However, the BTC network did not actually work until three months later, when Satoshi mined the first block.

The genesis block was mined on a small server in Helsinki. The reward for mining it was 50 BTC. The first transaction on the BTC network took place a few days later. On January 12, 2009, 10 BTC from Satoshi Nakamoto were sent to developer Hal Finney in Block 170.

Nine months later, on October 5, Bitcoin appeared on the New Liberty Standart exchange. Our experts note that for $ 1 you could buy 1,309 BTC (now their price is $21 million).

On February 9, 2011, BTC for the first time equaled in value to the U.S. dollar. And on April 16 of the same year a major publication – Time magazine published an article about Bitcoin, for the first time about the new asset. The currency reached a total capitalization of $10 million.

Since then, Bitcoin has experienced several ups and downs. It reached its peak in November 2021, rising to $69,000. In 2022, global economic problems and several major bankruptcies in the industry led to a significant decline in cryptocurrency rates and a prolonged crypto winter.

The asset currently has a market capitalization of $322 billion and a daily trading volume of $13 billion. Bitcoin’s stake in a crypto market is 38.2%.

In January 2023, there will be several big events at once. Which may affect both the value of individual cryptocurrency and crypto market as a whole. Review by Crypto-Upvotes experts

COTI (COTI) – launch of DJED stablecoin

At the Cardano Cryptocurrency Summit in late November, COTI CEO Shahaf Bar-Geffen announced the launch of an algorithmic stablecoin, DJED. According to its developers’ plan, the stablecoin will go live in January after a thorough audit and will be linked to the U.S. dollar. DJED will be backed by Cardano’s base coin (ADA). And use the SHEN coin as a backup.

The DJED algorithm is based on a collateral ratio in the 400%-800% range for DJED and SHEN. This is necessary to ensure a sufficient number of ADAs in a pool. Agreements have already been signed with 40 partners and decentralized exchanges for fast and proper implementation. These projects will offer increased rewards to those who provide liquidity with DJED.

The developers also announced Djed Pay. It’s a payment app and crypto-gateway that allows merchants. As well as e-commerce platforms and non-profit organizations to accept DJED as payment.

Flux (FLUX) – FluxOS V3.30.0 release

Flux project developers announced that FluxOS V3.30.0 update will take place on January 2 on unit number 1288000. All owners of node validators need to update their software by January 3. The update will fix synchronization issues. As well as reconfigured prices for decentralized applications. And changes have been made to prepare for a future update.

Flux Network is a former ZelCash project that was launched in 2018 and rebranded in March 2021. The main goal of the project is to create a decentralized Internet. To achieve this goal, the Flux project aims to achieve the maximum distributed network.

The blockchain can be supported by anyone: either by running a validator node (node) or by running mining on a video card. Rewards are divided equally between nodes and miners. FluxOS is an operating system that allows the deployment of decentralized applications (dApps). ZelCore is a multicurrency cryptocurrency wallet supporting over 450 coins and 50,000 tokens.

Cryptocurrency Klaytn (KLAY) — hardfork Kore

On January 10, after finding block number 111,736,800, the update for the Baobab network will go into effect. And an update for the Cypress network is planned for March 2023. All of these updates are part of the larger Klaytn v1.10.0 release. After the update, the block bounty structure will change. As well as there will be new features for API interface, gas cost for some functions will change. More details about the update can be found on the project website.

Klaytn blockchain is a development of Korean Internet giant Kakao. The main network was launched in 2019. The project is aimed at corporate businesses that plan to launch their applications in the field of meta or GameFi. And it provides users with convenient access to blockchain. This cryptocurrency project with corporations such as Samsung, LG Electronics, and Union Bank.

Polkadot (DOT) – Hackathon

On January 25th another online hackathon by the Polkadot project will start. This time the event will be held in Europe. The previous ones were held in the Pacific and North American regions. Participants are invited to present their project in one of five categories. These are: Interface and Experience, Smart Contracts, Web 3.0 and Development, DeFi, NFT. In each of the categories, the prize money is $35,000. Then each finalist team will be paid $3k for their flight to Paris.

In addition to the main prize fund, Moonbeam, Zeitgeist and ICE will also be offering prizes. On March 22 the dotSocial event will be held in Paris. There, finalists will be able to present and talk about their projects on the main stage of the event. You can register and find out more information on the website of a hackathon.

The government-supported platform will conduct secondary trade in NFT and digital asset copyrights. Crypto-Upvotes expert review

China will launch its first regulated NFT trading platform on January 1, 2023. This was reported by Sina News. ” China Digital Asset Trading Platform ” will be a secondary marketplace for NFT. It is jointly created by state-owned China Technology Exchange and Art Exhibitions China. And a private company, Huban Digital Copyrights Ltd.

The new trading platform will focus on a national strategy to digitize culture. It will use blockchain and NFTs as the basis for technical support for the innovative development of the cultural industry and the preservation of cultural heritage.

NFT in China are called digital collectibles. In addition to these, the platform will also trade copyrights related to digital assets. Specific types of items that will be featured on the platform have not yet been determined.

Our experts note that according to Chinese laws, NFT cannot be purchased for cryptocurrency. At the end of September 2021, the People’s Bank of China banned cryptocurrency transactions. The use of digital assets for payments equates to illegal financial activity. NFTs are sold in China on closed regulated platforms.

Investments giants and other big brands are registering names in digital assets and metaverse. Crypto-Upvotes expert review

Fidelity Investments and HSBC Bank have filed U.S. trademark applications related to NFT and cryptocurrencies. This was announced by licensed trademark lawyer Michael Kondoudis.

Fidelity Investments, an American financial company founded in 1946. It has $9.6 trillion under management, serving more than 40 million investors. According to Condudis, the company has filed trademark applications related to NFT and NFT marketplaces. As well as cryptocurrency trading as well as metaverse and virtual real estate investment services.

The lawyer also said that the UK’s largest bank, HSBC, has applied for trademarks for its name in the field of NFT. As well as cryptocurrency exchanges and transactions, and digital asset transactions on credit cards.

Earlier in December, Mercedes Benz also filed trademark applications related to digital assets. And Las Vegas-based gaming and hospitality company Boyd Gaming as well as popular toy brand Hello Kitty.

Our experts note that in the first 11 months of 2022 in the U.S. have already been registered 5.3 thousand trademarks associated with metaverse and virtual assets for them. And a year earlier there were 1.9 thousand. 4.9 thousand cryptocurrency and digital asset services trademarks were registered until December this year, while there were only 3.5 thousand registrations for the whole of 2021.

Christie’s sold only 87 NFT in 2022 for a total of $5.9 million. Review by Crypto-Upvotes experts

NFT sales at Christie’s are down 96% this year. The auction house sold more than 100 NFTs worth more than $150 million in 2021 and only 87 items worth $5.9 million in 2022.

In 2021, the most expensive lots of Christie’s were the works of American artist Michael Winkelman, known under the nickname Beeple. NFT-painting “Every Day: the first 5 thousand days” was sold in March for $ 69.4 million. And an animated 3d-image of an astronaut called HUMAN ONE left the auction in October of the same year for $ 28.8 million.

The NFT sculpture by Turkish-born media artist and filmmaker Refik Anadol was the most expensive lot of 2022. Living Architecture: Casa Batlló, which sold in May for $1.38 million.

Despite the decline in digital art sales. Christie’s continued to be active in web3 and NFT in 2022. The company created a venture capital fund, which on July 18 made its first investment in the startup LayerZero. This campaign specializes in blockchain interoperability.

Our experts also note that in September Christie’s launched its own NFT trading platform called Christie’s 3.0. The platform is based on the Ethereum network. Also now all payments are accepted in cryptocurrency and they include post-sale transactions (payment of commission and taxes).