Weekly Digest From TradeCrypto.com #2

Don't miss the news:

💰 Galaxy Digital, Binance among potential buyers of Celsius

⛔️ DOJ requests communication ban for Sam Bankman-Fried

👊 Alameda Research sues Voyager Digital for $446M

🚀 Ethereum withdrawal testnet Zhejiang to go live on Feb.1 

⚡️Bitcoin breaks $24K ceiling after 25 basis point rate hike

Daily statistics update:

Today's market is red. BTC is trading at $23,437; ETH is around $1,642.

💪 Bitcoin dominance: 42.00%

📉 Total Crypto Market Cap: $1.04T

😲 Fear and greed index: 60 (Greed)

🚀 7d Gainers (Top-100)

• Render Token (RNDR) +92.04%

• TerraClassicUSD (USTC) +87.88%

• dYdX(DYDX) +52.20%

😭 7d Losers (Top-100)

• UNUS SED LEO (LEO) -12.03%

• ApeCoin (APE) -7.30%

• Threshold (T) -6.82%

At least the intention was to disburse another batch of cash 💰from the Harmony bridge attack, approximately $27 million worth of ETH, but some of the exchanges to which the funds were sent managed to freeze them. The money movements were similar to what happened on January 13, when they laundered $60 million. But this time, crypto detectives were very active 👊. The movement came just days after the FBI confirmed that Lazarus was indeed the malicious group behind the $100m Harmony Bridge heist.

Bitcoin NFTs, to be or not to be? If you were to ask Satoshi Nakamoto, he'd say no, as Bitcoin was only meant for finance 🔝. The developers of the Ordinals protocol, which stores NFTs on Bitcoin, disagree. NFTs have caused some problems with the Bitcoin network. As more people create NFTs, the network demand increases, leading to higher transaction fees 💸. These fees are as high now as they were a year ago.

Viva Brazil. You get the second prepaid crypto card with a real-time conversion of 14 cryptos. Making purchases and paying bills has never been easier 🤌. Up to 8% cashback in cryptocurrencies on eligible purchases and no fees on select ATM withdrawals - that's the deal! In addition, Mastercard has released a survey showing that Brazil is leading in cryptocurrency usage, with up to 49% 🤘 of Brazilians having made at least one cryptocurrency transaction per year, compared to the global average of 41%.

Osprey, a competitor of Grayscale, has filed a lawsuit against the GBTC firm, alleging that it misled investors about the services they could provide to steal a market share🙀. Grayscale advertises that they're close to converting GBTC into an ETF, but that has never been the case and will probably never happen. And one more thing: if you buy GBTC, you can never get your assets back, but only if another Grayscale investor buys it from you. Grayscale fired back, saying the lawsuit is frivolous and they're still optimistic about ETF 🙌. To remind you, they're now suing SEC over the decision to prohibit GBTC from converting to ETF. The hearing is scheduled for March 7.

Following Alameda's decision to recover $446 million from Voyager, the lending company and its creditors said that won't happen. Voyager's creditors said Alameda's claims should either be subordinated to the claims of all other creditors or classified as equity 😡. It wasn't without loud accusations. The creditors took the time to remind Alameda that their fraud (with a wink to SBF) cost them about $122,000. While SBF praises its own balance sheet, thus trying to persuade Voyager that Alameda's rich and stable enough to buy the bankrupt company's assets☝️.

Celsius' lawyers are furious about Tiffany Fong's recent disclosure of bids from 5 companies for Celsius' assets. According to Tiffany, those bids are off the table 🚪, as Celsius has made it clear that it doesn't really plan to sell the assets but rather create a publicly traded company and pay off its debt to creditors with a new token. But from a distance, it can be seen as a distinct thing. Attorneys said it's just an option, and no decision has been made. Now they say Tiffany set them up, and the bids aren't really out 😅. The thing is, no one from Celsius creditors to upper management knew about the bids. Was Celsius showing off to get a better deal?

FTX ripple effect. DeFi project Everlend Finance on Solana is closing, citing liquidity problems and urging clients to withdraw funds as soon as possible🚨. They say staying in the market would be a gamble as Solana continues to shrink, and Everlend is 100% dependent on it. The funds will be repaid in full. Yet another Solana DeFi project closed, following the Friktion platform closing days after FTX collapse. At least Everlend doesn't want to gamble customers' funds ♠️.

Investigators haven't yet charged crypto bank Silvergate with anything, but they're taking a hard look at its relationship with Alameda and FTX. In the immediate aftermath of FTX's collapse, Silvergate reported a fourth-quarter loss of $1 billion, cut staff by 40%, and made billions in loans to stay afloat. Did Silvergate know about SBF's misconduct or not 🧐? That's a question DOJ is trying to figure out. In the meantime, as someone said on Twitter, this news may cause another FUD 😰 wave for other companies that do business with Silvergate. The company's clients include Coinbase, Crypto.com, Kraken, etc.

BTC is under laser focus. Now we're at $23.500-24.000, and if we break through this rate, we'll immediately get to $29.000-30.000. If we consider that the rate of interest increase, which we wrote about here, was known for a long time, and it's all positive with the price, why is BTC still growing? Well, so far, everything is going according to this scenario: The $24.000 zone is a resistance 🤛. If bitcoin sticks to it, we go to $24.000, break the shorts, buy longs, and go to $20.650, and from there, we get to $24.000. The liquidity chart shows that the traders should drive the price up rather than down 🤫.

Conclusion: Another week of struggles and trials, with a great highlight of BTC price predictions, gold crosses and speculations. The market is growing inexorably, but no one has confirmed its bullish nature. Don't forget that DCG and Genesis were pretty quiet this week, although Doom Cat predicted that Barry Silbert will go down next. Watch closely.

What is Crypto Ping Pong digest?

TC lads here are working quite hard and from time to time we gotta chill. Recently, we got ourselves a ping pong table to complete our lazy-bag-stuffed chill zone. As you all know our main hobby is Crypto, so even while we play we don’t really shut up about it. Ever.

So memes, leaks, gossips naturally come about – we collect them and share them with you in this interstellar space on our site we like to call Crypto Ping Pong digest.