This Week in Crypto
August 4, 2023
Welcome to this week’s issue of This Week in Crypto, where we take a closer look at some of the headlines that resonated throughout the Web3 industry. Today, we are covering the following key news:
Key Takeaway
- BTC remains resilient to market pressure
- Coinbase’s BASE, BALD, and SBF
- LeetSwap exploit, and Sushiswap comes to rescue
- MXC zkEVM enters discussion with CEX
BTC Remains Resilient to Market Pressure
In an overall downward market for almost all crypto assets this week, Bitcoin (BTC) showed incredible resilience, maintaining its price mark just below $30,000. While analysts have anticipated that the $30,000 psychological level will be challenging to break above and thus the price may maintain around the current $29,200 in a bullish trend, it surprises most that the current price level is maintained even during a bear market.
While it is unclear how strong this resilience will prove to be, commentators are expressing that the current trend points to the majority of BTC holders being almost indifferent to major news and macroeconomic conditions.
Coinbase, BASE, BALD, and SBF?
This has been an interesting week for Coinbase. Coinbase, one of the largest exchange and custody services in the industry, is officially showcasing its Layer 2 blockchain, BASE. Ahead of this announcement, there has been some major developments in memecoin area on BASE, as a sudden injection of large liquidity from major whales have resulted in a memecoin craze. BALD, a memecoin poking fun at Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, reached over 4,000,000% increase in price.
However, the deployer of BALD then removed most of the liquidity, causing the price of the token to plummet. While only a small fraction of the original liquidity was added later, the crypto industry went into full investigation mode to find the true identity of the BALD deployer, who has netted more than $40 million in this action. Some have pointed out that the deployer wallet participated in old governance on SushiSwap, received large amounts of funds from wallets closely tied to FTX and Alameda Research, and that the sentence structure the BALD deployer uses is similar to the now-house-arrested Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the former head of FTX.
While the speculation runs wild, it is important to note that the evidence is circumstantial at best. Meanwhile, the BALD deployer wallet has signaled “SushiSwap” through its message, indicating that the liquidity will most likely be moved from LeetSwap to SushiSwap.
LeetSwap Exploit, and SushiSwap Comes to Rescue
Part of the reason that BALD deployer is moving away from LeetSwap to SushiSwap is due to the recent exploit. LeetSwap recently admitted that it has noticed irregularities in its liquidity pool, and has thus paused all trading on its DEX. Studies indicate that this possible exploit was able to drain liquidity from LeetSwap, or forcefully lock liquidity on LeetSwap.
As of this morning, trading has resumed while an attempt to recover the liquidity is still partially ongoing. This is a relieving news for those who had their funds stuck on LeetSwap, and especially those who broke profit from BALD and have their $cbETH (Coinbase ETH) unable to be transferred to normal ETH.
Meanwhile, SushiSwap has made an announcement that it is now operating its DEX on Coinbase’s Layer 2 BASE, coming to the rescue for those affected by LeetSwap and having their funds stuck on BASE.
MXC zkEVM Enters Discussion with Centralized Exchanges
With the MXC zkEVM gaining increasing momentum within the community, MXC Foundation has entered a series of talks with centralized exchanges to pave the way forward for the exchanges to accept not only ERC-20 MXC but also zkEVM native MXC.
While the discussion is still in early stages, this move would allow seamless integration for the MXC community and the wider Web3 userbase, creating more adoption and increased activity on the MXC zkEVM.
