Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.
Top Stories This Week
Jack Dorsey has stepped down as Twitter CEO
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey announced Monday that he has stepped down from his role as CEO. Replacing Dorsey will be Twitter board member and chief technology officer Parag Agrawal, who was unanimously appointed to CEO by the company’s board of directors.
Dorsey also serves as the CEO and chairman of crypto-friendly payments tech firm Square, and it is unclear if he left Twitter to solely focus on the platform’s plans to develop a decentralized Bitcoin (BTC) exchange. He did note, however, that the company does not need to be founder-led to thrive.
“I believe it’s really important to give Parag the space he needs to lead,” said Dorsey. “I believe it’s critical a company can stand on its own, free of its founder’s influence or direction.”
Former Citi banker launches $1.5B crypto fund, taps Algorand as first partner
On Monday, 14-year Wall Street veteran and former Citi banking executive Matt Zhang announced a $1.5 billion multi-strategy fund called Hivemind Capital Partners that is aiming to support up-and-coming crypto projects.
In particular, the fund will place a strong emphasis on crypto infrastructure builders, virtual worlds and Metaverse projects, and programmable money. The fund’s first technology partner will be proof-of-stake-based blockchain Algorand.
While Hivemind is yet to announce any major funding, Zhang said the firm will support crypto entrepreneurs with infrastructure that cannot currently be offered by traditional asset management models.
Square rebrands to Block as focus shifts to blockchain
Speaking of Square, the firm revealed on Wednesday that it had rebranded to Block, suggesting it may be ramping up its focus on the blockchain sector.
The company said the rebrand will bring the payments firm together with Cash App, the decentralized Bitcoin exchange project tbDEX, and music and video streaming platform Tidal. As part of the rebrand, Square Crypto, the cryptocurrency-focused unit of the payments firm, will be changing its name to Spiral and joining the Block family.
“Block references the neighborhood blocks where we find our sellers, a blockchain, block parties full of music, obstacles to overcome, a section of code, building blocks, and of course, tungsten cubes,” said Square.
MicroStrategy purchases $414.4 million worth of Bitcoin, with total BTC balance eclipsing $3.5 billion
MicroStrategy, the analytics software firm led by fervent Bitcoin bull Michael Saylor, announced on Monday that it had snapped up a 7,002 BTC worth $414.4 million.
After the purchase, Saylor stated that the company’s total BTC holdings stood at a whopping 121,044, acquired for roughly $3.57 billion at an average price of $29,534 per BTC. To fund that latest shopping spree for digital gold, the firm sold 571,001 shares of company stock between Oct. 1 and Nov. 29 at $732.16 apiece.
MicroStrategy first bought Bitcoin back in August 2020 as part of its treasury strategy, and with Saylor at the helm, the firm has purchased the asset relentlessly since—regardless of price—and is showing no signs of slowing down any time soon.
Meta expands crypto advertisement eligibility on Facebook
Social media virtual reality firm Meta expanded the eligibility requirements for running crypto ad campaigns on Facebook and Instagram this week, enabling companies more freedom in running digital asset product-related promotions.
Prior to Meta’s latest update of its crypto advertising guidelines, a limited number of crypto firms were able to advertise on Facebook as the platform only recognized a small number of regulatory licenses.
According to the updated policy, crypto exchanges, trading platforms, wallet providers, mining infrastructure firms, crypto lenders and borrowing services can now receive written permission to run ads on Facebook. The firm cited maturation and increased regulation of the sector as the reasons why it changed its tune.
Winners and Losers
At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $55,468, Ether (ETH) at $4,407 and XRP at $0.95. The total market cap is at $2.54 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap.
Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Terra (LUNA) at 62.30%, Stacks (STX) at 33.85% and Polygon (MATIC) at 29.04%.
The top three altcoin losers of the week are Gala (GALA) at -30.67%, WAX (WAXP) at -19.18% and Immutable X (IMX) at -17.85%.
For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.
Most Memorable Quotations
“There are certain services that we have that don’t really fit the regulatory mold. So there’s this gray area that the whole industry exists in, and that’s not specific to us. […] That’s just the nature of the fact that we’re dealing with an innovative technology that really doesn’t necessarily fit the criteria that existing regulators perceive as possible.”
Jonathon Miller, managing director for Kraken Australia
“A CBDC would be one of the tools to fight crypto. […] We assume that people would find CBDC more credible than crypto. CBDC would be part of an effort to address the use of crypto in financial transactions.”
Juda Agung, assistant governor of Bank Indonesia
“If a coin has a large number of users, then we will list it. That’s the overwhelming significant attribute. Consider, for example, meme tokens; even though I personally don’t get it, if it’s used by a large number of users, we list it. We go by the community, my opinion doesn’t matter.”
Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance
“There’s always hope for the Chinese crypto industry. We still have information sources and we keep getting more and more users, evangelists, developers and others. There’s nothing to worry about. Everything happens for the best.”
Anonymous, executive at a Chinese crypto publication
“It is one thing to say that a stablecoin issuer itself must be a regulated bank — I think that is probably overkill, as there are perfectly effective ways for nonbanks to meet our legitimate regulatory concerns, but there is at least a clear relation between the existing framework of bank regulation and the specific measures that stablecoin issuers must address to operate safely. It is, however, quite another thing to contemplate that wallet providers may need to be completely separated from commercial firms.”
Randal Quarles, exiting U.S. Federal Reserve governor
“Innovations are coming, proof-of-stake is much more computational efficient and low on energy consumption. Innovation is key here and it is coming.”
Gary Nuttall, emerging technology consultant at Distyltics
“Cryptocurrency may be tricky to understand, but the value of a major crypto donation converted into cash is not.”
James Lawrence, co-founder and CEO of Engiven
“Undoubtedly, metaverse land is the next big hit in the NFT space. Outputting record sales numbers and constantly increasing NFT prices, virtual worlds are the new top commodity in the crypto space.”
Prediction of the Week
Bitcoin tests traders’ nerves as analyst reissues $400K BTC price forecast
Bitcoin started the week on Nov. 28 with a drop from nearly $55,000 down to almost $53,300, followed by a push up past $58,000, according to Cointelegraph’s Bitcoin price index. Following Sunday’s price action, most of the rest of the week saw BTC trade in a range between $55,800 and $59,300.
In a Wednesday tweet, crypto trader Michaël van de Poppe gave his thoughts on the crypto market, noting a desire to see sub-$60,000 BTC turn to support.
“It’s very simple. Below $60K I’ve remained cautious/bearish as I’d like to see that area flip,” he tweeted. “Levels to watch for buys; $53K-54K zone and $47-50K zones for #Bitcoin,” he added. “When to buy #altcoins? December. Nothing has changed past weeks.”
In a separate tweet on Wednesday, van de Poppe also provided his thoughts on a few possible price targets for the bull cycle top, noting price ranges between $350,000 and $450,000 for Bitcoin and between $10,000 and $17,500 for Ethereum, in addition to ranges for other assets as well. He tweeted out the same list with the same numbers back in April 2021, with the exception of Elrond, for which the new list gave an updated possible price range target.
FUD of the Week
Vladimir Putin says cryptocurrencies ‘bear high risks’
Russian President Vladimir Putin, a man with a squeaky-clean reputation who has most certainly never engaged in any nefarious activity, took time out of his busy schedule this week to voice his concerns over the risky nature of crypto speculation.
According to reports from local media outlets on Tuesday, Putin aimed criticism at the “Russia Calling!” investment forum in Moscow. The 69-year-old called for greater monitoring and regulation of crypto in Russia and astutely pointed out that certain countries are seeing significant adoption of digital currencies.
“It is not backed by anything, [and] the volatility is colossal, so the risks are very high,” he said. “We also believe that we need to listen to those who talk about those high risks.”
Bitcoin fails ‘worst-case scenario’ monthly close for the first time, starts December sub-$57K
Bitcoin failed to hit the November closing price of $98,000 demanded by Twitter personality PlanB’s so-called “floor model.” With Bitcoin sitting at $57,000 on Nov. 30, the actual price was roughly 71% below the forecast price.
In a Wednesday Twitter post, PlanB noted that he would give his famous model one more month, but was adamant in stating that $100,000 per BTC is still “on track” by year-end as he pointed to the S2F model. He further explained:
“No model is perfect, but this is a big miss and the first in 10y! Outlier/black swan? I will give Floor model 1 more month. S2F model unaffected and on track to $100K. Watch out for trolls confusing Floor and S2F model!”
BadgerDAO reportedly suffers security breach and loses $10M
DeFi protocol BadgerDAO reportedly suffered a $10 million security breach this week, with users on Twitter highlighting a “nasty frontend attack” where funds had been taken out of people’s wallets using “rug approval” at about 2 a.m. UTC on Thursday.
While BadgerDAO hadn’t officially confirmed the attack at the time, it said that all smart contracts on the platform had been paused to prevent additional potentially malicious withdrawals.
The malicious actors targeted the protocol on the Ethereum network at contract address 0x1fcdb04d0c5364fbd92c73ca8af9baa72c269107, and users that have interacted with this contract are urged to revoke permission from their wallet.
Best Cointelegraph Features
NFT art will never be mass-market — NFT licenses may be
NFT digital art sales generate headline after headline, though this is not the real mass-market use of this novel technology.
Lines in the sand: US Congress is bringing partisan politics to crypto
“There are too many members of Congress that don’t have enough of a base of understanding. Congress needs to come in and bring regulations to this space.”
Wear-to-earn NFTs target the billion-dollar fashion industry
Here’s how “wear-to-earn” NFTs will impact the fashion sector and what may happen if they become a trend.
