FTX hacker converts millions of Ether into Ren Bitcoin

The hacker responsible for the $600 million FTX cryptocurrency exchange hack has started trading Ether for Ren Bitcoin (renBTC). Ren Bitcoin is a token that represents Bitcoin on other blockchains. Over the past week, FTX funds were gradually converted to ether, making the exploiter one of the token's largest holders. The trading arm owned by Sam Bankman-Fried and at the center of a multibillion-dollar fraud, Alameda Research, said in 2021 that Ren's development team was "joining" Alameda and would focus on extending Ren's usage to several blockchains. According to blockchain data, the hacker transferred more than 5,000 ether to a new wallet at 7:27 UTC on Sunday. Later, 3 separate transactions totaling 35,000 more ether were made to that wallet. More here. Read details here

Lead Crypto Engineer for Twitter steps down as staff numbers decrease

Tess Rinearson, the company's crypto lead, announced her resignation late on Thursday night by tweeting a salutation and a blue heart emoji. According to her Linkedin and Twitter profiles, Rinearson, whose Twitter account is currently private, is based in Berlin, Germany, and has been employed by Twitter for just over a year. In order to reflect her departure from Twitter, Rinearson has not yet updated her Linkedin profile as of the time of writing. Rinearson posted on Twitter on Friday, "I am very proud of everything the crypto team started at Twitter, and I am sad I won't see it all the way through. However, the company still employs a tonne of smart, considerate individuals, and I always have my fingers crossed for them. Take a look

Ripple looks to Ireland as $1.3 Billion SEC Battle Continues

Ripple is focusing mostly on Europe as it pursues its conflict with the Securities and Exchange Commission outside of the United States. Stuart Alderoty, the lawyer for the blockchain payments company, told CNBC in an interview on Friday that "effectively, Ripple is operating outside of the U.S." and that it now plans to open an office in Ireland. In order to do this, Alderoty stated that Ripple is attempting to obtain a virtual asset service provider (VASP) license from the Irish central bank. This would enable it to use a local organization to "passport" its services across the European Union. Read more here

Coinbase Stock Downgraded by Bank of America to Neutral, COIN Down 7%

The shares of American cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase have been downgraded by Bank of America from buy to neutral, the company announced has announced. The stock’s downgrade caused COIN, the native token of the crypto exchange to tumble by 7%. Coin is currently trading around $45 levels, down 86% from its all-time high of $357.39 set on November 9, 2021. A study by Jason Kupferberg, senior equities research analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch states that Coinbase likely faces a variety of fresh headwinds over the near/medium-term due to the recent bankruptcy of rival crypto exchange FTX. Read details here

Sanctioning of Ethereum Mixer Tornado Cash was "deeply illiberal and profoundly authoritarian: Edward Snowden

A "do or die moment" that many in the cryptocurrency ecosystem "mostly aren't taking seriously enough," says Edward Snowden, came three months after the U.S. government banned the Ethereum mixing tool Tornado Cash. According to a leaked video from earlier this year, Snowden, who exposed the NSA's illegal mass surveillance program over ten years ago and left the country, assisted with the 2016 debut of the privacy coin Zcash. He has been a strong proponent of cryptocurrencies over the last few years, despite the fact that he believes Bitcoin is still insufficiently private. A blockchain technology called Tornado Cash, which was introduced in 2019, enables users to pool and "mix" money to hide the source and final destination of their transactions. Take a look

Solana loses $1 billion in the Tether Chain Swap from USDT to Ethereum

A $1 billion chain swap to move USDT from the Solana blockchain to the Ethereum blockchain has been announced by stablecoin issuer Tether. The announcement comes as Solana, which was among the top 5 cryptocurrencies by market cap only a few weeks ago, is having problems as a result of the failure of cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Solana has lost 25.4% over the past week and is currently ranked 16th by market cap. The price is currently $13.33, which is 95% below the $256 all-time high. Moving cryptocurrencies from one blockchain to another is referred to as a chain swap. When demand for using its stablecoins shifted from one blockchain to another, Tether did this in the past. For instance, in the middle of 2020, over a two-month period, Tether switched $1 billion in USDT from Tron to Ethereum twice. Read more here

Defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX starts a strategic review of global assets

The defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX and 101 of the 130 affiliated companies announced the beginning of a strategic review of their global assets as part of the most recent bankruptcy filing. In order to maximize recoverable value for stakeholders, the review will be conducted. After being discovered stealing user funds, FTX, which was then headed by CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on November 11. The bankruptcy filing aimed to mitigate losses for FTX debtors—parties with ties to FTX and associated businesses. Read details here

Cryptos last week: As FTX Contagion Spreads, Bitcoin Avoids Significant Losses

Crypto investors should anticipate things to get worse before they get better since we are already in week two of the FTX disaster story. The two market leaders, Bitcoin and Ethereum, don't seem to be falling too much though. The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, Bitcoin (BTC), has only decreased 1% over the past week and is currently trading at $16,560 levels. The second-ranked cryptocurrency, Ethereum (ETH), lost about 4% of its value and is currently trading at $1,175 levels. This week, the value of several prominent cryptocurrencies fell by 5% to 10%, including Cardano (ADA), Polygon (MATIC), and the popular dog meme coins Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB).