DeFi faces stress test, DoJ fears run on Binance, Hong Kong’s crypto trading: Hodler’s Digest, July 30 – Aug. 5

Published

2 years ago

August 5, 2023

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US DoJ is concerned about a run on Binance should prosecutors bring fraud charges

The United States Department of Justice is reportedly considering charging cryptocurrency exchange Binance with fraud, but hesitating based on costs to consumers. According to people familiar with the matter, Justice Department officials are concerned about an indictment against Binance causing a run similar to what happened with FTX in November 2022. The officials are considering fines or non-prosecution agreements for Binance rather than criminal charges in an effort to reduce the harm to consumers. Binance has been targeted by a criminal probe in the U.S. for allegedly violating the country’s sanctions on Russia and has also faced lawsuits from U.S. regulators.

Hong Kong debuts retail crypto trading with HashKey and OSL

Digital asset firm HashKey has successfully obtained all necessary licensing to broaden its business from serving professional investors to taking on retail users, as Hong Kong expands its cryptocurrency trading to individual investors. The first license, Type 1, allows HashKey to operate a virtual asset trading platform under Hong Kong’s securities laws. The second one, Type 7, officially enables the firm to provide automated trading services to both institutional and retail users. OSL, another local crypto firm, received an upgrade to its existing license from Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission, allowing it to offer Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) trading to retail investors immediately.

Coinbase denies SEC told it to delist everything but Bitcoin

Coinbase has denied reports claiming that its CEO, Brian Armstrong, was once told by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to delist all cryptocurrencies on its platform except for Bitcoin. In an interview with the Financial Times, Armstrong reportedly stated that the SEC wanted Coinbase to delist the nearly 250 tokens on its platform. According to a Coinbase spokesperson, however, the report is missing context and the SEC didn’t request Coinbase to delist any specific assets. SEC Chair Gary Gensler has previously claimed that “everything other than Bitcoin” is a security under the agency’s remit.

Ethereum’s 8th birthday: Crypto industry shares its top moments

The crypto community has come together to celebrate the birthday of the Ethereum network, marking eight years since the Ethereum Foundation first sent the network live.

On July 30, 2015, former Ethereum Foundation CCO Stephan Tual penned a blog post, officially announcing that the network had been rolled out. “The vision of a censorship-proof ‘world computer’ that anyone can program, paying exclusively for what they use and nothing more, is now a reality,” he wrote. Eight years later, Ethereum and its native currency, Ether (ETH), has grown to become the second-largest crypto asset in existence, boasting a market capitalization of $225 billion and more than 1,900 monthly active developers.

Winners and Losers

At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $28,985, Ether (ETH) at $1,823 and XRP at $0.63. The total market cap is at $1.16 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap.

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Helium (HNT) at 39.79%, XDC Network (XDC) at 20.11% and Bone ShibaSwap (BONE) at 18.04%.

The top three altcoin losers of the week are Compound (COMP) at -18.41%, Curve DAO Token (CRV) at -15.86% and Stellar (XLM) at -14.36%.

For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.

Most Memorable Quotations

“The digital asset products and services that TASE is exploring will no doubt play foundational roles in the future of Israel’s economy.”

Michael Shaulov, CEO of Fireblocks

“Spot [Bitcoin] ETFs will serve another set of customers in a synergistic fashion to grow the entire asset class.”

Michael Saylor, CEO of Microstrategy

“Generative AI has enormous economic potential and could boost global labor productivity by more than 1 percentage point a year in the decade following widespread usage.”

Goldman Sachs

“I personally have not seen any audit reports of USDT. I don’t think most people I spoke to have not seen that either. So it’s kind of a black box because we just don’t know.”

Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, CEO of Binance

“As president, on day one, CBDC goes into the trash can — we’re not going to allow it.”

Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida

“The most important thing that happened this year in Bitcoin is Larry Fink.”

Mike Novogratz, CEO of Galaxy Digital

Prediction of the Week

BTC price upside ‘yet to come’ at $29K after Bitcoin RSI reset — Trader

Bitcoin has not yet seen the majority of its gains this cycle, popular traders believe. After over a month of acting within a tight trading range, traders’ patience with Bitcoin is wearing thin, but amid expectations that BTC price will test levels closer to $25,000 or even lower, pseudonymous analyst Credible Crypto is one of those arguing the opposite.

Analyzing data, including Bitcoin market cap dominance and its relative strength index (RSI), he concluded that conditions had been reset. “Biggest upside moves on BTC are YET TO COME,” he summarized, before adding that:

“A month of sideways action on BTC and dominance has simply made a higher low. H12 bullish div confirmed, RSI on higher TF looks reset, maintaining above the ‘magic’ 40 RSI level, who’s ready for the next leg up?”

Continuing, fellow pseudonymous trader CryptoCon flagged RSI over longer timeframes to deliver a similarly bullish take on BTC price performance:

“I see price going sideways, and I’ve never been more bullish! Just wait until we break into phase 2 on the 3 Week RSI… Early bull market price action, period.”

FUD of the Week

Is SBF secretly behind BALD? Crypto Twitter debates latest conspiracy

Crypto Twitter has been abuzz with debate after a new conspiracy theory has suggested FTX founder Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried may be secretly behind one of the most controversial new memecoins on Base. The Bald memecoin was launched on July 30 and witnessed an incredible 289,000% gain within the first 24 hours of trading. After the token’s anonymous developer removed thousands of ETH in liquidity, the price of Bald plummeted more than 85% — sparking allegations of a rug pull, which the developer has denied. The incident led a number of blockchain sleuths to dig into the developer’s on-chain past, prompting some to draw a link to SBF as the Ethereum wallet address responsible for deploying the Bald token, which had received thousands of ETH in funding from wallets associated with FTX and Alameda Research.

Individual charged with money laundering admits to hacking Bitfinex in 2016

Ilya Lichtenstein admitted to a U.S. court that he was the individual behind an exploit of cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex in 2016 which resulted in the theft of roughly 119,754 Bitcoin. Lichtenstein spoke as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors, who charged him and his wife Heather Morgan with money laundering conspiracy and conspiracy to defraud the United States. The couple allegedly laundered more than 94,643 BTC from the Bitfinex hack — worth roughly $54 million at the time.

Users said CertiK’s warning was a false alarm — then the project rugged

Blockchain security firm Certik tried, in 2022, to warn users of an imminent rug pull surrounding a crypto project, but investors became angry and fired back. The firm rescinded the security alert. Then, the project pulled the plug. This is the story behind the Web3 gaming project “Crypto Cars.” At the time, the project’s native token was rapidly falling in price, its website was temporarily down, and its developers said that it would no longer respond on its Telegram due to the Lunar New Year holiday celebrated in Vietnam. The situation triggered Certik’s alert, but when Cointelegraph attempted to follow up with the project on Aug. 1, 2023, it had long ago shut its doors.

Best Cointelegraph Features

Deposit risk: What do crypto exchanges really do with your money?

While depositing may be easy, what some crypto exchanges do with your money behind the scenes can range from concerning to criminal.

Facebook’s parent company lost over $40 billion in metaverse, text-based Discord RPG uses AI and NFTs, Web3 gets new eSports platform, and more.

Girl Gone Crypto thinks ‘BREAKING’ crypto news tweets are boring: Hall of Flame

Girl Gone Crypto has had a wild ride in the crypto industry, going from posting videos playing her ukulele to getting invited to speak at crypto conferences all over the world.

Editorial Staff

Cointelegraph Magazine writers and reporters contributed to this article.

Politics

Liz Truss calls for Trump-style ‘revolution’ in the UK after blaming Bank of England for her downfall

Published

5 hours ago

September 3, 2025

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Liz Truss calls for Trump-style 'revolution' in the UK after blaming Bank of England for her downfall

Liz Truss has defended her record as prime minister and called for “institutional change” in Britain in the same way she claims Donald Trump delivered “revolution in the US”.

The former Conservative leader has spoken to Sky’s Wilfred Frost on his The Master Investor Podcast nearly three years after she resigned as prime minister – 44 days after taking over from Boris Johnson.

Politics Hub: Follow live updates

Her downfall began when she and her then chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng unleashed £45bn of unfunded tax cuts on the markets in a mini-budget which sparked weeks of economic turmoil in 2022.

However, Ms Truss has now told Frost the fault for what happened during her premiership lay with the Bank of England (BoE) as she “wasn’t captain of the ship”.

She said: “The last time I looked, it’s the prime minister who is the democratically accountable person that runs the country, not the Bank of England… The Bank of England’s role is to work with the government to ensure financial stability, and they weren’t doing that. They were pursuing their own agenda.”

Ms Truss, the UK’s shortest-serving prime minister in history, added: “The fact is I wasn’t captain of the ship because I wasn’t running monetary policy. The Bank of England were running monetary policy. I’m very happy to take responsibility for things, provided I have the full ability to actually control them. I didn’t have the ability to control them.”

The former prime minister also accused the BoE and Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) of briefing against her after the mini-budget.

She added: “My mistake, if you want to put it like that was underestimating the sheer malevolence of the economic blob in Britain.”

‘We’ve lost our way’

Ms Truss also said there is “economic stagnation” and poor public services in the UK and this is at least party due to the “failures” of the BoE and the OBR as “institutions”.

She continued: “There’s no doubt we’ve lost our way. But I think what is happening now in Britain is the people are now realising how bad the situation is. And I think there is going be massive pressure… for institutional change in this country, and that is what we need, in a similar way to Trump delivering the revolution in the US.

“That is what we need. And I think that will happen.”

Read more politics news:
Mee the ‘eco-populist’ Green Party leader
What is the UK-France migrant returns deal?

Ms Truss later said she believes the UK is heading for “calamity” under Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and claimed the economy is in a worse state now than when she was in office.

She said she sees Sir Keir and Chancellor Rachel Reeves as part of the “economic orthodoxy” and added: “That has ruined this country, and we are heading for a calamity because of that.”

Ms Truss also said she doesn’t expect the Conservatives to win the next election and this will be partly due to a failure to take on the “leftist establishment”.

“So I don’t think (Tory leader Kemi Badenoch) is going to be prime minister at this stage,” she added.

Asked by Frost whether she will ever return to frontline politics, Ms Truss said: “I never rule anything out… what I’ve always been obsessed with is I want Britain to be a great nation again, and I’m depressed about how far we’ve sunk. The dire state of our economy is in the deindustrialisation. The fact that we don’t make things the same way we used to.”

The full conversation also includes an extensive debate about the mini-budget. Liz Truss was speaking on The Master Investor Podcast with Wilfred Frost, available to watch here and listen here.

Politics

US regulators clarify rules for spot crypto trading

Published

14 hours ago

September 2, 2025

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US regulators clarify rules for spot crypto trading

In a joint statement, the SEC and CFTC said existing law does not block regulated exchanges from listing spot crypto products.

Politics

New Green leader reveals he spoke to Jeremy Corbyn – and doesn’t rule out pact

Published

15 hours ago

September 2, 2025

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New Green leader reveals he spoke to Jeremy Corbyn - and doesn't rule out pact

The new leader of the Green Party has revealed he spoke to Jeremy Corbyn this week amid suggestions there could be a pact between their two parties.

Zack Polanski, who comfortably beat his rivals Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns to win the Green Party’s leadership election, told the Politics Hub with Sophy Ridge that he spoke to the former Labour leader on Monday.

There have been suggestions that the Greens could join forces with Mr Corbyn’s new party – which does not yet have a formal name – to avoid splitting the vote on the left.

Politics latest: Reeves’ authority not dented by reshuffle, No 10 says

The question of a future potential pact with Mr Corbyn and his co-leader, the independent MP Zarah Sultana, became an issue in the Green Party’s leadership election, with Mr Polanski more keen on the idea than his co-leadership rivals.

Mr Polanski, who secured 20,411 votes – comfortably beating the 3,705 votes cast for the joint leadership bid of Mr Ramsay and Dr Chowns – praised Mr Corbyn for holding his own inquiry into the government’s conduct in Gaza, which will begin later this week.

The former Labour leader had tabled a private members’ bill calling for an independent public inquiry into the UK’s involvement in Israeli military operations in Gaza, but it did not progress in the House of Commons.

Speaking to the Politics Hub with Sophy Ridge, Mr Polanski said: “I spoke to him [Mr Corbyn] briefly yesterday.”

He said Mr Corbyn’s inquiry was “the exact kind of example where even if someone is from a different party, but I’m absolutely aligned with what they’re doing, then I’ll always call out what I think is good for this country and good for our global politics”.

My Corbyn congratulated Mr Polanski for his “stunning victory” after the results were announced, and added: “Your campaign took on the rich and powerful, stood up for the dignity of all marginalised communities, and gave people hope! Real change is coming. I look forward to working with you to create a fairer, kinder world.”

Mr Polanski, who is currently serving as deputy leader, won the election on a platform of “eco-populism”, which he says will make the Greens a real alternative to Labour and Reform UK.

The London Assembly member, who is not an MP, will now become the party’s only leader, after Bristol MP Carla Denyer stepped down from her joint role with Mr Ramsay, triggering the contest.

While Mr Polanski has strongly criticised the policies of Nigel Farage, he has acknowledged his cut-through with voters, and has argued that the Green Party needs to offer a bolder message to voters, in the guise of wealth taxes and net zero policies.

The new Green leader also weighed into the debate about flying the St George’s Cross, after the prime minister Sir Keir Starmer said he had one in his office – while also cautioning against the flag being used as a political statement.

Asked what he thought of the St George’s Cross, Mr Polanski said: “I think that migration is at the heart of this country. Migrants contribute a huge amount. That’s not a new thing – that has been traditionally throughout our history and that the English flag means different things to different people.

“And I think if people want to wave it because they’re being patriotic, particularly at football tournaments, I think there’s a huge space for patriotism in this country.

“But I’m also aware that for lots of people who have arrived in this country or people who aren’t even migrants, to be frank, Black and Asian communities, the flag can mean very different things around colonialism and empire. And that’s the thing about flags. It means different things to different people.”

He said he believed the idea of flying the English flag outside homes not in the context of sport was “quite imported from America”.

“If people want to do that then I think that’s up to people what they want to do.

“But I think at times of heightened tensions, I would say patriotism is actually about loving your neighbour, whether they’re from this country or not.”