Daily Digest - 3 February 2023

Headlines

▌Some Genesis claims were sold at 25% to 35% of face value

Xclaim’s chief strategy officer, Andrew Glantz, said that after Genesis filed for bankruptcy, three claims transactions have been confirmed, with an average value of more than $1 million, between 25% and 35% of the face value. A $4 million claim was sold to Jefferies Leveraged Credit Products LLC, according to a filing Tuesday. It is reported that Xclaim is a platform that focuses on providing trading encrypted claims. In previous news, on January 20, Genesis and its lending subsidiary filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Policies

▌Bank of New York Mellon Appoints Caroline Butler as CEO of Digital Assets

Bank of New York Mellon (BK) announced on Thursday that it has appointed Caroline Butler as CEO of Digital Assets. Butler joined BNY Mellon in 2020 and most recently served as CEO of Custody Services, where she led the development of the bank's integrated digital custody and management platform for traditional and digital assets. Launched in October 2022, the platform will allow fund managers to store the keys needed to access and move their bitcoin (BTC) and ethereum (ETH) as well as other traditional bookkeeping functions. In her new role, Butler will continue to manage the digital asset custody platform and oversee any digital asset business initiatives company-wide.

Cryptocurrency

▌MicroStrategy announced its 2022 Q4 financial report: a net loss of 250 million US dollars, and the total Bitcoin holdings increased to 132,500

According to its latest earnings report, MicroStrategy took an impairment charge of $197.6 million on bitcoin holdings in the fourth quarter, up from $727,000 in the third quarter. The company's digital asset impairment reflects the decline in the price of bitcoin relative to the bitcoin acquisition price. Under standard accounting rules, the value of digital assets such as cryptocurrencies must be recorded at cost and then adjusted only if their value is impaired or falls.

▌Orion Protocol loses $3 million in cryptocurrency due to cyber attack

Cryptocurrency exchange Orion Protocol will suspend operations on Thursday after an attacker drained millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency, according to cybersecurity firm Peckshield. According to PeckShield, Orion was the victim of a "reentrancy" attack in which an attacker repeatedly withdraws funds from a smart contract. Gal Sagie, CEO of cybersecurity firm Hypernative, said the attackers deployed a token called ATK to manipulate the Orion mining pool. “The protocol is being paused. Now that the team has identified the root cause, they are now fixing the bug,” Peckshield said. According to initial estimates from on-chain sleuths, Orion’s ethereum implementation is worth $2.8 million and its BSC loss is $200,000. Shortly after the incident, a wallet identified as the attacker began transferring ether through the privacy mixer Tornado Cash. In Orion's Telegram channel, chief marketing officer Andrew Kirk told users the protocol was investigating reports of the issue. The price of Orion's native token, ORN, was little changed after the apparent attack, rising nearly 14 percent to $1.03 in the past 24 hours.

▌Binance CZ says stablecoin regulation would boost adoption

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) said that stablecoin regulation could help accelerate its adoption, according to a Feb. 1 Twitter thread. CZ pointed out that stablecoins are under strong regulatory focus and their regulation would “bring much-needed certainty to issuers, users, and service providers.” Stablecoins have faced increased scrutiny over the past year following the collapse of Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin UST. Financial regulators have highlighted the dangers the asset class poses to the broader financial system and have increased their regulatory efforts around the space. CZ noted that we are already seeing the benefits and use cases of stablecoins in “cross-border payments, hedging against inflation, and even aid disbursement.”