Crypto Market Overview October 13th | Dex-Trade
Sam Bankman-Fried Named a Possible Reason for Crypto Merging with Traditional Finance
In a recent interview with the Unchained Podcast, FTX CEO and Founder Sam Bankman-Fried talked about how the speed and ease of cross-border financial transactions using crypto could one day cause the digital asset sector to integrate with the world of traditional finance: “Starting from that position, well, then what happens when markets get volatile? The answer is that risk just overwhelms the system. How do you fix that? You fix that with clean, clear, unambiguous settlements that are fast and cheap. And that’s what blockchain does. That’s its core, most-obvious use case.” According to the businessman, it is this quality that will allow in the future to increase the "cooperation" of traditional financial markets with the cryptocurrency market until the moment when they are integrated and will be a single system. Moreover, Bankman-Fried argues that this scenario concerns the "not too distant future." The FTX chief executive also hinted that this is the reason why the cryptocurrency exchange has been working to expand its presence in traditional financial systems. Bankman-Fried is convinced that the relatively young crypto industry already has something to offer the classic financial sector. It's only a matter of accepting innovation, but that's more about timing than coincidence.
Elizabeth Warren “Encroached” on Texas Miners
Democratic US Senator Elizabeth Warren released a letter signed by seven other members of the government demanding data on the finances and energy costs of crypto miners operating in Texas. The letter is addressed to Pablo Vegas, CEO of the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which is responsible for operating Texas' independent power grid. Specifically, the letter asks for information on the impact of cryptocurrency mining on climate change, carbon emissions, and the stability of the Texas power grid. The request also involves obtaining information about subsidies that ERCOT could provide to miners. The Texas Power Reliability Board has been known to offer cutback agreements to digital money miners, under which the organization pays companies to reduce their electricity consumption during peak hours. For example, the Riot Blockchain miner earned $9.5 million in subsidies in July 2022, and only $5.6 million in mining. In addition to Warren, the letter was also signed by Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Edward J. Markey, Congressmen Kathy Porter, Jared Huffman, Al Green and Rashida Tlaib. All of these are members of the US Democratic Party. Paradoxically, but it’s the Democrats who are more willing to tighten the regulation of the crypto industry, which often harms the reputation of politicians.
"Black October" Is a Record Month for the Number of Hacker Attacks in 2022
In less than half of October, there were 11 major attacks by hackers, and the amount of funds stolen by them reached $718 million, which is a record for 2022, according to fresh data from blockchain analysts at Chainalysis. As the company’s specialists say, if such intensity of attacks continues until the end of October, then the month will break the record for the activity of cybercriminals in the entire history of the cryptocurrency industry. Last year, hackers stole more than $3 billion from 125 system breaches. But this year is likely to eclipse that statistic. First of all, because cross-chain bridges are still extremely insecure for investors: they accounted for 82% of successful hacker attacks in October and more than half for the entire year. Three bridges have already been hacked since the beginning of this month, including a high-profile attack on Binance BNB that led to the loss of $100 million. Other major exploits this month include the Solana-based Mango Markets hack, which led to the theft of $100 million. As a result, Binance and Solana became the leading networks in hacking activity this month, which is also confirmed by data from The Block Research (BR ). By the way, BR analysts confirm Chainalysis’s forecast that this year the number of stolen crypto-assets could become a record in the history of the market.
