Though crypto’s 2022 inflows were the lowest since 2018, numbers show that payment growth using digital assets did not slow down.
Mt. Gox Creditors to Wait for A Little Longer
As reported in ProBit Bits Vol 20, the Rehabilitation Trustee in the Mt. Gox case presented September 15, 2022 as the start date for the assignment of rehabilitation claims to creditors. But that hasn’t happened, and the latest development indicates that it is not likely to be carried out soon. The deadline for creditors to select their repayment method and register payee information which was earlier scheduled for January 10, 2023 has been changed.
With the court’s permission, the Trustee has changed the deadline to March 10, 2023 , citing various circumstances such as the progress by rehabilitation creditors in respect of the Selection and Registration. They also changed the Base Repayment Deadline for early lump-sum and intermediate creditors from July 31 to September 30.
Creditors have waited for more than eight years to have their claims (about 141,686 BTC) repaid.
Last Week Was Bitcoin’s 14th Birthday
Bitcoin marked its 14th birthday last week. The first block of the top cryptocurrency known as the ‘Genesis Block’ was mined on 3 January 2009, though the Bitcoin whitepaper was first released three months earlier. It took a while for the coins to have a market price. A transaction in October 2009 shows 5,050 Bitcoins being sold for $5.02 (∼each one with a price of roughly $0.00099).
Unlike today, the genesis block was almost certainly mined by a computer using its central processing unit (CPU) and there was a 6-day delay between the first and the second blocks instead of 10 minutes. According to a January 2008 tweet, it seems Hal Finney was the first person to receive Bitcoin on the network.
Hong Kong Proposes Making HKD a Stablecoin
Amember of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, Ng Kit Chuang, has disclosed that Hong Kong is considering developing its dollar into a stablecoin as it seeks to experiment with a virtual asset rating agency.
In an interview, Ng suggests that the proposed rating agency, the HKD stablecoin option, and the regulation of hacking and currency theft are aimed at gaining investors’ trust in the Web3 industry.
Hong Kong wants Web3 enterprises to tap into its open financial and legal systems and use the special administrative region of China as their headquarters, from where they expand to other parts of the world.
Despite Bear Market, Crypto Payments Growth Not Slowing Down
Regardless of the picture painted by the bear market, people are still spending cryptocurrencies like there’s no tomorrow, states cryptocurrency payment processor, Coingate. It noted that a total of 927,294 payments were collected by merchants powered by the service in 2022, approximately 2.7 times more than the yearly average and an increase of 63% from 2021).
It results in the merchants’ turnover in 2022 increasing by 60% as against 2021 when the crypto market peaked. VPN, VPS, and hosting service providers had the most payments, and Bitcoin accounted for nearly half or 48% of all transactions (though 7.6% less than in 2021) followed by USDT (14.8%), Ethereum (10.9%), Litecoin (9.6%) and TRON (5.8%).
Crypto’s 2022 Inflows Lowest Since 2018
The bear market had a toll on the inflows of digital assets in 2022, according to a CoinShares report last week. A meager US$433m flowed into the market throughout the whole year making it the lowest since 2018 when there were inflows of only US$233m — mid-year outflows in early 2018 reached total weekly outflows of 1.8% at some point as against only 0.7% of AuM in 2022.
While 2022’s inflows were significantly lower than 2021’s US$9.1bn and US$6.6bn in 2020, Europe’s largest digital asset investment and trading group shares that it is encouraging to see investors add positions during price weakness considering that Bitcoin prices fell by 63% in a prolonged state of a bear market.
Ethereum Core Devs Hold First Call in 2023
Last week was the first Ethereum All Core Developers Execution (ACDE) call (#152) for 2023 as they resume reflecting their focus on changes to the execution layer of Ethereum. Sequence to discussions in call #151 when developers agreed to include five Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) related to EOF implementation, they agreed to remove code changes related to EOF implementation from the Shanghai upgrade. They also agreed to reject any additional EIPs from Shanghai in place of the EOF EIPs so as not to delay the timeline for staked ETH withdrawals. EOF implementation is a major code change targeting the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) known as the “heart” of Ethereum.
US Attorney’s Office Wants SBF SBF Fraud Victims to Reach Out
With the eight-count indictment charge against Samuel Bankman-Fried (SBF) now unsealed, the United States Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York last week started seeking those who believe to “have been a victim of fraud” to SBF to reach out. The Office offers an email address ([email protected]) through which likely victims can verify their claim in the case.
According to reports, SBF defrauded FTX.com customers, investors, and Alameda Research lenders. He has been charged with wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and conspiracy to defraud the United States and violate campaign finance laws.
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