Popular cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has announced it will suspend trading in XRP globally next month, nearly a week after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Ripple claiming the token is an unregistered security.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) insurance project Cover Protocol was hacked on Monday, December 28, in an infinite printing scheme that saw the price of its COVER token plunge over 90% in a few hours. A “white hat hacker” claimed responsibility for it and returned the stolen funds.

Leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance has launched “European-style” Vanilla Bitcoin options contracts settled in Tether (USDT) geared for institutional and advanced investors.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Coinbase to Halt XRP Trading Following SEC Lawsuit Against Ripple
• Cover Protocol Attacker Returns Stolen Funds
• Binance Launches European-Style Options Contracts
• BNB, DOT, ADA Are Moving in the Crypto Market

Coinbase to Halt XRP Trading Following SEC Lawsuit Against Ripple

Popular cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has announced it will suspend trading in XRP globally next month, nearly a week after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Ripple claiming the token is an unregistered security.

Coinbase first listed XRP on its retail-facing platform in February last year, and will now move XRP trading to “limit only.” Paul Grewal, Coinbase’s chief legal officer, wrote:

“We will continue to monitor legal developments related to XRP and update our customers as more information becomes available.”.

Users’ XRP wallets, Coinbase said, will “remain available for receive and withdraw functionality after the trading suspension.” The price of XRP is down over 20% in the last 24-hour period, in which OKCoin also revealed it was halting XRP trading.

Cover Protocol Attacker Returns Stolen Funds

Decentralized finance (DeFi) insurance project Cover Protocol was hacked on Monday, December 28, in an infinite printing scheme that saw the price of its COVER token plunge over 90% in a few hours. A “white hat hacker” claimed responsibility for it and returned the stolen funds.

The attack saw a hacker create 40 quintillion COVER tokens and sell $5 million worth of them, while also cashing out over $4 million worth of cryptoassets including 1,400 ETH, 90 wBTC, and about one million DAI.

On Twitter, a user going by Grap.Finance claimed responsibility for the attack. The hacker reportedly tricked the protocol into minting new tokens as rewards by exploiting a bug in the smart contract. Sorawit Suriyakarn, chief technology officer at Band Protocol, said the exploit was new and has not been spotted in other attacks.

Cover Protocol announced on Twitter the attacker returned 4,350 ETH and is exploring launching a new token through a snapshot taken “before the minting exploit was abused.”

Binance Launches European-Style Options Contracts

Leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance has launched “European-style” Vanilla Bitcoin options contracts settled in Tether (USDT) geared for institutional and advanced investors.

The trading platform announced its latest addition through a press release that detailed Binance completed a testnet trial of the new BTC options contracts last month, after gathering public feedback.

Options are derivatives contracts that give the holder the right but not the obligation to buy or sell an underlying asset at a predetermined price in a set timeframe. While American-style options contracts were already live on Binance, European-style options contracts do not allow traders to purchase the underlying BTC at any point, right up until the contract expires.

European-style contracts are referred to as “vanilla” because they are simpler options contracts. Trader issues these options themselves, which means traders set their own rules on the contract. Binance said it launched the options to encourage investment from institutional investors.

BNB, DOT, ADA Are Moving in the Crypto Market

Several tokens are leading the charge in the last 24-hour period. Some of these are well-known cryptocurrencies with rather liquid trading pairs, so we’ll be focusing on these over low-cap cryptos that may have higher percentage changes.

Binance Coin (BNB) – BNB is the cryptocurrency that powers the Binance ecosystem and is the native asset of the Binance Chain. It’s used to pay for fees on the Binance DEX, get discounts on Binance, and powers the Binance Smart Chain, which is an EVM-compatible network, forked from “go-ethereum.” BNB is up 29.1% in the last 24 hours.

Polkadot (DOT) - Polkadot enables cross-blockchain transfers of any type of data or asset, not just tokens. Connecting to Polkadot gives users the ability to interoperate with a wide variety of blockchains in the Polkadot network. DOT is p 27.49% in the last 24 hours.

Cardano (ADA) - Designed and developed by IOHK in conjunction with the University of Edinburgh, the University of Athens and the University of Connecticut, Cardano SL (or Cardano Settlement Layer) is the world’s first peer-reviewed Proof of Stake cryptocurrency. Its token Ada is up 10.7% in the last 24 hours.

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