The Crypto Roundup: 10 June 2024

Latest price and news from the crypto space

Latest price from our hand picked list of digital assets

Blockchain surveillance firm CipherTrace has announced it developed the “world’s first Monero (XMR) tracing tool," to be used by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in order to track illicit XMR transactions.

Holders of the Maker (MKR) token have voted to prioritize adding Gemini’s stablecoin GUSD and Binance USD, as well as several other tokens, as collateral assets to the MakerDAO protocol, so the tokens can be used to generate DAI.

Cryptocurrency mining hardware manufacturer Canaan has seen its Q2 losses drop to $2.38 million, or 10 cents a share, from the $5.64 million, or 24 cents a share, the firm lost in the first quarter of this year.

Sponsored: Crypto.com Exchange is listing OMG on The Syndicate, where all Crypto.com Coin (CRO) stakers will be able to participate in a discounted sale event for 500,000 USD worth of OMG at 50% off. The event commenced on Tuesday, 1 September 6:00am UTC on the Crypto.com Exchange.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

CipherTrace Builds Monero-Tracing Tool for US DHS
MakerDAO Weighs Adding GUSD and BUSD as Collateral for DAI
Crypto Miner Maker Canaan Sees 160% Revenue Increase om Q2
Sponsored:Crypto.com Exchange is listing OMG at 50% OFF

At the time of writing, bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $11,892.90 (2.65%) with a daily Top Tier volume of $3.60 bn. As for ether (ETH), it is trading at $460.47 (9.52%) with a daily Top Tier volume of $3.59 bn. The MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 10 Index is currently tracking at 4,822.30 (3.37%).

CipherTrace Builds Monero-Tracing Tool for US DHS

Blockchain surveillance firm CipherTrace has announced it developed the “world’s first Monero (XMR) tracing tool, to be used by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in order to track illicit XMR transactions.

Monero is a privacy-centric open-source cryptocurrency created in 2014. It uses enforced privacy for all transactions leveraging concepts like ring signatures, bulletproofs, and one-time addresses. Due to its enhancements, it has been used on darknet markets for being untraceable.

CipherTrace claims it now has software capable of tracing and visualizing Monero transaction flows. In a press release, the firm wrote:

“These tools include transaction search, exploration, and visualization tools for Monero transaction flows that have been integrated with CipherTrace’s Inspector financial investigations product. This provides ways to track stolen Monero currencies or Monero currencies used in illegal transactions.”

In the document, the firm claims XMR represented 45% of all darknet market transactions and called it the “second-favorite cryptocurrency of choice among criminals.” The press release did not detail how CipherTrace can track XMR transactions, and as such has been met with skepticism.

Justin Ehrenhofer, on social media, claimed he believes it is “extremely unlikely that Ciphertrace can trace Monero to the remote extent that they can trace any other coin. Seth Simmons, an information security engineer and XMR proponent, added: “The most likely answer is they’re using methods developed *by the Monero community to improve Monero* to de-anonymize some specific transactions with external data.”

MakerDAO Weighs Adding GUSD and BUSD as Collateral for DAI

Maker “Domains Teams,” which are made up of elected community members, will now analyze these tokens to determine whether or not the protocol can use them as collateral before the community makes a final vote to either accept or reject them.

GUSD and BUSD are two stablecoins approved and regulated by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Other cryptocurrencies community members approved to be analyzed include: TrueAUD, TrueCAD, Ren, Huobi Global BTC, UniswapV2 USDC-ETH Liquidity Token, New Silver DROP, and Harbor Trade Credit DROP.

These tokens now have to be reviewed by the domain teams in “areas such as risk, oracles, and smart contracts to ensure the protocol can handle them in a secure manner.” When MakerDAO launched only ether could be used as collateral, but with the launch of multi-collateral DAI other tokens started being used, including BAT, WBTC, TUSD, KNC, ZRX, and USDC.

Crypto Miner Maker Canaan Sees 160% Revenue Increase om Q2

Canaan’s revenue rose more than 160% in the second quarter to $25.2 million, and its expenses in the second quarter were mostly general and administrative, accounting for $4.19 million, or 48% of the company’s $8.8 million operating expenses in the quarter.

Shares of the company, currently worth $314 million, jumped nearly 15% after it announced its Q2 results. The company also revealed it had cash and cash equivalents worth $22.2 million, down from $37.3 million at the end of Q1. Canaan cited short-term investments for the lower cash on hand.

The China-based firm has been trading on Nasdaq since November 2019. Since its shares have been listed they dropped nearly 85%.

USDC Serves as Major Onramp for DeFi Users

The USDC stablecoin has now been added to the Flipside Data Cooperate, meaning on-chain data is now publicly accessible. The above gif is a preview of USDC net asst flows between August 12 and 19.

Newly minted USDC tokens go straight to Coinbase, and users then moved the funds to decentralized exchanges and DeFi platforms. The tokens are moved to Coinbase as the exchange is part of the Centre Consortium, which manages and backs the stablecoin.

USDC is notably more present on decentralized exchanges and applications than Tether’s USDT. It’s especially attractive for businesses and financial institutions looking to integrate blockchain technology, as Circle provides platform services and APIs that make it easier to do so.

Curve Finance users farming yield have turned to USDC to farm the platform’s CRV governance token, which rewards users who provide liquidity to the Curve pools. Curve is a decentralized exchange for stable pairs, meaning users bought USDC to participate in Curve.

Accordingly, its on-chain data reveals a spike in activity on August 14, when Curve’s governance token CRV was launched. The launch helped Curve become one of the largest DeFi apps, with over $1 billion in crypto locked in it.

The recent launch of USDC 2.0, which will allow services that offer the token to pay transaction fees for their user, is likely to help boost DeFi activity as it brings the user experience closer to resembling existing mobile payment apps, where customers can send and receive USDC payments on a peer-to-peer basis solely using USDC.

Crypto.com Exchange is listing OMG at 50% OFF

Crypto.com Exchange is listing OMG on The Syndicate, where all Crypto.com Coin (CRO) stakers will be able to participate in a discounted sale event for 500,000 USD worth of OMG at 50% off. The event commenced on Tuesday, 1 September 6:00am UTC on the Crypto.com Exchange.

Allocation:

Each participant’s maximum amount of CRO that can be applied towards the listing event will depend on the amount of CRO staked on the Crypto.com Exchange.

Subscription:

Participants will be able to subscribe for OMG by contributing an amount of CRO tokens not exceeding their respective maximum allocation. Staked CRO tokens may not be used to subscribe for OMG in this event.
Participants will need to trade the minimum volume required at their CRO staked level in the past 30 days in order to be eligible to subscribe.
The past 30-day trading volume is calculated daily at 00:50:00 UTC. For more information regarding exact cutoff times, refer to our FAQ here.

NOTE: The trading volume can take up to 1 hour to calculate at most. To avoid any delays, we advise you to satisfy the trading requirement well in advance of the subscription timelines.

Event Timeline:

1 Sept 6:00am UTC: Sales Begins (OMG/CRO subscription price fixed)
2 Sept 6:00am UTC: Sales Ends
3 Sept 6:00am UTC: Acceptance Period Begins (unused CRO will be refunded immediately if you reject the allocation)
4 Sept 6:00am UTC: Acceptance Period Ends (CRO refunds will be distributed for forfeited participants)