Coinbase Prime has added Ethereum as a staking option for U.S. domestic institutional clients, offering a new crypto on-ramp for institutions while allowing them to generate yield by staking their ETH.

Cross-chain token bridge Nomad has seen attackers drain virtually all of its funds, leading to a total loss of near $200 million. Nomad, which like other cross-chain bridges, allows users to send and receive tokens between different blockchains, acknowledged the exploit and said an investigation is ongoing.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged 11 people in an alleged $300 million cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme known as Forsage, which raised funds using promoters to convince other investors to recruit others into the scheme.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Coinbase Prime Adds Ethereum Staking for U.S. Institutions
• Cross-chain Bridge Nomad Exploited for $200 Million
• SEC Charges 11 in Alleged $300 Million Crypto Ponzi Scheme
• Chart of the Week: BTC Option Volumes Grouped by Strike Prices

Coinbase Prime Adds Ethereum Staking for U.S. Institutions

Coinbase Prime has added Ethereum as a staking option for U.S. domestic institutional clients, offering a new crypto on-ramp for institutions while allowing them to generate yield by staking their ETH.

The company noted in a blog post that clients can create a wallet,decide how much to stake and initiate staking from the ETH asset page on their Coinbase Prime account. Coinbase Prime also offers staking for other tokens, including Solana, Polkadot, Cosmos, Tezos, and Celo.

Coinbase added that withdrawal keys are held in its cold storage custody vault, which means “staked ETH and accumulated yield are always safe.” On Coinbase, staked ETH is represented through the ticker ETH2, which represents Ethereum after the transition to Proof-of-Stake.

The Ethereum Merge, which will move the network into Proof-of-Stake, describes the network’s current mainnet merging with the Beacon Chain’s PoS system, setting the stage for future scaling upgrades, including sharding, is expected to occur later this year.

Cross-chain Bridge Nomad Exploited for $200 Million

Cross-chain token bridge Nomad has seen attackers drain virtually all of its funds, leading to a total loss near $200 million. Nomad, which like other cross-chain bridges, allows users to send and receive tokens between different blockchains, acknowledged the exploit and said an investigation is ongoing.

The team was quoted saying:

"We have notified law enforcement and are working around the clock to address the situation and provide timely updates. Our goal is to identify the accounts involved and to trace and recover the funds."

According to a researcher at crypto investment firm Paradigm, a recent update to one of Nomad’s smart contracts made it easy for users to spoof transactions, meaning they were allowed to withdraw money from the Nomad bridge that did not belong to them.

While behind most exploits there’s one attacker, the Nomad exploit saw various users spoof transactions, as all one had to do was “ find a transaction that worked, find/replace the other person's address with yours, and then re-broadcast it.”

SEC Charges 11 in Alleged $300 Million Crypto Ponzi Scheme

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged 11 people in an alleged $300 million cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme known as Forsage, which raised funds using promoters to convince other investors to recruit others into the scheme.

Carolyn Welshhans, acting chief of the SEC’s crypto assets and cyber unit, said:

“Forsage is a fraudulent pyramid scheme launched on a massive scale and aggressively marketed to investors. Fraudsters cannot circumvent the federal securities laws by focusing their schemes on smart contracts and blockchains.”

The SEC accused Forsage’s operators of raising $300 million from at least January 2020 in an unregistered securities offering.

Chart of the Week: BTC Option Volumes Grouped by Strike Prices

In this week’s Chart of the Week we look at the options data for Bitcoin in the Deribit Exchange using our data. The volume of strike prices above $24,000 per BTC started to grow in mid-July, indicating a bullish stance from traders.

On the other hand, the volume of strike prices below $20,000 per BTC was more prevailing earlier this month, signaling the bearish nature of the market.

State of the Crypto by Top Tier Exchange Volume

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