Bitcoin’s hashrate has recovered from a temporary drop it saw over the past week over freezing temperatures in the United States, which put a strain on the country’s electricity grid and saw BTC miners in Texas voluntarily curtail operations.

Decentralized finance protocol Defrost Finance suffered a $12 million exploit that, according to blockchain security firm Peckshield, which cited “community intel,” could have been a rug pull.

District Judge Ronnie Abrams has withdrawn herself from the legal proceedings involving collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX and its former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, due to a potential conflict of interest.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Bitcoin’s Hashrate Recovers From 40% Plunge
• DeFi Protocol Defrost Finance Exploited Via Flash Loan
• Judge Withdraws From FTX Legal Proceedings Over Potential Conflict of Interest

Bitcoin’s Hashrate Recovers From 40% Plunge

Bitcoin’s hashrate has recovered from a temporary drop it saw over the past week over freezing temperatures in the United States, which put a strain on the country’s electricity grid and saw BTC miners in Texas voluntarily curtail operations.

The network’s hashrate fell to 170.60 EH/s on December 25 from a weekly peak of 276.40 EH/s. As of December 26, the hashrate has returned to 241.29 EH/s. Bitcoin’s hashrate is calculated by measuring the number of hashes produced by Bitcoin miners to solve the next block, and is seen as a key metric in assessing how secure the network is.

Cheap power and favorable mining regulations in Texas led to a cryptocurrency mining boom in the state, which now hosts some of the largest mining firms in the world, including Riot Blockchain, Argo, Bitdeer, Genesis Digital Assets, and others.

The Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index shows that the United States accounts for approximately 37.84% of the average monthly hashrate share.

DeFi Protocol Defrost Finance Exploited Via Flash Loan

Decentralized finance protocol Defrost Finance suffered a $12 million exploit that, according to blockchain security firm Peckshield, which cited “community intel,” could have been a rug pull.

The team behind Defrost said a first attack used a flash loan, a loan taken and repaid within one transaction, to drain funds out of its V2 product. A second, larger attack, used the owner key to exploit V1.

Defrost, which offers leveraged trading on the Avalanche network, didn’t reveal how much was taken. Peckshield’s analysts said the attack used fake collateral together with manipulated pricing.

The total value locked on the protocol peaked at $95 million in February, and stood at about $13 million ahead of the exploit. It has since dropped to less than $95,000. The team behind the protocol has said it’s willing to negotiate with the people behind the attack for a return of users’ funds.

DeFiYield, which provides a security layer for smart contracts and operates a cross-chain digital asset management platform, claimed that it had performed an audit of Defrost Finance one year prior and had identified the smart contract vulnerability that was exploited in the recent hack.

Judge Withdraws From FTX Legal Proceedings Over Potential Conflict of Interest

District Judge Ronnie Abrams has withdrawn herself from the legal proceedings involving collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX and its former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, due to a potential conflict of interest.

Abrams' husband, Greg Andres, is a partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell, a law firm that served as an adviser to FTX in 2021 and has also represented parties that may be opposed to FTX and Bankman-Fried.

In a filing, Abrams wrote that her husband had “no involvement in any of these representations,” but was nonetheless recuing herself from the case “to avoid any possible conflict, or the appearance of one.”

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