While spot trading volumes have been plunging in the cryptocurrency industry, Coinbase’s new derivatives unit is seeing retail traders pour into its “nano” bitcoin futures product (BIT), which recently saw volumes hit record highs for three straight days over the last week.

FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has said that his firms would be willing to spend “hundreds of millions beyond what we have thus far and in some cases more than that” to backstop firms affected by crypto’s recent crash.

Music streaming platform Audius has seen a malicious governance proposal result in the transfer of $6.1 million worth of cryptoassets away from its wallets, with the hacker behind the attack making away with over $1 million.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• The Rise of FTX
• Coinbase’s ‘Nano’ Bitcoin Futures Product Sees Trading Volume Surge
• FTX CEO Says His Firms May Deploy ‘Hundreds of Millions’ to Backstop Crypto Industry
• Hacker Steals $1.08 Million From Music Streaming Platform Audius

The Rise of FTX

Over the last few months, cryptocurrency exchange FTX has seen a significant rise in spot trading volume.

While Binance remains the dominant exchange with a market share of 49.7%, FTX has become a leader compared to its competitors, including OKX, Coinbase, Bitfinex, and Bitstamp.

FTX’s market share among the five has risen to 36.8% in June from 18.7% at the start of the year. Read more in CryptoCompare’s latest Market Spotlight.

Coinbase’s ‘Nano’ Bitcoin Futures Product Sees Trading Volume Surge

While spot trading volumes have been plunging in the cryptocurrency industry, Coinbase’s new derivatives unit is seeing retail traders pour into its “nano” bitcoin futures product (BIT), which recently saw volumes hit records highs for three straight days over the last week.

Coinbase launched its cash-settled BIT futures product in June. Each BIT contract represents 1/100^th of a bitcoin and is available on a number of different retail brokers, including NinjaTrader, EdgeClear, Wedbush, Ironbeam, and Tradovate.

Coinbase is awaiting regulatory approval for its futures commission merchant license and is as such unable to offer the product to users directly.

On July 19, notional volumes for nano futures hit 217,045 after increasing for several days , but declined to 117,493 on July 22. For most of June and July, BIT trading volumes sat below 50,000 contracts per day.

Coinbase’s team noted the product saw a “surge in activity ever since retail broker partners started marketing/ promotional efforts last week."

FTX CEO Says His Firms May Deploy ‘Hundreds of Millions’ to Backstop Crypto Industry

FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has said that his firms would be willing to spend “hundreds of millions beyond what we have thus far and in some cases more than that” to backstop firms affected by crypto’s recent crash.

The CEO’s words come days after reports suggested FTX and FTX US are in talks to raise funds following a spending spree that saw them deploy nearly $1 billion last month.

The $1 billion was used to acquire Canadian trading platform Bitvo and clearing house Embed, and to provide revolving credit lines to BlockFi and Voyager.

The CEO said that while the amount of capital the firm will deploy is “open-ended” there “is a limit.” Bankman-Fried also said FTX is not actively pursuing a monopoly and would “love other people to be coming in and providing capital to those in need.”

Hacker Steals $1.08 Million From Music Streaming Platform Audius

Music streaming platform Audius has seen a malicious governance proposal result in the transfer of $6.1 million worth of cryptoassets away from its wallets, with the hacker behind the attack making away with over $1 million.

Over the weekend, a malicious proposal requesting the transfer of 18 million of the platform's AUDIO tokens was approved through governance voting after the attacker was “able to call initialize() and set himself as the sole guardian of the governance contract.”

Audius co-founder and CEO, Roneil Rumburg, clarified that the community did not pass the proposal, but rather that the hacker “just happened to use the governance system as the entry point for the attack.”

The firm halted its smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain to avoid further losses shortly after the attack came to light, but resumed them shortly after.

While the hacker stole tokens worth $6 million from the platform, their move to quickly sell them on the market led to significant slippage, netting them only $1.08 million.

State of the Crypto by Top Tier Exchange Volume

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