Daily News | South Korea Prohibits Illegal Crypto Trading; Justin Sun Deposits Over 100K STETHs to EigenLayer; Bitcoin L2s Soak to 25; RSIC In_script_ion Floor Prices Reached a Historic High

2024-02-08, 03:59

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## Crypto Daily Digest: South Korea prohibits illegal crypto transactions, Justin Sun deposits over 100,000 stETHs to EigenLayer

First, let’s investigate the latest developments among regulatory authorities in various regions around the world.

According to Yonhap News Agency, the South Korean Financial Commission announced today that prior to the implementation of the Virtual Asset User Protection Act on July 19, it had already issued a legislative notice on the law and the Regulations on the Supervision of the Virtual Asset Industry on July 22.

According to the implementation regulations and regulatory provisions, market manipulation, illegal transactions, and the use of unpublished important information of virtual assets for trading are prohibited. Those who violate regulations may be sentenced to criminal penalties such as fixed-term imprisonment of more than one year, or a fine of three to five times the amount of illegal gains. If the amount of illegitimate benefits exceeds 5 billion Korean won, the maximum sentence is life imprisonment. Also, a fine of twice the amount of illegitimate benefits can be imposed.

Recently, the US Treasury Department released the 2024 National Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing, and Spread Financing Risk Assessment Report, which stated that criminals, fraudsters, and illegal actors are increasingly turning to virtual assets. The department provides a detailed introduction to how unscrupulous actors launder money through the continuous use of cash and cryptocurrency for fraud, drug trafficking, human trafficking, and corruption. The money laundering report states, "Although money laundering activities derived from drug trafficking are mainly based on cash, the use of virtual assets is increasingly attracting attention from US law enforcement agencies." The US Treasury Department plans to release a strategic plan in the coming weeks, intended to provide suggestions for addressing these issues.

In addition, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission recently issued a warning that the public should be wary of suspicious investment products and related projects involving the Hong Kong International Financial Center Token (IFCT). Although the relevant promotional materials claim that the product has been officially approved in Hong Kong, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has clearly stated that the product has not been approved by the CSRC for sale to the Hong Kong public. The China Securities Regulatory Commission has included it in the suspicious investment product warning list and alerted the public of the risks of investment products that are not recognized by the China Securities Regulatory Commission, including the possibility of losing all investments.

According to DefiLlama data, the liquidity re-staking protocol EigenLayer TVL has exceeded $4.5 billion, currently at $4.574 billion, with a 24-hour growth rate of 16.21% and a 7-day growth rate of 125%. Previously, it was reported that the increase in TVL was driven by EigenLayer's temporary cancellation of the staking limit.

According to on-chain analyst @ai_9684xtpa monitoring, Justin Sun deposited 109,327 stETHs into EigenLayer, valued at $259 million. Nine hours ago, Justin Sun unsealed all wstETH in Lido as stETH, transferred it to two new addresses, and stored it in EigenLayer; Currently, only 4,393 stETHs remain in Prisma Finance for address 0x9FC...c19Fe.

DWG Ventures stated on the X platform that despite <a href="/id/price/ethereum-eth" target="_blank" class="blog_inner_link">Ethereum</a> leading Layer 2 by three years with 38 L2s, the number of <a href="/id/price/bitcoin-btc" target="_blank" class="blog_inner_link">Bitcoin</a> L2s skyrocketed to 25 in less than a year.

According to its compiled list, these Bitcoin L2s include BEVM, BiopDAO, Dovi, Elastos, Interlay, Map Protocol, Omni Layer, Rootstock, SatoshiVM, <a href="/id/price/stacks-stx" target="_blank" class="blog_inner_link">Stacks</a>, U Protocol, b ² Network, Bison Labs, BOB, Botanix Labs, Chainway, Lighting Network, Liquid Network, LumiBit, Merlin Chain, RGB Network, Rolkit, RollUX, ROOS, and Rosetta Network.
According to Bloomberg and data compiled by CryptoQuant, the mining reserves of Bitcoin (unsold Bitcoin held in company related digital wallets) have decreased by 8400 tokens to 1.8 million since the beginning of 2024. The last time this level occurred was in June 2021.

Analysts say that this decline indicates that miners are selling Bitcoin. Matthew Sigel, Director of Digital Asset Research at VanEck, said, "Miners have started selling more tokens to improve their balance sheets and provide funding for growing capital expenditures to cope with the difficult period of halving block rewards in April. After the halving, scale will become even more important."

The sale by miners seems to be putting pressure on Bitcoin prices, as Bitcoin prices have been struggling since the approval of the first Bitcoin ETF in the United States on January 10th. During this period, the token fell by about 6% to $43,000. According to CryptoQuant's data, 3,617 Bitcoins have been transferred from miners' wallets to exchanges since the ETF was approved. On February 1, a net outflow of 13,542 Bitcoins occurred, marking the largest single day outflow since December 2020.

According to Deribit data, BTC options with a nominal value exceeding $573 million and ETH options contracts with a nominal value of $468 million will expire and be delivered on February 9. The maximum pain point price for BTC is $42,000; The maximum pain point price for ETH is $2,350.

In terms of market fluctuations, according to Magic Eden data, the RSIC in_script_ion RSIC METAPROTOCOL floor price is currently at 0.115 BTC (approximately $4,952), setting a new historical high with a cumulative transaction volume of 509.1 BTC. It is reported that RSIC is a peer-to-peer rune allocation system based on Bitcoin. Its core is a digital game where players obtain runes by managing and manipulating RSIC tokens, which will be "engraved" on the Bitcoin network at some point in the future.

According to Cointelgraph, crypto tax software provider CoinLedger data shows that crypto investors received an average net profit of nearly $900 from selling cryptocurrency in 2023. This stands in stark contrast to 2022, where several crypto companies went bankrupt and investors lost billions of dollars.

CoinLedger analyzed its report of 500,000 users and found that on average, each crypto investor achieved a realized return of $887.60 in 2023. As the industry began to recover, the situation improved. CoinLedger added, "This is in stark contrast to 2022- in that year, median crypto investors achieved a loss of $7102."

## Macro: Fed officials collectively suppress expectations of interest rate cuts, with a probability of less than 20% for March rate cuts

On February 7, a record number of 10-year US Treasury auctions unexpectedly remained stable, with US Treasury yields falling before rebounding. The benchmark 10-year US Treasury yield briefly fell below 4.10%, but quickly returned to 4.10%; The two-year US Treasury bond yield, which is sensitive to interest rates, surged 4.40% during trading. The US dollar index continued to decline from its nearly three-month high, falling below the 104 mark during trading and ultimately closing down 0.08% at 104.05.

Spot gold broke through the 2040 mark and fell back in the trading session, closing flat with a slight decrease of 0.04% at $2,035 per ounce; Spot silver closed down 0.95% at $22.22/ounce.

Crude oil has risen to a one-week high for three consecutive days, and the intraday increase has narrowed after EIA announced US crude oil inventories exceeded expectations by 5.521 million barrels last week. WTI crude oil closed up 0.82% at $74.01 per barrel; Brent crude oil closed up 0.85% at $79.32 per barrel. The settlement price of US natural gas futures has fallen below $2 for the first time since March 2023.

The US stock market closed higher, with the Dow Jones up 0.4%, and the S&P 500 index up 0.83%, reaching a new closing high. The Nasdaq rose 0.95%.

On Wednesday, four Federal Reserve officials stated that they believe there is currently no urgent situation for interest rate cuts, which is consistent with the views of other policy makers in recent days. They explicitly stated that interest rate cuts may not be possible until May at the earliest.

Federal Reserve Director Kugler, Boston Fed Chairman Collins, Minneapolis Fed Chairman Kashkali, and Richmond Fed Chairman Barkin all hold reservations about when the Fed can start cutting interest rates from 20-year highs, despite significant improvements in inflation last year. These remarks largely align with the message conveyed by Federal Reserve Chairman Powell over the past week, emphasizing that the Fed is not prepared to start cutting interest rates until it is confident that inflation is moving towards the 2% target, so the likelihood of a rate cut at the March 19-20 meeting is unlikely.

Investors have reduced their bets on the March interest rate cut and turned their attention to the Federal Reserve's subsequent decision on May 1, but believe that the likelihood of early action is still small.

According to CME's Federal Reserve Observation, the probability of the Federal Reserve maintaining interest rates in the 5.25% - 5.50% range in March is 81.5%, and the probability of a 25 basis point rate cut is 18.5%. The probability of maintaining interest rates unchanged by May is 36.6%, the probability of a cumulative 25 basis point cut is 53.2%, and the probability of a cumulative 50 basis point cut is 10.2%.

<div class="blog-details-info">
<div>Author:**Byron B.**, Gate.io Researcher
<div>Translator:Joy Z.
<div class="info-tips">\*This article represents only the views of the researcher and does not constitute any investment suggestions.
<div>\*Gate.io reserves all rights to this article. Reposting of the article will be permitted provided Gate.io is referenced. In all cases, legal action will be taken due to copyright infringement.
</div>

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