Good morning, today is Thursday, Nov. 24, 2022.

TL;DR

🔹 Bitcoin and Ether rise for a third consecutive day, following in-line expectation from the Federal Reserve to go through with a 50bps rate hike in December, ending the previous 75bps jumbo rate hikes.

🔹 Global investors will look to Germany’s economic data on Thursday and Friday to gauge the business conditions of Eurozone’s biggest economy.

🔹 The topic of the Day: $42 million in assets stolen: Distributed Capital founder Bo Shen's wallet theft

🔹 Happenings of the Week: City of Panda Chengdu released an action plan for the Metaverse; Zhu Su considers starting a new investment firm; Mt. Gox Hacker moved 10k BTC after 7 years…

🏦 . . .

⚡️ Bitcoin (BTC) 24-Hour Change: 16,161 (+2.13%)

⚡️ Ether (ETH) 24-Hour Change: 1,129 (+2.38%)

Optimistic Wall Street

Global equities and futures rose on Thursday and the dollar fell after Federal Reserve meeting minutes showed support for tapering interest-rate increases. The optimism has spread to cryptocurrency markets, pushing Bitcoin and Ether to rise for a third consecutive trading day.

Minutes from the Fed gathering earlier this month indicated several officials backed the need to moderate the pace of rate hikes, even as some underscored the need for a higher terminal rate.

Since then, US economic data have shown modest growth with some signs of slowing inflation amid still strong demand for labor. Employers added 261,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate rose slightly to 3.7%, though it remains very low on a historic basis.

Overall, financial conditions in the US have eased quite a bit since the early November rate increase, with lower yields on government 10-year notes and higher US equity markets.

Investors now expect the central bank to raise rates by 50 basis points next month, ending a run of jumbo 75 basis point increases.

On Thursday and Friday, investors will look to Germany’s economic data to gauge the business conditions of Eurozone’s biggest economy.

4️⃣ . . .

Thursday

09:00 UTC

Germany Ifo Business Climate NOV

Actual: Awaiting Data; Consensus: 85; Previous: 84.3

• In OCT, the Ifo Business Climate indicator for Germany edged lower to 84.3, the weakest since May of 2020, compared to an upwardly revised 84.4 in September. Still, figures beat market forecasts of 83.3.
• Winter recession is coming and Europe's biggest economy will contract by 0.6% in the fourth quarter, the Ifo forecasted. The institute also note that one in two companies is still expecting to increase prices in the coming three months.
• At the same time, 63.8% of businesses were complaining about supply bottlenecks, below 65.8% in September while export expectations from the industry improved slightly. Meanwhile, the gauge for the current situation fell to 94.1 from 94.5 while expectations for the coming months were slightly higher (75.6 vs 75.3).

3️⃣ . . .

Wednesday

13:30 UTC

US Durable Goods Orders OCT

Actual: 1%; Consensus: 0.4%; Previous: 0.4%

• Durable goods orders in the US which measure the cost of orders received by manufacturers for goods that meant to last at least three years, jumped 1% MoM in October, following a 0.4% increase in September and beating market forecasts of a 0.4% rise.
• It is the biggest rise in four months, led by transportation equipment (2.1%) and military aircraft (21.7%). The data aren’t adjusted for inflation.

15:00 UTC

US New Home Sales OCT

Actual: 632K; Consensus: 603K; Previous: 570K

• New home sales in the United States rose by 7.5% to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 632K in October of 2022, beating market forecasts of 570K sales and defying the recent drawdown in housing demand as the Federal Reserve aggressively tightens monetary policy.
• Sales rose sharply in the South (16% to 399K) and in the Northeast (+45.7% to 51K), more than offsetting the decline in the Midwest (-34.2% to 50K).
• The median price of new houses sold was $493,000, while the average sales price was $544,000. There were 470,000 houses left to sell, up 21.4% from one year ago.

19:00 UTC

FOMC Minutes

Federal Reserve officials concluded that the central bank should soon moderate the pace of interest-rate increases to mitigate risks of overtightening, signaling they were leaning toward downshifting to a 50 basis-point hike in December as anticipated by investors.

According to Anna Wong, chief US economist at Bloomberg, “The FOMC minutes reveal a surprisingly strong dovish tendency on the committee as well as at the staff level. There is widespread agreement within the committee to slow the pace of rates hikes -- a view championed by Vice chairwoman Lael Brainard, in our view -- but little conviction on how high rates should go.”

Officials in September saw rates reaching 4.4% by the end of this year and 4.6% in 2023. They will update those quarterly forecasts at their Dec. 13-14 meeting.

💡 . . .

Today's Markets at 06:00 UTC

BTC +0.31%; Ether +1.34%.

Asia: Japan +0.95%; Hong Kong +0.56**%**; China -0.20%; India +0.51%.

Europe: London -0.13%; Paris +0.32%; Frankfurt +0.04%.

Index Futures: Dow +0.12%; S&P +0.20%; Nasdaq +0.24%.

US Two-year Treasury down 5bps at 4.473%.

US Ten-year Treasury down 9bps at 3.689%.

UK Ten-year Government down 11bps at 3.009%.

US Dollar Index -0.33% at 105.35.

FX: GBP: +0.34%; EUR: +0.40%; JPY: -0.50%; CNY: -0.28%.

Gold +0.27%; Brent Crude +3.34%.

Catalysts this week

• Thursday: Germany Ifo Business Climate
• Friday: Germany GfK Consumer Confidence

🏦 . . .

🟠 BTC

BTC Weekly timeframe:

• Major Level: 13,965 (Monthly High of Jun. 2019)
• Closest support zone: 16,400 - 16,220
• Key resistance level: 16,400 - 16,880
• 
  

Analysis as of Nov. 24 - 27 Session.

BTC Weekly Resistance zones

1. 16,400 - 16,880
2. 17,085 - 17,715
3. 17,875 - 18,246

BTC Weekly Support zones

1. 16,400 - 16,220
2. 15,950 - 15,830
3. 15,525 - 15,200

BTC Daily Timeframe:

• Closest support zone: 16,630 - 16,280
• Closest resistance zone: 16,630 - 16,800
• Key Level: 15,952 (Weekly Close Between Nov. 02 - 09, 2020)
• 
  

Nov. 24 05:47 UTC Update:

Bitcoin (BTC) was trading at $16,676, or +1.47% in a 24hr period.

BTC Daily Resistance zones

1. 16,630 - 16,800
2. 16,875 - 17,085
3. 17,205 - 17,370

BTC Daily Support zones

1. 16,630 - 16,280
2. 15,860 - 15,580
3. 15,535 - 15,200

🌐 . . .

🔵 ETH

Weekly Timeframe

• Major Level - 757 (Monthly High of Dec. 2020)
• Closest support zone: 1,110 - 1,060
• Key resistance zone: 1,180 - 1,265
• 
  

Analysis as of Nov. 24 - 27 Session.

ETH Weekly Resistance zones

1. 1,180 - 1,265
2. 1,310 - 1,345
3. 1,390 - 1,450

ETH Weekly Support zones

1. 1,110 - 1,060
2. 1,035 - 990
3. 910 - 795

ETH Daily Timeframe

• Closest support zone: 1,175 - 1,160
• Closest resistance zone: 1,220 - 1,240
• Key Level: 1,010 (Weekly High from Dec. 28, 2020 - Jan. 04, 2021)
• 
  

Nov. 24 05:58 UTC Update:

ETH was trading at $1,199, or +3.71% in a 24hr period.

ETH Daily Resistance zones

1. 1,220 - 1,240
2. 1,255 - 1,270
3. 1,295 - 1,315

ETH Daily Support zones

1. 1,175 - 1,160
2. 1,140 - 1,120
3. 1,110 - 1,065

⚠️ . . .

📌 Today's topic: $42 million in assets stolen: Distributed Capital founder Bo Shen's wallet theft

On November 23, Bo Shen, Founding Partner of Fenbushi Capital, tweeted, "A personal wallet that ends with the digits “894” had a total of $42 million worth of assets, including 38 million USDC, was stolen in the early morning hours of November 10, New York time. The stolen assets are personal funds and are not related to distributed related funds. It has been reported locally and both the FBI and lawyers have been involved."

Twitter user 0xGene analyzed, "The theft of Bo Shen's wallet is suspected to be due to a helper or private key leak: large USDC transfers occured on Nov 8/9, and was stolen on Nov 10 between 13:36 and 14:01. The address is clean, without any contractual authorization."

According to security experts, Bo Shen's wallet address initiated transfer transactions: transferring ETH, USDC and other assets to other addresses instead of transferFrom, so the reason for his theft was not conventional authorized phishing, but probably private key leakage.

In addition, the theft address has replaced 38 million USDC with DAI, which can no longer be frozen through the centralized entity. According to the analysis, Bo Shen's personal address (the address ending in 5e894) only has 1.05 ETHs remaining and the value of ERC20 tokens is about $33.

In addition, according to security agency Slow Fog, Bo Shen used Trust Wallet, which itself may not have security issues related to this theft.

👁️ . . .

Happenings of The Week (Nov. 18 - 24):

📣 Notables

🔹 Hong Kong Monetary Authority: Stablecoin mass redemptions may have a significant impact on the traditional financial system.

🔹 In their declaration, G20 leaders, including President Joe Biden, called for a global regulatory framework for crypto.

🔹 Singapore's deputy prime minister said he’ll take a tough stance on crypto speculation, especially targeting retail investors.

🔹 China's first metaverse computing center opened in Qingtian County, Zhejiang Province.

🔹 China's central bank and eight other departments are actively exploring the safe application of blockchain technology in financial scenarios such as transaction clearing.

🔹 China's City of Chengdu Releases Action Plan for Fostering The Metaverse Industry: To Complete Industry Chain by 2025

🔹 Bank of England: the UK needs digital pounds and should include cryptocurrencies in the scope of regulation.

🔹 South Korean government asks each crypto company to establish a tax collection system and intends to advance crypto taxation next year.

📣 Nov. 24

🔹 Marvel director duo Russo Brothers and others will shoot an SBF-related series for Amazon.

🔹 ApeCoin pledge system will go live on December 5 and pledge rewards will start counting on December 12.

🔹 CryptoQuant: Mt. Gox Hacker Related Address Moves 10,000 Bitcoins That Have Been Dormant for 7 Years.

🔹 SBF will make a public appearance on November 30 to speak with a New York Times columnist at the DealBook Summit, but did not specify whether he would attend the event in person or conduct the interview via video conference.

🔹 Pepsi announced a new NFT Collection "Pepsi Black" on Polygon.

📣 Nov. 23

🔹 Zhu Su, who is considering starting a new investment firm, said, “the FTX collapse set the crypto industry back 7 to 8 years, the domino effect of FTX is just beginning, and more dominoes will fall.”

🔹 Apple bids for millions of dollars for the rights to the FTX bankruptcy novel, expected to be made into a feature film.

🔹 FTX bankruptcy lawyer: a large number of FTX assets were either stolen or lost, and SBF did not officially relinquish control until Nov. 11.

🔹 Sequoia Capital apologizes to investors for losing $150 Million in FTX case, and says they’ll improve due diligence process moving forward.

🔹 Aave: Most CRV collateral positions have been liquidated, with $1.6 million of bad debt remaining.

📣 Nov. 22

🔹 Elon Musk to Twitter employees: No allowances, daycare, or team activities to cut down costs until financial situations improve internally.

🔹 Genesis says it may file for bankruptcy if it can't raise enough money.

🔹 Texas Securities Commission formally investigates NBA star Steph Curry and NFL star Tom Brady for their involvement in promoting cryptocurrency trading platform FTX in possible violation of U.S. securities laws.

🔹 U.S. Senators ask Fidelity to cancel Bitcoin Retirement Savings Plan.

📣 Nov. 21

🔹 Y-Combinator founder says “a trusted friend sees systemic risk in cryptocurrencies soon.”

🔹 Playboy's application to register NFT-related trademarks had been approved.

🔹 NEAR Protocol releases Staking Transparency Report which reported 469 Million NEARs were pledged or about 42% of the Total Supply.

🔹 JPMorgan Chase has registered the trademark "J.P. MORGAN WALLET”.

🔹 Ren 1.0 network to shut down in 30 days, officials suggest bridging Ren assets back to the native chain as soon as possible.

🔹 BTC Long-term Hodlers' losses are approaching the 2015 Bear Market.

🔹 The countries with the largest share of users before the FTX crash were South Korea, Singapore and Japan.

🔹 Porsche launches NFT page on its website and opens a Twitter account with the ETH symbol.

🔹 Sony filed a patent application for its technology described as "using tokens on a distributed ledger to track in-game unique digital assets.”

🔹 Vitalik Buterin: FTX incident is a "huge tragedy" and says cryptocurrencies have a long way to go to reach their full potential.

📣 Nov. 20

🔹 Bitcoin's third largest whale address outflows 1,800 BTC in the past week.

🔹 Trump reiterated that he has no intention of returning to Twitter.

🔹 CME CEO: We won't abandon crypto futures trading because of FTX's failure.

🔹 The Caribbean island nation of St. Nick is set to make BCH legal tender by 2023.

📣 Nov. 19

🔹 FTX announces the launch of a strategic review of its global assets and intends to sell or restructure certain businesses.

🔹 Grayscale: For security reasons, no on-chain wallet information will be disclosed via proof of reserve.

🔹 X2Y2 removed "custom royalty" and will enforce royalties on all NFTs.

🔹 The Ensign Group plans to launch a cryptocurrency hedge fund.

📣 Nov. 18

🔹 Oscar-nominated director David Darg and XTR Studios have begun production on the FTX documentary.

🔹 Tuvalu will be the first country to move into the metaverse as rising sea levels threaten survival.

🔹 New FTX CEO: Alameda had a "secret waiver" in the FTX auto-liquidation agreement.

🔹 Jump Crypto: no plans to close, still actively investing and trading.

🔹 ConsenSys Launches Ether Climate Platform ECP, Aims to Mitigate Energy Consumption Issues Prior to Ether Merger

📣 This week’s fundraising activities include but are not limited to:

🔹 Asset management and technology platform Fasanara Capital receives a $200 million mandate from the Canadian Pension Fund. Founded in 2011, Fasanara Capital, which describes itself as "a significant provider of liquidity to the crypto market," is understood to have just recently launched a $350 million fintech and crypto venture capital fund. Fasanara Capital CEO Francesco Filia said the latest $200 million in funding will help strengthen its portfolio companies, ensuring they have access to a range of financial products when they need them.

🔹 Web3 and virtual reality game developer Thirdverse closed a $15 million funding round led by MZ Web3 Fund, which has brought the company's total funding to $33 million to date. Other organizations that have invested in Thirdverse include 8DAO, YGG and OKX. Thirdverse plans to release at least 10 Web3 games by 2023 and is currently recruiting more game developers to expand its development team.

🔹 Ethereum cross-chain bridge Across Protocol closed a $10 million funding round at a $200 million valuation, with participation from Hack VC and others. Proceeds from the investment will drive growth of the cross-chain bridge, further improve capital efficiency, and expand the permissionless relay network.

🔹 Web3 developer platform Buildspace closes $10M round led by a16z with participation from Y-Combinator. Buildspace aims to provide a Web3 learning platform for users and currently offers learning programs such as Solidity, Ether NFT, Solana Web3 App, and more.

🔹 Decentralized financial marketplace infrastructure startup Revv announced that it has closed a $5.5 million round of funding in Q2 led by Libertus Capital. Revv founder Adi Dommaraju said he hopes to build the new DeFi product by combining TradFi and Web2 practices with a crypto-native experience.

🔹 NFT utility platform Tropee closes $5.1 million funding round led by Tioga Capital. Tropee reportedly aims to empower utility for NFT by helping brands enhance the user experience from their collections.

🔹 Cryptographic privacy startup Nucleo closed a $4 million seed round led by Bain Capital and others. The company seeks to create a private, multi-signature solution for organizations to transact on the ethereum blockchain through zero-knowledge cryptography. The funding round will be used to develop DeFi services for organizations, further increase integration with the on-chain network, and scale the team.

🔹 Decentralized identity project Carv closes $4M in funding led by Temasek's Vertex Ventures. Carv's main products include an engine that aggregates gamer data from Web2 and Web3 and centralizes this information under a unique user ID. On the enterprise side, Carv provides a white-label data service for game operators to query cross-platform data on new users. Carv currently has partnerships with over 90 games and over 300,000 registered users.

🔹Web3 gaming infrastructure service provider Insert Stonks closed a $2.5 million pre-seeded round led by FunFair Ventures. Insert Stonks provides personalized tools to help players and developers profit from games quickly and transparently and is currently launching two platform tools, "is_engine" for game developers and "is_games" for gamers, which are compatible with most games on the market and can be integrated quickly.

🔹 NFT infrastructure Vinci Protocol closes $2.1 million seed round led by TGE Capital and others. This round will be used to develop a suite of NFT data services and development tools, including NFTFi, NFT Predictor, NFT Governance, and other tools. vinci Protocol is available for native Web3 builders and applications.

🔹 NFT platform Hyakkit closed a $2 million seed round led by Step VC and others. Hyakki is dedicated to building marketing and utility infrastructure for Web3 and NFT, using AR and AI to provide marketing services and application scenarios for Web2 and Web3 brands so that NFT is not limited to JPEG images but can give brands more.

🔹 Gaming guild PEG and Web3 branded online marketing platform BrandNation have combined to close a $2 million seed round led by Sonla. BrandNation integrates with social networks such as Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and Twitter, and Yassi Pressman, who herself has 20 million followers on social media, says her style of playing and earning is the right marketing approach to attract large strategic clients.

🔹 Blockchain digital securities platform DEFYCA closes a $1.3 million seed round led by QBN Capital and Blizzard Fund. DEFYCA developed the blockchain protocol DEFYCA Protocol to help cryptocurrency investors invest in traditional debt securities through Tokenized assets. These Tokenized assets will be incorporated into a liquidity pool, and processes including price discovery, settlement, and payment will be executed through smart contracts, subsequently creating a link between DeFi and TradFi (traditional finance).

🔹 Web3 data solution Vezgo closes a $750,000 funding round with participation from Bitnomic Capital and others. Reportedly spun off from investment aggregation platform Wealthica and operating independently, Vezgo aims to provide Web2 finance and fintech companies with access to data including centralized trading platforms, wallets, NFTs, and other on-chain data via APIs.

🔹 Knobs, a blockchain IoT project, closed a new round of funding with participation from Smart Capital for an amount not yet disclosed to the public. Knobs was founded in 2014. It operates in three main areas: blockchain, IoT (integration of devices to make them smart) and traditional software platforms. In the blockchain area, Knobs has so far filed two patents and a blockchain software platform registered with the Italian Copyright Office SIAE.

📣 This week’s on-chain criminal activities include but are not limited to:

🔹 Slow Fog: Numbers Protocol (NUM) Token Project under attack, users are asked to quickly deauthorize the cross-chain bridge. The numbers protocol (NUM) token project on the ETH chain is under attack. According to the Slow Fog security team, the Numbers Protocol (NUM) token project on the ETH chain has been attacked and the attackers have made approximately $13,836 in profit. The main reason for this attack is that NUM tokens do not have a permit function and have a callback function, so it is possible to pass in fake signatures to spoof the cross-chain bridge and cause users' assets to be transferred out unintentionally.

🔹 FTX hack update: According to Etherscan on-chain data, the address marked as "FTX Accounts Drainer" starting with 0x59a has transferred approximately $200 million worth of ETH to 12 different crypto wallets, which started around 00:00 on November 22 (UTC+8 ). Within six minutes, the wallets made 12 transactions, each sending 15,000 ETH to a different crypto wallet address, and the 12 new wallet addresses have yet to do anything with the funds. Larry Cermak, vice president of research at The Block, said the entity has not yet started selling off the Ether that has been transferred to the 12 wallets because there is little remaining liquidity to convert Ether for renBTC.

🔹 sDAO contract business logic is flawed, attackers made over 13,000 BUSD in profit. Beosin analysis found an error in the business logic of the sDAO contract, where the getReward function is calculated based on the LP tokens owned by the contract and the LP tokens added by the user as parameters, and the calculated reward is positively correlated with the number of LP tokens added by the user, and not with the total number of LP tokens owned by the contract. The calculated reward is positively correlated with the number of LP tokens added by the user and negatively correlated with the total number of LP tokens owned by the contract, but the contract provides a withdrawTeam method to send all the BNBs owned by the contract and the specified tokens to the address specified in the contract, which can be called by anyone. After adding LP tokens to the contract, the attacker calls the withdrawTeam function to send all LP tokens to the specified address and immediately transfers a very small number of LP tokens to the contract, causing the attacker to use a very small value for the total number of LP tokens owned by the contract when calling getReward to get the reward, making the reward unusually large. Ultimately, the attacker gains approximately 13,662 BUSD through this vulnerability.

🔹 VenomSoftX, a malicious extension for stealing cryptocurrency, was discovered in Google Chrome and can be used to steal users' cryptocurrency and sensitive data. The extension is installed via the Windows version of the ViperSoftX malware and is a Java_script_-based RAT (Remote Access Trojan) and cryptocurrency hijacker. By analyzing the hard-coded wallet addresses in the ViperSoftX and VenomSoftX samples, Avast found that by November 8, 2022, both had earned its hackers a total of approximately $130,000. This stolen cryptocurrency was obtained by transferring attempted cryptocurrency transactions on the attacked devices, excluding profits from parallel activities.