Bitcoin at a Decision Point, Solana-Based Wallets Exploit, and the Nomad Fiasco: This Week’s Crypto Recap

The past seven days failed to bring positive developments, at least in terms of pricing, as the total cryptocurrency market capitalization dropped by around $35 billion. This comes on the back of BTC and ETH failing to overcome critical resistance levels and presently circulating below them.

This time last week, Bitcoin’s price was firmly set at around $24,000, and we saw the cryptocurrency making an attempt to surge towards $25,000 on Saturday. Unfortunately for the bulls, sellers stepped up and sent the market into a correction which resulted in BTC losing about 2.5% of its value in the last seven days.

A lot of the other coins followed suit, with some obvious exceptions. FLOW, for once, seems to be the week’s best performer, charting a staggering increase of about 55%, all of it coming within the past 24 hours. This is no surprise. Meta (formerly known as Facebook) announced yesterday that the company will integrate the Flow blockchain to further expand the NFT universe for its users. This is interesting because, according to Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, corporate attempts at creating the metaverse (such as Meta’s obvious efforts in this direction) are going nowhere.

The most impactful event of this week was undoubtedly the widespread attack of wallets on the Solana network. Over 8,000 hot wallets were compromised, with users seeing their funds drained directly. The team confirmed that this is not a problem with the Solana network, but the cryptocurrency’s price suffered nonetheless.

Speaking of hacks, the Nomad Bridge was also exploited. Interestingly enough, the hacker posted the script in a public Discord group, and everyone could copy and paste it to drain funds out of the bridge. The team is now offering a bounty for returning the $190 million that was drained.

Elsewhere, institutions might be once again dipping their toes in the industry, as suggested by analysts from Nansen in an exclusive interview with CryptoPotato from EthCC 5 in Paris. This was further evidenced by the fact that the Fairfax County Retirement Systems, which operates Virginia’s Pension Fund consisting of over $6.8 billion, invested another $70 million across two different cryptocurrency yield farming funds.

The broader market sentiment has also improved a lot over the past couple of weeks. The cryptocurrency fear and greed index currently sits at 31. Although this is still considered to be in the “fear zone,” at least we are out of the “extreme fear” zone.

Speaking of improving market sentiment, some big investors also seem to think that Bitcoin is out of the woods. For instance, Anthony Scaramucci – founder of SkyBridge Capital – believes that the cryptocurrency won’t dip below this year’s lows again.

All in all, it was an interesting week, and it’s very exciting to see what will happen going forward, as it seems that prices are reaching a focal point.

Market Data

Market Cap: $1,134B | 24H Vol: $83B | BTC Dominance: 39.1%

BTC: $23,204 (-2.5%) | ETH: $1,668 (-3.2%) | ADA: $0.51 (+0.3%)

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This Week’s Crypto Headlines You Can’t Miss

Thousands of Wallets Compromised in Ongoing Solana-Based Hack. In what seems to be the latest widespread attack in the cryptocurrency industry, thousands of wallets in the Solana ecosystem were compromised. According to the developers, it wasn’t an issue with Solana but rather an exploit targeted at stealing users’ private keys.

Virginia Pension Fund Invests $70M in Crypto Lending. The Fairfax County Retirement Systems is diving deeper into the field of cryptocurrencies. The institution that manages over $6.8 billion in assets has invested some $70 million across two different crypto yield farming funds.

Bitcoin’s Next Bull Run to Come in 2024, Predicts Morgan Creek’s, Mark Yusko. According to Mark Yusko, the CEO of Morgan Creek Capital Management, BTC will enter its next bull run sometime in 2024. The main reason for this, somewhat not surprisingly, would be the halving.

Corporate Attempts at Creating the Metaverse Going Nowhere: Vitalik Buterin. One of Ethereum’s co-founders, Vitalik Buterin, believes that the current attempts of large corporations at creating a metaverse aren’t really going anywhere. Despite this, he thinks that this is a concept that “is going to happen.”

BlackRock Taps Coinbase for Institutional Crypto Trading and Custody Services. The world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, has tapped Coinbase to offer cryptocurrency trading and custody services for its institutional clients. The collaboration was revealed earlier this week – on August 4th.

Bitcoin Already Bottomed in This Cycle, Anthony Scaramucci Says. Anthony Scaramucci, the founder of SkyBridge Capital, doesn’t expect BTC to go below $17,500 again. He maintains that its fair value should be around $40,000, which represents an increase close to 100% from its current levels.