McRib NFTs, India’s Modi Hacked, BTC and ETH See Margin Gains

Last week saw an overall recovery in the crypto market, with the bulk of the coins in the top 100 for market capitalization seeing price improvements. CVX led the pack with an increase of 47.7%, followed by NEAR (up 37.99%), BTT (up 29.8%), and HT (up 13.7%).

The main coins followed this overall trend, with BTC increasing by 2.6% and ETH by 1.5%. They’re still both lagging between their all-time highs a few weeks back (especially bitcoin), but at least things are pointing in the right direction.

However, not all cryptocurrencies were fortunate enough to enjoy price rises. LUNA was at the opposite end of the spectrum, dropping by 19.99%. Not far behind were OHM (down 19.6%), XRD (down 18.1%), and RUNE (down 14.6%). Notably, SOL didn’t follow the pattern of other major cryptocurrencies and decreased in value by 13.%. It was a week that reminded swing traders of the need to manage their risk.

None of these statements are true. Hacks have always been a major issue for traditional financial institutions and cryptocurrencies alike, but there are always novel methods that surprise us. One of them happened last week when a hacker got into India Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Twitter account and tweeted that his country had bought 500 bitcoin and adopted bitcoin as legal tender. Fortunately, the hacker was swiftly removed, and an update was released. A similar thing happened in 2020 when various social media users were hacked so they could ask for cryptocurrency “donations” from followers.

Modi wasn’t the only one to be hacked last week. The DeFi platform BadgerDAO also announced that it had suffered an attack — and this time, rather than the hacker simply tweeting on its behalf, they stole $120 million. Earlier in December, BadgerDAO suffered a phishing incident during which illicit code got into its system, allowing the infiltrators to take $130 million of holdings. However, $9 million of this was recovered successfully as it hadn’t been withdrawn yet).

McDonalds issued ten McRib NFTs (inspired by the McRib that is available for a few weeks each year) at the start of November, following the footsteps of various other food brands that have made similar moves recently. Unfortunately, the fast-food chain didn’t quite have the launch it was expecting. It was brought to the public’s attention that one of the Ethereum addresses associated with the NFTs contained an offensive racial remark.

The message had been written on the blockchain, but after being decoded, it became apparent it was a slur. Although it’s unclear if the person responsible for the message is directly affiliated with McDonald’s, it serves as a warning of what can happen when major corporations use blockchain technology.

Traders of ConstitutionDAO’s PEOPLE token have suffered liquidations of $9 million. 

Perhaps this shouldn’t come as a surprise given the token has no intrinsic value and even ConstitutionDAO itself has thrown in the towel (it initially tried to purchase a copy of the U.S. Constitution but was unsuccessful). However, despite the lack of uses for the token, crypto enthusiasts continued to trade it and pump the value up until this could go on no longer. It’s a warning that our trading strategy and risk management is only as good as our discipline and as I always warn, do your reading and research before investing. 

But now some better news. Router protocol has raised $4.1 million in its latest funding round, with backers that included Coinbase Ventures, Polygon, and DeFi Capital. It plans to use as part of its mission to create a liquidity bridge that can link Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and non-EVM chains. This will help improve connectivity in the crypto world so that trading systems and other applications can be more comprehensive. 

At the time of writing, Tim Thomas holds no positions in the cryptocurrencies mentioned. YMG, Wealth of Geeks have no positions in the cryptocurrencies mentioned. YMG has a disclosure policy.

This post was produced by Timothy Thomas Limited and was syndicated by Wealth of Geeks. 

Featured Image Credit: Wealth of Geeks.