Trader turns $3K into $46M in PEPE, Ethereum gas overhaul, Tornado dev guilty: Hodler’s Digest, May 12-18

18/05/2024 admin

Crypto trader turns $3K into $46M in one month as PEPE price soars

A savvy trader made $46 million in profit, which is an eye-watering 15,718-fold return on his initial $3,000 investment. The unknown wallet bought 4.9 trillion PEPE for $3,000 on April 15, which is currently worth over $56 million. The trader sold 1.41 trillion PEPE for $7.4 million and is currently sitting on 3.5 trillion PEPE, worth $38.9 million, according to a May 15 X post from Lookonchain. PEPE’s market capitalization was around $4.5 billion on May 15, making it the third-largest memecoin behind Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB).

Vitalik Buterin proposes Ethereum gas model overhaul

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed Ethereum improvement protocol, EIP-7706, which introduces a new gas model for transaction call data. This new fee would be separate from the existing gas fees for transaction execution and data storage. The proposal aims to reduce costs for transactions that are data-heavy but not computationally intensive by setting separate charges for call data, distinct from the costs of executing contract code or storing data in “blobs.” If the proposal is accepted, the Ethereum network will be responsible for setting the call data costs independently of other costs.

Tornado Cash developer guilty of money laundering

Alexey Pertsev, the developer of the cryptocurrency mixing protocol Tornado Cash, has been found guilty of money laundering, raising potentially severe implications for open-source code developers. The developer was sentenced to five years and four months in prison for allegedly laundering $1.2 billion worth of illicit assets on the platform. The sentencing came despite Tornado Cash being a noncustodial crypto mixing protocol — meaning that the funds that go through the protocol are never held or controlled by it.

Over 600 firms reveal billions in combined investment in Bitcoin ETFs

Over the past week, more than 600 firms have revealed significant investments in spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in their 13F filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. According to the data, professional investment firms reported owning $3.5 billion worth of Bitcoin ETFs. Among them are Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, UBS, BNP Paribas, Royal Bank of Canada and hedge funds like Millennium Management and Schonfeld Strategic Advisors, which is the largest BTC ETF investor with $1.9 billion invested.

Sam Altman thinks giving everyone ‘a slice of GPT’ could pay for UBI

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and chair of Tools For Humanity, has suggested a novel approach to universal basic income (UBI) by utilizing “compute” as a resource. In a recent episode of the All-In podcast, Altman discussed how the advancements in AI could reshape socioeconomics and possibly replace traditional monetary income with a system where everyone has access to computational resources. The executive suggested that individuals could use their allocated compute from powerful AI systems like GPT-7 for personal use, sell it, or donate it for purposes like cancer research.

Winners and Losers

At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $66,662, Ether (ETH) at $3,081 and XRP at $0.52. The total market cap is at $2.41 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap.

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are FLOKI (FLOKI) at 24.25%, Pepe (PEPE) at 23.52% and Chainlink (LINK) at 15.95%.

The top three altcoin losers of the week are Ethena (ENA) at -14.47%, Worldcoin (WLD) at -11.28% and Render (RNDR) at -9.40%.

For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.

Most Memorable Quotations

“I do think that as these two technologies [crypto and AI] progress, you can create agents that bring together the power of both. We’re just scratching the surface.”

Yorke Rhodes, director of digital transformation, blockchain and cloud supply chain at Microsoft

“Gambling has been around since the very first day of human life. People love taking risk. Crypto is the epitome of that.”

Zach Bruch, founder and CEO of MyPrize

“The SEC is turning cryptocurrency regulation into a political football and forcing President Biden to choose sides on an issue that matters to many Americans.”

Wiley Nickel, U.S. representative

“The U.S. government is going after Tether, that is clear to me.”

Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple

“Privacy stands as a core value of Bitcoin. Mixing itself is not a crime. […] It’s like punishing the inventor of the knife instead of the one who uses it.”

Ki Young Ju, founder and CEO of CryptoQuant

“Republicans smell blood in the water and are turning hard towards crypto. Not much time for Biden to save it.”

Hayden Adams, founder and CEO of Uniswap

Prediction of the week

Bitcoin moves toward range highs but derivatives traders watch from the sidelines

According to Capriole Investments founder Charles Edwards, stock and crypto market seasonality, along with Bitcoin on-chain data, suggest that BTC price could consolidate for four-to-five months.

In a new report, Edwards said that Bitcoin continues to oscillate within the cycle range highs in the $58,000-65,000 region, with continuous weekly closes above the $58,000 “supportive of the long-term trend continuation.”

Likening BTC’s price action to gold, which formed a “massive cup and handle” pattern over the last 13 years, with the “cup” lasting four years, Edwards noted how Bitcoin appears to show the same chart pattern.

Edwards noted that given the similarities between Bitcoin and gold, there is a possibility that BTC could spend “up to 9 months in the range high forming a cup before a measured move up.” He said:

“The technical picture remains bullish, provided the price holds above $58K. The longer we spend in the range highs, the more likely this structure will merge into a classic ‘cup and handle’ pattern, which would typically see strong price appreciation following.”

FUD of the Week

Filing suggests SEC is exploring grounds to deny spot Ether ETFs

Analysts have discovered a March filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission indicating that the regulator might consider classifying Ether as a security. Scott Johnsson, an associate at Davis Polk and Wardwell, analyzed a March 4 filing by BlackRock concerning its application to list a spot Ether exchange-traded fund (ETF) on Nasdaq. The filing extended the SEC’s decision deadline to June and requested public input on whether the ETF should be classified as a commodity. Johnsson suggested the ETF could be rejected if its filings should be classified as holding securities rather than commodity trust shares.

Coinbase website down as crypto exchange cites ‘system-wide outage’

Crypto exchange Coinbase suffered a “system-wide outage,” rendering its services unusable for those looking to access the crypto exchange on desktop or mobile. Coinbase notified users of the outage on its official status page, sharing that a “major outage” began at 4:15 am UTC on May 14. Attempts to visit the website returned a “503 Service Temporarily Unavailable” error message. The system outage lasted nearly three hours.

Memecoin launcher pump.fun claims ex-employee behind $1.9M exploit

Solana memecoin creation tool pump.fun has claimed a former employee exploited the firm for nearly $2 million through a “bonding curve” attack. The ex-employee used their “privileged position” to access a “withdraw authority” and compromise the protocol’s internal systems, pump.fun alleged in a May 16 X post. About $1.9 million was stolen from the total $45 million held in pump.fun’s bonding curve contracts. The platform temporarily paused trading but it is now back up and running. The pump.fun smart contracts “are safe,” and users impacted by the incident will receive “100% of the liquidity” that it previously had within the next 24 hours, pump.fun team said.

Top Magazine Pieces of the Week

UK cannabis millionaire’s legal ‘deals on wheels’ via crypto

Maximillian White, owner of Europe’s largest medical marijuana business, is now embracing crypto and blockchain.

OpenAI’s ‘iPhone moment’ trumps Google, AI lies, porn and dating: AI Eye

OpenAI’s voice assistant upstages Google, plus why do AIs lie… and should they date each other? AI Eye.

Bybit’s Notcoin listing debacle, China firm’s profits up 12-fold after crypto buy: Asia Express

Bybit CEO apologises for Notcoin listing woes, Hong Kong crypto ETFs disappoint, China firm’s profits surge 1100% after crypto buy

Editorial Staff

Cointelegraph Magazine writers and reporters contributed to this article.

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