Did you catch that rug pull?

Good morning! Welcome to The Daily Moon. NFTs are bringing in the moolah for some people. Nike, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Adidas, and Tiffany’s have made combined sales worth $260 million from NFTs. And for those who’ve been in the loop, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that more than half of the sales were made by Nike. It’s truly Just Doin’ It!

The markets were in the green today. Bitcoin was up slightly, but still hovered in the ~$21,000 range. Ethereum was up 2.50%. Nasdaq was up marginally in early trade. Back home, the markets saw marginal gains.

Bitcoin Is On A Crazy Ride

Bitcoin’s recent dip has prepared investors for the big crypto dipping below $20,000 levels. Conventional wisdom in crypto has always been to HODL. But the Terra Luna crash changed that. New research shows Bitcoin has been flowing out of crypto exchanges. But DBS said Bitcoin activity on its digital exchange actually increased in June. Here’s a look at what is going on. 

Bitcoin leaves crypto exchanges

Arcane Research has found bitcoin deposits at crypto exchanges declined for seven out of eight months in 2022. Trust in exchanges has dipped this year, for good reason.

1. First, there was the Terra Luna crash at the end of May. Over the next two months, crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital went into liquidation. This was followed by crypto lender Celsius going bankrupt. There were others like Voyager Digital and Babel Finance that went down too.

2. All this lowered trust in the entire Bitcoin ecosystem. Arcane says June saw the highest outflow of Bitcoin from exchanges, at 119,000 Bitcoin. In July, the number was 96,000 Bitcoin, and until August 22 it was 65,000 Bitcoin. 

There is every indication that people prefer to keep their crypto rather than trust third parties. And then, there is the case of DBS. 

DBS buys the dip

Bucking the trend is Singapore-based DBS Bank’s members-only digital exchange. DBS said on Tuesday that Bitcoin trades on the exchange doubled in June from the previous two months. 

The digital exchange serves institutional investors and family offices. It hasn’t revealed numbers, but CEO Lionel Lim said investors are seeking “safe harbours to trade and store their digital assets amid the ongoing market volatility”.

Another Day, Another Rugpull

NFT exchange SudoRare pulled the rug on its users, with the scammers taking off with $820,000 in different cryptocurrencies on Tuesday. The exchange was live for all of six hours. 

What they did

SudoRare is (or was) a fork of two well-known decentralised NFT marketplaces—LooksRare and SudoSwap. The new exchange was going to let users build liquidity pools for NFT collections. Then they could earn fees by staking the native SudoRare token SR. 

Red flags

The community wasn’t very enthused about SudoRare from the start. Yet, people did invest and lose. 

FYI: Rugpulls are the most common kind of crypto scams, having drained billions so far. 

From the looks of it, this one wasn’t, but this kind of scam is becoming extremely sophisticated and bringing down trust in DeFi and crypto.

Stop The (Class) Action

Bankrupt crypto-asset broker Voyager Digital has asked the bankruptcy court to halt a class action suit filed against its founder and CEO, Stephen Ehrlich, and Dallas Mavericks’ owner, Mark Cuban.

Why, though?

You’d remember that Cuban was in business with Voyager. When the company went bust, a bunch of angry investors filed a class action suit. They say they trusted Cuban’s endorsement of the crypto broker and lost close to $5 billion. 

Why halt?

The reasons are technical, it would seem. As per this report, lawyers for Voyager say Ehrlich and Cuban are tied to a similar lawsuit filed by the same group of plaintiffs against Voyager. Filing for bankruptcy stops other legal actions against the entity, including debt-collection lawsuits.

Meanwhile, another bankrupt crypto hedge fund, Three Arrows Capital (3AC), probe got an important decision in favour of the liquidators. A Singapore court recognised the liquidation order, which was originally filed in the British Virgin Islands. This gives the liquidators the ability to probe the local assets of 3AC.

Celsius vs KeyFi

Remember Jason Stone of KeyFi? The DeFi entrepreneur who had sued Celsius for refusing to honour their contract with him? Now Celsius has filed a countersuit against Stone. 

Bring out the popcorn

The troubled crypto lending platform is alleging Stone falsely said he was an expert in coin staking and DeFi investments. And that he was not just “incompetent”, but also a thief. Celsius has alleged that KeyFi misappropriated millions of dollars worth of company assets and processed them through Tornado Cash. Celsius claims that KeyFi made unauthorised NFT purchases that violated their agreement. 

KeyFi had previously called Celsius a “Ponzi Scheme”. 

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Who are we? There is a lot happening in our world. Everything has layers, and each layer has to be carefully peeled so you, the reader, know how the world of money is changing every day. That’s our promise. Help you unpeel the onions, which are the public markets in the US, India, and crypto, so that you know just a little more.