Markets
Bitcoin Holds $67,000, CRV Slides
Bitcoin held up above $67,000 during the European morning following the Fed’s hawkish interest rate projections on Wednesday. The US central bank left rates unchanged on Wednesday and predicted only one cut this year, sending bitcoin lower. After falling towards $67,000 during the Asian morning, BTC quickly returned to the upside before trading between $67,200 and $67,800. At the time of writing, bitcoin was above $67,900, up 0.16% from 24 hours ago. The CoinDesk CD 20, for its part, is down 0.34% over this period. Ether has been fluctuating back and forth between $3,500, currently down 1.1% over the past 24 hours.
Paxos has 65 people were made redundant, i.e. a 20% reduction in its workforceaccording to a Bloomberg report. CEO Charles Cascarilla said the layoffs “allow us to better exploit the enormous opportunity ahead in tokenization and stablecoin” and that the company is in “a very strong financial position to succeed.” Paxos intends to gradually discontinue its settlement services in commodities and securities. Instead, it will focus more on asset tokenization and stablecoins, Bloomberg reported, according to disclosures of its various stablecoins. However, the company was hit last year when the New York Department of Finance. The services forced it to stop minting Binance’s BUSD in early 2023, which had a market cap of $16 billion at its peak.
Curve’s CRV token plunged 30% in early Asian trading hours as some loan positions allegedly linked to its founder, Michael Egorov, began to be automatically liquidatedleading to sudden sales activity. Data tracked by Lookonchain and Arkham shows that Egorov addresses took out a cumulative loan of almost $100 million in stablecoins, primarily crvUSD, against $140 million in CRV collateral. A Debank profile that tracks Egorov’s portfolio shows that he borrowed from Inverse, UwU Lend, Fraxlend and Curve’s LlamaLend using CRV tokens as collateral. Total holdings in tracked wallets decreased by 50% in the last 24 hours. In the early days of Asia, several loans were repaid on Inverse and Llamalend with FRAX, DOLA and CRV tokens.