First Mover Americas: BTC Struggles to Break $20K as More Lenders Face Trouble

Good morning, and welcome to First Mover. I’m Lyllah Ledesma, here to take you through the latest in crypto markets, news and insights.

• Price Point: BTC remains below $20,000 and Argentinians are buying stablecoins more than normal as their economy minister resigned over the weekend.
• Market Moves: Solana DeFi protocol Crema lost $8.8 million in an exploit on Sunday.

Price point

Bitcoin BTC$89,347.10 was up 2% on the day with U.S. equity index futures and European bonds falling as investors worried about the threats of deteriorating economic growth and inflation.

Germany also reported its first monthly trade deficit in three decades as surging import prices have caused a shortfall in the export-reliant nation, according to Bloomberg.

Bitcoin is down 6% over the last seven days to about $19,400., and ether ETH$3,041.03 is also down over the last seven days with a decline of about 10%. ETH’s price weakness continues as "the Merge" fast approaches. The Merge will see the network go to a proof-of-stake platform from proof-of-work.

Crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital filed for bankruptcy late Friday after weeks of speculation that it was functionally insolvent.

Celsius Network, an American-Israeli crypto lender, laid off 150 employees over the weekend as it battles a crisis that prompted it to halt customer withdrawals last month.

Crypto exchange Coinbase said in a report that recent selling of newly minted bitcoin by crypto miners doesn't add any significant market pressure. If all newly issued bitcoin were sold onto the market each day, it would equate to only 900 BTC of selling pressure, Coinbase said.

In South America, Martin Guzman, Argentina’s economy minister, resigned on Saturday. That caused citizens to purchase up to three times as many stablecoins over the weekend than they usually do, crypto companies in the country told CoinDesk.

Separately, a survey from Mastercard reported that over 51% of Latin Americans made at least one transaction with cryptocurrencies between March and April.

Market moves

By Shaurya Malwa

Solana-based liquidity protocol Crema Finance had more than $8.8 million worth of cryptocurrencies stolen from its platform in an attack over the weekend, developers said in a tweet.

Crema said it had suspended its smart contract after the exploit. The protocol allows liquidity providers to set specific price ranges, add single-sided liquidity and conduct range order trading. This makes for a sophisticated and decentralized trading platform.

“We've been closely working with several experienced security institutes and relevant organizations to track the hacker's fund movements,” the developers said in a tweet.

Value locked on Crema plunged to $3 million on Monday from over $12 million on Saturday following the exploit, data shows. Crema has seen trading volume of $1.34 billion since its inception in January.

The attacker started by creating a fake "tick" account. A tick account is "a dedicated account that stores price tick data in CLMM,” the developers said, referring to Crema's market making protocol. After that, the attacker exploited a command by writing the data on the fake account and circumventing security measures.

Read the full story here: Solana DeFi Protocol Crema Loses $8.8M in Exploit.

Latest headlines

• CoinShares Completes Napoleon Acquisition, Can Now Offer Products Across EU The acquisition of Napoleon Asset Management was subject to approval by the AMF, which was granted on June 28.
• WonderFi Closes Acquisition of Crypto Trading Platform Coinberry The Canadian crypto firm says it's open to more deals for firms hit by the crypto winter.
• Lending Platform Vauld Looks to Restructure Amid Crypto Downturn, Suspends Transactions Vauld has seen withdrawals of around $198 million since June 12.
• Software Firm Meitu Lost Up to $52.3M in H1 Due to Slide in Crypto Prices. The last purchase by the Central American country had been in May.

Today’s newsletter was edited by Parikshit Mishra and produced by Sheldon Reback.