WhiteboardCrypto Newsletter - July 15

Welcome back to this week's edition of our WhiteboardCrypto Newsletter!

Crypto crime report shows improvement

According to the latest Chainalysis report, the rate of crime in the crypto world is down 65% compared to the same time last year, mostly due to people learning about how to avoid scams. The market as a whole has seen less activity, of course, after the disaster that was 2022, but the legitimate activity is only down 28%. That’s a 37% higher decrease in crime than general crypto activity. And in more good news, BTC is up 80% since this time last year! Unfortunately, the crime seems to have shifted to ransomware, so we all still need to be careful of that, but it’s good to see that the crypto space is becoming more secure.

Learn more here.

20% of ether is staked

Withdrawals of staked ether were enabled in April, and since then increasingly more people are staking. While there was a surge of withdrawals initially, there have been many more deposits. Staking ether keeps the Ethereum blockchain secure and helps process transactions. A lot of the ether is staked with the same services, though, which means it is more centralized than a lot of users would like.

Learn more here.

XRP found generally not a security

As we shared in yesterday’s email, the court case against Ripple, the issuer of XRP, finally has a decision. The results were mixed but overall good news for crypto in that the company, Ripple Labs, is in trouble, but the asset itself is not. The case isn’t fully closed, and probably someone (the SEC) will try to appeal this decision. The specific details are still playing out but XRP has pumped over 50% in 24 hours and alt-coins are following.

Learn more here.

Multichain bridge shuts down

Multichain was recently hacked, and now both of the founders are in jail in China and the team has decided to shut the bridge down for the time being until they can ensure there are assets available. Make sure not to use this bridge, or anything pretending to be it!

Learn more here.

Bounty on doxxing info

Arkham Intel has launched an on-chain “intelligence exchange” that offers bounties for people who reveal the owner(s) of a blockchain address. This could be good for identifying hackers as it encourages people to dox them, but it has serious concerns for privacy in general. While all information on the blockchain is visible, the actual owner of each address is not necessarily known. That may be changing, though, so a lot of people may be looking for more privacy measures.

Learn more here.

Thanks for reading and I hope you learned something!

- Theodore