Nigeria’s CBDC deemed a failure; Korea gathers more proof on Do Kwon

The biggest news in the cryptoverse for Nov. 3 includes the private conversation Korea obtained that proves Kwon purposely manipulated the LUNA price, the reveal of China’s $6 billion worth of crypto reserves, and Stripe’s decision to downsize by 14%.

CryptoSlate Top Stories

Korean authorities reportedly have proof of Kwon’s LUNA price manipulations

Korean prosecutors confiscated a private conversation between Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon and one of his employees where Kwon ordered him to manipulate Terra’s (LUNA) market price, according to local news sources.

Prosecutors also discovered Kwon was currently residing somewhere in Europe. Since his passport was terminated by the Korean government at the end of October, Kwon is currently an illegal immigrant on European soil.

China holds $3.9B worth of Bitcoin despite anti-crypto stance

CryptoQuant’s co-founder Ki Young revealed that China holds $6 billion worth of crypto, including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). This is particularly interesting since China is known for its anti-crypto attitude.

Young revealed the news via his personal Twitter account and disclosed that China seized 194,000 Bitcoins, 833,000 Ethereums, and others from the PlusToken scam of 2019 and has been holding on to them ever since.

Stripe lays off 14% of workforce to cut costs amid economic downturn

Payments processor Stripe’s CEO sent an email to all staff on November 3 to announce that the company laid off 14% of its workforce, equating to over 1,100 employees.

The email stated:

“We were much too optimistic about the internet economy’s near-term growth in 2022 and 2023 and underestimated both the likelihood and impact of a broader slowdown.”

Rumors of Andre Cronje’s return cause Fantom to spike 24%

iEarn Finance’s founder and architect Andre Cronje posted a meme saying, “here we go again” on his official Twitter and Linkedin accounts on Nov. 3.

pic.twitter.com/SJ0XrCkN8v

— iamdefinitelyandre.ftm (@AndreCronjeTech) November 3, 2022

The meme led to rumors that he is back in the crypto industry. While Cronje didn’t deny or approve the rumors, Fantom (FTM) reacted to the news by spiking 24% in the past 24 hours.

eNaira CBDC ‘a massive failure’ despite Nigerian central bank’s claims to the contrary

Nigeria’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) eNaira has didn’t reach its anticipated success. It was launched on Oct. 25, 2021, to “increase remittances, foster cross-border trade, improve financial inclusion and enable the government to make welfare payments more easily.” However, it only facilitates a little over 700,000 transactions since its launch.

However, the Nigerian Central Bank claims that this is a victory and that the eNaira fulfilled its purpose: to familiarize people with crypto.

Cloud service provider Hetzner blocks access for Solana validators over TOS breach

Stake pool operator SolBlaze tweeted the screenshot of an e-mail from Hetzner, revealing that Hetzner blocked all Solana (SOL) validators.

🚨⚠️ Hetzner just kicked off all @solana nodes hosted on their infrastructure. ⚠️🚨

Over 20% of stake weight on mainnet-beta is delinquent, with thousands of validators offline.

If you are running a Solana validator using Hetzner, please switch to a different provider ASAP. pic.twitter.com/rkXwKvXGVx

— SolBlaze.org | Stake with us! 🔥💃 (@solblaze_org) November 2, 2022

Hetzner reminded that its network doesn’t allow crypto-related activities and asked the validator to remove all Solana-related activities from their server.

Research Highlight

Research: Bitcoin falling below key resistance for only the fourth time in its history

Analyzing Bitcoin’s realized price and cost basis cohorts metrics, CryptoSlate analysts revealed that the bear market is likely to turn by the end of the first quarter of 2023.

The conclusion was drawn from the cost basis cohorts, which are calculated based on the realized price.

On the chart above, the Bitcoin cost basis cohorts chart shows that the current Bitcoin price is below the short-term holders’ and long-term holders realized prices. This incident has been repeated only three times before, which is demonstrated by the purple areas on the chart.

In each incident, Bitcoin recorded a surge. Judging by the historical evidence, Bitcoin is likely to break its current resistance soon, possibly at the end of the first quarter of 2023.

News from around the Cryptoverse

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Haas F1 Formula Team inked a partnership deal with major NFT marketplace OpenSea to launch a new NFT collection, as the Haas F1 Team announced.

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In the last 24 hours, Bitcoin (BTC) increased by +0.22%  to reach $20,244, while Ethereum (ETH) also spiked by +1.61% to trade at $1,542.

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