News Updates January 15, 2023

1. Tether’s 2022 Settlement Volume Flips Visa and Mastercard. Tether USDT processed $18.2 trillion in transactions in 2022, placing it ahead of traditional payment processors like Visa and Mastercard, according to a January 14 tweet.

In comparison, Mastercard and Visa processed transactions worth $14.1 trillion and $7.7 trillion, respectively.

Tether’s high transaction volume testifies to the massive growth of stablecoins over the past years. Despite the challenges facing the crypto industry, stablecoins appeared to have thrived. Stablecoin adoption grew in countries where the current economic situation has placed their national fiat currency at a disadvantage.

Tether Had a Difficult 2022

Despite the growing adoption of stablecoins in 2022, Tether had a somewhat difficult year.

Over the past year, Tether has seen more concerns raised about its reserves and its solvency following the collapse of Terra UST in May and the FTX crypto exchange in November.

The stablecoin briefly lost its peg to the US Dollar at the height of Terra’s crash FUD. During this period, the stablecoin issuer honored over $10 billion in redemptions. BeinCrypto later reported that several traditional financial institutions took short positions against USDT because of the speculations surrounding its financial health.

USDT Market Cap Declined

While USDT remains the dominant stablecoin in the crypto market, rivals like USDC and BUSD recorded victories against it in 2022. For context, Tether’s market cap declined from a peak of $83.13 billion to as low as $65.31 billion over the reporting period. On the other hand, USDC’s market cap grew to $56 billion before declining.

2. Solana Surpasses Polygon (MATIC) as SOL Becomes Top 10 Again.

It seemed impossible for another two months, but it happened, and SOL is back in the top 10 largest crypto assets by capitalization, according to CoinMarketCap. It seemed impossible because Solana's place in the ranking was taken by Polygon's native blockchain token, MATIC, which is the main currency in Ethereum's rapidly growing Layer-2 network, but no such luck. The reason, of course, lies in SOL's meteoric rise in price in 2023, with the Solana token being one of the leaders in growth rate among the 100 largest crypto assets. SOL posted a 134% increase in price in January, while MATIC rose "only" by 28.9%.

As a result, Solana's capitalization since the beginning of 2023 has added $4.7 billion against Polygon's $1.85 billion and moved from 16th place in the ranking to the top 10.

Knocked down, not out It is not just the price of the Solana token that has recovered to at least decent levels, however, but also activity on the network. According to Token Terminal, the daily number of active blockchain users has returned to "pre-FTX" levels, above 150,000. At the same time, the number and amount of fees increased accordingly, as did the revenue of validators.

Activity in the NFT segment, traditionally a strong market for Solana, has also increased. The funny thing is that this comes just days after major digital art studios migrated from Solana to Polygon.

3. Decentralized Exchange Trading Volumes Remain Lackluster in the New Year, Uniswap Leads the Way with Daily Swaps.

According to statistics, decentralized exchange (dex) monthly trading volumes have dropped significantly since Jan. 2022. After a brief spike in volume in Nov. 2022, dex trade volumes have been lackluster for the past 44 days. As of Jan. 14, 2023, Uniswap version three (V3) has the highest trade volume during the past 24 hours at $1.9 billion and the second-highest total value locked (TVL) at $3.57 billion. Metrics show that Curve holds the second-largest trade volume on Saturday with $399 million in 24 hours and the highest TVL in terms of assets locked in dex platforms, with $4.19 billion locked.

Uniswap V3 Dominates Dex Trading as Decentralized Exchange Volumes Remain Flat

After the first two weeks of Jan. 2023, and as of Jan. 13, 2023, metrics indicate that there has been $15.33 billion in global swaps settled among decentralized exchange (dex) platforms. Last month, dex protocols recorded roughly $43.65 billion in swaps, meaning that during the first two weeks of the new year, 35.12% of last month’s volume has been reached.

With the recent spike in global cryptocurrency market prices, jumping 6.24% in the last 24 hours, dex trade volume has been fueled over the last few days. Uniswap V3 has captured the most volume during the last 24 hours with $1.9 billion in swaps.

Uniswap V3 Dominates Dex Trading as Decentralized Exchange Volumes Remain Flat

After the first two weeks of Jan. 2023, and as of Jan. 13, 2023, metrics indicate that there has been $15.33 billion in global swaps settled among decentralized exchange (dex) platforms. Last month, dex protocols recorded roughly $43.65 billion in swaps, meaning that during the first two weeks of the new year, 35.12% of last month’s volume has been reached.

With the recent spike in global cryptocurrency market prices, jumping 6.24% in the last 24 hours, dex trade volume has been fueled over the last few days. Uniswap V3 has captured the most volume during the last 24 hours with $1.9 billion in swaps.

Uniswap is followed by Curve ($399 million), Balancer ($190 million), Pancakeswap ($176 million), Uniswap Polygon ($164 million), Uniswap Arbitrum ($142 million), Sun.io ($132 million), Uniswap V2 ($91 million), and Uniswap Optimism ($77 million).

It’s worth noting that the top five smart contract platform tokens have captured double-digit gains during the last week. Ethereum jumped 20.6%, Binance Coin (BNB) rose 16.6%, Cardano increased by 25.4%, Polygon has risen by 23.2%, and Solana jumped 68.5% higher against the U.S. dollar over the last seven days.

The entire smart contract platform coin economy has gained 8.5% against the U.S. dollar in 24 hours. Data also shows that the dex Curve is the top decentralized finance exchange with the most total value locked on Saturday afternoon at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time.

At the time of writing, Curve commands a $4.19 billion total value locked (TVL) and Uniswap is just below the protocol with $3.57 billion. Both Curve and Uniswap are followed by Pancakeswap ($2.46 billion), Balancer ($1.61 billion), Sun.io ($578.83 million), Sushi ($448.9 million), and Biswap ($232.3 million).

4. Solana Foundation warns about security incident with Mailchimp

According to an email sent to users, an unauthorized actor accessed and exported certain user data from the Solana Foundation’s Mailchimp instance.

Solana Foundation, the non-profit organization of the Solana Network, disclosed on Jan. 14 a security incident involving its email service provider Mailchimp. 

According to an email sent to users and seen by Cointelegraph, the Foundation was informed by Mailchimp on Jan. 12 that "an unauthorized actor accessed and exported certain user data from the Solana Foundation’s Mailchimp instance."

Among the information accessed and exported in the incident were user's names and Telegram usernames. The Solana Foundation stated:

"Based on the information we have received from Mailchimp, the affected information may have included, inter alia, email addresses, names, and Telegram usernames, in each case only to the extent users provided any such information. Mailchimp advised that the incident did not affect passwords or credit card information."

The number of users affected by the incident is unclear. There was no official announcement from Solana or Mailchimp regarding the incident at the time of publication. Solana did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.

Few weeks ago, another crypto company had user's emails exposed by third-party providers. As reported by Cointelegraph on Dec. 13, hackers gained access to 5,701,649 lines of information pertaining to customers of crypto exchange Gemini, including email addresses and partial phone numbers.

It is not the first time crypto companies have experienced security issues with Mailchimp. In August 2022, the email marketing platform Mailchimp suspended its services to crypto content creators and platforms associated with crypto news or related services. Users started to experience issues logging into accounts, followed by notices of service interruptions.

At the time, Mailchimp stated that “across the tech industry, malicious actors are increasingly deploying an array of sophisticated phishing and social engineering tactics targeting data and information from crypto-related companies.”

The company also said that "in response to a recent attack targeting Mailchimp’s crypto-related users, we’ve taken proactive measures to temporarily suspend account access for accounts where we detected suspicious activity while we investigate the incident further.”

The Beosin Global Web3 Security Report 2022 revealed 167 major security incidents over 2022, with DeFi projects attacked 113 times, which accounted for approx. 67.6% of recorded attacks, Cointelegraph reported.

5. Reserve Bank of India wants cryptocurrencies treated as gambling.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor, Shaktikanta Das, has once again reiterated his stand calling for the ban of cryptocurrencies on the grounds that they are speculative and similar to gambling. 

According to Das, the RBI’s stance on crypto remains the same, stating that they cannot be considered as a financial product and should be treated like gambling activities, India Today reported on January 13. 

“Anything whose valuation is dependent entirely on make-believe is nothing but 100 percent speculation, or to put it bluntly, it is gambling. <…> In our country, we don’t allow gambling. If you want to allow gambling, treat it as gambling and lay down the rules. <…> Cryptocurrency masquerading as a financial product or a financial asset is a completely misplaced argument,” he said.

The threat posed by crypto 

Das argued that the threat posed by crypto on the financial sector is due to the lack of underlying value while warning that allowing digital assets to grow will undermine the bank’s role in controlling the money supply.

“Some people call cryptocurrency an asset, some call it a financial product, but every asset or financial product needs to have an underlying value. But cryptocurrency does not have any underlying value,” Das said.

Amid the call to ban cryptocurrencies, the governor acknowledged that the government needs to support blockchain technology due to its underlying benefits.

As reported by Finbold, RBI has been advocating for outlawing private cryptocurrencies at some point, warning that digital assets might lead to the next financial crisis. 

Countering private crypto

To counter the growth of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), the bank is pushing for the rollout of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) and has since released a concept note. However, the note has received backlash from the crypto and blockchain industries operating in the country on the grounds of being regressive.

It is worth mentioning that India has been pushing for a global approach to regulating cryptocurrencies, citing the sector’s cross-border nature. Despite the uncertainty in crypto regulations, India still accounts for a significant share of digital asset investors.