The biggest event of last week for the blockchain & cryptocurrency world is crypto tracing firm Elliptic reporting that funds collected by the sudden scam that breached Twitter (NASDAQ: TWTR) this week seem to be moving. According to transaction data associated with crypto wallets used in the hack of over 130 prominent accounts, a total of around $123,000 in Bitcoin (BTC) was taken by the attackers. Elliptic said it "strongly believes" about 22% or 2.89 BTC, was transferred to a Wasabi wallet, a wallet that lets users evade the transparency guaranteed through the public blockchain by mixing up the transaction trail and making analysis more difficult. Meanwhile, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service said on July 15 it had negotiated a COVID-19 deal with Elliptic under a federal disaster relief law known as the Stafford Act, in order to use the firm's software for tracing and analysis of cryptocurrency transactions and the entities involved.
Here is the rest of the week in review:
Lightning Network startup Zap Inc., creator of the Zap non-custodial Bitcoin wallet and the payments app Strike, raised its first round of $3.5 million in April, led by Green Oaks Capital and veteran crypto investor Anthony Pompliano. Forbes first reported the funding raise on Wednesday. Founder Jack Mallers' startup is now the latest darling in the Green Oaks portfolio, as the firm previously invested in booming fintech unicorns Robinhood and Stripe. Investor Colleen Sullivan of CMT Digital said: "We believe that Zap/Strike will bring the use of the Bitcoin protocol and the Lightning Network to the masses, resulting in a much more efficient and cost-effective way for users to send and receive money while abstracting away the complexities of the underlying technology." The Zap team plans to issue a Visa (NYSE: V) card in 2020, making its ambitious goal to offer exchange services with mainstream liquidity in US dollars.
Waves Enterprise and Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) Russian subsidiary announced Wednesday they signed a five-year memorandum to work jointly on corporate blockchain solutions. Waves (WAVES) is a Moscow-based tokenization platform, and Waves Enterprise was founded in July 2019 to provide services for corporate clients on private blockchains. Although no concrete project was confirmed, Waves said both firms want to use blockchain for new supply chain solutions as well as the "tokenization of industrial assets." Microsoft Russia CEO Christina Tikhonova said the partnership is an effort to help the country's business sector become familiar with blockchain technology. The partnership will look at the interconnection between blockchain and cloud technologies, and Waves Enterprise noted it will build a data analytics solution based on Microsoft Azure. Waves added future solutions could be available in Russia and globally.
Crypto prices edged down to $270 billion this week. For the majors, all were red except Chainlink (LINK), which soared 17% into the top 10, with Bitcoin SV (BSV) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) posting the worst losses. In the top 100, the biggest losers were Ampleforth (AMPL), down 34%, Nexo (NEXO), down 15%, and Quant (QNT), down 14%. The biggest gainers were Aurora (AOA), up a whopping 398%, Nimiq (NIM), up 164%, and Swipe (SXP), up 106%. Next week traders will watch if crypto can make a big move.
The author owns a small amount of BTC.