Perhaps the biggest news in the last week of January was that nearly all of the tokens from IOTA's (IOTA) recent $11 million hack have been recovered. IOTA cofounder and board cochair Dominik Schiener told reporters that the IOTA tokens have been found and are being held by police as evidence for an investigation. On January 24, Europol, British, and German law enforcement arrested a 36-year-old man on charges of stealing $11.4 million worth of IOTA from at least 85 victims over a year. The hacker stole wallet security seeds from a defunct website and used them to drain IOTA wallets. It's good that the victims will likely receive restitution.
Here is the rest of the week in review:
Distressed Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX owes customers $190 million but cannot access most of its funds. After QuadrigaCX founder Gerald Cotton unexpectedly died in India in December, the exchange owes its 115,000 customers about $190 million worth of Canadian dollars, Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Bitcoin Gold (BTG), and Litecoin (LTC). The exchange owns about $147 million in crypto, but does not know how much it holds in cold storage. Some of QuadrigaCX's remaining funds could be held on other exchanges. The Nova Scotia Supreme Court has allowed QuadrigaCX to find extra funds and negotiate its liabilities. A February 5 hearing will a stay of proceedings and let QuadrigaCX appoint Ernst & Young to oversee its operations.
Pantera Capital is leading a $4.5 million funding round for Staked, a startup that provides institutional investors staking services and required infrastructure. The blockchain hedge fund is partnering with Coinbase Ventures, Winklevoss Capital, Global Brain, Digital Currency Group, Fabric Ventures, and Blocktree Capital to fundraise. Staked chief executive Tim Ogilvie believes $25 billion of crypto that allows staking will be available in the next 15 months. Staked wants to allow large investors to boost returns through the blockchain validation process called staking. Staked currently supports six coins, and Ogilvie expects up to 20 coins this year. After staking, Staked wants to try crypto lending services.
Crypto prices remained fairly stable, ending the week at above $113 billion. For the majors, EOS (EOS) and Litecoin had the only positive performances. In the top 100, the biggest losers are Nasdacoin (NSD), down 37%, NEM (XEM), down 25%, and Project Pai (PAI), down 24%. The biggest gainers are Bitcoiin (B2G), up a whopping 1,582%, Dimecoin (DIME), up 651%, and Flash (FLASH), up 401%. Traders and investors will continue watching US government agencies for news about the Bitcoin exchange-traded fund application.
The author owns a small amount of BTC.