First Mover Americas: BTC Struggles to Break $20K as More Lenders Face Trouble

Good morning, and welcome to First Mover. I’m Lyllah Ledesma, here to take you through the latest in crypto markets, news and insights.

Bitcoin (BTC) was up 2% on the day with U.S. equity index futures and European bonds falling as investors worried about the threats of deteriorating economic growth and inflation.

Germany also reported its first monthly trade deficit in three decades as surging import prices have caused a shortfall in the export-reliant nation, according to Bloomberg.

Bitcoin is trading down 6% over the last 7-days, at around $19,400.

Ether (ETH) also suffered a downfall over the last 7-days, trading down 10%. ETH’s price weakness continues as “The Merge” fast approaches. The Merge will see the network go from a proof-of-work platform, to proof-of-stake.

The once-mighty crypto hedge fund, Three Arrows Capital, filed for bankruptcy on late Friday after weeks of speculation that it was functionally insolvent.

American-Israeli crypto lender, Celsuis, laid off some 150 employees over the weekend as it battles a financial crisis which saw it halt customer withdrawals last month.

Coinbase, the U.S. crypto exchange, said in a report that recent selling of newly minted bitcoin by crypto miners does not add any significant market pressure. If all newly issued bitcoin were sold onto the market each day, it would equate to only 900 BTC of selling pressure.

Over in Latin America, Argentina’s economy minister, Martin Guzman, resigned on Saturday. This caused citizens to purchase up to three times as many stablecoins over the weekend than they usually do, crypto companies in the country told CoinDesk.

Separately, a survey from Mastercard reported that over 51% of Latin Americans made at least one transaction with cryptocurrencies between March and April of this year.

Market moves

Solana-based liquidity protocol Crema Finance had more than $8.78 million worth of cryptocurrencies stolen from its platform in an attack over the weekend, developers said in a tweet.

Crema said it had suspended its smart contract after the exploit. The protocol allows liquidity providers to set specific price ranges, add single-sided liquidity and conduct range order trading. This makes for a sophisticated and decentralized trading platform.

“We’ve been closely working with several experienced security institutes and relevant organizations to track the hacker’s fund movements,” the developers said in a tweet.

Value locked on Crema plunged to $3 million on Monday from over $12 million on Saturday following the exploit, data shows. Crema has seen trading volumes of $1.34 billion since its inception in January.

The attacker started by creating a fake tick account. A tick account is “a dedicated account that stores price tick data in CLMM,” the developers said, referring to Crema’s market making protocol. After that, the attacker exploited a command by writing the data on the fake account and circumventing security measures.

Read the full story here: Solana DeFi Protocol Crema Loses $8.8M in Exploit.

Today’s newsletter was edited by Parikshit Mishra and produced by Sheldon Reback.