Welcome to Finance Redefined, a weekly newsletter that provides essential insights into decentralized finance. This newsletter is designed to bring you the most important events of the past week.
Cryptocurrency markets have seen a significant recovery this week after the largest cryptocurrency sell-off in a year wiped out more than $510 billion in global market cap, with Bitcoin (BTC) briefly plunging to a five-month low of $49,000.
Beyond these changes, there have been significant positive developments in the broader decentralized finance (DeFi) space since the eldest son of presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump announced plans to launch a DeFi platform to compete with the banking industry.
While Trump Jr. has yet to reveal any details about the platform, the cryptocurrency industry could benefit greatly from the public’s attention.
Donald Trump Jr. Launches Cryptocurrency Platform to ‘Take on’ Banks
Donald Trump Jr. has announced plans to launch a new DeFi cryptocurrency platform to address banking inequality. However, the platform is still in its early stages and will take some time to become a reality.
In a Q&A session on subscription-based platform Locals on August 8, Donald Trump Jr., the eldest son of presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump, said he is not launching a memecoin, but rather is developing a cryptocurrency platform to challenge banks.
“What we’re talking about is a larger type of platform,” he said. It’s very different and not a meme coin. But he added, “It’s going to be a long time before we can do anything,” and said he wouldn’t offer anything in a time frame.
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$510 Billion Crypto Selloff Will Wipe Out All Profits of Top 50 Coins in 2024
More than half of the top 50 cryptocurrencies by market cap are down following the biggest cryptocurrency sell-off in a year.
The total market capitalization of the entire cryptocurrency market has decreased by $510 billion.
According to CryptoQuant author Binhdangg, more than 60% of the top 50 cryptocurrencies have lost all their gains in 2024 after the selloff. He wrote in an August 6 post to X:
“Since Black Monday, 60% of the top 50 coins have lost all their gains and even suffered losses since early 2024.”
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Solana’s first game, SVM, has surpassed 1 million monthly active users.
Sonic’s testnet has surpassed 1 million monthly active users, demonstrating the growing adoption of Web3 games.
Sonic, the first gaming-focused Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) Layer 2, generated over 600 million transactions from over 1 million users during its testnet.
According to Chris Zhu, CEO of Sonic SVM, the surge in users is largely due to the Odyssey testnet campaign, which offered rewards for playing and trading on the testnet.
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Nomad Bridge Hacker Transfers $35.2 Million Worth of ETH to Tornado Cash
Approximately 14,500 Ether (ETH), worth approximately $35.2 million, was transferred from an address flagged as a Nomad Bridge exploit to Tornado Cash, a popular cryptocurrency mixing service.
According to a PeckShieldAlert post on X, funds related to the Nomad Bridge hack in August 2022 were transferred on August 8th.
However, the 14,500 ETH transfer was part of another transaction on August 5th, where 16,892 ETH was purchased using stolen funds linked to Nomad Bridge.
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Ronin ‘White Hat’ Attacker Returns $10 Million Worth of ETH After Accidental Preemption Attempt
According to data from block explorer Etherscan, the highest extractable value bot that withdrew about 3,996 Ether from the Ronin Network bridge on August 6 has returned almost all of its funds. This suggests that the bot may have accidentally outpaced the attack. At the time the ETH was returned, it was worth over $10 million.
The bot returned the funds on August 6th at 3:04 PM UTC. A total of 3,991 ETH was transferred to the Ronin team, but the remaining 5 ETH were not returned. The Ronin team announced the return on social media platform X, and stated that the bot owner had received a $500,000 bounty for discovering the exploit.
The team said it would reopen the bridge only after the vulnerabilities have been patched and an audit has been performed.
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DeFi Market Overview
According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, most of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap ended the weekend in decline, still recovering from the aftermath of the aggressive crypto market selloff.
Among the top 100 tokens, the Lido Dao (LDO) token suffered the biggest loss, falling more than 26% on the weekly chart, followed by the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance (FET) token, which plunged more than 23% last week.
Thanks for reading our roundup of the most impactful DeFi developments of the week. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights, and education on this dynamic and evolving space.