The Breakdown First Five - Monday June 5, 2023

Welcome back to The Breakdown First Five — the 5 most interesting and/or important stories in bitcoin, crypto, and markets to start your day.

5. Move over Faketoshi, enter Uniscam

A bizarre conference was held in China to promote Uniswap, including glitzy production values and a red carpet appearance by “CEO” Mike Hanlon. Never heard of him? Neither had Uniswap founder Hayden Adams who confirmed the entire production was unrelated and likely a scam. Turns out there was also a fake website launched which the Uniswap team are attempting to take down. In a sea of low-rent scams, this one deserves an Oscar.

4. Bitcoin less volatile than Amazon stock

Bitcoin has traded with remarkably low volatility recently, hitting an annualized rate of only 32%, down from 71% on a longer term average. That’s less than Amazon or Meta stock. In its history, Bitcoin has only achieved such low volatility for short periods, so look out for wild swings to come. Stability breeds instability.

3. Atomic Wallets drained

An ongoing security exploit of Atomic Wallet has seen more than $35M stolen so far. The team is still looking into the problem while hackers make off with the look. The team is still looking into the issue and claims that only 1% of users have been affected, however one user saw $2.8M in USDT disappear. Losses are concentrated in whales, meaning this could be a targeted attack, but for now we just don’t know.

2. Celsius’ big deposit

As the Celsius bankruptcy gets close to resolution, the Crypto lender has staked $745M worth of ETH. The massive deposit into staking contracts has pushed the entry queue to 44 days. The ETH was formerly staked with Lido and likely forms part of the post-bankruptcy strategy to return the firm to profit. Large creditors will receive equity in the new entity instead of their tokens and are now forced to hodl staked ETH under new management.

1. Market Structure Bill

Patrick McHenry and Glenn Thomson dropped a mammoth Crypto bill on Friday. Crypto Lawyer’s canceled weekend plans to dig into 162 page draft. The bill tackles all of the major issues in Crypto regulation, from exchange licensing to the securities definition. Only a discussion draft, the GOP bill seeks comment from Democrats with a view to getting comprehensive laws on the books by the end of the year.

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Thanks for reading -NLW