The Breakdown First Five - Monday September 25, 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. ByBit Exits UK

Citing difficult new regulations, ByBit has elected to suspend services in the UK. New customers will be rejected from Sunday with existing users given until January to wind down positions. The firm said their primary goal was to operate in compliance with all regulations and they intend to focus efforts on getting up to code. The strict new regulations around customer suitability have already seen Paypal and Luno leave Britain.

4. EU Stablecoin Delisting

Binance have warned that they could be forced to delist all existing stablecoins under the EU’s MiCA regulations. The current regulations require issuers to be registered domestically, which none are. The rules are also silent on how they will be applied to decentralized issuers. The strong statement appears intended to trigger clarifications from EU regulators to ensure the new rules don’t function as a de facto stablecoin ban.

3. Mixin Hack

Another week, another hack. The Mixin network suffered a $200M hack over the weekend. The platform which offers decentralized wallet services has said around half of customer assets were secured during the incident. The team is considering issuing recovery tokens to settle user deficits. The attack seems to have breached the protocol’s cloud service in what is becoming an alarming trend of third party security failures.

2. Coinbase Considered FTX Europe

Coinbase took a second look at acquiring FTX Europe last month. The firm holds a valuable license to operate derivatives markets in Europe. Coinbase expressed interest way back in November, shortly after the bankruptcy, but the estate was in no hurry to sell. The acquisition could help Coinbase expand its global derivatives products as part of a larger international strategy. Other firms are also bidding on the company and talks reportedly did not progress.

1. Inflationary ETH

Ethereum has hit a quiet patch, with network revenue falling to a 9-month low. Although layer 2 volume remains robust, the lack of fees flowing to the base layer has caused Ethereum’s token issuance to flip back to being inflationary. Following the merge Ethereum saw months of deflation, leading to the ultra-sound money meme. Inflation is still relatively low, less than 15% of Bitcoin’s issuance.

Thanks for reading -NLW