What happened this June in the cryptocurrency world?

We’ve seen some historical events in the cryptocurrencyA digital currency running on a blockchain and built with cryptography. Contrary to central-bank issued currency, cryptocurrency issuance rules are... world last June. BitcoinBitcoin is the first decentralized digital currency. It was created in 2009, by an anonymous founder or group of founders... More as legal tender, China expelling miners, some high-profile scams, and important regulations worldwide are only part of the list. Let’s check what happened.

June on the cryptocurrency markets

• Bitcoin (BTCAn abbreviation for Bitcoin.) didn’t perform very well this month. Its price decreased by over 10% [CoinMarketCap], probably due to the new mining restrictions in China. However, MicroStrategy decided to buy the dip with over $489 million. Now, they’re holding around 105,085 BTC ($2.7+ billion).

There was some other good news too. Elon Musk declared that Tesla will resume the BTC payments once “there’s confirmation of reasonable (~50%) clean energy usage by miners with positive future trend”. Besides, in a historical event, El Salvador established Bitcoin as legal tender. They’re also going to mine Bitcoin with geothermal energy.

• XRP went down in June (-35%) as the lawsuit against Ripple extends. The court granted the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) request for a 60-day extension of the discovery period in their case. Meanwhile, the former CTO and co-founder of Ripple, Jed McCaleb, keeps receiving XRPs and slowly selling them.
  
• Ethereum (ETH) lost around 22%, but it’s already recovering. Last month, the developer team Matter Labs launched their alpha version of the so-called “rollups” on an Ethereum testnet, to make it faster and cheaper. Probably because of this, the gas fees on this network plunged to a yearly low of around $0.15 per transactionA cryptocurrency transaction is an entry on the blockchain ledger, noting sender, receiver and number of coins transacted..
  
• Amid the bloodbath, some tokens managed to keep stable and even bullish. Shiba Inu (SHIB) decreased by 16%, but its popularity and exchange listings are on the rise. Its DeFi platform, Shibaswap, is planned for summer.

Meanwhile, Waves announced a new game platform including NFTs, and its price saw brief peaks through the month. For its part, Cardano (ADA) achieved a new record of staking addresses, with over 673,887. Charles Hoskinson, its founder, is looking for a higher adoption in El Salvador.

• NFTs sales decreased by over 74% in June, compared to May [Non-Fungible]. However, important creators, companies, and celebrities keep joining this market. So far, they include Jay Z, Twitter, Mattel, Marvel, Matt Furie (Pepe the Frog creator), the International Olympic Committee, and the Spanish poet Jorge Dot.

Worldwide cryptocurrency regulations

• While El Salvador recognizes Bitcoin as legal tender, Iran seized over 7,000 ASIC miners. They banned Bitcoin mining last month for the time being, due to electrical issues in the country. However, at least 30 crypto-mining farms received operation licenses more recently.

Not too far from there, the Indian authorities are still discussing whether to ban cryptocurrencies or just regulate them. And Indonesia followed the steps of Turkey and China, by banning cryptocurrency payments inside their territory.

• The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) from the United Kingdom extended its deadline for the crypto-asset firms to properly register. They should meet the requiring anti-money laundering standards before March 2022 if they want to keep operating in this country.
   
• The exchange Binance is having trouble operating in, at least, six countries. Malaysia was the first one to ban it (in 2020). More recently, by the end of June and barely starting July, the United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, and the Cayman Islands joined the list. They assure that Binance doesn’t have proper permissions to operate in their territories. 
  
• The World Economic Forum (WEF) published a guide for the governments to regulate Decentralized Finance (DeFi). Only if necessary, according to the guide, they should consider the creation of customized frameworks, including warnings for the users and limited licenses for DeFi issuers. 

In the same vein, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) postponed their new guide for international cryptocurrency regulation. Their first draft was heavily criticized for attempting against privacy. That’s maybe why they’ll be discussing it until October, instead of June, the original deadline.

Cryptocurrency hacks and scams

• The United States is about to treat ransomware attacks almost like terrorism. A recently-created task force in Washington will be in charge of these attacks, and the affected companies must share every possible data about it. This is no wonder since a great hack against the Colonial Pipeline put the country in an emergency last month.

Not long after, the G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, and the United States) announced that they’ll take joint actions against ransomware. They’re aiming “to ensure that critical infrastructure is resilient against this threat” and malicious digital activity is investigated and prosecuted.

• The DeFi hacks and scams weren’t absent this month either. The Safedollar (SDO) team assured that there was a hack of over $248,000, sending the token price to zero. Likewise, the Iron Finance protocol and its stablecoin IRON suffered a destabilization by whales, sending its price to zero.

For its part, the Polywhale team ran away with over $1 million. Other victims include PancakeHunny ($1+ million), Visor Finance ($500k), and Impossible Finance ($500k).

• Some scammers are targeting LedgerA ledger is like a spreadsheet keeping track of which addresses own how many bitcoins. The Bitcoin blockchain is a... users to send them fake devices through the mail. Along with a letter, they explain to them that, supposedly, the company is changing the old devices to increase security. Therefore, they should insert their private keyA cryptographic key that is used with an algorithm to encrypt and decrypt data. A cryptocurrency private key lets you... on the new fake hardware wallet. If the victim does so, their credentials (and funds) will end up with the scammers.
  
• A fake NFT Marvel Marketplace is around scamming people. Marvel is, indeed, offering their own NFT collection now. However, the fake marketplace appeared before the official announcement, and, instead of NFTs, they offered a shady presale of a new token.

• Two African brothers disappeared with around $3.6 billion in cryptocurrencies, as indicated by some reports. Ameer and Raees Cajee, co-founders of the investment platform Africrypt, closed the website and flee away with 69,000 BTC. They announced a supposed hack in April, and they didn’t respond to any messages until their previous customers hired lawyers.

According to them, the platform never managed such an amount of cryptocurrencies, and they’re still hiding because they received death threats. However, they’ll back in South Africa for a court date the next July 19.

Other news

• John McAfee was found dead on his cell in Spain. The famous creator of McAfee Antivirus and frequent crypto-promoter was about to be transferred to the United States. He was facing charges for millionaire tax evasion.

The official version states that he killed himself. Nevertheless, some suspicions have been raised, since, in previous weeks, he assured through Twitter that he’d never do such a thing. His last autopsy established the death as suicide, though.

• Craig Wright won the lawsuit against Bitcoin.org by default. Last January, he threatened with legal actions to this webpage, arguing that he’s Satoshi NakamotoThe inventor of Bitcoin, which might be one person or a group of people who released the original Bitcoin whitepaper... and the Bitcoin whitepaper is under copyright (which it’s not). Sadly, the UK Court ruled a default judgment, because the admin of Bitcoin.org, Cobra, didn’t want to waive his anonymity to appear at the hearing.
  
• Visa and PayPal were an important part of the investors for the last round of BlockchainBlockchain is a type of database storing an immutable set of data, verifiable to anyone with access to it —through... Capital. This is, as described, “the first venture capital firm founded to focus exclusively on blockchain technology and the crypto ecosystem”. The raised amount this time was $300 million.

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