Qrafty heard that someone got hacked for $24 million, Grayscale is Bitcoin whale no. 2 and a new crypto reality show will air on Sept. 7

***Qrafty rolling out the red carpet and fixing his tie***

Hey there, human of remarkable taste and exceptional charm! I am Qrafty - the crypto lovin’ honey badger 🦡 !

Welcome to Coinqraft – Your daily dose of digital currency drama-free news for the busy but delightfully curious folks who'd rather HODL their time than deal with crypto chaos!🌟

🦡   Qrafty has fresh bits from the crypto jungle, so let’s dive in: 📰 🌟

1. A Whale Lost $24 Million in a Hack

2. How To Get Paid To Stay Closed

3. The Race for Ethereum ETF is LIT!

Bonus: A New Crypto Reality Show is Live on Sept 7th

Crypto Mining Company Paid to Power Down

The news is that Riot, a huge Bitcoin miner, was paid by the state of Texas $31.7 million to… stop functioning for the month of August. You might say…

Qrafty, the title and the first 2 lines don’t really make any sense…

Qrafty was trying to ease into it a bit and expected the question: why would Texas pay so much money to a crypto mining company just to shut down?

That’s what I meant, Qrafty, didn’t you get it?

Of course I got it! So, in 2021 Riot was making huge loads of cash in the middle of the crypto bull run, to the point where it reached an 8000% revenue! It’s important to mention that the company was created in July 2021 so it didn’t have a history of growth to begin with… It’s almost as if someone actually knew how things will evolve and started the company just before the crypto boom. Cool, huh?

But we all know that what goes up, must come down. And that’s exactly what happened! In 2022, Riot posted a net loss of $500 million. Ouch…

Now, in 2023, when crypto investments have dried up and there are about 15 people left (out of which 9 are bots) on the whole crypto scene, they’re really not well… Their stock more than doubled since the 2022 bottom, reaching 11 USD. But they’re still far away from the top value of $78 in 2021.

But hey, guess what? If you have enough infrastructure to stress the energy grid to the point where it becomes a threat to its stability, you get paid to shut down!

What do you mean, Qrafty? They got paid to stay shut?

Yup! That’s exactly what happened and might continue to happen in Texas! Texas’s ERCOT (The Electric Reliability Council of Texas) is independent and not connected to the two US grids, like the rest of the USA. One of the former ERCOT Interim CEO was hired in an advisory board of Riot’s.

Texas has become crypto friendly by providing financial credits. While the government initially proposed legislation to terminate these credits at the beginning of 2023, it has now approved two additional measures that will offer even more benefits to Bitcoin mining companies. These initiatives were enacted on September 1, following unsuccessful efforts by Texas State Senate to advance a bill that would restrict credits.

The argument is that if the grid operators pay the miners a penny more than they would have made from mining in any given hour, then they’ll gladly power down.

So Riot announced that they earned an astonishing $31.7 million in energy credits last month by reducing energy usage when Texas experienced an extreme heatwave.

This is a significant figure, especially when compared to the company's Bitcoin mining activity, which yielded 333 BTC last August, worth around $9 million at the time.

Pretty cool, huh? That’s a cool way of keeping the electrical grid hostage and make serious cash, isn’t it? Go Planet, yay!

🙃 Qrafty hopes that today’s main story brought brave badgery value to you! Now it’s time for a break, you deserve a bit of fun! 😇 👇️

1. Phished Out of $24 Million in Ethereum. Fuuu…

The truth is crypto has some stories… wow! It doesn’t really matter if you are a fan, against the whole thing or just passive. Crypto has its own culture, its villains, its huge collapses, degenerates, success stories and a lot of everything else in between. Crypto stories are the best stories!

Today it’s about a crypto “whale“ who lost over $24 million in staked Ethereum (liquid staking) by not paying attention to the Input Data of the transaction.

This is quite an advanced way of interacting with the blockchain and it’s not for regular users. The function coded in the Input Data field gives the sender of the transaction the possibility to transfer all the funds from the wallet.

Obviously, this is trackable on the blockchain and all the moves of the attacker will be. But it becomes difficult if the attacker uses a crypto mixer or other anonymization services.

Either way, that wallet is short 24 million USD. Yowzaaa…

2. Fair Value Accounting Rules Starting 2025

The rulebook for US accounting is like a clueless tourist without a map when it comes to guiding companies like MicroStrategy, Tesla, or Coinbase on recognizing and valuing their digital currencies.

Crypto asset holdings are regarded as intangible assets… which is DEFINITELY not the case for crypto, as we can’t keep our dirty little hands off of them preciousss!!!

Qrafty, are you ok?

Si, senor! So, crypto is seen like owning brands or copyrights/trademarks. Highly illiquid and not very tradeable.

With the new, long awaited accounting rules, companies have to report how much crypto they own at fair value. Regulators want to make sure that the companies aren't under or overvaluing their assets, especially when things start to get really hot and frisky in the market; not like right now when it’s cold, damp and rats are running rampart in the jungle.

It's kind of like having to tell someone exactly how much each car in your car collection is worth even if the price keeps going up and down all the time.

3. Things are Happening for XRP

Things have been happening for a while now and XRP has been a dear to SBI Remit, being used by them for their cross border remittance. Think of Ripple as the turtle of the crypto space, while pretty much everyone else wants to be the rabbit. That’s why we see about 90-95% of crypto startups implode from cycle to cycle. But Ripple keeps on drudging, taking punches and going on one-on-one’s with the authorities. And wins!

Now, what’s happening new is that XRP becomes bridge currency for Japanese financial giant SBI Remit in Philippines,Vietnam and Indonesia as transfer destinations.

In 2021, they were the first in Japan to provide an international remittance service that utilizes the crypto asset XRP as a bridge currency between two legal currencies.

In more recent news, Chris Larsen seems to be pretty fed up with SEC’s policy of regulation by enforcement. Can’t blame him… he won against the SEC and now he can vent!

4. Jump Trading Moving to Solana

It looks like Jump Trading, the crypto-market-moving-market-maker that has worked with pretty much all the big players in the industry, has jumped onboard the Solana ship. So much so, that they’re building a Solana validator.

Their website states: “We are building a new validator client for Solana to increase its networking throughput, resilience, and efficiency.“ All eyes open! Either someone knows something about Solana, or some things are happening in the background.

5. The Race for Spot Ethereum ETFs is On

Oh boy, looks like ARK Invest and 21Shares are trying to get the green light from the SEC for an ETF that puts all its eggs in one basket, so to speak.

It’s a spot ETF, that means they will have direct exposure to Ethereum (as in own it themselves, not just a ticker on a screen).

They plan to keep those assets under lock and key at Coinbase Custody for safekeeping, so basically outsourcing security and remembering all those damn keys and passwords and letters and codes… blah!

6. The Crypto “Shark Tank” Goes Live Soon 

On September 7th, The Next Crypto Gem will go live. In the reality show, participants compete against each other for a reward package that is believed to be worth more than $150,000.

There are two episodes available on Imdb, with descriptions in the style of the TV show “Friends“: The One with the Casting and The One with the No Coiners

Qrafty wrote about this in a previous edition and believes that entertainment is the best way to spread knowledge about crypto. It’s the best method to educate and bring more people into the ecosystem.

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Yesterday is like a mystery novel you accidentally skipped to the last chapter of. You know how it ends, but you have no idea how you got there!

Qrafty’s thougt of the day

Other stories

Grayscale is Bitcoin Holder no. 2

Arkham Intelligence reports that the funds are distributed among more than 1,750 addresses and that Grayscale is the 2nd largest BTC entity globally, holding more than $16 Billion worth of BTC. What’s more to say?

bUt MuH mUh MuH dEcEnTrALiZaTiOn?!!?!

Yeah… right 😂😂😂

Celsius CEO Mashinsky's home and assets ordered frozen

Last July, the US authorities detained Mashinsky, who was accused of deceiving Celsius investors and swindling customers out of billions of dollars. He denied all accusations and was released on a $40-million bond, with certain limitations such as wearing an ankle monitor and obtaining permission before moving, sending or receiving any amount greater than $10,000.

Now, a federal judge has ordered that the Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch accounts under the names of holding companies, as well as accounts at , SoFi Bank, SoFi Securities and First Republic Securities under Mashinsky’s name be frozen.

Ex-FTX executive pleads guilty for bribing politicians

Ledger cofounder leaves

Nicolas Bacca, who is recognized for his role as the Chief Innovation Officer and co-founder of Ledger, has opted to depart from the company amid controversy regarding the recovery feature.

The debate over the Recovery feature is still raging on the Ledger forum, and the conversation has reached boiling point. People are arguing about whether or not the company was clear in its messaging, whether using the feature means giving up control of your cryptos, and whether the introduction of a key extraction mechanism could lead to new security risks.

Binance delists privacy coins

European nations ask Binance to delist all privacy coins, so Monero ($XMR), MobileCoin ($MOB), Firo ($FIRO) and Horizen ($ZEN) are not on the platform anymore. Poof, gone!

SAP is working with Polygon on NFT’s

It’s an “internal exploration“ project that aims to develop novel ways for customer engagement methods. So they started an NFT platform which would enable companies to issue their own NFT. As per their LinkedIn statement:

"SAP covers the costs of minting and transferring NFTs, eliminating potential barriers. The platform's reliance on the Polygon Labs Blockchain further reduces costs, making NFTs a feasible option for businesses of varying sizes and an array of use cases with more restrictive unit economics such as marketing.”

Coin Listings/Delistings - September 7, 2023

Binance delists spot trading pairs with BUSD for: AUDIO, BAT, BSW, CITY, CVX, FORTH, JUV, MOB, OGN, OMG, PLA, POLS, REI, RSR, SCRT, TVK, UTK. And the pairs ADA/BIDR, MATIC/BIDR, ZIL/BIDR.

Users are encouraged to convert their BUSD assets into other available assets on Binance prior to February 2024.

Binance encourages users to convert BUSD to other stablecoins prior to February 2024.

Market Whispers

Hihi...Qrafty smelled a pump the other day, after seeing all the shorts opened.

Those shorts, more than 200 mil $ are gone now and it looks like a bunch of spot bitcoin purchases appeared in this pump.

Don't wanna jinx it, but as long as it holds 26-26,2k we can expect a push higher to 27k or maybe even retest 28,4k. Happy bulls day today!

Qrafty ends channeling his inner trader.

Today is NATIONAL BEER LOVERS DAY!

That’s all from Qrafty 🦡 for today! Qrafty thanks you and wishes you to live each moment as if you are listening to the music you love most!

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