The Largest Crypto Hack, Bitcoin Volatility, and Azuki Airdrop: This Week’s Crypto Recap

This week was nothing short of eventful from all ends of the spectrum. The market went through considerable volatility, fortunately – it was to the upside for the most part. One of the most popular NFT series – Azuki – also airdropped additional NFTs to its holders while the anticipation and hype more or less doubled its value. All this while Axie Infinity’s Ronin bridge was exploited for some $600 million in what can easily be the largest crypto hack ever. Let’s unpack.

Bitcoin was trading at around $44K this time last week, but it didn’t take a lot for the cryptocurrency to start moving higher. By Monday evening, the price had already increased to almost $48,000, where it consolidated for a few days. Market participants were unable to move BTC in either direction. All that changed on Thursday, but unfortunately, the bears took over and pushed the price back towards $45,000 – where it’s currently trading.

The rest of the market followed in Bitcoin’s footsteps with certain obvious exceptions. Ethereum is up about 8%, BNB – about 5%, AVAX – 8%. Solana managed to increase by a whopping 26% on news of OpenSea integration, whereas LUNA is up 10.9% as Do Kwon doesn’t seem keen on halting the Bitcoin buys.

Meanwhile, Axie Infinity’s Ronin bridge got exploited for a whopping $600 million. The leader of Axie Infinity’s Kapital DAO – Sam Peurifoy – even suggested that they might sell some of its equity to raise the funds necessary to reimburse all the users.

Stepping into the realm of NFTs this week, it was the Azuki collection that stole the show and outperformed all others in terms of both floor price increase and overall volume. This is because the team airdropped the Something Official collection to Azuki holders. It currently has a floor value of 4.3 ETH worth over $13K.

All in all, it was a very busy and eventful week, and it’s particularly exciting to see how the next seven days will come to be.

Market Data

Market Cap: $2,200B | 24H Vol: $154B | BTC Dominance: 39.3%

BTC: $45,414 (+3.4%) | ETH: $3,344 (+7.7%) | ADA: $1.14 (+10.6%)

The Biggest Ever Crypto Hack: What Happened in the Ronin Bridge Attack. The Ronin bridge – an essential piece of infrastructure for the Axie Infinity ecosystem – was exploited. This saw the company lose over $600 million in ETH and USDC in what seems to be one of the largest cryptocurrency-related hacks.

Rio de Janeiro to Accept Cryptocurrency Payments for Taxes (Report). Cryptocurrency adoption continues, and this time it happens in the form of regulatory clarity. The city of Rio de Janeiro revealed that it will begin accepting crypto for tax payments in a considerable push forward.

MicroStrategy to Buy More BTC Following $205M Bitcoin-Collaterized Loan From Silvergate. MicroStrategy – the company, spearheaded by one BTC’s most vocal proponents, Michael Saylor – will be buying more Bitcoin following a $205 million loan from Silvergate that was collateralized in BTC.

$13 Trillion in Total Addressable Market for the Metaverse, Banking Giant Citi Says. The international banking giant – Citi – has demonstrated a very bullish outlook for the metaverse. The institution believes that the total addressable market for it would be between $8 trillion and $13 trillion by 2030.

Grayscale Comapres Ethereum to New York City. Grayscale – the world’s leading digital asset manager – took a very interesting approach to explaining cryptocurrencies to the mainstream audience. The company compared Ethereum to New York City for being abundant in development yet cluttered at times.

OpenSea Reveals the Solana Integration Date. The world’s largest marketplace for non-fungible tokens, OpenSea, teased that they will be integrating Solana next. This saw the price of the cryptocurrency skyrocket by some 26% in the past seven days alone.