#Ethereum

The current market landscape marks an unprecedented decline in liquidity, according to Bloomberg Intelligence's senior macro strategist, Mike McGlone. If this pattern holds throughout 2023, he warns of a potential sharp descent in Bitcoin prices, which would ripple through Ethereum, XRP, and the general cryptocurrency domain. “What should be early indications of recessionary times? The best indication should be bitcoin and that’s where I’m looking for the bleeding occasion from bitcoin and it’s still kind of showing what I expected.” “Picture December: Recession looms, Fed hesitates on easing due to inflation,” said McGlone.

In collaboration with its subsidiary Zynga, acquired for $12.7 billion last year, Take-Two is launching “Sugartown,” a web3 game built on Ethereum, marking the debut of a “major mobile game developer” crafting a crypto-based game “from the ground up.” Players will utilize Ethereum (or ERC-721) tokens to access the game, stake for energy, and earn in-game currency. Access tokens named Oras will also be minted this year as part of an initial release.

Tether CTO: "The launch of PayPal stablecoin doesn’t impact Tether as the firm does not serve U.S. users. If PYUSD launches in international markets, it could have a positive impact on the crypto industry and potentially erode revenues for payment giants like MasterCard and Visa." Co-founder of zkLend: "PayPal will indeed bolster the perception and acceptance of cryptocurrencies, but it can lead to a diminished market share for decentralized stablecoins, threatening the very principles of decentralization that underpin the crypto space." Analysts at JPMorgan: "This could boost Ethereum activity and enhance Ethereum’s network utility as a stablecoin/DeFi platform. PYUSD could fill the void left by the $20 billion shrinkage of Binance's BUSD stablecoin, which was forced to shut down by U.S. regulators earlier this year." Co-founder of Sei Network: "The gas fees of using PYUSD will be ridiculous, which will disincentivize its usage. To help make the user experience better, PayPal will either need to subsidize transaction costs or will need to help support PYUSD on other networks with cheaper gas fees." It's worth noting that PayPal currently serves 435 million customers globally.

RocketSwap, a DEX on the Base Layer 2 network, suffered a hack, losing 471 ETH ($862,000). The team identified lapses, including offline signatures during launchpad deployment and storing private keys on the server. While some accused the team of a potential rug pull, RocketSwap blames a third-party hacker who brute-forced a server to extract private keys. Post-hack, the hacker moved assets to Ethereum, creating a meme token, "LoveRCKT", which saw a brief price surge on Uniswap before plummeting.

The BALD project’s scammer team managed to relocate 7000 ETH ($13 million) from Base network into Ethereum. Not stopping there, they sent 2100 ETH (around $4 million) to the Kraken exchange, possibly gearing up for a grand withdrawal. Want the full story on this crafty meme coin scam? Read all about it in our detailed article!

The company’s successful testing of this technology lets users now handle gas fees using their credit or debit cards. This trial took place on the Ethereum Goerli testnet.