Short-lived Bitcoin Trap, Ethereum on WordPress, IOTA’s Drama + More News

Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.

Trading news

• It appears that large traders, whales, and institutions that accumulated bitcoin (BTC) around USD 10,000 levels decided to take profits during this rally, while retail traders mostly kept adding to their positions during the price surge, OKEx said in their latest report. The result of this could be that retail traders will be trapped in the short- to mid-term — with BTC currently trading below USD 19,000 — but given how overall market sentiment remains bullish, their losses may be short-lived, they added.

Adoption news

• A new WordPress plugin called EthereumAds allows content publishers to auction ad space for ethereum (ETH). Per the plugin description, it is open-source software; it automatically allocates ad space to the highest bidder for two weeks, and it sends payments to users’ Ethereum wallets. The service is suitable for any content, not just crypto-related, e.g. websites, blogs, videos, even billboards, says the website.
• Three Chinese internet giants – ride-hailing app DiDi, Tencent-backed food delivery app Meituan, and video streaming platform Bilibili – are reportedly participating in the country’s second city-wide test for digital yuan, known as the Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DCEP). Per local media CLS, lottery-winners in Suzhou can spend their free digital yuan on DiDi’s ride-hailing service or Meituan’s bike-sharing service if they activate their DCEP wallets with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and they can spend the money on Bilibili if they activate their wallets with the Bank of China.

Altcoins news

• The IOTA Foundation Board of Directors and Supervisory Board announced that the Foundation has “officially parted ways” with IOTA co-founder David Sønstebø. According to the announcement, this is the result of a unanimous decision, made by the Supervisory Board “in the best interest of IOTA and its ecosystem.” They added that it has become clear that the interests of Sønstebø and those of the IOTA Foundation “have diverged significantly.” The development doesn’t change anything about the delivery and strategy with Chrysalis and Coordicide, they added, saying that “things are progressing very well on both fronts.”
• An initial sale for the rapper Lil Yachty’s $YACHTY coin sold out in just 21 minutes, 41 seconds, per a press release circulated by the “social money” platform Fyooz. A total of 25,000 (25% of the 100,000 coins minted) sold out, with buyers paying USD 15 each for the tokens. Buyers were told they could expect a range of exclusive benefits owning from the rapper’s coin, including the opportunity for an exclusive 1:1 video event and a “collectors’ surprise boxes prepared by his biggest idol – his mom.”
• A 19-year-old Ukrainian millionaire politician who made history by winning a seat on the Kramatorsk, Donetsk, governing council despite the fact that he is still a teenager reportedly made a fortune on crypto trading. Rostislav Solod, the son of Natalia Korolevska, the former Minister of Social Policy and one of the country’s richest women, began dabbling in the crypto markets aged just 14, per EA Daily. Solod, according to his tax returns has gained a cool USD 23m largely from his crypto trading, with much of his assets held in monero (XMR) – a figure that has helped him buy multiple properties and expensive foreign motor vehicles.

Mining news

• The Venezuelan government has enforced a new set of crypto mining regulations. Per an Instagram post from the National Superintendent of Cryptoassets and Related Activities (SUNACRIP), the state crypto regulator, SUNACRIP has signed a framework agreement for inter-institutional cooperation with the Ministry of Electrical Energy that has set out the “parameters” for the “legal development” of “digital mining” in the country. The deal, said SUNACRIP, will see the government create what it called a “crypto mining industrial sector” that will “give special treatment to miners” – provided they sign up to a national register.
• Bitcoin mining difficulty, the measure that shows how hard it is to compete for mining rewards, is estimated to decrease by around 1% in two days, reaching 18.93 T, according to major mining pool BTC.com. During the adjustment on November 29, it jumped by almost 9%, cutting into the profit margins of BTC miners.

DeFi news

• A November report by data and research company BraveNewCoin, which took a look into technical concerns associated with Ethereum-based smart contract finance protocols, has noted several serious “non-financial” risks in decentralized finance (DeFi). These include scalability, oracle, finality, design and other risks, as well as re-entrancy, unhandled exceptions, timestamp dependence, and other vulnerabilities.