A message from Agoric

Bitcoin traded either side of $64,000 following a retreat from $65,000 on Thursday. The increasing likelihood of Joe Biden withdrawing from the race for U.S. president has taken some of the wind out of BTC's sails after it briefly regained $66,000 earlier this week. With a second term in the White House for Donald Trump considered the far more beneficial outcome for the crypto industry, BTC was buoyed by Biden's poor performance thus far in the campaign coupled with the assassination attempt on the Republican nominee. The possibility of a Biden withdrawal may mean that crypto traders' sentiment has been tempered slightly. BTC has dropped about 0.9% in the last 24 hours, while the CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20), a measure of the broader crypto market, fell 1.9%.

Bitcoin and shiba inu traded at substantial discounts on Indian crypto exchange WazirX following Thursday's attack by a North Korea-linked hacker. The BTC/INR pair has fallen 22% in the last 24 hours, while on other local exchanges it's just 2% lower. The SHIB/INR pair lost 30%. Wazir's native token, WRX, is down 40% since the attack. The hacker, who drained $230 million from WazirX, converted most of the spoils into ether, according to blockchain tracker Lookonchain. The exploiter holds over 59,097 ETH as of Friday morning, worth $200 million at current prices and another $15 million in various alternative tokens.

Dozens of crypto tokens themed after internet services company CrowdStrike and the Microsoft “Blue Screen of Death” error were issued on Ethereum and Solana amid a global internet outage. Millions of Windows users worldwide are experiencing the so-called BSOD error, which causes the system to suddenly shut down or restart. The error has hit businesses ranging from airlines and railways to stock exchanges and is reportedly related to a Crowdstrike software update that went awry. No crypto-related company has yet reported errors or outages in their services. Creating tokens to profit from a trending news narrative is a niche behavior of crypto market participants. Many end up making a profit for their creators and early buyers before losing all value.

Trading volume in XRP flipped that of bitcoin (BTC) on South Korean crypto exchanges this week, one symptom of the frenzy that may have helped fuel the token’s 20% rise over the period.

Data tracked by CoinGecko shows XRP accounted for as much as 40% of trading volumes on UpBit, the country’s biggest exchange, and over 35% on Bithumb and Korbit earlier this week. That is, unusually, higher than usual leaders bitcoin and Tether's USDT, indicating a short-term demand for the tokens in the country.

On Wednesday, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said in a TV interview that he expects a “resolution very soon” on its legal dispute with the U.S. SEC.

In crypto circles, South Korean traders are known for pushing euphoric rallies on tokens, contributing to buying pressure and possibly influencing prices.

“With daily local media coverage of XRP and influencers mentioning it, it seems that trading volume is focused on the token,” Bradley Park, a Web3 analyst at on-chain analysis firm CryptoQuant, said in a Telegram message. “There seems to have been a sudden increase in trading volume as SEC-related news has been in the spotlight.”

- Shaurya Malwa