Cryptocurrency news in January 2022

The following news are a summary of what happen in the cryptocurrency market during January 2022, Some bad but also some interesting ones

Crypto-Market as per [CoinMarketCap]

Bitcoin(BTC): lost around 29% probably due to political problems in Kazakhstan leading to miner migration mainly, though. Now it’s also on recovery now.
Altcoins: Most of altcoins were affected by the bear market too, only FTX Token (FTT —a derivative platform) and BORA (an entertainment platform) ended up January with positive percentages.
DeFi apps: The Decentralized Finance apps ended January up with over $80b in Total Value Locked. We are talking about the most popular ones like Maker, Curve Finance, Convex Finance, Aave, and Uniswap
NFTs: Non-Fungible Tokens keep booming as well, with over $3.3 billion in sales during January. Axie Infinity, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), CryptoPunks, Art Blocks, and The Sandbox are the most popular NFT projects per volume.

Some Latin America countries (Argentina, Colombia and Peru) are preparing their own crypto regulations. Some already released and others in proposal phase and concerns collecting taxes on cryptocurrency activities and control of crypto exchanges.
Spain are actively implementing laws on crypto activities. The exchanges based on the country should pay taxes, and a new taxing model would ask the investors to declare their cryptocurrencies in foreign lands. Ads about cryptocurrencies addressed to at least 100,000 people, will be regulated as well and need to warn about cryptos being a risky investment.
Due to energetic crisis, Kosovo (Southeast Europe) banned Bitcoin mining inside its borders and seized over 200 machines and GPUs so far.
Russia is considering a blanket ban on cryptocurrencies, or, otherwise, that only the banks could handle them.
Estonia denied a crypto ban but cleared that DeFi operators and crypto exchanges will be regulated.
The United States is aiming for tighter crypto regulations in 2022, starting from February.

At least 15 DeFi platforms were hacked or made exit scams in January.
- Multichain on ETH (hacked for over $2.7 million),
- Solfire on Solana (exit scam for over $4 million),
- Arbix Finance on BSC (exit scam for $10 million),
- Lympo on ETH (hacked for over $18.5 million), and
- Qubit Finance on BSC (hacked for $80 million, read more on Twitter).
OpenSea was also attacked by hackers, and over $1m in NFTs were stolen from the users. The most affected were the owners of BAYC, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, Cool Cats, and CyberKongz. The team behind the platform assured that they will reimburse the stolen NFTs to the victims.
The ransomware gang REvil was finally dismantled by Russian authorities, in collaboration with U.S. authorities. This group of hackers used to attack companies with malware and then ask millions as a ransom to recover the data. This way, they claimed annual revenues of over $100 million in BTC and Monero (XMR).
The exchange Crypto.com was hacked by over $30 million in BTC. The hackers exploited their 2FA system to withdraw the funds from almost 500 users’ accounts. The company reimbursed the victims, and most of the funds are still on-chain.

El Salvador will issue Bitcoin Bonds from February, with an APY of 6.5% (in USD). The raised funds will be used to build a Bitcoin City, and acquire more BTC for their reserves. Indeed, during January, they bought another 410 BTC (around $15 million), for a total of 1,500 BTC on their wallet.
Several companies and banks are aiming to create their own stablecoins and tokens. They include PayPal, Walmart, MercadoLibre, Synovus Bank, New York Community Bank, FirstBank, and Sterling National Bank. All of them, of course, aside from any Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
Tonga (Oceania), Borgo D’Anaunia (Italy), and Arizona (U.S.) are opening their doors to Bitcoin. There are already two proposals to make BTC legal tender in Tonga and Arizona. Meanwhile, the government in the Italian city Borgo D’Anaunia is mining BTC through a hydroelectric plant.

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Cryptocurrency news in January 2022