The Curve exploit, and the fear of a DeFi contagion took a toll on investor sentiment over the past week. In a quick turn of events, the hacker returned around 70% of the $62M they stole from one of the industry’s largest decentralized exchanges, exploiting code vulnerabilities in the programming language used by Curve. While Bitcoin and Ethereum fell by 0.19% and 1.63%, respectively, over the past week, the biggest gainer was indeed Curve (+7.57%) on the back of the returned funds. While it hasn’t fully recovered yet, a 25.47% jump in total value locked indicates that most stolen funds are back and haven’t been moved off-chain.
Figure 1: Weekly Price and TVL Developments of Cryptoassets in Major Sectors
Source: 21Shares, CoinGecko, DeFi Llama. Close data as of August 7, 2023.
3 Things to Remember in Markets this Week:
• Arbitrum Decentralizes its Validation Technology
Arbitrum, a leading scaling solution for Ethereum, has introduced Bounded Liquidity Delay (BOLD) software. BOLD decentralizes validation by enabling anyone to submit fraud proofs, contest transaction validity, and enhance dispute resolution. While Optimistic Rollup scaling solutions, like Arbitrum, introduce a 7-day validation challenge delay, they remain susceptible to flooding attacks due to the previous model’s central validator. A flaw that could sometimes lead to prolonged withdrawal delays is why BOLD significantly advances Ethereum’s scaling decentralization as it finally sets a fixed, not probable, upper bound of seven days on the time taken to contest transactions. Finally, Arbitrum recorded the most newly deployed contracts on the day of launch. Thus, we’ll closely monitor the true impact on Arbitrum’s ecosystem growth and its influence on similarly-designed scaling solutions.
Figure 2: Total of Arbitrum Contracts Created
Source: @HenryStats on Dune
• Tether’s Flight to BTC
The issuer behind the US-denominated stablecoin has become the 11th largest holder of Bitcoin. Following their announced plans to convert surplus profits into BTC, Tether has accumulated 55K units of Bitcoin, amounting to ~$1.6B in market value. Per its latest attestation report published last week, the company’s excess reserves increased by ~$800M over Q2, bringing the total to $3.3B. This is a significant development to watch closely, given that Tether’s decision boosts Bitcoin’s demand for corporate treasury management.
Conversely, Tether should convert surplus BTC and treasury profits into cash to fortify the company’s resilience against unforeseen challenges and furnish the necessary capital for swift deployment in potential bank run scenarios especially as their current cash reserves were significantly reduced to $90 million from $5.3 billion in December 2022, which is not preferable for a stablecoin with a $85B market cap, despite their access to several other liquid instruments like US treasuries, REPOs, and money market funds. Finally, although the address hasn’t been personally confirmed by Tether, the wallet holdings do match the quarterly holdings of the issuer.
Figure 3: Tether’s Potential BTC Holdings
Source: 21.co on Dune
• Worldcoin Under Scrutiny
On July 24, OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman launched Worldcoin, a decentralized identity verification solution built on Optimism that requires users to scan their irises to obtain an online ID.
Worldcoin’s motive bodes well at first glance. However, collecting biometric data from the masses has been scrutinized by the community, especially since they started with users from developing countries like Kenya. Though, the country’s privacy regulations allow the data collection practices adopted by Worldcoin, which was how the company collected an undisclosed number of iris scans from Kenya out of the over 2.2M collected worldwide. On August 2, the Communications Authority of Kenya published a statement listing five privacy concerns, including questions on the security and storage of the collected biometric data and obtaining data subjects’ consent in return for monetary reward. The authority ordered Worldcoin to cease its data collection practices until further notice.
In France, the privacy authority told the media that it is aware that Worldcoin collected biometric data and has initiated investigations into the matter. Many other countries from the developed world, including UK and Germany, are closely monitoring the project; some have even been investigating it since November 2022. Despite the regulatory push-back, Worldcoin’s adoption is still on the rise, as shown below. Altman still hopes to work with regulators to expand Worldcoin’s services to governments and companies while reassuring that the data collected is preserved by a zero-knowledge (ZK) proof verification mechanism.
Figure 4: Worldcoin Adoption
Source: @21co on Dune
What You Should Pay Attention To
• More TradFi Web2 Players Are Entering the Stablecoin Space
Paypal partnered with stablecoin issuer Paxos to launch their USD-pegged stablecoin, PYUSD, built on Ethereum and fully backed by U.S. dollar deposits, short-term U.S. treasuries, and similar cash equivalents. According to the press release, eligible U.S. customers will be able to pay for their purchases using PYUSD in the same manner that Gnosis Pay announced it would empower European customers to pay for their purchases with Monerium’s euro-pegged stablecoin (EURe) via its Visa card, with a convergence mechanism running in the backend. This trend aims to boost mass adoption by solving two ailing issues stifling the industry by providing users with a familiar user interface while complying with regulations. Moreover, onboarding more traditional players from the second generation of the internet shows the institutional appetite for the stablecoin subsector, whose market cap is valued at $124.5B, with USDT dominating by 67%. More traditional players, especially those with existing tools to their advantage, will likely follow suit, aiming to topple this dominance in their favor. In the grand scheme of things, the more regulated players in the space, the healthier the market.
• The Ramification of the Curve Hack
The top stablecoin DEX was exploited, resulting in an initial loss of $62 million. The vulnerability, termed a reentrancy attack, stems from an Ethereum programming language named Vyper. This flaw enabled the attacker to repetitively trigger the withdrawal function, bypassing safeguards and ultimately draining all assets from the four impacted pools, leaving them fully depleted. The hacker has since returned 73% of the stolen funds while retaining $18 million tied to CRV/ETH, one of the four affected pools.
Figure 5: Curve’s Hacker Balance on CRV/ETH
Source: @21shares on Dune
Fortunately, the security bug was limited to three specific versions, so the damage was relatively contained. That said, despite the hack not severely impacting the DEX, it calls into question the reliability of DeFi’s risk management practices. For context, Curve’s founder Michael Egorosv, owned close to ~35% of the token’s circulating supply, which he then used to secure several loans on the three largest lending protocols. Thus, even though the hacker didn’t hold a substantial amount of CRV, his selling of the token, under last week’s thin liquidity conditions, would have triggered a chain of liquidations starting with Michael’s $85M loan backed by 168M units of CRV. Although Michael has been increasing his margin over the past week and raising it to ~$57M via selling CRV over the counter to dampen the market impact and help mitigate the contagion, the true market implications of the exploit will still linger.
Figure 6: Total amount of CRV sold via OTC by Curve Founder
Source: @0xramen on Dune
Thus, we anticipate lending protocols to reduce the debt ceiling for supplying CRV in order to avoid accruing bad debt in the interim and until the supply of CRV is further diluted. Finally, the broader lending segment could pivot towards a dynamic interest rate model that adjusts automatically to extreme market movement, inspired by Frax’s V2 design, combined with isolated lending markets which confine risk to singular assets.
Bookmarks:
• Our Dune dashboard, along with our researcher Tom Wan’s insights, was mentioned in The Block’s report about Tether. Read here.
• Check out our Dune dashboard, tracking Worldcoin’s airdrop and adoption metrics, here.
• Top 5 Trends in Crypto: User Experience Improvements, Scaling Solutions, and More. Watch here.
• Our latest issue of Cryptoassets of the Month: Find out the biggest gainers of July. Read here.
Next Week’s Calendar
These are the top 3 events we’re monitoring for next week.
• August 9th: Coinbase’s scaling solution, Base, goes live on Mainnet
• August 10th: Next US CPI print
• August 13th: Next deadline for SEC on ARK Spot ETF
Each week the 21Shares Research team will publish our data-driven insights into the crypto asset world through this newsletter. Please direct any comments, questions, and words of feedback to research@21shares.com
Disclaimer
The information provided does not constitute a prospectus or other offering material and does not contain or constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of any offer to buy securities in any jurisdiction. Some of the information published herein may contain forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties and that actual results may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors. The information contained herein may not be considered as economic, legal, tax or other advice and users are cautioned to base investment decisions or other decisions solely on the content hereof.
iShares MSCI Japan ESG Enhanced UCITSETF EUR Hedged (Acc) (CEB3 ETF) med ISIN IE0002SCQ8X0, försöker följa MSCI Japan ESG Enhanced Focus (EUR Hedged)-index. MSCI Japan ESG Enhanced Focus (EUR Hedged)-index följer de största företagen från Japan. Indexet är utformat för att maximera exponeringen för positiva miljö-, sociala och styrningsfaktorer (ESG) och samtidigt minska koldioxidekvivalentexponeringen för koldioxid (CO2) och andra växthusgaser (GHG) samt minimera deras exponering för potentiella utsläppsrisker från fossila bränslen reserver. Valutasäkrad till euro (EUR).
Den börshandlade fondens TER (total cost ratio) uppgår till 0,18 % p.a. iShares MSCI Japan ESG Enhanced UCITSETF EUR Hedged (Acc) är den enda ETF som följer MSCI Japan ESG Enhanced Focus (EUR Hedged)-index. ETFen replikerar resultatet för det underliggande indexet genom samplingsteknik (köper ett urval av de mest relevanta indexbeståndsdelarna). Utdelningarna i ETFen ackumuleras och återinvesteras.
Den börshandlade fondens lanserades den 5 augusti 2024 och har sin hemvist i Irland.
Varför CEB3?
Syftar till att ge exponering mot en portfölj av japanska aktiepapper som är en del av MSCI Japan Index och syftar till att överträffa dekarbonisering och andra minimistandarder för ett EU Climate Transition Benchmark (CTB) och maximera exponeringen mot emittenter med högre ESG-betyg.
Utesluter företag som är inblandade i kontroversiella, konventionella och kärnvapen, civila skjutvapen, termiskt kol, tobak eller okonventionell olja och gas. Företag som klassificeras som att bryta mot FN:s Global Compact-principer, har en ”Röd” MSCI ESG Controversies-poäng eller inte har bedömts av indexleverantören för en ESG-kontroverspoäng eller ett ESG-betyg.
Antar en bindande och betydande ESG-optimeringsmetod för hållbara investeringar. Detta innebär att fonden kommer att integrera ESG-information i sin investeringsprocess för att optimera exponeringen mot emittenter för att uppnå ett högre ESG-betyg och minska exponeringen mot koldioxidutsläpp jämfört med moderindexet samtidigt som optimeringsbegränsningar uppfylls.
Investeringsmål
Fonden strävar efter att uppnå avkastning på din investering, genom en kombination av kapitaltillväxt och inkomst på fondens tillgångar, vilket återspeglar avkastningen från MSCI Japan ESG Enhanced Focus CTB Index, fondens jämförelseindex.
Det betyder att det går att handla andelar i denna ETF genom de flesta svenska banker och Internetmäklare, till exempel DEGIRO, Nordnet, Aktieinvest och Avanza.
Sortimentet omfattar åtta omdöpta ränte-ETFer (Core ETF); sex av de åtta fonderna kommer att få en avgiftsreducering
Core-sortimentet med räntebärande fonder erbjuder tillgång till ett brett utbud av räntebärande segment, inklusive amerikanska och Eurozonens stats- och företagsobligationer, samt inflationslänkade och inflationsskyddade produkter
UBS Asset Management (UBS AM) har meddelat att de har inkluderat åtta räntebärande fonder i sitt Core ETF-sortiment UBS Core-ETFerna med räntebärande fonder kommer att ligga bredvid Core-aktie-ETFerna och tillsammans förse kunderna med konkurrenskraftigt prissatta, högkvalitativa byggstenar för deras investeringsportföljer Core-sortimentet med räntebärande fonder inkluderar amerikanska och eurozonens stats- och företagsobligationer, samt inflationslänkade och inflationsskyddade produkter
André Mueller, chef för kundtäckning på UBS Asset Management: ”Vi har sett ett starkt gensvar från kunderna på våra Core-aktie-ETFer med inflöden på över 2,1 miljarder pund sedan lanseringen* Vi tror att kombinationen av våra Core-aktie- och ränte-ETFer kommer att vara ett attraktivt alternativ för storskaliga förmögenhetsförvaltare, institutionella och privata investerare Dessa kostnadseffektiva fonder utgör byggstenarna för portföljer och kompletteras av våra mer specialiserade, hållbara och valutasäkrade ETFer för att möta våra kunders föränderliga behov”
Det nya utbudet av UBS Core-ETFer med räntebärande tillgångar är**:
*Över 2,1 miljarder pund i inflöden till Core equity ETFer mellan 12 maj och 30 juni 2025
**Fonderna är registrerade för försäljning i Österrike, Tyskland, Schweiz, Danmark, Spanien, Finland, Frankrike, Storbritannien, Italien, Luxemburg, Liechtenstein, Nederländerna, Norge, Portugal och Sverige
***ETFen var tidigare endast tillgänglig som en säkrad andelsklass
Amundi MSCI World Ex USA UCITSETFDist (WEXF ETF) med ISIN IE0009BI8Z04, syftar till att följa MSCI World ex USA-indexet. MSCI World ex USA-indexet följer stora och medelstora aktier från utvecklade marknader världen över (exklusive USA).
Den börshandlade fondens totala kostnadskvot (TER) uppgår till 0,15 % per år. ETFen replikerar det underliggande indexets utveckling genom fullständig replikering (genom att köpa alla indexkomponenter). Utdelningen i ETFen delas ut till investerarna (årligen).
Amundi MSCI World Ex USA UCITSETFDistär en liten ETF med 55 miljoner euro i förvaltningstillgångar. Denna ETF lanserades den 12 februari 2025 och har sitt säte i Irland.
Investeringsmål
Amundi MSCI World Ex USA UCITSETFDist syftar till att så nära som möjligt, oavsett om trenden är stigande eller fallande, replikera utvecklingen för MSCI World ex USA-indexet (indexet), och att minimera spårningsfelet mellan delfondens substansvärde och indexets utveckling. Delfonden strävar efter att uppnå en nivå av spårningsfel för delfonden och dess index som normalt inte överstiger 1 %.
Det betyder att det går att handla andelar i denna ETF genom de flesta svenska banker och Internetmäklare, till exempel Nordnet, SAVR, DEGIRO och Avanza.