Coming every Sunday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link. Top Stories This Week Libra hearings: Hostility and criticism as Congress grills Facebook executive A godsend to drug dealers. More dangerous than 9/11. A global economic threat. Congress was given two days to grill the head of Facebook’s Calibra wallet, David Marcus, over the upcoming Libra cryptocurrency, and it didn’t hold back. The Senate Banking Committee went first on …

Bitcoin (BTC) outflows on major crypto exchange BitMEX have notably exceeded the inflows after the firm was reported to be a subject in a regulatory investigation. Bitcoin outflows on BitMEX exceeded inflows by $73 million Over the past 24 hours, BitMEX saw an outflow of $83 million worth of Bitcoin, while only $12 million came in, London-based blockchain data provider TokenAnalyst reported in a tweet on July 19. 24-hour on-chain Bitcoin flows on major exchanges. Courtesy of: TokenAnalyst Twitter While such a discrepancy appears to be abnormal in comparison with other exchanges, such as Binance, which saw a $54 million …

United States regulator the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is reportedly investigating derivatives giant BitMEX. CFTC wants to know if Americans using BitMEX According to Bloomberg sources citing people familiar with the matter speaking on July 19, the CFTC suspects that BitMEX allowed U.S. residents to use its platform to trade. Under current law, the U.S. is one of the countries excluded from using BitMEX, which is registered in the Seychelles, and similar crypto-based financial services, but users may have sought to circumvent the geoblock using services such as VPNs. The investigation, details of which have not yet been confirmed …

Economist and anti-cryptocurrency pundit Nouriel Roubini has recently declared that there is “overwhelming evidence of rampant fraud and abuse” in the crypto space. Roubini, a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, also took aim specifically at the compliance policies of crypto exchange BitMEX in an essay entitled “The Great Crypto Heist.” The essay was published by opinions publication site Project Syndicate on July 16. According to Roubini, anonymous sources from within BitMex told him that criminals perform a massive amount of money laundering on the exchange: “BitMEX insiders revealed to me that this exchange is also used daily for …

At the Tangle in Taipei on July 3, American economist and crypto sceptic Nouriel Roubini (aka “Dr. Doom”) and BitMEX CEO and co-founder Arthur Hayes didn’t agree on anything except that “Facebook’s Libra is not cryptocurrency.” One of the reasons on that is, while Roubini took for granted that the success of Bitcoin should be measured by its transaction speed only, Hayes argued that there was a different measurement. Roubini continued to criticize Bitcoin based on his assumption and said, as he has often pointed out, “this conference is not even accepting Bitcoin.” But for Hayes, that is not the …

Bitcoin (BTC) Lightning Network nodes have claimed 2.2 BTC in “justice transactions” to deter potential thieves, a BitMex Research analysis revealed on July 15. A so-dubbed “justice transaction” is a punitive mechanism involving the closure of a lightning channel that is suspected to be attempting theft. As the report outlines: “[B]y design, when a thief attempts to steal funds on the lightning network, if caught, they do not only lose the money they tried to steal, they lose all the funds in the relevant channel. This ‘punishment’ is expected to act as a deterrent and is sometimes called ‘justice’. BitMEX …

Bitcoin Core contributor Michael Ford, aka “fanquake,” has been awarded a $60,000 grant by the parent firm of top crypto derivatives platform BitMEX. In an official announcement published on July 12, BitMEX owner and operator HDR Global Trading revealed its decision to award Ford the grant, noting that he has just recently been made the latest official maintainer of the Bitcoin Core software project. This means that the developer’s key has been added to the “trusted keys list” file on GitHub — giving him the ability to merge in changes to the Bitcoin Core codebase. HDR Global Trading has presented …

Facebook’s Libra payment protocol could make central and commercial banks irrelevant, but PayPal has no future anyway, the CEO of derivatives giant BitMEX thinks. Arthur Hayes made the comments in a new interview with Taiwanese news network BlockTempo TV on July 9. Speaking during this year’s Asia Blockchain Summit (ABS), Hayes made grim forecasts for both banks and fiat-based payment networks. Libra, which saw its white paper release last month but has yet to launch, has drawn both praise and criticism from across the international economy. For Hayes, participants who should be most worried are banks themselves. Even if Libra …

American economist and professional crypto contrarian Nouriel Roubini has furiously demanded the release of a recording of his latest debate with BitMEX CEO and co-founder Arthur Hayes. In one of several fulminating tweets posted on July 2, Roubini accused the organizers of the Asia Blockchain Summit in Taiwan of being part of a “mafia hush money racket” and cowing to BitMEX’s censorship by choosing to neither tape nor broadcast his debate with Hayes during the event. One tweet reads: “Another @CryptoHayes scam: he didnt allow the blockchain conference to record our debate or beam it live. He controls the only …

Facebook’s new cryptocurrency project really can boost bitcoin (BTC), new sources, among them a report from equity research platform Seeking Alpha, said this week. Capitalizing on existing theories about the social media giant’s Libra protocol, the brief report suggested that publicity from mainstream consumers will ultimately flow into bitcoin. The collateral attention will only help the bitcoin price and its overall acceptance, particularly in the face of global market uncertainty. “I believe that Libra will allow users to be more inclined to use bitcoin as a peer-to-peer payment system while the uncertainties of the global markets are having investors flock …

BitMEX, the world’s largest cryptocurrency trading platform, saw record volumes across its operations as bitcoin (BTC) hit $13,000. The company reported the figures on Twitter on June 26. On Wednesday, BitMEX, which is the world’s single biggest bitcoin derivatives provider, reported more than $1 billion of open interest on the market. Trading topped $13 billion, with the number topping $16 billion across the platform’s product range. Volume had swiftly risen above $10 billion in previous hours, leading CEO Arthur Hayes to declare any signs of the previous cryptocurrency bear market were officially gone. “XBTUSD perp swap open interest is now …

This article has been updated to correct that BitMEX is not Hong Kong-based. Peer-to-peer (P2P) cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX has reported an influx of attacks on user account credentials, according to an official blog post on June 11. In addition to covering a litany of best practices for user security, the cryptocurrency exchange stressed the importance of using two-factor authentication (2FA) in particular. The report summarizes 2FA as follows: “2FA, sometimes referred to as ‘two-step verification’ or ‘multi-factor authentication’, adds an additional layer of security to your account by requiring not only your username and password at login, but also the …