The growing number of speculators taking out Ether (ETH) loans to maximize their potential to earn forked Ether Proof-of-Work tokens (ETHPoW) has been causing headaches for decentralized finance protocols. The issue has been gaining traction over the past month or so, given that a significant number of Ether miners are expected to continue working on a forked PoW chain, or possibly even multiple chains post the long awaited Merge. In the event of a fork, on-chain ETH hodlers such as those using non-custodial wallets or those holding on exchanges that are supporting ETHPoW will be airdropped the equivalent amounts of …

Crypto lending platform SALT has received a buyout offer from a prominent online investment platform — a move the company said could potentially enhance its product offerings and advance its mission of making digital assets more accessible to mainstream audiences. Bnk To The Future, or BF, has submitted a letter of intent to acquire SALT for an undisclosed amount, the companies disclosed Friday. The acquisition is contingent on both parties signing definitive agreements and requires regulatory approval. Robert Odell, SALT’s chief product officer, described the potential acquisition as being a unity of first-movers in the cryptocurrency market: “This potential union …

The price of CEL soared by nearly 50% as traders assessed its parent firm Celsius Network's inclination to return a portion of the locked funds to its customers. No CEL-ling pressure for now On the daily chart, CEL surged to its intraday high of $1.67 per token on Sep. 2 after lows of $1.15 the day before. However, the token's sharp rally accompanied lower trading volumes, suggesting a lack of conviction among traders about further upside moves. CEL's gains appeared after Celsius Network filed a motion with the Bankruptcy Court, requesting that its clients with "certain Custody and Withhold accounts …

The decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem scored another win against traditional finance, often called TradFi, with a former Morgan Stanley executive launching a DeFi protocol. Kevin Lepsoe, the former head of structuring for Morgan Stanley, aims to deliver an institutional fixed income scheme that offers fixed and floating rates with his new project named Infinity Exchange. According to Lepsoe, his new project will allow DeFi traders to “implement arbitrage, pull liquidity from other protocols and hedge their futures rates basis risk positions.” The DeFi market is known for its volatility and, therefore, risk in digital asset trades. Trading with more options …

The bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Celsius is facing more legal issues as disgruntled clients are taking action to recover their funds after the platform froze withdrawals in June. An ad hoc group of 64 custodial account holders at Celsius on Wednesday filed a complaint with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York in order to recover their assets. According to court documents, the creditors are seeking to recover a total of more than $22.5 million worth of cryptocurrency assets collectively held in Celsius’ custody service. The ad hoc group is represented by bankruptcy-focused law firm Togut, Segal …

Decentralized lending platform Compound has been plagued by a code bug in a recent governance proposal to update its price feeds. The code error has “temporarily frozen” the Compound ETH (cETH) market, causing cETH transactions to revert, but Compound Labs stated that despite the front end not working, “funds are not immediately at risk.” Compound Labs announced on Aug. 31 that the code bug came from Proposal 117: Compound Oracle Upgrade v3, which was implemented a couple of hours ago to update the oracle contracts on the Compound protocol to a new version that uses Uniswap V3 instead of V2 …

Crypto lending platform Nexo has increased the size of its buyback program, giving the company more discretionary ability to repurchase its native token to boost interest payments or make strategic investments in the future. On Aug. 30, Nexo disclosed that its board of directors had committed an additional $50 million to buybacks, building off the company’s initial $100 million repurchase program launched in November 2021. The approval green lights the discretionary repurchase of up to $50 million worth of NEXO tokens on the open market. NEXO is the platform’s native cryptocurrency giving users the ability to earn interest and lock …

With the Ethereum Merge on the way, the risk research and analysis team Block Analitica proposed a temporary pause in Ether (ETH) borrowing to mitigate the risks which may lead to a decentralized finance (DeFi) implosion in the Aave lending protocol during the Merge. The team pointed out the potential issue of high ETH utilization which may result in liquidations being hard or impossible and annual percentage yields (APYs) reaching negative figures. Furthermore, the uncertainties surrounding the Merge and a potential Ethereum proof-of-work (PoW) fork may cause liquidity providers to start a bank run, pushing utilization to even higher levels. …

Singapore-based crypto lending firm Hodlnaut was placed under interim judicial management, a form of creditor protection program, by the Singapore court on Aug. 29. The court orders came three weeks after Hodlnaut froze all trading activities and withdrawals on its platform citing a liquidity crisis. In an official blog post on Aug. 30, the crypto lending platform notified its users that Ee Meng Yen Angela and Aaron Loh Cheng Lee, care of EY Corporate Advisors, were appointed as interim judicial managers. The blog post read: “The Court has delivered judgment on 29 August 2022, and has been confirmed that Hodlnaut …

Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you significant developments over the last week. This past week, there were some major developments in the run-up to the upcoming Ethereum Merge slated for Sept. 15. Bitfinex became the latest crypto exchange to throw its support behind the chain split token. While DeFi bridge hacks have become a norm this year, developers behind Rainbow Bridge managed to foil an exploit attempt within seconds, leading to the hacker losing their safety deposit. The Tornado Cash developer who was arrested last week …

The Celsius Network is one of many crypto lending firms that has been swept up in the wake of the so-called “crypto contagion.” Rumors of Celsius’ insolvency began circulating in June after the crypto lender was forced to halt withdrawals due to “extreme market conditions” on June 13 and eventually filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy a month later on July 13. The crypto lending firm showed a balance gap of $1.2 billion in its bankruptcy filing, with most liabilities owed to its users. User deposits made up the majority of liabilities at $4.72 billion, while Celsius’ assets include CEL tokens …

A joint committee of the United States's Uniform Law Commission (ULC) and the American Law Institute (ALI) finalized amendments to the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), regulating the specifics of digital asset transactions and crypto-as-collateral secured financings. The amendments are “recommended for enactment in all the States,” although each case of final implementation may vary depending on the State. A final draft of the ULC-ALI Emerging Technologies Committee’s amendments to the UCC was approved during a meeting on July 8–13. The key updates for the crypto industry appeared in Articles 3 and 9, the new Article 12 contains a set of …