🥴 Silicon Valley and Signature Banks, USDC - what happened?

🥴 Silicon Valley and Signature Banks, USDC - what happened? 🪜 Hacker targets Hedera network, HBAR TVL drops 🥚 Pokemon plans to enter web3

GM. The new week has just begun and we've got plenty of news that you can't consider *good*, the crypto market is sure full of surprises. But this is not the first time or the last time it will happen. So, don't worry too much about the price of your coins, look at the future. The blockchain industry is here to stay and will continue to grow, from the biggest institutions to the smallest projects.

Here's a short recap of what happened:

🥴 Silicon Valley and Signature Banks, USDC - what happened?

🪜 Hacker targets Hedera network, HBAR TVL drops

🥚 Pokemon plans to enter web3

Silicon Valley and Signature Banks, USDC - what happened?

Everything started last Friday, when tech investors got the news that Silicon Valley Bank was no longer solvent. This came as a surprise to many, since SVB had been one of the most successful financial institutions in the country and a major player in the tech startup world.

Another crypto friendly bank, Signature Bank, was closed by US regulators the very next day, with the intention of "preventing a potential banking crisis". This was an especially shocking move since it seemed to come out of nowhere - Signature Bank seemed to be doing well.

The Federal Reserve had raised interest rates, which scared away some investors and that was all it took to send SVB and Signature into a tailspin. A "bank run" means that everyone wants their money out of the bank at once - and when that happens, the bank fails because usually, the bank doesn't have enough money on hand to cover all the withdrawals. This is exactly what happened.

The biggest crypto related casualty was Circle (issuer of USDC), which had $3.3 billion of reserves in SVP. On March 9, Circle submitted a wire transfer to remove its funds from SVB but just two days later, Circle revealed that the transfer was not successful and that $3.3 billion of USDC reserves were stuck.

After hearing this news, investors panicked and USDC lost more than 10% of its value in a matter of hours. It traded as low as $0.8774, which caused even more panic.

The Federal Reserve, FDIC and US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen have since released a statement saying that all depositors at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank will be fully protected and able to access their money on Monday.

This certainly put investors' mind at ease, USDC's peg was restored and the FED promised to work together with the FDIC and other government authorities to help secure banks' deposits.

While this is certainly a relief, it does prove that even the best run financial institutions can fail when faced with immense pressures. Plus it seems like we won't really know the full impact of this incident until the dust settles. In the meantime, it's important to remember why diversification is key when investing and managing funds. Stay safe out there!

Hacker targets Hedera network, HBAR TVL drops

HBAR got hit by a hacker last week, but the team managed to turn the situation around and stop him by turning off the chain. Hedera's team said it turned off the mainnet proxies to make sure the hacker was locked out of the system and couldn't steal any more tokens.

The hacker targeted accounts used as liquidity pools on multiple DEXs that use Uniswap v2-derived contract code ported over to use the Hedera Token Service, including Pangolin Hedera, SaucerSwap Labs and HeliSwap DEX. The hacker attempted to quickly withdraw large amounts of HBAR from the liquidity pools using flash loan attacks.

The TVL on the chain got hit hard and dropped by more than a third. But, thanks to the quick response of Hedera's team, things are back up and running. The HBAR team put out a statement saying that they are taking extra precautions to make sure this type of attack won't happen again.

Pokemon plans to enter web3

The Pokemon Company - a venture created by Nintendo and a game dev company called Game Freak and Creatures listed a job role for Corporate Development Principal. This role requires the candidate to be someone who's deep in the web3 world, with knowledge and understanding of blockchain technologies and NFTs/metaverses.

The offer doesn't seem to provide any other details regarding the company's actual plans in web3, and it remains a mystery as to what The Pokemon Company is actually up to. Maybe they're looking to create their own NFTs? Or maybe they'll launch a blockchain-based game?

As you probably know, physical Pokemon trading cards have been around for years - and some cards, depending on their rarity, can be worth a fortune. Could they be looking to bring the same concept to web3?