 Celsius dropped 70% in 1 hour after the company paused customer withdrawals and swaps on Sunday night. The CEL token dropped from $0.49 to $0.15 following the announcement, according to CoinMarketCap. The company blamed "extreme market conditions," but the pause has invited comparisons to the Terra collapse and the infamous Bitconnect Ponzi scheme. More: - Celsius launched in 2017 and offers customers a high yield for crypto deposits by lending to other crypto firms.
- On Sunday, Celsius paused all customer withdrawals and transfers and released the following statement: "We are taking this necessary action for the benefit of our entire community to stabilize liquidity and operations while we take steps to preserve and protect assets. Furthermore, customers will continue to accrue rewards during the pause in line with our commitment to our customers."
- The problem is that high-yield crypto lending products are now considered unregistered securities by regulators.
- Last year, the states of New Jersey, Texas, Alabama, and Kentucky sent the company a cease-and-desist letter. BlockFi, which offers a similar product, has already settled with the SEC for $100M.
- Following the announcement, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, and BNB each dropped by 9%, while Cardano was down by 11% and Solana by 12%.
Decrypt 
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Binance temporarily paused Bitcoin withdrawals due to a "stuck on-chain" transaction. A batch of bitcoin transactions got stuck on the network due to low TX fees, causing a backlog. Users could still withdraw Bitcoin on other networks, such as BEP-20. More: - CEO Changpeng Zhao tweeted: "temporary pause of $BTC withdrawals on #Binance due to a stuck transaction causing a backlog. Should be fixed in ~30 minutes. Will update."
- He also reassured users that "funds are SAFU," referring to Binance's Secure Asset Fund for Users, an insurance fund to protect users' funds in a similar idea to traditional U.S. banks' FDIC insurance.
- The problem took longer than 30 minutes to resolve, but withdrawals were working again by 11:32 a.m EST.
- Bitcoin dropped in value by 10% Monday morning.
CNBC
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Bitcoin dropped below $23,000 Monday morning as investors abandoned riskier investments. By Monday morning, $200B had been wiped off the crypto market. At one point, Bitcoin was trading at $22,643, a marking 14% drop, though it later recovered some of its losses and traded between $23,000 and $24,000 the rest of the day. More: - The crypto market cap dropped below $1T on Monday for the first time since February due to inflation and the U.S. Federal Reserve's interest rate hike.
- U.S indices sold off heavily, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq both dropping, and when these indices fall, crypto falls with it.
- Vijay Ayyar, VP of corporate development of Luno, said: "All this points to the market not completely having bottomed, and unless the Fed is able to take a breather, we're probably not going to see bullishness return."
- Ayyar believes that we can see Bitcoin drop even further over the summer as the market is concerned about Celsius, which paused all crypto transfers between accounts.
- The market sell-off and regulations have hurt Celsius, which has $11B worth of assets as of May 17, down from $26B in October. "The Celsius situation is adding fuel to the fire," Ayyar said.
CNBC
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Crypto.com has laid off 5% of its employees as crypto markets continue downward. Other companies like Gemini, Coinbase, Bitso, and Buenbit are making arrangements to prepare for the upcoming crypto winter. More: - The market downturn is causing more layoffs in the crypto industry; CEO Kris Marszalek said in a tweet on Saturday that the decision was "difficult but necessary" as companies are looking to prepare for the crypto winter and ensure sustainable growth.
- Marszalek described the current crypto market as the 2018/2019 crypto winter, where the price of bitcoin tumbled 65% from $20,000 to below $7,000 in Feb. 2008.
- Other companies like Gemini and Bitso laid off 10% of their staff; meanwhile, Argentina's crypto exchange laid off 45% of its employees.
Decrypt
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Ethereum's highly anticipated merger may be delayed further due to the difficulty bomb being delayed to two months. Despite the downturn in the crypto market, Ethereum's user base still holds strong as daily transactions have stayed above the 1 million mark. More: - The difficulty bomb is delayed to "be sure that we sanity check all the numbers before selecting an exact delay and deployment time," said developer Tim Beiko in a Sunday tweet.
- The difficulty bomb is designed to measure disincentivized Ether mining operations and to deter from using proof-of-work (PoW) as the transition to proof-of-stake transition occurs.
- The PoS move will reduce the Ethereum network's energy demands by up to 99.9%; delaying the difficulty bomb could also delay the merger expected to occur in Aug. 2022.
Coin Telegraph
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Justin Sun, the founder of TRON, will deploy $2B to fight short positions on Binance. The TRON DAO reserve fund saw an uptick of $800M shortly after the tweet. More: - USDD has been under scrutiny during the recent crypto market crash. To avoid the same fate as UST-Luna, Tron has a new strategy that involves over-collateralizing USDD at a scale of 1.3:1 to ensure that USDD is always worth $1.30.
- The company will acquire assets such as USDC, USDT, TUSD, BTC, TRX, and USDJ.
- The funding rate shorting TRX is negative by 500% ARR. Sun plans to inject $2B to protect TRX and protect the peg of USDD.
- USDD is an algorithmic stablecoin that dropped in value to $0.98, and the collateralization ratio of USDD is sitting at 280%.
Crypto Potato
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 |  | Gia Mattu is based in Calgary, Alberta. She is an entrepreneur with experience in climate technology, drones, AI, machine learning, and blockchain technology. When she's not working, she loves to hike the Canadian Rockies, try new cuisine, and travel. | | | | Editor | Aaron Crutchfield is based in the high desert of California. Over the last two decades, he has spent time writing and editing at various local newspapers and defense contractors in California. When he's not working, he can often be found looking at the latest memes with his kids or working on his 1962 Ford. | |
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