In today’s cryptocurrencies, digital asset investment products recorded $360 million in outflows last week. The DeFi protocol Balancer suffered a $116 million exploit related to staked Ether, but Aster soared 30% after the Binance co-founder revealed he had purchased around $2.5 million worth of tokens with personal funds.
Hawkish Fed causes $360 million in crypto outflows due to Solana ETF downtrend
Cryptocurrency investment products shed $360 million last week as investors reacted to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s cautious remarks about future interest rate cuts.
Despite Wednesday’s rate cut, Chairman Powell’s statement that another rate cut in December is “not a foreseeable conclusion,” coupled with a lack of economic data due to the continued government shutdown, appears to leave uncertainty in the market, CoinShares reported on Monday.
Most of the selling pressure came from the U.S. market, with $439 million in outflows, partially offset by modest inflows from Germany and Switzerland. Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) led the decline, with redemptions of $946 million.
Even if Bitcoin funds bore the brunt of the outflow, not all assets followed suit. Solana was a particular standout, attracting the second-largest inflow of $421 million on record, driven by demand for newly launched U.S. ETFs, bringing the year-to-date total to $3.3 billion.
Ethereum also saw inflows of $57.6 million, but day-to-day activity suggests mixed sentiment among investors.
The outflow comes after inflows into crypto products reached $921 million in the previous week following lower-than-expected Consumer Price Index (CPI) data released on October 24.
Team Offers 20% Bounty, Balancer Exploit Breach Swells to $116 Million
A decentralized exchange (DEX) and automated market maker (AMM) balancer was exploited to transfer over $116 million worth of digital assets to newly created wallets.
“We are aware of a potential exploit impacting Balancer v2 pools. Our engineering and security teams are investigating it as a top priority,” the Balancer team said in a Monday X post, adding that it will share further updates as information becomes available.
According to Etherscan logs, on-chain data initially showed that a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol was exploited to transfer $70.9 million worth of Liquid Stake Ether (ETH) tokens to a new wallet in three transactions.
Cryptocurrency intelligence platform Nansen said in an X post on Monday that the transfer included 6,850 StakeWise Staked ETH (OSETH), 6,590 Wrapped Ether (WETH), and 4,260 Lido wstETH (wSTETH).
By 8:52 a.m. UTC Monday, the funds stolen in the ongoing exploit had grown to more than $116.6 million, according to blockchain data platform Lookonchain.
The Balancer exploit could be due to an issue in the smart contract where “an access check flaw allows an attacker to send a command to withdraw funds,” Nikolai Sondergaard, a research analyst at Nansen, told Cointelegraph, adding:
“From what I can see, the losses are now over $100 million, impacting Balancer v2 and various forks.”
Aster Tokens Fly After CZ Reveals $2.5 Million Personal Investment
The native token of decentralized exchange protocol Aster soared more than 30% on Sunday after Binance co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao revealed that he currently owns more than $2.5 million in Aster.
CZ shared his wallet holdings in an X post on Sunday, saying, “I bought some Asters today on Binance with my own money.”
“I’m not a trader. I’m a buy and hold,” he added.
According to CoinGecko, this post caused Aster to skyrocket from $0.91 to a high of $1.26.
