Рождественская пауза на крипторынке: Trust Wallet теряет $7 млн из-за взлома Headline: Christmas Pause on Crypto Market: Trust Wallet Loses $7 Million Due to Hack

The cryptocurrency market entered a sideways trend during Christmas, losses from the Trust Wallet hack reached $7 million, Bitcoin mining difficulty halted its decline, and other notable news from the past week.

During the Christmas week (with Catholic Christmas celebrated on the night of December 24-25), the crypto market hit a pause: volatility decreased and prices remained relatively stable.

On Monday, December 22, Bitcoin attempted to maintain its position above $90,000 but failed once again.

After this, the asset retraced to $87,000. For the rest of the week, digital gold traded within a range of $86,000–$89,000.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s price is around $87,900. Over the week, the coin experienced a loss of approximately 0.5%.

The rest of the cryptocurrency market did not show much dynamic movement either. Ethereum remained at the $3,000 level.

Among the top 10 largest assets by market capitalization, XRP and DOGE faced the steepest declines, losing 3.3% and 5.8% respectively over the week.

Against a backdrop of worsening sentiment and declining demand, analysts from CryptoQuant suggested a potential shift of the market into a bear phase.

Experts predict that the bottom will be formed near the realized price—around $56,000. In this case, the drop from the all-time high would be 55%. An intermediate support level is set at $70,000.

Meanwhile, the popular market sentiment index has remained stuck in the «extreme fear» zone since December 13.

By the end of the week, the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies reached $3.06 trillion. Bitcoin’s dominance index stands at 57.3%, while Ethereum’s is at 11.6%.

Late on December 25, reports began to surface regarding hacks of users’ accounts with the Trust Wallet.

One of the first to notice the incident was on-chain detective ZachXBT, who pointed to a recent update of the Chrome browser extension as a possible cause.

Cybersecurity specialist Akinator discovered a malicious script in the upgrade that covertly transmitted wallet data to a phishing site.

The Trust Wallet team confirmed the incident. Hundreds of users were affected, with damages estimated at around $7 million.

«I was coming back from my family’s celebration. I wanted to check the markets, maybe find opportunities during the New Year dip. Instead, I opened my wallet and saw that $300,000 had disappeared. […] Everything I worked for. Stolen right on Christmas,» recounted one of the victims.

Analysts from Lookonchain managed to identify the hacker’s addresses, which had already transferred $4.2 million to ChangeNOW, FixedFloat, KuCoin, and HTX.

Binance founder and Trust Wallet owner Changpeng Zhao assured that the project would fully compensate the losses.

The week also saw the prediction platform Polymarket facing a security incident. Users complained about unauthorized access attempts to their accounts and balance resets.

Project representatives cited a vulnerability in a third-party service without specifying details. Judging by comments online, the problem affected clients using the Magic Labs authorization service.

On December 25, the mining difficulty of the first cryptocurrency increased slightly by 0.04% to 148.26 TH. This positive change ended a streak of a month and a half of declines.

Following an all-time high of 155.97 TH reached on October 29, the difficulty recorded three consecutive drops of 2.37%, 1.95%, and 0.74%.

During this period of decline, the hash rate remained above 1 EH/s. According to Glassnode, the seven-day moving average is approximately 1.06 EH/s.

TheMinerMag believes that the modest rise in difficulty signals that recent reductions in network computational power did not significantly impact miners’ activities.

The decline in Bitcoin hash rate has proved to be temporary, although analysts at VanEck even suggested miner capitulation, where miners were disconnecting unsustainable equipment.

According to TheMinerMag’s calculations, the Bitcoin network’s difficulty has corrected about 4% from its peak. During this time, digital gold prices lost around 20%. Historically, such divergence typically led to weaker players exiting the market.

«So far, this capitulation has not materialized. The limited decline in difficulty and the stability of the hash rate indicate that the network is handling economic stress without significant shutdowns,» experts emphasized.

Meanwhile, the hash price remains low at around $38 per PH/s daily, putting pressure on mining economics.

During the week, strife erupted within the Aave DeFi protocol community over control of the brand, domains, and public channels.

The conflict is between the project’s DAO and the centralized development company Aave Labs. This dispute began with a controversial deal in early December.

Aave Labs announced a partnership with the CoW Swap project allegedly to improve swap pricing and security. However, it was later revealed that fees from the updated swap contracts were being channeled to the developer company’s wallet.

As a result, the decentralized organization lost a significant portion of its revenue.

The largest delegate and network activist, Marc Zeller, characterized the situation as a hidden privatization of the project. His estimates suggest that the DAO potentially lost about $10 million in annual revenue due to the actions of the managing firm.

On December 16, former Aave Labs CTO Ernesto Boado presented a proposal that aimed at changes favoring the DAO.

Aave Labs brought the initiative to a community pre-vote starting on December 23. Boado was named the sole author, but he did not participate in the discussions.

In the end, Aave ecosystem participants rejected the proposal. The voting concluded on December 26, with 55.29% against, 41.21% abstaining, and only 3.5% in favor.

Simultaneously, Aave co-founder Stani Kulechov faced backlash after purchasing $10 million worth of project tokens. He was suspected of vote manipulation.

Researchers also discovered that the three largest addresses controlled over 58% of the votes. The leading wallet held 27% (333,000 AAVE), while the address associated with Aave Chan Initiative held 18.5%.

Amid the community discord, the AAVE token fell 12% over the week, dropping from $176 to $148 at one point. The coin has since rebounded to $155.

Supported by Peter Thiel, the crypto treasury ETHZilla sold 24,291 ETH worth $74.5 million ($3068 per coin) from its balance to meet debt obligations. The proceeds will be used to buy back issued convertible bonds.

The firm still holds about 69,800 ETH, worth $206 million.

This is the second sale of tokens by the DAT company since the end of October. Previously, the firm sold assets worth $40 million.

According to ETHZilla representatives, the company plans to continue selling coins until the market adjusts its mNAV.

In light of the Ethereum «dump,» the firm’s shares dropped 8.7% in a day. Since the beginning of the year, the price has fallen by more than 65%.

Meanwhile, the largest corporate holder of Ethereum, BitMine, continued to accumulate, purchasing 13,412 ETH worth $40.61 million during the week. The company’s treasury has now exceeded 4 million ETH (about $12 billion).

«BitMine continues to steadily increase its Ethereum reserves; in the past week, the company added 98,852 ETH, bringing its supplies above the critical threshold of 4 million ETH. This is a significant milestone achieved in just five and a half months,» commented company chairman Tom Lee.