On Wednesday, decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol xToken announced it suffered an exploit through which $14 million in SNX and BNT tokens were drained by an attacker using flash loans, a new type of near-instant, uncollateralized lending made possible with blockchain technology. While these loans have gained popularity, they also have made recent headlines, as they are being used to exploit a number of vulnerable DeFi protocols. xToken stated that minting paused on all contracts as it further investigates exactly what happened. Late last week, Glassnode, an on-chain analytics provider, published a comparison of the number of ether deposited in Ethereum-based smart contracts to the number held on centralized exchanges. According to the report, over the past 17 months, the percentage of ether locked in smart contracts increased from 13 percent to 22.8 percent, while the share of supply on exchanges dropped more than a quarter, from about 17 percent to 12 percent.
On Wednesday, Elon Musk said his electric-car company is discontinuing bitcoin payments, just months after announcing it would accept the cryptocurrency and after purchasing over a billion dollars' worth of it. Musk cited environmental concerns arising from the electricity requirements for bitcoin mining and transacting as the reason for the reversal. Bitcoin's environmental impact has been a known issue for years and was discussed in a report published by blockchain analysis company Chainalysis earlier this week.
For more information, please refer to the following links:
- DeFi Protocol xToken Suffers $24.5M Exploit
- Almost twice as much ETH locked in DeFi as on exchanges: Glassnode
- Big Questions in Crypto: What is Cryptocurrency's Environmental Impact?
- Elon Musk Says Tesla Is Suspending Bitcoin Payments Over Environmental Concerns
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