January 27, 2026

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Bitcoin’s Descent Causes Wall Street to Hold Off on Crypto

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bitcoin’s Descent Causes Wall Street to Hold Off on Crypto

At press time, bitcoin is still over $4,000, though it appears Wall Street has lost all hope in the crypto asset. Though many players have tried earnestly to build honest businesses from the bitcoin mania, the hype has suddenly died down, and crypto-based ventures now seem to be the last things on Wall Street’s mind.

Goldman Sachs, for instance, released plans early this year to construct a bitcoin trading desk from the ground up. Some analysts say that this was an unrealistic goal, and that Goldman Sachs merely got lost in the crypto craze.

bitcoin’s Fall Is Detracting Top Financiers

Daniel H. Gallancy – chief executive officer of the New York-based SolidX Partners – states:

“The market had unrealistic expectations that Goldman or any of its peers could suddenly start a bitcoin trading business. That was top-of-the-market hype thinking.”

At press time, Goldman Sachs has yet to offer any cryptocurrency trading services to its clients. Its product also attracted very little attention, with only 20 customers allegedly signing up to take part in the desk’s abilities. Justin Schmidt, who leads the company’s digital asset division, says that lawmakers are limiting what the company can do in the space for now.

Goldman Sachs isn’t the only venture falling behind in its crypto developments. Morgan Stanley has also been positioned to start tracking bitcoin futures since September, though at the time of writing, the company has yet to trade a single contract. An anonymous source allegedly familiar with the company’s operations claims there is very little demand for bitcoin futures trading amongst Morgan Stanley’s customers.

At first glance, the ecosystem appears negative, though some analysts claim institutional players are waiting for the right moment(s) to jump back in. Ben Sebley – a former Credit Suisse Group AG trader that now heads brokerage at the crypto boutique NKB Group – states:

“The more important story is all the infrastructure that’s being built now [in the crypto space] to enable institutional trading.”

Things Are Secretly Getting Better

Similar sentiment is offered by Eugene Ng, a former Deutsche Bank AG trader in Singapore. Now an executive with the crypto hedge fund Circuit Capital, Ng claims:

“It appears as if progress is coming to a halt, yet nothing could be further from the truth. The bear market is going to allow many of these institutions to build the proper foundations without rushing to build-out infrastructure without adequate testing for fear of missing out on a gold rush.”

Do you believe that institutional players still have potential interest in crypto? Post your comments below.

Image courtesy of Shuttershock

The post Bitcoin’s Descent Causes Wall Street to Hold Off on Crypto appeared first on Live Bitcoin News.

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Hacker Allegedly Siphons $31 Million Out of Tether, Driving Further Speculations About the Cryptocurrency

Hacker Allegedly Siphons $31 Million Out of Tether, Driving Further Speculations About the Cryptocurrency

Tether, a cryptocurrency pegged 1-to-1 to the U.S. dollar, was allegedly hacked today to the tune of $31 million.

Tether functions to convert U.S. dollars to a type of cryptocurrency. The project’s token (USDT) is pegged to the dollar and is used in exchange trading. The idea behind Tether is that instead of having to sell your bitcoin or other token for a fiat currency, you can convert it to USDT, and either hold it in USDT or else transfer your USDT to another exchange and use it to purchase tokens there.

As for the exchanges, USDT allows them to trade in something akin to dollars, without requiring them to have a bank account.

Tether operates on the “Omni Layer Protocol,” which itself operates on top of the bitcoin network, and uses bitcoin addresses. According to a blog post on the project’s website, $31 million worth of USDT was sent to an unauthorized bitcoin address on November 19, 2017.

In the blog post, Tether also noted it released a new version of the Omni Core software used by exchanges and wallets to support USDT transactions, thus implementing a temporary hard fork to the Omni Layer. As a result, the affected tokens are frozen in place, making them essentially worthless to the hacker.

“We strongly urge all Tether integrators to install this software immediately to prevent the coins from entering the ecosystem,” Tether wrote, adding that “any tokens from the attacker’s addresses will not be redeemed.”

Some exchanges, like Kraken, have stopped trading USDT temporarily while they upgrade to the newer software.

The heist was made in three separate USDT transfers out of Tether’s core Treasury wallet in the amounts of 23,000,000; 7,900,000; and 500,000 USDT. It is unclear why the hacker did not move all of the money out at once.

In addition to the other exchanges it trades on, USDT is widely traded on Bitfinex, an exchange that lost 119,756 BTC (worth $72 million at the time) in a hack that took place a year and a half ago.

News of the Tether attack comes at a time when some — notably the blogger “Bitfinex’ed” — are questioning whether USDTs are being issued without backing of actual U.S. dollars. Similarly, there has been growing speculation that Tether is being used in possible market manipulation to drive up the price of bitcoin.

The current market cap value of USDT is around $673 million. If that money is backed by real reserves, as Tether claims, the project would need to have at least that much in its bank account in Taiwan.

Tether publishes a bank account balance on its website’s Transparency page and claims the money is redeemable for U.S. dollars at any time directly through the Tether platform.

The project’s website has been up and down sporadically, since the hack. An archive of the site is available here.

The post Hacker Allegedly Siphons $31 Million Out of Tether, Driving Further Speculations About the Cryptocurrency appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.