BTC prices could quickly fall in a final capitulation. This would be similar to the 82% drop recorded in the last cycle. Shrimps continue to accumulate sats during the bear market.

The pain may not be over for cryptocurrencies yet, with one analyst predicting a final capitulation that sees Bitcoin price as low as $13,000 or even $12,500.

Bitcoin is teetering at the $20,000 psychological price level at the time of writing, having dropped another 1.3% on the day. It has remained in this range-bound channel for the past 10 days or so, but could quickly head south, according to one analyst.

Fundstrat technical strategist Mark Newton said there is a good chance of a final capitulation event before the market bottoms out.

“Most short-term technical data point to an above-average probability of a final washout-style decline before bottoming out.”

Bitcoin price has room to drop as low as $12,500 to $13,000, “which I expect to be a great place for medium-term buyers to add to longs,” he wrote, according to Bloomberg.

Capitulations in Previous Cycles

A drop in those prices would be an 82% correction from their all-time high. Bitcoin is currently down 71% from its peak, so using this as a guide might reinforce the premise.

In the previous market cycle, the price of Bitcoin reached a high of $20,000 in December 2017 before falling to $3,200 in December of the following year. This drop was 82% similar, so if history checks out, it’s plausible it could happen again. There was also a final capitulation event in November 2018 that wiped out an additional 50% in the price of Bitcoin.

The previous cycle saw BTC prices shed a similar 84% in the 2015 bear market that followed their 2014 peak.

Bitcoin prices hit a low of $17,760 on June 19 before recovering to as high as $21,600. However, the bears are still in full control of the markets. Continued selling pressure from miners could add to the downside.

Oanda Senior Market Analyst Craig Erlam commented that there is some relief given the series of negative headlines in recent months, before adding that, “I’m afraid there will be more in the coming weeks, and I wonder if the community does too, given their inability to gain traction above $20,000.”

Accumulating Sats

On-chain analytics provider Glassnode has noted that some accumulation is still taking place, especially in the smallholder group. On Twitter, Glassnode posted that, “Within the extremely challenging #Bitcoin market conditions of 2022, there are three entity cohorts with very interesting dynamics: – Shrimp < 1 $BTC are stacking; – Whales > 1k $BTC are stacking; and – Miners are distributing.”

Glassnode noted that small Bitcoin holders with less than one coin, whom they call “shrimp,” have been adding to their balance at the most aggressive rate since March 2020.

Additionally, whales with over a thousand coins are also aggressively adding to their balance, acquiring 140,000 BTC per month directly from exchanges.

By Audy Castaneda

According to research firm Elliptic, Lazarus Group is behind the Harmony Protocol Horizon Bridge hack.

Lazarus Group, a North Korean cybercriminal group, may be behind the Harmony Protocol Horizon bridge hack, according to a recent investigation.

According to research firm Elliptic, Lazarus Group is behind the Harmony Protocol Horizon bridge hack that led to the theft of $100 million in cryptocurrencies.

The accusation is based on a tracking of the stolen cryptocurrencies with the aim of identifying who is moving them through the Web and, due to the fact that the laundering method bears its characteristics, Lazarus Group would be the main suspect in the hack:

“There are strong indications that North Korea’s Lazarus Group may be responsible for this theft, based on the nature of the hack and subsequent laundering of the stolen funds.”

Harmony Protocol: A $100 Million Hack

On June 23, Harmony Protocol announced that it had suffered a $100 million hack in various crypto assets through a Horizon bridge exploit.

As reported by BeInCrypto, the stolen cryptocurrencies were sent to the hacker’s Ethereum address. In this way, Horizon became the third major bridge to suffer an exploit so far this year.

Subsequently, on June 27, the hacker began moving ETH to Tornado Cash. So far, just over 35,000 ETH ($39 million) of the stolen funds have been sent to the popular cryptocurrency mixer.

Amidst the uncertainty caused by the hack, on June 28 the Harmony Protocol team reached out to the crypto community on Twitter to provide some reassurance:

“Our community and ecosystem are everything, and we want to show our support and appreciation for all of you.

Harmony’s content and communications teams will be significantly ramping up joint marketing efforts in the coming weeks, showcasing the great teams and apps in our ecosystem.”

Lazarus Group Becomes Prime Suspect

Over the years, North Korea’s Lazarus Group has been the subject of major crypto heists totaling more than $2 billion. The most famous and recent was the nearly $600 million hacks of Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge.

In this sense, the United States Department of the Treasury sanctioned the address that received the stolen funds.

Elliptic notes that the Horizon bridge hack was the product of a social engineering attack on members of the Harmony team, noting that “these techniques have been used frequently by the Lazarus Group.” Furthermore, the research team adds that, “Lazarus Group tends to focus on APAC [Asia-Pacific Region] based targets, perhaps for language reasons. Although Harmony is based in the US, much of the core team has ties to the APAC region.”

At the same time, Elliptic emphasizes the relationship between timing and movement of funds:

“The relatively short periods during which stolen funds stop being pulled out of Tornado cash are consistent with APAC overnight hours.”

Despite the Lazarus Group’s prominence in cyberattacks, the recent market crash has seen the value of stolen cryptocurrencies held by North Korea drop by more than 60%, as reported by BeInCrypto.

By Audy Castaneda