Coinbase Reports Reduction In Unnecessary Account Freezes

Coinbase has made progress in resolving issues with user account restrictions. On June 6, CEO Brian Armstrong acknowledged on X that account freezes had been an ongoing problem and said unnecessary restrictions had been reduced by about 82 per cent. He added that more improvements are planned.

Armstrong advised users still facing account freezes unrelated to legal obligations to contact Coinbase Support for help.

For Levi, a product team member who joined Coinbase nine weeks ago to address these issues, shared in a separate X post that improvements to Coinbase’s machine learning systems have led to fewer false account locks. He also mentioned that new self-service capabilities in the Coinbase app are being added to enable users to authenticate their accounts and handle restrictions more quickly.

Armstrong and Levi both emphasised that while there has been enhancement more has to be done to improve the platform's overall user experience.

NFT Artist Earned $3M, But Lost Everything to Crypto Crash and Tax Bill

NFT musician Jonathan Mann, well-known for his "Song A Day" initiative, used the $3 million he made from selling 3,700 NFT songs to pay for an expensive lesson. He sold his songs on January 1, 2022, receiving about $3 million in Ether (ETH). Mann held onto the crypto, expecting ETH’s value to rise, but the market crashed amid the Terra ecosystem collapse.

Despite the price drop, Mann owed taxes based on the ETH’s value when received, leading to a huge tax bill of over $1 million. To prevent selling his crypto at a loss, he borrowed against his ETH holdings, but the market downturn led to liquidations that resulted in the loss of 300 ETH, according to CoinTelegraph.

Under financial strain and the risk of liens, Mann sold a rare Autoglyph NFT for $1.1 million to settle his tax bill. Due to the losses from his earlier loan, the sale did not trigger capital gains tax.

Though the experience was painful, Mann continues creating daily songs as NFTs, hoping to rebuild his earnings.

Sui-Based Cetus DEX Resumes Operations, Launches Recovery and Open-Source Initiatives

Cetus Protocol, a decentralised exchange operating on the Sui blockchain, has restarted its services after suffering a $220 million security breach in May. On May 22, a vulnerability in its pricing mechanism was used to extract tokens from key liquidity pools. The team managed to freeze $162 million of the compromised assets shortly after the breach.

Before the hack, Cetus saw strong trading activity, with over $5 billion in volume both April and May. In a June 7 Medium post, the team announced plans to become fully open-source and introduced a white bounty program to boost security contributions.

For the relaunch, Cetus fixed the exploited bug, reset pool data to accurate values, and carried out thorough security checks. The team restored impacted liquidity pools using $7 million in reserves, a $30 million loan from the Sui Foundation, and a portion of the recovered assets. Recovery rates vary from 85 per cent to 99 per cent, depending on the pool.

For compensation, 15 per cent of CETUS tokens are set aside for affected users, with 5 per cent released immediately and the rest unlocking monthly over a year. CETUS token price dropped over 12 per cent recently, trading at $0.11.