Today in crypto, Tether’s CEO says the stablecoin issuer has no plans to go public, Bitcoin layer-2 Alex Protocol was hacked for $8.3 million, spot Ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have recorded inflows for 15 consecutive days.
Tether CEO snubs IPO, says $515B valuation is ’a bit bearish’
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino says the stablecoin issuer has no intention of going public, just days after rival Circle made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
“No need to go public,” Ardoino said on June 7, just two days after Circle, which is behind the stablecoin USDC (USDC), entered the public market on June 5. Circle’s shares climbed 167% on its first trading session on the NYSE.
Ardoino addressed valuation speculation raised by Artmesis CEO Jon Ma, who claimed that if Tether, which is behind the stablecoin USDT (USDT), were to go public, it would rank as the 19th largest company globally with a valuation of $515 billion, larger than multinational giants like Costco and Coca-Cola.
While Ardoino called the $515 billion valuation a “beautiful number,” he said it might actually be too low. “Maybe a bit bearish considering our current (and increasing) Bitcoin + gold treasury, yet I’m very humbled,” Ardoino said.
Bitcoin DeFi platform Alex Protocol loses $8.3 million to exploit
Alex Protocol, a Bitcoin decentralized finance (DeFi) platform on the Stacks blockchain, suffered an exploit on June 6, resulting in $8.3 million in digital asset losses.
In an X announcement, Alex Protocol said the breach was caused by a vulnerability in its self-listing verification logic. The attacker used the flaw to drain liquidity from several asset pools.
The Bitcoin DeFi platform said the attackers siphoned about 8.4 million Stacks (STX) tokens, 21.85 Stacks Bitcoin (sBTC), 149,850 in USDC (USDC) and USDt (USDT), and 2.8 Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC). The incident is one of the largest exploits in the Stacks ecosystem to date.
In response to the incident, Alex Lab Foundation, the organization supporting the protocol, pledged to fully reimburse affected users using its treasury reserves.
Cointelegraph reached out to Alex Protocol through its X account but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
Spot Ether ETFs 15-day inflow streak accumulates $837.5 million inflows
US-based spot Ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have just recorded a third consecutive trading week of inflows. If next week follows suit, the current inflow streak alone may surpass $1 billion in total inflows.
On June 6, spot Ether (ETH) ETFs posted $25.3 million inflows for the trading day, extending the streak to 15 consecutive inflow days, according to Farside data.
The current inflow streak since May 16 has now brought in $837.5 million, roughly 25% of the total $3.32 billion in net inflows since spot Ether ETFs launched in July 2024.
If the pattern continues into the coming week, an additional $162.5 million in inflows would push the streak’s total to $1 billion.