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Crypto, Bitcoin and Blockchain News Admin: @wanwangg More Crypto News: @BitcoinBreaking
🥇 GBTC Bitcoin discount nears 50% on FTX woes as investors stock up
The largest Bitcoin (BTC) institutional investment vehicle is coming under suspicion as it trades at a record discount. With contagion and fears over a deeper market rout everywhere in Bitcoin and altcoins at present, misgivings are impacting even the best-known — and trusted — crypto industry names.
The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) is the latest Bitcoin industry entity to feel the heat from the debacle over defunct exchange FTX. In recent days, it was the turn of GBTC, the long-embattled Bitcoin investment fund, amid problems at a related crypto firm, Genesis Trading. As Cointelegraph reported, parent company Digital Currency Group (DCG), as well as operator Grayscale itself, swiftly sought to reassure investors and the market that its flagship product was financially watertight.
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🪙 FTX Bankruptcy Jurisdiction Fight: Bahamas Regulators Now Confirm They Directed SBF to Move Assets
At least some of the millions of dollars in FTX customer funds mysteriously moved off the exchange last week were moved at the direction of regulators in the Bahamas. That assertion was made in a new filing by the embattled company, and confirmed late on Thursday by the Securities Commission of the Bahamas itself.
The company went on to say that its co-founders Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang were recorded saying that Bahamanian regulators instructed the pair to make "certain post-petition transfers" and that such assets were "custodied on FireBlocks under control of [the] Bahamian government.". read the filing, signed by new FTX CEO John Ray, famous for handling the liquidation of Enron.
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🏦 Gemini Earn unable to meet customer redemptions as Genesis unit pauses withdrawals
Crypto exchange Gemini said its Earn program "will not be able to meet customer redemptions within the service-level agreement of five business days" following the announcement that lending partner Genesis Global Capital has paused withdrawals.
"The past week has been an incredibly challenging and stressful time for our industry," Gemini wrote in an official blog post, continuing.We are disappointed that the Earn program SLA will not be met, but we are encouraged by Genesis’ and its parent company Digital Currency Group’s commitment to doing everything in their power to fulfill their obligations to customers under the Earn program.
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🏦 Binance to Remove Trading Pairs for FTX Token—Except With Stablecoin BUSD
Binance is shutting down a slew of trading pairs and contracts featuring FTT, except for one involving its own stablecoin, the crypto exchange announced today. FTT is the native utility token for the now-bankrupt FTX exchange, which gave holders trading fee discounts.
All margin pairs, futures contracts, and Binance Flexible Products for FTX’s native token were also delisted from the exchange on Monday morning, the company said in an announcement. Several spot trading pairs will be removed, with trade ceasing on FTT pairs with Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether, and Binance Coin on November 15.
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🇺🇸 Sen. Pat Toomey slams Congress's failure to produce crypto regulation in good time
Sen. Pat Toomey criticized the the slow process of passing U.S. crypto trading regulations. Hostility and a lack of transparency by the SEC, alongside a failure to pass regulatory guardrails, has "generated a debilitating amount of legal uncertainty," the Pennsylvania Republican wrote on Twitter on Friday.
The comments come after a torrid week in the crypto industry and shocking revelations about one of the world's largest crypto exchanges. A liquidity crisis brought on by revelations about its balance sheet pushed FTX toward insolvency. Binance, which signed a letter of intent that could have led to an acquisition, ultimately passed on the deal, citing due diligence concerns as well as reports of investigations by American regulators.
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🚨 FTX used $4 billion including customer funds to keep Alameda afloat: Reuters
The transfers were made after Alameda, Bankman-Fried's trading firm, suffered losses from deals in May and June, including a loan agreement with Voyager Digital, Reuters said, citing people close to the subject. These funds included customer deposits, according to the report.
Crypto exchange FTX has suffered a spectacular fall from grace this week after Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of larger rival Binance, said he would begin selling off holdings of FTX's exchange token, FTT. After seeing a flood of client withdrawals, FTX announced on Tuesday it would sell its non-U.S. assets to Binance. That deal then fell apart on Wednesday after Binance walked away. FTX executives about the transfer of funds to Alameda because he was afraid of leaks, Reuters said.
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📣 Founders of short-lived NFT investing game Visionrare raise $1.5 million for web3 job network
The founders of a short-lived NFT marketplace for "fantasy startup investing" raised $1.5 million in funding for Job Protocol, a new decentralized recruitment network. The platform aimed to allow users to buy fake shares — represented by NFTs — of real-life startups such as OpenSea, Deel and Multis.
Visionrare didn't last long, shutting down within 24 hours of its open beta going live, amid questions over whether the platform was offering securities. During this period, the Europe-based founders said they received a call from U.S. regulators, which helped them understand some of the regulatory and legal hurdles the pair would need to clear if they pursued the project further. Even Bloomberg's Matt Levine weighed in on the startup's troubles in his column Money Stuff.
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📣 Circle is bringing Euro Coin to Solana in first half of 2023
Payments firm Circle is bringing Euro Coin to the Solana blockchain and expanding its cross-chain protocol to Solana in the first half of 2023. Circle only launched Euro Coin as a European take on its popular stablecoin USDC in June. Euro Coin works in the same way but is pegged to the euro instead of the dollar. It’s currently live on the Ethereum blockchain.
FTX will add support for the Euro Coin when it goes live on Solana, Circle said in a statement. Circle said other decentralized finance protocols have also expressed interest in supporting the stablecoin when it launches. Circle is also planning to expand its cross-chain transfer protocol — which is yet to launch — to Solana. This protocol was announced in September and is set to go live in the beginning of 2023 on Ethereum and Avalanche. Circle expects to bring it to Solana in the first half of 2023.
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📣 AptosLaunch on course to raise $2 million in token round
AptosLaunch, a crypto startup offering a platform for Aptos-based projects to launch their tokens before an exchange listing, is on course to raise about $2 million in a token round. AptosLaunch's native ALT token but ultimately received commitments of more than $18 million, two people with direct knowledge of the matter told The Block.
AptosLaunch was set up in September by three pseudonymous founders named PC, ProfessorZundapp and Loco, according to a project summary document obtained by The Block. The project began raising funds last month. Aptos is a new Layer 1 blockchain co-founded by Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching, both former Meta employees who worked on the social media giant's Diem blockchain. Aptos launched its mainnet late last month. A number of new Aptos-based projects have also raised funds in recent weeks, including Thala Labs, Martian and Souffl3.
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📣 DeFi protocol Centrifuge raises $4 million in strategic round: Exclusive
The Berlin-based project enables real-world assets — such as real estate, consumer credit and invoices — to be tokenized and leveraged within DeFi services. Such tokenization has been seen as one of the core use cases for blockchain technology, as it allows for more transparent and liquid markets.
Centrifuge is one of BlockTower’s first investments in its new $150 million fund. BlockTower’s backing is more than just a simple VC investment, Vogelsang said. The BlockTower credit team has secured approval to be onboarded as a collateral provider to MakerDAO. BlockTower is set to provide $70 million in junior capital alongside Maker's contribution of $150 million to create a $220 million pool on Centrifuge.
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📶 Ethereum Exchange Inflow Soars, Hinting at Spike in Profit-Taking
Ethereum has been one of the most consistent gainers for over 10 days now, surging more than 25%. With the bullish momentum weakening, ETH price was subject to Ethereum bulls, who did a pretty good job at bringing prices from the $1,300 level to $1,585. Even though Ethereum price charted quite a run, the $1,600 resistance halted the upward trajectory.
Firstly, the active Ethereum addresses have seen a continued decline, making lower lows on a daily chart after spiking on Oct. 10. Declining active addresses present waning market confidence from participants. That said, another worrying trend is that the number of Ethereum addresses holding 10,000+ ETH just reached a 7-month low of 1,158 addresses. This could mean that whale entities have been taking profits during the recent pump and reduced their holding as Ethereum price action weakened.
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🪙 Ripple Claims More Decentralization as XRP Holdings Drop to 50%
San Francisco-based fintech firm Ripple released its third quarter report revealing that its control over its native token is diminishing. The company proudly stated that it is becoming more decentralized contrary to what critics have claimed. It said the ownership of XRP is not an indicator that Ripple controls XRP Ledger (XRPL).
Ripple disclosed that its total net sales of XRP for the period were down to $310 million from the $409 million it sold in the second quarter. It added that these sales have been solely linked to its on-demand liquidity (ODL) transactions which have been increasing. ODL is one of Ripple’s primary products, which facilitates cross-border transfers for financial institutions. The company highlighted its expansion with a Travelex partnership which will enable ODL in Brazil to allow transactions between Brazil and Mexico.
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💰 Hong Kong plans to legalize retail crypto trading: Bloomberg
Hong Kong's government plans to allow retail investors to trade crypto on locally licensed exchanges as part of a wider effort to position the city as a center for virtual asset service providers, according to Bloomberg. Officials will announce more details Monday at a Hong Kong fintech conference as part of effort to position the city as a center for the virtual assets industry.
A mandatory licensing regime for crypto trading platforms that is due to begin in March will allow retail trading, Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed sources. Details of the new regime are expected to be announced on Monday at an annual fintech conference in the city where senior government and regulatory officials are scheduled to speak. Currently, only two crypto exchanges are licensed to operate in Hong Kong and they are limited to offering a narrow range of services to sophisticated investors only.
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💸 Pension Fund-Backed Parataxis Digital Yield Fund Targets $500M in Assets in 2023
Multi-strategy crypto investment firm Parataxis Capital expects to triple the assets under management for its $35.6 million digital yield fund by the end of the year, with a further ambitious target of $500 million by the end of 2023, co-founder and CEO Edward Chin told CoinDesk in an interview.
Parataxis, which currently has about $116 million in assets under management, primarily focuses on institutional investors such as banks, family offices and pension endowments. The market-neutral Parataxis Digital Yield Fund made headlines in August when Fairfax County, Virginia’s, $6.8 billion pension fund, the Fairfax County Retirement Systems, said it would invest $35 million in the yield farming fund.
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🥇 Bitcoin lender and custodian Unchained Capital announces job cuts
Joe Kelly, CEO of Bitcoin financial services outfit Unchained Capital, said the company will reduce its staff by “roughly 15%” as part of efforts to manage the business during the current crypto bear market. Despite these issues, the Bitcoin lender's CEO said its loan book is still over-collateralized, with a collateral-to-principal ratio of 214%.
Kelly also said the company did not have any exposure to bankrupt crypto exchange FTX or its sister trading firm Alameda Research. Still, he said the Bitcoin lender is caught up in the current challenging crypto market and needs to plan for the long term. He added that some of the company’s hires during the last bull-market period are no longer sustainable.
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🇦🇺 Australia’s Biggest Stock Exchange Shelves Blockchain Project, Writes Off $170M
Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) has shelved its seven-year-long project to ramp up the exchange’s CHESS clearing and settlement system using blockchain after an independent audit by Accenture reported issues. ASX developed CHESS 25 years ago to process securities trading electronically.
According to ASX, the project incurred a pre-tax loss of roughly $170 million (~$255 million AUD), which the company has written off. Since CHESS is decades old, ASX intended to upgrade the system and started evaluating its replacement options by late 2015. ASX selected Digital Asset as its technology partner to develop a similar system using blockchain technology, with the project becoming widely known as the “CHESS Replacement.”.
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🚨 Senate Banking chair warns crypto could 'crash our financial system' following FTX collapse
Senate Banking Committee Chair Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, is sounding the alarm on crypto following FTX's collapse. “This year we’ve seen cryptocurrency values collapse by $2 trillion. 2,000 billion dollars,” Brown said at the opening of a hearing with top U.S. banking regulators. "The parallels to past financial crises throughout our history are troubling.”
Brown's Republican counterpart, Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Penn., pushed back on this sentiment in his line of questioning.“The insinuation was that they might have the ability to crash our financial system,” Toomey said. "It’s fundamentally not about the kind of assets held at FTX, it’s about what individuals did with those assets.”. Toomey drew a comparison to MF Global's bankruptcy. “Nobody suggested that the problem was the instruments that were used.
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🔄 Over 4 Million Lido DAO (LDO) Tokens Transfer to Exchanges Sparks Fear
With the larger crypto market down once again, Lido DAO prices rebounded back to lower levels after charting a short-term recovery. Lido DAO LDO token showed a near 30% recovery over the last day, appreciating from the $0.95 level. However, the larger market’s bearish tones pulled LDO price down by 4.5% at press time as Lido DAO token traded at $1.13.
LDO price had retested the $1.25 mark, but macro market uncertainty pulled the token’s price action back to red. Despite LDO price’s short-term appreciation, there was a significant drop in daily active addresses (DAA) on Lido DAO. DAA noted an over 50% pullback on the last day. Notably, the daily on-chain transaction volume in loss rose to an all-time high on Nov. 9. With fear gripping LDO holders, the market saw considerable sell-offs, which could be seen in the high exchange inflows.
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🚨 Vauld gets creditor protection until January as court blocks longer extension
The company now has until Jan. 20 to explore options to ease its financial troubles, according to an email from Vauld to its creditors obtained by The Block. Vauld, however, had sought protection through March 7. The firm's previous creditor protection expired on Nov. 7 and on the same day.
Vauld halted client withdrawals in July and owes over $400 million to creditors. At the time, rival Nexo entered into a 60-day exclusive due diligence agreement with Vauld to potentially acquire it, but it has extended the due diligence period twice. Last month, The Block reported that Nexo could take "as long as needed" to decide on the potential deal, while it is "cautiously optimistic" about it. Meanwhile, customers' funds remain stuck.
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⚡️ Lack of FTX buyer would leave 'giant hole' in crypto markets: Circle CEO
FTX’s collapse was “sort of a shock,” that spoke to the lack of public visibility into the company’s balance sheet, said Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire during a Wednesday appearance on CNBC. “We don’t know the details of a term sheet, is that something other potential firms could compete around?” Allaire said.
Asked what Binance backing out of a preliminary deal to acquire its troubled rival would do to crypto markets as a whole, Allaire said the possibility of no one buying FTX and its assets would leave a “giant hole” that would be “far worse” than what investors and markets are concerned about right now. Allaire noted FTX’s base outside of the U.S. and its lack of financial transparency was, “at some level, not the visibility.
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🚨 Deribit Hacker Has Started Moving the Stolen $28M to Tornado Cash
Etherscan data shows that the hacker has moved over $2.5 to Tornado Cash. Less than a week after exploiting the leading cryptocurrency derivatives exchange Deribit, the attacker started moving the stolen funds. As of November 5, the hacker had moved 1,610 Ether (ETH) worth over $2.5 million to the U.S.-sanctioned crypto mixer Tornado Cash.
The exchange was forced to pause withdrawals and deposits as it tried to control the situation by conducting security checks. Deribit told users that all losses would be covered by its reserves and not the insurance fund, assuring them that clients’ assets, including those in cold storage, were unaffected. The platform resumed activities that same day after migrating all hot wallets to crypto custodian Fireblocks. The exchange also instructed users to refrain from sending funds to their previous BTC, ETH, and USDC addresses, as they could be exploited again
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🚨 Instagram Influencer Jay Manzini Pleads Guilty for Draining $2.5M in BTC From Fans
The popular Instagram influencer Jebara Igbara, also known as “Jay Manzini,” pleaded guilty to money laundering, wire fraud, and wire fraud conspiracy. He used the social media platform to promote various schemes to investors but, in fact, defrauded them with $8 million. Jebara Igbara, a.k.a. “Jay Manzini,” will go to jail for running an investment scam and bitcoin Ponzi scheme.
The US Department of Justice announced that the so-called Instagram influencer “Jay Manzini” will face up to 20 years in federal prison for his offenses. In addition, Igbara told his followers he wanted to buy a huge amount of bitcoin and that authorized exchanges would not allow him to accumulate such a stash. He urged Instagram users to send him BTC, assuring he will pay premium prices for those transactions.
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📣 Rumors of Andre Cronje’s return cause Fantom to spike 24%
The price movement continues the asset’s recent upward trend, which had seen it rise by 25% in the last seven days and over 20% in the previous 30 days. FTM traded over $0.40 in early August; however, the asset experienced a market downturn that pushed its value to as low as $0.19 on Oct 13.
Rumors of Cronje’s return began last week when he published a medium post discussing the various issues that led to the recent market meltdown. The DeFi developer also used the opportunity to call for more regulatory reforms. The blog post divided the crypto community, with some arguing that it was not from him. However, earlier today, Cronje updated his LinkedIn to the Vice President of Memes at the Fantom Foundation, adding that he started the position this month.
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🇮🇪 Binance sets up seventh unit in Ireland
Crypto exchange operator Binance set up a seventh unit in Ireland as it continues to expand its roots in Europe. Binance Global Sourcing was established last week, according to records from the Companies Registration Office (CRO), the central repository of public statutory information on Irish companies.
The news comes after Binance picked Paris as its European hub after France's financial regulator granted Binance a license to offer and market its services to local customers in May. Last year, Binance considered Ireland as part of its plans to establish a number of headquarters worldwide to break with its "decentralized" structure and improve relations with regulators. It is unclear what is the primary purpose of Binance's new Irish entity. Binance declined to comment.
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💰 Uniswap v3 Launches TWAP Oracles On Ethereum’s Proof-of-Stake
Uniswap unveiled an innovation to bring scalability and solution to protocols. The new tool dubbed TWAP Oracles is an algorithm that provides information regarding the price of an asset. This is for developers who encounter setbacks when developing smart contracts fused with a Decentralized Finance (DeFi) protocol on Ethereum.
The launch of Uniswap v2 was geared towards empowering mainnet builders to design decentralized on-chain TWAP Oracles, free from internal or external manipulation. Uniswap v3 extended included this with additional gas capabilities within TWAP Oracles. This offered far more perks to the network than PoW did. But, unfortunately, it had unforeseen consequences on TWAP oracles and other layers that depended on PoW blocks.
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⚡️Cross-chain swap protocol Thorchain is back online after 20-hour outage
Cross-chain swap protocol Thorchain is back online after a software error halted the network for 20 hours. At 1:45 p.m. UTC on Friday, Thorchain validators collectively resumed the network and started to make new blocks. Still, the network is not fully operational for on-chain trades.
THORChain is back online and producing blocks. The network is signing outbound transactions, so pending swaps should start to go through. Once the queue is cleared, trading will be re-enabled. ETA 2-3 hours," said the Thorchain team. The Thorchain network validators lost consensus yesterday due to a “unique transaction type” software error that disrupted communication between their nodes.
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📣 Compass Mining inks 27-megawatt hosting deal with Aspen Creek Digital
Compass Mining signed a hosting deal to house around 9,000 of its bitcoin mining machines with data center developer Aspen Creek Digital Corporation. The company will get 27 megawatts of power capacity out of Aspen Creek's 30-megawatts site, located behind the meter, drawing power from a solar farm in Texas.
Compass Mining hosts machines from individual clients in facilities across the US and Canada. The company said that it would start deploying machines, including S19 XPs and S19j Pros, to this site starting in the fourth quarter of 2022. “ACDC’s pairing of cost effective, renewable energy with mining operational excellence is difficult to find in today’s current market," said Compass co-founder and co-CEO Thomas Heller in a statement. Compass saw one of its other hosting partners shut down two sites in Georgia.
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🥇 Bitcoin Skyrockets Toward $20K Leaving $100M in Daily Liquidations
Following days of inactivity, Bitcoin was struck by another wave of upward volatility on Tuesday. After nearly reaching $20,000, the asset left $100 million in liquidations in its wake. The coin touched $19,500 about an hour later, experiencing another hour of flat trading before climbing again to $19,834 by 16:00 UTC. The price is now $19,792, at writing time.
Data from Coinglass shows that $50 million in crypto trades have been liquidated over the past hour alone, with $112 million being squeezed over the past day. The largest single liquidation took place on Binance for a BTC/USDT trade, with a value of $1.01 million. Big price moves have been rare in crypto for the past several weeks, with Bitcoin now showing volatility comparable to the British pound.
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💰 MakerDAO on course to custody 1.1 billion USDC with Coinbase for rewards
MakerDAO, the issuer of the stablecoin DAI, appears set to move forward with a proposal to onboard an account to Coinbase prime and transfer roughly 33% of its USDC ($1.1 billion) into custody. The ongoing vote ends Oct. 24, and as of press time, 88.19% of voting MKR tokens are in favor of approval.
a16z deal partner, Porter Smith, announced the venture capital firm’s support for Coinbase Institutional’s Maker Improvement Proposal (MIP) 81 that would provide institutional rewards for USDC with MakerDAO. Founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, a16z cast the majority vote that solidified approval of MIP81. MakerDAO will use the 1.6 billion USDC to participate.
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