What a weekend! So much dramarama involving two of crypto’s most prominent billionaires, FTX, Alameda Research and Binance. Never a dull moment in crypto, even during a bear market. Amid concerns over FTX’s liquidity and other issues, Binance CEO, CZ announced their plan to sell off his platform’s entire stash of FTT with Alamade’s CEO countering that they’d be glad to buy their position at $22. More than $451M in stablecoins has flown out of crypto exchange FTX in the last seven days and rumors of insolvency circulate. Looking forward, we’ve got a CPI print this Thursday on Nov. 10 -estimated at 7.9%, down 0.3% versus September.
tl;dr:
- Binance/FTX battle
- U.S. Silk Road $3.36B crypto seizure
- Meta to fire thousands of employees this week
- Mythical Games fires 10% of staff
- Web3 Foundation/Polkadot claims to be software not a security
- Avalanche $4M GMX incentive program
- Solana unveils Google partnership, smartphones, Web3 store at Breakpoint Conference
- Zerion in-browser web extension to challenge MetaMask
- SEC subpoenas influencers who promoted HEX, Pulse Chain and PulseX
- SEC suing Ponzi schemeTrade Coin Club that netted 82,000 bitcoin
- UK bank Santander to block real-time payments to crypto exchanges next year
- Huobi alleges pNetwork Gala actions were malicious
- Solana will add support for Circle’s Euro Coin (EUROC)
- OpenSea to allow creators to enforce royalties on-chain
- Coming Soon: LooksRare NFT Aggregator
- Beeple bringing 'immersive 3D NFTs' to Solana via Metaplex and Render Network
Now for a more expanded and detailed look at the day…
⛓ Crypto News:
- Binance to sell FTX token holdings after ‘recent revelations’, Alameda CEO says leaked balance sheet is incomplete and offered to buy Binance's FTT token holdings for $22. Drama filled twitter exchanges between CEOs
- U.S. Attorney announces historic $3.36B cryptocurrency seizure and conviction in connection with Silk Road dark web fraud
- Meta, the parent company of Facebook, plans to cut thousands of employees this week
- Solana unveils Google partnership, smartphones, Web3 store at Breakpoint
- Google Cloud is adding support for the Solana blockchain in BigQuery, in order to make it easier to access Solana data and also working on bringing Solana support to its Blockchain Node Engine
- The Solana Saga smartphone can be used on the upcoming Helium Mobile network. Helium Mobile pairs the Helium 5G decentralized network with coverage from T-Mobile’s nationwide 5G network. Due to launch in early 2023
- As Lebanon's economy struggles and people lose trust in banks, they are relying on Bitcoin and Tether to store funds and make payments
- Neon Labs plans to release its mainnet, an Ethereum virtual machine on Solana, on Dec. 12. Neon EVM will allow developers to port Ethereum-based applications on top of Solana
- Crypto wallet Zerion is gearing up to launch an in-browser web extension as it prepares to take on industry leader MetaMask. The web extension is now in a closed beta and is expected to go live by the end of November
- A16z-backed Mythical Games, which reached unicorn status last November, has laid off 10% of staff as part of a business restructuring
- Crypto trading platform Amber Group lowered its valuation to the $3B at which it previously raised, as the company seeks an additional $100M from investors. Attempted to raise again at a much higher valuation between $5B-$8B
- Ajuna Network has won the Polkadot parachain slot 31 + Weekly ecosystem update
👨⚖️ Economic/Government/Regulatory:
- The Web3 Foundation that funds development of Polkadot said the blockchain’s token should no longer be considered a security subject to regulation by the U.S. SEC and is instead considered software
- The European Commission will soon propose legislation on a central bank digital currency
- Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission looks set to allow the launch of ETFs tracking cryptocurrency futures for retail investors, citing the increasing sophistication of investor safeguards
- The SEC reportedly issued a subpoena to influencers who were found promoting cryptocurrencies such as HEX, Pulsechain and PulseX
- The SEC is suing Trade Coin Club, an alleged Ponzi scheme that netted 82,000 bitcoin from 2016 to 2018
- UK bank Santander is set to block real-time payments to crypto exchanges next year citing fraud
💸 Exchange News:
- Huobi made allegations against pNetwork, claiming that the protocol’s recent Gala actions were not a white hat move but a scheme for malicious profit and calling the activity a white hat attack was only an excuse by the pNetwork team to avoid legal consequences
- Gate.io has cooperated with Armanino for the third consecutive year to complete 100% margin audit
- Hashflow (HFT) will be listed on Binance, Coinbase & Coinbase Pro
- Crypto exchange Gemini has expanded its offerings to five more European countries - Croatia, Cyprus, Hungary, Romania, and Slovenia
🏦 DeFi News:
- The Avalanche Foundation is providing incentives worth $4M in AVAX tokens for the decentralized trading platform GMX, as part of the Avalanche Rush incentive program, which has the goal of growing the DeFi ecosystem on Avalanche
- BetDEX, a sports betting exchange built on a blockchain, will open on Solana mainnet on Nov. 17 at the beginning of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar - offering fee-free betting on all World Cup games
- Stablecoin issuer Circle announced Solana will add support for Euro Coin (EUROC), a regulated and reserve-backed stablecoin pegged to the value of the euro
- pGALA post-mortem: measures taken to safeguard the ecosystem from malicious actors and recovery plan
- Beefy Finance now on Ethereum
- Drift v2 is officially live on gated mainnet. v2 alpha ticket holders can now trade $SOL perps with SOL & USDC collateral
🖼 NFT/Gaming/Metaverse News:
- OpenSea laid out the first of a suite of tools for its users, allowing creators of new NFT collections to enforce royalties on-chain. The code to which it is giving creators access restricts NFT sales to marketplaces that enforce creator fees
- Coming Soon: LooksRare NFT Aggregator
- The world’s biggest-selling NFT artist, Beeple, is bringing 'immersive 3D NFTs' to Solana via Metaplex and Render Network
💰 Fundraises:
- Digital currency exchange Coinmetro raised $7M in a funding round that valued the business at 180M euros and plans to use the capital to scale up its operations in the U.S., U.K. and Europe
- MT Tower, a metaverse project aiming to bridge the gap between current Web2 social media platforms and the Web3 metaverse space, closed a $3M seed round
- Upskilling startup AlmaBetter raises $2.7M funding from Kalaari Capital
👶 Early Stage Projects:
- The Sandbox and Brinc announce the startups selected for the first cohort of their $50M Open Metaverse Accelerator Program. Each startup will receive up to $250,000 in initial funding, as well as access to and support from the best network of Web3 mentors and experts
- Zeta Markets perps mainnet live - the world’s first orderbook DEX with Options, Dated Futures & Perps
- 3xcaliSwap is now officially live
- Introducing Web3 Subscription of Mail3
- Introducing DFlow Chain - a standalone, Cosmos-based appchain built to host decentralized order flow auctions
- Introducing Duality - the DEX that gives Liquidity Providers superpowers. The next generation exchange is now coming to Cosmos
- Flare Network - FLR Tokenomics
📊 Data:
TL;DR: Traditionally, crypto is deposited onto an exchange to be sold and withdrawn if it’s not. There was a large drop in the ETH held on exchanges recently. Looking at exchange deposits and withdrawals flows, Smart Money has been sending $197M ETH to exchanges and removing ~ $127M in stables from exchanges. On the other hand, all wallets combined have primarily sent $695M FTT onto exchanges and have been removing over $4B in stables, $2B in ETH and WBTC from exchanges.
- Nansen Data
Smart Money Exchange Inflow:
Smart Money Exchange Outflow:
All Money Exchange Inflow:
All Money Exchange Outflow:
🎓 Research/Reads:
- Research Paper: DeFi on Bitcoin - source
- Arthur Hayes - Pure Evil - source
- Bankless - The Case for $15,000 ETH - A venture fund's valuation model for ETH this decade - source
- WuBlockchain - The battle between FTX and Binance: why, will FTX crash？- source
- Messari - State of NEAR Q3 2022 - source
- The Buildooooooor - Chris Whinfrey of Hop Protocol - source
- State of Aurory Address - October 2022 - source
🌍 Crypto Twitterverse:
As part of Binance’s exit from FTX equity last year, Binance received roughly $2.1 billion USD equivalent in cash (BUSD and FTT). Due to recent revelations that have came to light, we have decided to liquidate any remaining FTT on our books. 1/4
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance)
Nov 6, 2022
@cz_binance if you're looking to minimize the market impact on your FTT sales, Alameda will happily buy it all from you today at $22!
— Caroline (@carolinecapital)
Nov 6, 2022
Liquidating our FTT is just post-exit risk management, learning from LUNA. We gave support before, but we won't pretend to make love after divorce. We are not against anyone. But we won't support people who lobby against other industry players behind their backs. Onwards.
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance)
Nov 6, 2022
1/6
The main FTX hotwallet had $90 of USDC before being refilled.
etherscan.io/tokenholdings?…
Their secondary only had $800 USDC...
etherscan.io/tokenholdings?…
Money flying in from onchain swaps and addressed labelled "Fund" but shouldn't their be a clear cold wallet somewhere?
— Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth) (@adamscochran)
Nov 6, 2022
Sam Bankman-Fried was once admired as the king of crypto.
Now Alameda and FTX are rumoured to be on the brink of insolvency.
🧵: Here's how it all went wrong for SBF and FTX. 👇
— Miles Deutscher (@milesdeutscher)
Nov 7, 2022
Updated roadmap diagram!
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin)
Nov 4, 2022
Turning $7,500 -> $225,000 in 3 weeks.
This is the 4th(?) account I've run up like this on Twitter and there are a number of reasons why I keep doing it.
Little overview for how I did it and some stats from the few weeks.
🧵👇
— Cold Blooded Shiller (@ColdBloodShill)
Nov 5, 2022
I made a Dune dashboard on @Uniswap that has caused a stir among prominent members in #DeFi
It's disturbingly revealed those who think they have invented perpetual motion
📕 A story 📕 about a chart, a cookie, hubris, social proofing, and the future of DeFi
👇 1/
— Alex (@thiccythot_)
Nov 5, 2022
There’s been a lot of discussion over the past few months about business models for NFT creators & whether creator fees (“royalties”) are viable.
Given our role in the ecosystem, we want to take a thoughtful, principled approach to this topic & to lead w/ solutions. 🧵
— OpenSea (@opensea)
Nov 6, 2022
Ever since Twitter’s new sink was in, I was asked about it in every interview. And I had many interviews last week. So, here is a summary.
Why did we do it? 6 reasons. 👇
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance)
Nov 4, 2022
Did we miss anything or is there anything you want to discuss? We’d Love to hear your feedback and engage with the community! Feel free to leave a comment and let us know your thoughts on the Crypto market!
Subscribe to receive our brief daily and extended weekly newsletter along with in-house research content!