Alameda co-CEO Caroline Ellison and FTX co-founder Gary Wang have now pled guilty to criminal charges and it looks like they’re fully turning on SBF. One huge question that is still hanging in the air is the other co-CEO of Alameda, Sam Trabucco. He joined Alameda in 2019, became co-CEO in October 2021 and stepped down in August 2022 - well after the market downturn that left Alameda in a position that required using FTX customer funds. There is literally no way he wasn’t involved in what happened but so far he seems to have escaped the court of public opinion and barely mentioned in official reporting. Did he leave once he saw the ship sinking? Too little, too late? Why not sound the alarm? Why is no one focusing more on him?
Also, we saw the return of controversial blockchain dev Dani Sesta which caused Popsicle Finance's native token, ICE, to pump. Dani previously worked on a number of DeFi projects, including Abracadabra.money and Wonderland, which was a fork of OlympusDAO. He was hailed as a hero in the crypto space as leader of the Frog Nation until his association with Sifu became public and ruined his image. Fallen heroes from grace are a trend in crypto - think Do Kwon, Su Zhu, Kyle Davies, Andre Cronje, SBF. Many also actively try to successfully mount a redemption arc. Will this dev be able to pull it off?
Daily Bullets:
- Daniele Sesta returning to Popsicle Finance, a DeFi market-making and yield-earning protocol
- Twitter implements financial charts for cashtags in search
- Polygon’s zkEVM second testnet launched, the last step before mainnet goes live
- The Republic of the Marshall Islands passed a law providing recognition of DAOs as LLCs
- Kraken launched Kraken Pro, a suite of advanced trading tools and a new interface
- Huobi partnership with Visa to issue the Huobi Visa Card worldwide
- MetaMask Swaps now enable swaps on Layer 2 networks Arbitrum and Optimism
- Frax Protocol turns 2 years old. Yearly emissions halvening increases FXS scarcity
- Blur Airdrop 2 recalculated to fix the wash trading filters that affected legitimate traders
- Yuga Labs's NFT collection Meebits launched a music album
- The Argentine Football Association (AFA) partnering with metaverse startup Upland
Data:
TL;DR: Daniele Sesta is back and states that he’s focusing on rebuilding the OG Popsicle Finance and working on NFT Real Estate as collateral. So let’s take a look at the performance of this fallen crypto hero’s projects. We have to switch to log scale on each of these charts because otherwise it looks like they just went to zero on linear scale. All 3 are down pretty bad, roughly 99% from all time highs. However crypto is often based on narratives and stories, will Dani be able to successfully rebuild Popsicle and draw attention to his next endeavor?
Popsicle Finance: rekt
Wonderland: rekt
Abracadabra.money: rekt
Now for a more expanded and detailed look at the day for those who like details and sources:
Crypto News:
- Former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison and FTX co-founder Gary Wang plead guilty to criminal charges. In the complaint, the U.S. SEC labeled FTX's exchange token, FTT, as a security in SEC complaint, throwing a shadow over similar tokens issued by rival crypto exchanges such as Binance and OKX. Caroline’s plea agreement includes: $250,000 Bail, surrender of travel documents, forfeiture of assets
- Twitter implements financial charts for cashtags in search
- Crypto investment fund manager 3iQ supports Fir Tree Capital Management’s lawsuit centered on Grayscale Investments’ Bitcoin trust
- Polygon’s zkEVM second testnet launched, the last step before mainnet goes live
- South Korean experts say North Korean hackers have stolen $1.2B in crypto assets around the world since 2017 including about $626M in 2022
- Immunefi, a crypto-focused bug bounty platform, paid over $52M to whitehat hackers in 2022, with crypto hacks topping more than $3B
- A Tornado Cash developer identified as “Gozzy” initiated a proposal to receive $240,000 in remuneration to continue development activities on the sanctioned mixing protocol
Economic/Government/Regulatory:
- The Republic of the Marshall Islands passed a law providing recognition of DAOs as limited liability companies (LLCs) - previously recognized DAOs as legal entities
- The U.S. SEC filed a complaint against Thor Technologies along with its co-founder and CEO David Chin, claiming that Thor’s 2018 ICO constituted an unregistered securities sale
- Retiring U.S. Senator. Pat Toomey introduces Stablecoin TRUST Act - a bill to legitimize the use of stablecoins in payment systems
- Investment platform MyConstant ordered to desist and refrain from violating the California Securities Law and California Consumer Financial Protection Law for its peer-to-peer lending service and interest-bearing accounts
Exchange News:
- Around 94% of the $84M FTX paid for its majority stake in Blockfolio in 2020 was in the FTT token it itself invented
- Kraken launched Kraken Pro, a suite of advanced trading tools and a new interface that unifies access to spot trading, margin trading, staking and portfolio management
- Huobi partnership with Visa to issue the Huobi Visa Card worldwide
- Binance Margin will delist FET, FORTH, KEY, MBOX and WIN as borrowable assets from Cross Margin, as well as AION and BTS from Isolated Margin
DeFi News:
- Blockchain developer Daniele Sestagalli returning to Popsicle Finance, a DeFi market-making and yield-earning protocol
- MetaMask Swaps now enable swaps on Layer 2 networks, Arbitrum and Optimism in addition to the currently supported Ethereum mainnet, BSC, Polygon and Avalanche
- Nomad Bridge is now relaunched
- Uniswap votes passed to reform the voting process in an effort to make it easier to change the way the system is governed with nearly 100% voting in favor
- Lido on Solana v2 is live - brings a series of validator economy changes
- Frax Protocol turns 2 years old - per $FXS yearly halvening schedule, the total emissions have now been halved thus increasing FXS scarcity
- Aave founder Stani Kulechov was given 2 million LDO tokens as an early investor in December 2020, which he held for a year and began selling at the end of 2021 over 12 months for a total of $2.4M
- Raydium update on remediation of funds for recent exploit - There _should_ currently be enough cumulative protocol revenue from trading fees to make liquidity providers whole
- Trust Wallet now supports Aptos dApps
NFT/Gaming/Metaverse News:
- Drops on OpenSea: Creators will be able to easily drop collections on the world’s largest NFT platform with a rich canvas to express their brand, art, and roadmap
- Blur Airdrop 2 recalculated to fix the wash trading filters that affected legitimate traders
- Yuga Labs's NFT collection Meebits launched a music album that's also collectable as ERC-1155 NFTs in collaboration with the generative AI music platform WarpSound
- The Argentine Football Association (AFA) partnering with metaverse startup Upland as one of its first entries into web3 fan engagement in a deal includes digital collectibles and a virtual gathering space for AFA's fanbase
- The Pokémon Company International is suing Pokémon Pty Ltd, an Australian company, in the Federal Court of Australia over the advertisement of a new NFT-based Pokémon mobile game called PokéWorld
- Axie Infinity passed Google Play store review - plan to soft launch Origins in the Malaysian Play Store first
- BAYC - 2.5% royalty fee for BAKC companion collection has been turned back on
Fundraises:
- Startup Cypherock, who’s new hardware wallet uses NFC-based cards to reduce risks related to seed phrases raises $1M from ConsenSys Mesh, Infinite Capital, Gnosis and its co-founder Stefan George, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, Mahin Gupta, OrangeDAO - @CypherockWallet
Early Stage Projects:
- Kavarii - designed to be a Social Economic Platform that promotes freedom of speech while being censorship resistant
Research/Reads:
- Coinbase 2023 Crypto Market Outlook - source
- Blockchain Analysis: Nansen's 2022 Annual Report Compilation - source
- November 2022 GameFi Report - source
- European Central Bank - Progress on the investigation phase of a digital euro - source
- Uniswap Fee Switch Proposal - source
- Jump Crypto - Statistical Attacks on Proof of Solvency - source
- An Open Letter From Bitfinex - source
Crypto Twitterverse:
CFTC reiterating that BTC ETH and USDT are commodities in FTX filing.
— Steven (@Dogetoshi)
Dec 22, 2022
We just discovered Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang turned on @SBF_FTX, rattling him out to the Feds. The SEC’s civil (non-criminal) complaint is built on their participation and gives us our first “insider’s account” of the FTX disaster.
I’ve given you 12 key takeaways below:👇🧵
— Compound248 (@compound248)
Dec 22, 2022
No mention of Tabasco in the CFTC filing.
Mentioned a few times in the SEC filing in regards to how he was Alamedas Co- CEO for a while, until Caroline took the reins.
Also stress how at the end of the day the goblin was the decision maker at Alameda too.
— Hsaka (@HsakaTrades)
Dec 22, 2022
2022 is ending. This is the time where many VC’s / institutions come up with a YoY reviews or insights on what they’re looking at in the space for 2023.
If you want to know what they’re looking at, I summarized some reports from key players in the industry.
Part 1 🧵 below:
— CJ (@CJCJCJCJ_)
Dec 21, 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!
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