Hi Stackers,
FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried has gone from crypto’s white knight, to public enemy number one, in a short space of time. Let’s dive in.
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FTX blows up spectacularly
So much has happened regarding FTX over the past week, it’s difficult to summarize.
Binance initially wanted to buy FTX. However, it backed out of the deal, leaving the cryptocurrency exchange on the brink of collapse.
Stablecoin giants Circle and Tether also distanced themselves from both FX and Alameda Research. The list of companies affected continues to grow.
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire explained on Twitter that the firm has never given loans to FTX or Alameda and has never received FTT as collateral.
The FTT Token
FTX’s token decreased by 80% on liquidity concerns and wiped out over $2 billion in value on November 8. The coin initially traded around $22 the day prior, on November 7, before sinking under $5.
Venture capital firm Sequoia Capital tweeted out a letter sent to its partners on November 10, indicating the firm had marked its $213.5 million investments in FTX and FTX US down to zero dollars.
The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are investigating whether FTX.com mishandled customer funds and are looking into the firm's relationships with other parts of Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX empire.
Keep in mind that the SEC's scrutiny began months ago as a probe into FTX.US and its crypto-lending activities.
The CFTC's jurisdiction over crypto is generally limited to derivatives. However, they believe they can take enforcement action if they believe there's fraud or even manipulation in the underlying market.
FTX.com had its assets frozen in the Bahamas, and BlockFi paused withdrawals on November 11, 2022, due to the FTX and Alameda Research collapse.
Vitalik Buterin, the Co-founder of Ethereum (ETH), Has Revealed a New Section in the Roadmap Known As the Source
Vitalik Buterin added a new category of milestones relating to the technical roadmap of Ethereum. It aims to improve censorship resistance and decentralization of the broader Ethereum (ETH) network.
The updated plans were revealed originally on November 5 through a post on Twitter by Buterin, which introduced a section called the Scourge in an expanded six-partechnical roadmap.
The goal of the Scourge is to “ensure reliable and credibly neutral transaction inclusion and to avoid centralization and other protocol risks from MEV.”
Binance Released the Wallet Addresses of $69 Billion in Crypto Reserves
Binance pledged to reveal its crypto reserves and did so through an official announcement on November 10, 2022. This report was just the starting point, and it is working towards creating a Merkle Tree POF.
Binance holds 475K Bitcoin (BTC), 4.8 million Ethereum (ETH), 17.6 billion Tether (USDT), 21.7 billion Binance USD (BUSD), 601 million USD Coin (USDC), and 58 million BNB. In total, the exchange holds $69 billion in its crypto reserves.
OpenSea Shared Plans Surrounding the NFT Creator Royalties Due As Rival Marketplaces Have Been Following a Trend of Honoring Them
OpenSea had largely remained silent surrounding the subject of creator-set royalties.
However, in a Twitter thread posted on November 6, 2022, OpenSea broke past this silence. The NFT marketplace announced what it calls a “thoughtful, principled approach” to NFT royalties, which included the rollout of a system that lets creators of new projects essentially blacklist specific marketplaces which do not require traders to pay royalties, and this system took effect on November 8.
OpenSea also shared their perspective on what they are considering doing on existing NFT projects, and they will garner additional community feedback.
Thanks for reading,
James