This Week in Crypto: FTX Files for Bankruptcy
Discover the top new stories circulating the block
On November 2nd, reports of a balance sheet from FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s trading firm, Alameda Research, suggested the company held a significant amount of FTX Token (FTT). FTX uses FTT as a reward currency for trading discounts, and Alameda held far more tokens than traded on the market, suggesting its stake would be hard to liquidate at current prices.
The next few days saw the potential news of Binance offering a bailout. However, Binance backed away the following day after doing their due diligence, tweeting “The issues are beyond our control or ability to help”. On November 9th, The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) started investigating the relationship between FTX and sister entities Alameda Research and FTX US, as well as allegations that the company mishandled customer funds. Two days later, FTX filed for bankruptcy and announced that Sam Bankman-Fried resigned as CEO.
On November 13th, Kraken announced they have frozen accounts associated with the FTX Group, Alameda Research, and their executives on its exchange after engaging with authorities. The freeze is to access certain funds that are suspected to be associated with fraud, negligence or misconduc
Binance announces Crypto Market Recovery Fund
On Monday November 14th, Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao announced that Binance will be forming a crypto recovery fund. CZ tweeted the following, “To reduce further cascading negative effects of FTX, Binance is forming an industry recovery fund, to help projects who are otherwise strong, but in a liquidity crisis. More details to come soon.” CZ also announced that the fund is open to industry co-investors. This was met with quick responses from Tron founder Justin Sun, Huobi Global and Poloniex, saying they will support Binance in their initiative.
Coinbase looks to support Ripple against SEC
A new update in the Ripple court case has shown Coinbase coming to the defence of Ripple and its token XRP. In the brief submitted by Coinbase they said that the de-listing of XRP from exchanges due to SEC’s legal action caused its market value to drop by US$15 billion, which resulted in significant losses to Coinbase’s customers. Another takeaway from the Coinbase brief was the following: “In the absence of a regulatory framework governing digital assets, Coinbase believes that parties like Ripple must be permitted to pursue fair notice defenses in matters where they are facing surprise enforcement actions like this one.”
Crypto.com accidently transfers $400 million worth of ether
What was supposed to be a move to a new cold storage address, ended up being a $400 million accidental transfer of ETH to a whitelisted external exchange address. Luckily this was returned to their cold storage and they have mentioned that “new process and features were implemented to prevent this from happening again”. This follows their accidental transfer of $10 million to a Melbourne resident that was not noticed for 7 months.
Aussies have lost $242 million to scams this year
According to ScamWatch data, in 2022, Australians have lost $242 million to investment and crypto-related scams. With majority of these funds lost to investment scams, ranging from romance baiting scams to classis Ponzi schemes and crypto scams. The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) has received $10 million in seed funding as part of its budget to build a National Anti-Scam Center to support the community in its fight against cybercriminals, which Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones recently confirmed on the 7th of November.
Top Gainers (7d)
1. Trust Wallet Token (TWT) +100%
2. SafePal (SFP) +60%
3. DFI.Money (YFII) +49%
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