Crypto CEO Billionaires Battle Royale
💊 Daily Bullets 💊 Monday, November 7th
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.
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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
What’s your take on today’s news? Anything interesting that you have to say about these stories? Did we miss anything that should’ve been included?
📊 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:
What is the Data telling you? See anything that sticks out to you?
🎓 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
Have you seen our institutional-quality research?
🌍 Crypto Twitterverse:
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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