$700M Less for SBF 💣
In today's edition: ⌛ What to watch this week, 💰 US seizes FTX's assets, ❌ Signature Bank's decision, 🤑 a lucky solo Bitcoin miner, and more!
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On the Pod…
Why Crypto Developer Activity Continues to Grow Despite the Bear Market
Maria Shen of Electric Capital delves into the latest findings of the company's Developer Report, a highly-anticipated annual analysis of which blockchains developers are actively working on. Despite the crypto market downturn in 2022, the report shows that developer interest remains robust...
What’s Poppin’?
What to Watch in Crypto This Week
by Samyuktha Sriram
Here are some of the most important things to watch out for this week:
Genesis’s First Bankruptcy Hearing
CoinDesk Is Up for Sale
Bitcoin Whales Accumulating
Genesis First Bankruptcy Hearing Scheduled for Monday
The first hearing in Genesis’s bankruptcy case has been scheduled for Jan. 23 at 2:00 pm Eastern Time, according to recent court filings. The case will be heard by Judge Sean H. Lane of the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.
Genesis reported liabilities of up to $10 billion, with initial reports revealing that the firm owes more than $3.5 billion to its top 50 creditors. Genesis’s parent company Digital Currency Group has denied involvement in Genesis’s bankruptcy filing.
US Seizes $700M Linked to SBF and FTX: Report
U.S. authorities have taken possession of $700 million worth of assets linked to bankrupt crypto exchange FTX and its former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, as per a report from CoinDesk. The government is seeking the forfeiture of these assets on the grounds that they are not the property of the bankruptcy estate.
The assets in question include $525 million worth of Robinhood shares, which Bankman-Fried purchased with money borrowed from Alameda Research, and $171 million in cash from bank accounts tied to FTX-related entities.
Binance’s SWIFT Banking Partner Bans Transactions Under $100,000
Major crypto exchange Binance’s SWIFT banking partner Signature Bank will no longer support transactions under $100,000 in value. Binance notified customers of the development in a Jan. 21 email, saying they were actively seeking a new SWIFT partner for U.S. dollar-held bank accounts.
The change, expected to come into effect on Feb. 1, will not affect credit and debit card purchases of cryptocurrencies, or payments to and from third-party exchanges. Signature Bank’s revised transaction limit is part of a move to reduce its exposure to the digital asset market, Bloomberg reported on Saturday.
Terra Lending Protocol Mars to Launch Mainnet on Cosmos
Mars Hub, a Terra lending protocol, plans to launch an independent Cosmos application chain on Jan. 31. In a Friday update, Mars said that the mainnet would go live with 16 genesis validators, with an additional 34 slots for permissionless validators available post launch.
Each genesis validator will receive a pro-rata delegation of 50 million MARS tokens at the time of the launch, which will be returned to the Mars Hub treasury one month later. Users who held MARS on Terra Classic will also be eligible to receive 64.4 million tokens via an airdrop.
Solo Miner Solves Bitcoin Block With 10 TH/s
An individual Bitcoin miner with an average hash power of just 10 terahashes per second (TH/s) solved block number 772,793 on the blockchain. The odds of finding a block at the current level of Bitcoin’s difficulty, with such a low amount of hash power are extremely low. According to Dr. Con Kolivas, an administrator of a solo BTC mining pool, such an event only occurs once every 500 years.
The miner earned 98% of the 6.35939231 BTC block reward, which amounted to $142,863 at the time of writing. The remaining 2% went to Kolivas’s Solo CK Pool.
Stellar Joins CFTC Advisory Committee
The Stellar Development Foundation, the entity behind the Stellar blockchain, has joined the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Global Market Advisory Committee. Stellar will be one of four crypto-focused organizations on the committee, according to a statements on the SDF blog.
Currently the only blockchain representative on the committee, Stellar said it hopes to bring the unique perspective of Layer 1 protocols to the CFTC’s attention. It also plans to highlight the role of stablecoins in digital asset markets.
In Other News…✍️✍️✍️
The SEC charged Avraham Eisenberg with market manipulation for his role in the Mango Markets attack, where he allegedly stole $116 million from the platform.
The Delaware bankruptcy court authorized law firm Sullivan & Cromwell to continue providing legal representation for FTX during the process.
Crypto lender Genesis Global Capital has been revealed as the top creditor of FTX and is owed $226.3 million, according to a court filing.
Cumberland DRW disputed the amount Genesis says it owes the firm and describes its inclusion in the lender's bankruptcy filing as "misleading and incorrect information."
The legal team representing Sam Bankman-Fried reported an incident where a car drove into the barrier at his parents' home and the car’s occupants made threatening statements.
Ratings agency Moody’s downgraded Coinbase stock citing "challenging conditions in the crypto asset operating environment”.
The Stellar Development Foundation, a nonprofit promoting the Stellar blockchain, was listed as a major creditor in Genesis' bankruptcy filing with a claim for $13 million.
Ransomware attackers saw a significant drop in their earnings in 2022, with extortion revenues plummeting 40.3% to reach $456.8 million, compared to the $765.6 million in the previous year.
The $$$ Corner…
Brett Harrison, former president of FTX.US, raised $5 million for a new crypto startup.
What Do You Meme
📈 Your Market Update 📉
BTC is up .3%, trading at $22,763
ETH is up .65%, trading at $1,634
BTC dominance: 40.85%
Crypto market cap: $1.07 trillion
*All data as of today, 5 am ET
Recommended Reads
Tarun Chitra on auctions in NFTs:
Ram Ahluwalia on Genesis’ bankruptcy:
Monetsupply.lens on decentralized stablecoins:
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