Cryptocurrency & Blockchain News and Discussions

weatheriscool
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Crypto lender BlockFi files for bankruptcy, cites FTX exposure

Source: Reuters
Nov 28 (Reuters) - Cryptocurrency lender BlockFi has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, it said on Monday, the latest crypto casualty after the firm was hurt by exposure to the spectacular collapse of the FTX exchange earlier this month. The filing in a New Jersey court comes as crypto prices have plummeted. The price of bitcoin , the most popular digital currency by far, is down more than 70% from a 2021 peak.

“BlockFi’s Chapter 11 restructuring underscores significant asset contagion risks associated with the crypto ecosystem," said Monsur Hussain, senior director at Fitch Ratings. New Jersey-based BlockFi, founded by fintech executive-turned-crypto entrepreneur Zac Prince, said in a bankruptcy filing that its substantial exposure to FTX created a liquidity crisis. FTX, founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, filed for protection in the United States earlier in November after traders pulled $6 billion from the platform in three days and rival exchange Binance abandoned a rescue deal.

"Although the debtors’ exposure to FTX is a major cause of this bankruptcy filing, the debtors do not face the myriad issues apparently facing FTX," said the first day bankruptcty filing by Mark Renzi, managing director at Berkeley Research Group, the proposed financial advisor for BlockFi. "Quite the opposite." BlockFi said the liquidity crisis was due to its exposure to FTX via loans to Alameda, a crypto trading firm affiliated with FTX, as well as cryptocurrencies held on FTX's platform that became trapped there. BlockFi listed its assets and liabilities as being between $1 billion and $10 billion.

Renzi said that BlockFi had sold a portion of its crypto assets earlier in November to fund its bankruptcy. Those sales raised $238.6 million in cash, and BlockFi now has $256.5 million in cash on hand. In a court filing on Monday, BlockFi listed FTX as its second-largest creditor, with $275 million owed on a loan extended earlier this year. It said it owes money to more than 100,000 creditors. The company also said in a separate filing it plans to lay off two-thirds of its 292 employees.
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/technology/cryp ... 022-11-28/
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caltrek
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Crypto Probably Isn’t Dead, but Should It Be?
by Emily Stewart
November 29, 2022

Introduction:
(Vox) It would be easy to write crypto’s obituary right now. The technological ecosystem has never quite managed to justify the logic of its existence or reach the mass adoption its boosters have promised for years. The latest crypto winter is turning into the crypto ice age, with company after company appearing to be in trouble and, at the very least, facing questions about their stability.

Months of turmoil in the space have culminated in the spectacular implosion of crypto exchange FTX and the incredible downfall of its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried. His business operations have been revealed to be a disaster, and Bankman-Fried as a deeply unserious person and potential fraudster.

According to a count from the website Web3 is Going Just Great, $12 billion have been lost to intentional crypto grifts and scams. That count doesn’t include the $8 billion that appears to have been lost by Bankman-Fried, not to mention other recent high-profile collapses. (Disclosure: This August, Bankman-Fried’s philanthropic family foundation, Building a Stronger Future, awarded Vox’s Future Perfect a grant for a 2023 reporting project. That project is now on pause.)

For those who have been paying attention to the sector, this sort of feels like waking up from a worldwide hypnosis. The metaverse thing, which is basically Zoom meetings with legless cartoons, never made sense. Neither did this idea that images of pixelated punks and weird-looking monkeys were worth millions of dollars as NFTs. Thousands of crypto tokens and coins spun up out of thin air have been revealed to be nothing more than magic beans. Project after project has fallen apart, often taking customers’ money with them, and then there’s the multitude of outright crypto scams.

Crypto isn’t just a financial space where the line goes up and the line goes down; it’s also a place where the line goes poof! and disappears.
Read more here: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2022/11/ ... -coinbase
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
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Time_Traveller
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Same here within the UK, like Caltrek's comment in March with the US.

UK to Launch Government-Backed ‘Digital Pound’ for Central Bank Digital Currency
December 12, 2022 by Save Britain

The Bank of England has started consultations on implementing a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), which could usher in the globalist vision of a cashless society where all transactions are traceable by the government, according to an announcement made this week by the de facto head of His Majesty’s Treasury.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt announced that the Bank of England will start consultations on the design of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), which would serve as a digital equivalent of the pound sterling, as part of his “Edinburgh Reforms” of Britain’s financial services.

Hunt said in a written statement to Parliament that the government will begin “bringing forward a consultation in the coming weeks to explore the case for a central bank digital currency – a sovereign digital pound – and consult on a potential design.”

“The Bank of England will also release a Technology Working Paper setting out cutting-edge technology considerations informing the potential build of a digital pound,” he added.

In contrast to Bitcoin, which functions on a decentralised basis in which no single person can control its functions, ownership, or value, a CBDC would be similar to traditional fiat currency issued by a central bank, such as the Bank of England, and therefore could suffer from the same inflation issues if the central bank decided to issue more of it — like printing cash
.

https://savebritain.org/uk-to-launch-go ... -currency/

This would make it easier for the government to spy on you on every little thing you buy from food to technology in digital form.
"We all have our time machines, don't we. Those that take us back are memories...And those that carry us forward, are dreams."

-H.G Wells.
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FTX collapse shows crypto is 'too dangerous' not to regulate, Bank of England deputy governor says

In an exclusive interview with Sky News, Sir Jon Cunliffe says investors and the financial system need protection from the "casino" of crypto trading.

Friday 23 December 2022 08:06, UK

Cryptocurrency trading is "too dangerous" to remain outside mainstream financial regulation and could pose "a systemic problem" without action, the deputy governor of the Bank of England has warned.

Speaking for the first time since the founder of the crypto trading platform FTX was arrested and charged with massive fraud, Sir Jon Cunliffe told Sky News the Bank is considering regulation to protect retail investors in the "casino" of crypto trading, as well as the wider financial system from potential crypto shocks.

Sam Bankman-Fried was extradited on Wednesday from the Bahamas to the US where he will appear in a New York court charged with eight counts of fraud, money laundering and breaking campaign finance.

The collapse of FTX left more than one million customers unable to withdraw assets worth an estimated $8bn.

Prosecutors allege he used FTX's customers' money to cover losses in his private crypto hedge fund Alameda Capital in what the company's new chief executive told Congress was "old-fashioned embezzlement".

https://news.sky.com/story/ftx-collapse ... s-12773169
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Last edited by ººº on Fri Feb 03, 2023 10:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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caltrek
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ººº wrote: Fri Feb 03, 2023 3:55 pm Image
...and another one bites the dust...
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
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Do Kwon: US regulator charges cryptocrash boss with fraud

7 hours ago

US financial regulators have charged failed South Korean cryptocurrency boss Do Kwon and his company Terraform Labs with "orchestrating a multi-billion dollar crypto asset securities fraud".

The Singapore-based firm created the Terra Luna and TerraUSD tokens, which collapsed spectacularly last year.

The collapse is estimated to have cost investors more than $40bn (£33.5bn).

Mr Kwon and Terraform Labs did not immediately respond to a BBC request for comment.

"We allege that Terraform and Do Kwon failed to provide the public with full, fair, and truthful disclosure as required for a host of crypto asset securities, most notably for LUNA and Terra USD," US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Gary Gensler said in a statement.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64671745


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caltrek
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NFTs are Down, but They're Not Dead
by Brady Dale
February 21, 2023

Introduction:
(Axios) The market for NFTs has gotten smaller. But it hasn't died.

Why it matters: Despite the societal and media urge to eulogize the fall of any once-big thing, more than $480 million worth of NFTs exchanged hands in the past 30 days. Perhaps more importantly, the market is changing in a fundamental way.

The big picture: From the beginning of the NFT (lesser known as "non-fungible tokens") boom in early 2021, the issue that's held the marketplace back has been liquidity.
  • It's hard to truly know an asset's "value" when a person can't sell it quickly when they want to.
  • Lately one marketplace, Blur, has been trying to change that, catering to people making a living day trading NFTs.
Read more here: https://www.axios.com/2023/02/21/nft-market-frenzy
Don't mourn, organize.

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