Also today, Shark Tank star Kevin O'Leary has revealed that he was paid $15 million to act as a spokesperson for FTX - and lost it all when the exchange went bankrupt.
BREAKING: SBF says it is ready to testify in Congress next week.
However, the FTX founder cautions that “there is a limit to what I can say.”
Sam Bankman-Fried has said she is ready to testify to Congress about ending FTX on Tuesday.
The embattled founder was asked to appear before the House Financial Services Committee on Dec. 13 — but declined because they are still determining what led to the exchange’s demise.
Rep. his argument. Maxine Waters denied how she gave several high-profile interviews, including to The New York Times, Good Morning America and The Wall Street Journal.
On Friday, he tweeted:
“I still don’t have access to most of my data — professional or personal. So there’s a limit to what I can say, and I won’t be as helpful as I’d like. But as a committee Still thinking it would be useful, I am prepared to testify on the 13th.”
The SBF added that it would try to be helpful during the hearing — and highlight why FTX US is solvent, opportunities for value returns to customers around the world, and what led to the crash.
Promising to reflect on his failures, he added:
“I thought of myself as a model CEO, who wouldn’t be lazy or disengaged. That made it all the more devastating when I did that. I’m sorry. I hope people see the difference. Can learn who I was and who was. Maybe.”
Kevin O’Leary Reveals He Was Paid $15 Million To Be An FTX Spokesperson… And Lost It All
“It’s all at zero. I don’t know because my account expired a few weeks ago — all data, all coins, everything.”
Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary has revealed he was being paid $15 million to act as a spokesperson for FTX – and lost it all after the exchange filed for bankruptcy.
Speaking to CNBC’s Squawk Box , the billionaire admitted he had made “bad investments” — and said he and other institutional investors would have “looked like idiots” after succumbing to “groupthink.” are”.
Breaking down the numbers, O’Leary revealed that he invested $9.7 million from the deal in cryptocurrencies that were held on the crashed exchange.
“It’s all at zero. I don’t know because my account expired a few weeks ago — all data, all coins, everything.”
To make matters worse, his $1 million equity stake in FTX is also now down to zero – a fate likely shared by other celebrity backers such as Naomi Osaka and Tom Brady. Is.
Several A-listers who were involved in promoting the exchange in advertising — including O’Leary, Osaka, Brady and others like Larry David — are facing lawsuits from upset investors.
During the candid interview, O’Leary said:
“I don’t invest a lot all the time – luckily I do more good investments than bad, but this was a bad one.”
Things got a little awkward when O’Leary was asked about a statement he made after becoming a spokesperson for FTX, in which he declared that the company met “its own strict standards of compliance.”
When asked what kind of due diligence he has done, O’Leary explained:
“[The institutional investors] relied on each other’s due diligence but we also relied on another investment theme that I felt generated a lot of interest in FTX: Sam Bankman-Fried is an American . His parents are US compliance lawyers. There were no US, major exchanges to invest in if you want to invest in crypto as an infrastructure play.”
O’Leary said he was determined to find out where his money went because there were no accounting records – and revealed he had spoken to Bankman-Fried last Saturday.
The Amber Group has pulled out of its sponsorship of Chelsea amid growing concerns over the company’s future.
There have been widespread concerns that the company could be affected by FTX’s bankruptcy — but Amber executives say day-to-day operations are continuing as normal.
A sophisticated crypto-trading platform is ending a high-profile sponsorship deal with Chelsea Football Club, according to Bloomberg.
Amber Group is also reportedly reducing its workforce from 700 to 400 as the bear market bites – the company is shifting its focus from retail customers to large enterprises.
Bloomberg claims this will effectively see Amber Group’s number of clients shrink from millions to just 100 – a stunning reversal.
The company operates the WhaleFin trading platform, and its logo has appeared on the sleeves of English Premier League team players.
The sponsorship deal is believed to be worth $25 million to Chelsea – and marks the latest withdrawal by crypto firms from lucrative tie-ups with sports teams.
In other developments, the Financial Times is reporting that Amber Group has raised just over half of its $100 million funding round.
There have been widespread concerns that the company could be affected by FTX’s bankruptcy – and although it has not been revealed by the doomed exchange’s sister trading firm Alameda Research, it had some funds on FTX.
Speaking to the newspaper, Amber Group managing partner Annabelle Huang strongly denied allegations that her day-to-day operations had been disrupted – calling such speculation “predatory and misinformed”.
Crypto-Twitter was also spooked after claims that an investigation into public blockchain records showed that Amber Group only had $9.46 million in assets.
Huang has claimed that @lookonchain’s figures fail to take into account in-person business – and insisted that outlets remain open as usual.
Amber Group co-founder Tiantian Kolander died unexpectedly at the age of 30 late last month. In a statement, the company called him a “respected thought leader” and “industry pioneer”, adding:
“He poured his heart and soul into the company, at every stage of its growth. He led by example with his intelligence, generosity, humility, diligence and creativity.”
After a long wait, the return of Stacked Ether could begin in March.
Ethereum developers have described the Shanghai upgrade as a top priority – and some people who have locked up ETH have been unable to access it for two years.
Stakeholders who have locked up their Ethereum may be able to withdraw their funds from March, it has been revealed.
About 15.6 million ETH have been locked up in the aggregator contract since it launched two years ago – and at the time of writing, it has a cash value of $20 billion.
This deposit contract played a key role in helping the Ethereum network successfully transition from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake blockchain earlier this year — an ambitious upgrade known as “The Merge.” is called.
Once completed, it made energy-intensive mining obsolete, and meant that validators staking Ether were responsible for verifying transactions and adding them to the blockchain. . As a reward for doing so, they receive rewards and returns on their investment.
Hopefully the next major upgrade in March – known as Shanghai – will enable validators to reconnect with their ETH if they wish to do so.
But importantly, enabling withdrawals can encourage new participants to join — those who might otherwise be reluctant to do so amid the uncertainty of how long to lock up their digital assets. In turn, this has the potential to improve network security.
Ethereum developer Tim Beiko has called Shanghai “a top priority for everyone” – however, there’s a fairly medium chance the upgrade will be delayed. However, the timing around the merger was pushed back on several occasions.
Suggestions have been made that, to ensure evacuation is activated as soon as possible, other planned improvements may be delayed if they risk undermining it.
Ether was the strongest performer among the world’s 10 largest cryptocurrencies on Friday, with a 4.36 percent gain over the past 24 hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
Coinbase attacks Tether and urges users to switch from USDT to USDC.
“The events of the past few weeks have put some stablecoins to the test and we’ve seen a flight to safety,” warns a new blog post.
Coinbase has launched a thinly veiled attack against the Tether stablecoin — and is urging users to switch to the “trusted and credible” USD Coin instead.
In a new blog post, the exchange — which helped co-found the USDC back in 2018 — said “stability and confidence” are of utmost importance to customers during bear markets, adding:
“However, the events of the past few weeks have put some stablecoins to the test and we have seen a flight to safety.”
While not addressing any rival stablecoins by name, this is likely a reference to USDT, which has been going through its paces this month since FTX collapsed.
Data from CoinMarketCap showed that USDT briefly lost its peg and fell to a 30-day low of $0.9815. Moreover, the world’s largest stablecoin hit a 52-week low of $0.9485, the worst among trading pairs on some crypto exchanges.
Our data shows that the track record of other market leading stablecoins is much more reliable.
USDC — No. 2 — has a 30-day low of $0.9992 and a 52-week low of $0.9973, slipping just a fraction of a cent.
And it’s a similar story with Binance USD, the third most popular stablecoin. It has seen a 30-day low of $0.9963, and a 52-week low of $0.9958. Binance is the parent company of CoinMarketCap.
Coinbase has now announced that it will waive the fee for users who switch from USDT to USDC — stressing that the stablecoin is “100% cash and short-dated US Treasuries regulated by the US. are held in financial institutions, supported by The blog added:
“It is always worth 1:1 to the US dollar
There have long been concerns about whether stablecoin issuer Tether has enough reserves to fully back all USDT in circulation.
It was also criticized for holding commercial paper – debt instruments issued by companies – amid concerns that it was too risky. In October, it was confirmed that these investments had been completely replaced by US Treasury bills. At the time, it said:
“Tether has liquidated over $30 billion worth of trading paper without loss, a testament to how conservatively and professionally Tether’s reserves are managed.”
The stablecoin issuer is known to respond to criticism about the management of the funds. An independent audit – years in the making – has yet to materialize and has been repeatedly pushed back.
In September, Binance raised the stakes when it announced plans to automatically convert USD Coin, Pax Dollar and TrueUSD balances to Binance USD.
At the time, there was speculation that this could have significant implications for the USDC’s standing in the rankings.
Tether’s total market cap is currently $65.7 billion — down about 15 percent from the start of the year.
Meanwhile, USD Coin has a market cap of $42.7 billion, roughly the same as the start of 2022.
DAO Abruptly Cancels Plan To Donate 100 ETH To ‘On-Chain Sleuth’ ZachXBT
On Twitter, it was suggested that the action was carried out by someone who wanted to prevent ZachXBT from investigating further.
Confusion is brewing at a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) after plans to donate 100 ETH to a well-known, on-chain crypto sleuth were suddenly canceled.
Nouns is a project that releases a new piece of computer-generated artwork every 24 hours — and anyone who wins an auction for one becomes a member of its own DAO, receiving 100% of the proceeds. Is.
Community members voted to donate an amount each — worth $128,000 at current market rates — to ZachXBT, rewarding him for his work in exposing crypto scams. The proposal was first initiated by Hong Kim, co-founder and CTO of Bitwise Asset Management.
Some of ZachXBT’s scoops this year alone include releasing a spreadsheet showing how much major influencers have allegedly charged to promote crypto projects — and an investigation that claims That Lark Davis promoted low-cap altcoins to his audience, only to dump them shortly after.
ZachXBT said he was grateful for the donation, writing:
“If the bear market holds up long enough it won’t be much of an expense. Also plan to hire a dev intern in the coming months. Will probably upgrade some of my equipment as well.”
So far everything seems in order. But after it was revealed that the proposal had been abruptly cancelled, things soon got a bit more complicated.
Governance client House of Nuance claimed that a technical glitch meant the proposal could be canceled by an anonymous wallet – and on Twitter, it suggested the action was carried out by someone who called ZachXBT. Wanted to refrain from further investigation.
Undeterred, he confirmed that a new, identical proposal has been drawn up to ensure ZachXBT receives this 100 ETH reward – and House of Nones added that it was a “near certainty” that the vote would be a Will pass again. Further explaining what happened, Hong Kim wrote in the latest proposal:
“I submitted my names to the House of Nunes team without knowing that until a proposal is implemented (even after a vote is passed) it would mean removing voting power from the proposer’s address. Maybe one can cancel the prop. Unfortunately it was canceled as a result. My sincere apologies for the need to retract.”
Why is ZachXBT receiving this cash?
Hong Kim argued that ZachXBT is “a public good serving the ecosystem by exposing countless scams through tireless research” – adding:
“Recent events have highlighted the dire need and importance of such work.”
But he acknowledged that giving donations to individuals can be controversial if there is a conflict of interest — and said there isn’t one.
“I confirm that I have no past (or planned future) relationship with ZachXBT and that today is the first time I have contacted them (via Twitter) to ask for their permission to make this proposal. can be done.”
House of Nuns has expressed confidence that ZachXBT will receive his reward “in about a week” after voting closes.
Nomad Bridge relaunch and partial compensation offer – $190M four months after hack
Smart contracts have been upgraded in an effort to prevent a similar incident in the future, and Know Your Customer checks have been opened to validate compensation entitlements.
Four months after the devastating $190 million hack, Nomad Bridge has announced that it is relaunching and offering partial refunds to affected users.
The attack was described as a “free-for-all”, with funds slowly depleted over the course of a few hours. Dozens of exploiters took advantage of a code flaw that enabled them to spoof transactions and falsely claim ownership of collateral.
In a blog post, the Nomad team says they are “hard at work making the necessary updates to recover funds and safely relaunch.”
In an effort to prevent a similar incident in the future, smart contracts have now been upgraded, and Know Your Customer checks have been opened to verify those who are entitled to compensation.
Those who pass KYC steps through CoinList will be given a unique NFT that reflects the type of cryptocurrency they owe — as well as how much.
Compensation will be offered on a pro rata basis – this means that, if Nomad manages to recover 25% of the funds that were taken, NFT owners are entitled to receive 25% of the total funds owed to them. will Gypsy gave his example and presented it as follows:
“If 10% of the total mined ETH has been recovered, and Alice has an NFT that is worth 20 ETH (which she originally bridged with Ethereum), Alice can use her NFT to access 2 ETH. will.”
However, it doesn’t have to be that straightforward. Lots of USD coins, wrapped Ethereum, wrapped Bitcoin and altcoins were stolen back in August – and it’s easy to piece together where everything went.
“There is some complexity in calculating the total pool of recovered funds for each exploited token because some white hats returned different tokens than they took in the hack (example: a hacker stole ETH, exchanged ETH for DAI , and then finally returned the DAI).
At this point, victims of the nomads have no way of knowing how much money they’ll be entitled to — and it’s unclear exactly how much of the $190 million has been recovered. In August, about 20% of the stolen funds were sent to an official recovery address created for white-hat hackers, with the project offering a 10% reward.
Masterclass released crypto course featuring Binance’s Changpeng Zhao and Coinbase’s Emily Choi.
To maintain a bit of balance, a healthy dose of cynicism about digital assets is provided by Professor Paul Krugman – a long-time skeptic of what the crypto space has to offer.
An educational streaming platform has released a new course covering cryptocurrencies and blockchain.
Masterclass – which has made a name for itself by offering content featuring stars such as Gordon Ramsay, Serena Williams and RuPaul – has tapped some of the biggest names in the industry as instructors.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao and Coinbase COO Emily Choi are among the contributors, along with Andreessen Horowitz partner Chris Dixon.
And for a bit of balance, a healthy dose of cynicism about digital assets is provided by Professor Paul Krugman – a long-time skeptic of what the space has to offer.
In total, the course is three hours and 40 minutes long – with separate tracks for beginners and advanced topics that understand how crypto works.
Topics include the history of cryptocurrencies, and why the principle of decentralization is so important. Time is also devoted to the evolution of blockchain technology, why Web3 technology is so promising, and how decentralized autonomous organizations can shake up the way companies operate.
The discourse surrounding cryptocurrencies is often polarizing – with clear camps dividing supporters and detractors. But in an effort to bridge the gap, CZ and Professor Krugman engage in a discussion where they share their perspectives on the biggest challenges facing the industry.
This latest offering from Masterclass could not have come at a better time, as crypto markets are reeling from the dramatic and sudden collapse of FTX. His demise has garnered countless column inches on national news, but the technical nuances are often difficult for everyday listeners to decipher.
Masterclass founder and CEO David Rogier said cryptocurrencies and blockchain have the potential to disrupt the financial system — even in the current bear market. Acknowledging that the landscape is “changing rapidly” on a daily basis (meaning there is a risk that the course may be out of date), he added:
“Beyond today’s headlines, the class lessons will help members gain insight into the system’s past and potential future to help them decide how and what they want to invest in the space. “
The arrival of this course is an exciting development as it advances equally on what is happening in the industry – moving beyond the hype and hyperbole.
It also serves as an opportunity for Choi and CZ to debunk some of the misconceptions that often cloud the crypto space, both arguing that volatility actually serves an important purpose.
Results from the recently released second annual Crypto Literacy Survey revealed that only 9% of US respondents were able to pass a 30-question basic quiz about how digital assets work — despite the fact that 32 % of Americans have invested in crypto.
Photo courtesy of Masterclass.
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