The cryptocurrency market is operating without a specific direction on Thursday (5), while US futures indicators are losing steam amid uncertainty about the direction of interest rates in the world’s largest economy.
Bitcoin (BTC) has been stable over the past 24 hours, as it was priced at $16,815.40. Ethereum (ETH) is also showing little change, trading at $1,249.86, according to data from Coingecko.
In fact, Bitcoin (BTC) is moving sideways, trading at 90,871.18 Brazilian reals, according to Bitcoin Gateway Index (IPB).
The most traded altcoins go in opposite directions, among them BNB (+0.7%), XRP (-2.6%), Dogecoin (+1.3%), Cardano (+0.1%), Polygon (-0.5%), Polkadot (-1.6%). ) %), Shiba Inu (+3.3%), Avalanche (+0.8%).
Solana is down 4.8% in the past 24 hours after its recent rally. But a Shiba Inu-inspired token, Bonk, which was released on December 25 in the Solana ecosystem, has already delivered returns of more than 2,000% to traders over the past week, according to CoinDesk.
percent bankruptcy
A US bankruptcy judge ruled on Wednesday that the merged Celsius Network – and not the customer – is the true owner of most of the cryptocurrencies deposited by users on the crypto credit platform.
This means that these customers will be last in line to redeem assets and likely only recover a small percentage of the locked assets. The company does not have enough funds to pay those deposits in full, according to court filings.
New York Judge Martin Glenn’s ruling affects nearly 600,000 accounts that held $4.2 billion in assets when Celsius filed for bankruptcy in July.
Users participating in Celsius’s interest-earning lending service were denied access to their funds in June when Celsius froze withdrawals on its platform citing “extreme market conditions.”
FTX and Robinhood
Amid the FTX bankruptcy process, the US Department of Justice said in a Delaware bankruptcy court hearing that it had acquired $450 million in shares of trading platform Robinhood under the control of the exchange.
In May 2022, then-CEO Sam Bankman Fried (SBF) and FTX co-founder Gary Wang formed the holding company Emergent to buy shares in Robinhood. In an affidavit filed in December, Bankman-Fried and Wang said they borrowed $546 million from Alameda Research, the investment arm of FTX, to buy the shares.
In addition, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) has created a task force to expand investigations and prosecutions of FTX in an effort to recover billions of dollars from clients.
A key player is “in” the investigation, former FTX attorney Daniel Friedberg, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters. Friedberg provided details about the exchange’s operations in a meeting on Nov. 22 with more than 20 investigators from agencies including the Justice Department, FBI and SEC, according to the source. At the meeting, Friedberg shared what he knew about Bankman-Fried’s use of client money to fund his empire.
Under house arrest awaiting trial in October, the SBF could get a longer sentence than if it made a deal with justice, according to an analysis by CoinDesk. Your decision to trial may indicate that no plea bargain was offered or that the offer may have been very poor.
We are in limbo
Another victim of the FTX turmoil, cryptocurrency payments startup Wyre Payments, which was reportedly bought by US fintech firm Bolt Financial for $1.5 billion last year, may be about to close this month, as well as layoffs. Axios portal.
At least two former employees confirmed the news, with one noting that the company’s CEO, Ioannis Gianaros, went so far as to warn some employees via email. Seeking comment on the matter, Giannaros tells Axios that the company is still in business, but will be “downsized” so that she can plan next steps.
Wyre provides custodial services for crypto banking platform Juno, which advised customers to keep their digital assets on their own or sell them while searching for a new custodian, according to the company. tweet Wednesday.
“We are changing custodians because we anticipate potential issues with Wyre as they may be downsized or closed down,” Varun Deshpande, co-founder and CEO of Juno, which allows users to get paid in cryptocurrencies, told CoinDesk.
Bitcoin King Leaving Jail
In Brazil, Claudio Oliveira, who has come to be known as the King of BitcoinHe was released from prison on charges of advancing the regime on January 2, after spending less than two years in prison. The information was confirmed to Bitcoin portal By someone who requested anonymity and had access to the internal systems of the prison system in Paraná, where Oliveira was serving his sentence.
Oliveira has been in jail since June 5, 2020, when he was the target of an operation that investigated the embezzlement of R$1.5 billion. In April last year, Oliveira was sentenced in the first instance to eight years in prison for embezzlement and crimes against the financial system. In the sentence, the judge noted that Bitcoin Banco faked buying and selling cryptocurrencies that were only on the company’s balance sheets.
Giant steps close deeply
Brazilian manager Giant Steps Capital will close Giant Satoshi’s cryptocurrency fund, which until then has been promoted as “the first fund in Brazil seeking to ‘outperform’ Bitcoin.”
As described by the company in an email it sent to customers, the decision to discontinue the product on January 25th was due to a lack of confidence in the cryptocurrency market, which intensified after the collapse of the FTX exchange.
Giant Satoshi ran client funds in the derivatives market within FTX and had the equivalent of 16 bitcoins in the brokerage, according to data from the Brazilian Securities Authority (CVM). However, Giant stated that it did not lose money on FTX because it was able to cash it out before the crash.
Genesis asks for more time
The interim CEO of Genesis Global Trading, which suspended withdrawals in November after the collapse of FTX, said it needed more time to resolve its complex financial situation, according to CoinDesk, a unit of the Digital Currency Group (DCG), which also controls Genesis.
“While we are committed to working as quickly as possible, this is a very complex process and will take some extra time,” Dirar Islam wrote in a letter to clients on Wednesday.
Genesis, which is partnering with Gemini under the Earn program, is under pressure from cryptocurrency exchange clients whose redemptions have been blocked due to the FTX crash. And while trying to resolve the impasse with Genesis, Gemini just lost its chief operating officer. Noah Perlman has left the company founded by twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, a person told Bloomberg.
grayscale boxes
DCG’s troubles extend to Grayscale Capital, another subsidiary of the group. The Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE), which is managed by Grayscale, is trading at nearly a 60% discount to the price of Ethereum, according to data from YCharts.
The ETHE fund, which allows dealing with Ethereum without investing in the second largest cryptocurrency, has assets of $3.6 billion. Another company-run fund, Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), the world’s largest BTC fund, is facing similar problems and is currently trading at a 45% discount.
Other advantages of cryptocurrency
In 2022 Brazil will become one of the main markets of the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector, according to a survey by cryptocurrency broker Huobi published by Exame. The United States leads the sector with a share of 31.8%. Brazil ranks second, with about 5% of the DeFi market. Huobi attributes the number to the fact that the country is “the No. 1 cryptocurrency market in South America.”
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (CVM) has filed an objection to the Binance.US proposal to acquire crypto credit platform Voyager Digital for $1 billion, Reuters reports. The agency explained that the purchase agreement lacked details about the cryptocurrency exchange’s ability to close the transaction and requested more information about the nature of the company’s trading operations post-transaction, according to a statement.
Coinbase Global, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United StatesInc., reported that its US unit had reached a $100 million settlement with New York regulators to allow clients to open accounts with insufficient background checks, according to Bloomberg. Under the agreement, the company must pay a $50 million fine and invest $50 million to improve compliance over two years.
Animoca seeks to raise about $1 billion In this quarter of the year for web3 and the metaverse new venture fund, which has significantly scaled back its ambitions during this current crypto winter. In November, the company expected to raise US$2 billion. Co-founder Yat Seo, who is also chairman of Animuka Brands, told Bloomberg that Animuka Capital is in talks with potential investors..
Despite the crypto winter, it is an investment company She is related to two of the most famous families in Singapore and is also betting on the future of digital assets. The Whampoa Group intends to invest approximately $100 million in Web3 startups through its new venture capital arm, Whampoa Digital.
It is no wonder that major investors are showing increasing interest for web3 related projects. In an article in the MIT Technology Review newsletter, Robson Harada, director of marketing and growth at 2TM, the holding company that controls MB, notes that non-fungible tokens and web3 “has breached the crypto-fan bubble” and invaded traditional brands.
In this context, build communities About Artists, Influencers, and Corporations brings “a new paradigm of relationship, which is more interactive and measurable,” notes Harada, with the potential to “revolutionize social relations in both the digital and physical environment.”
Total NFT sales last year nearly peaked in 2021, according to DappRadar data, even as the market “crashed”. The NFT market generated an estimated $24.7 billion in organic trading volume in 2022 across blockchain platforms and markets, according to Decrypt’s DappRadar calculations. In 2021, the total is US$25.1 billion.
Meanwhile, CloneX COO Nikhil Gopalani and notable NFT collector CryptoNovoAn estimated hundreds of thousands of dollars in NFTs were lost to scammers, according to CoinDesk.
US regulators kicked off 2023 with a new round of investigations Targeting cryptocurrency scams. Six individuals and two companies linked to an investment scheme called CoinDeal were indicted on Wednesday by the Securities and Exchange Commission in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, according to Decrypt. According to the agency, the scheme raised $45 million from the sale of unregistered securities.
Xiao Yi, former secretary of the Chinese Communist Party From Fuzhou, he admitted in court that he took bribes to support bitcoin mining companies between 2017 and 2021. According to the Weixin website, Xiao had received about R$100 million (125 million yuan) in this period.
What will the cryptocurrency market look like in 2023? click here Find out in the MB Research team’s free report