The cryptocurrency market has been operating with some volatility this Friday (20th), and it appears that it has already been priced into the legal recovery of another company in the sector, Genesis. Global equity investors also took a break from a week marked by losses, prompted by tightening currency warnings.
Bitcoin (BTC) shows little change over the past 24 hours, with a price of $20,950.39. In fact, BTC is also performing stable, trading at R$108,924.32, according to Bitcoin Gateway Index (IPB).
Ethereum (ETH) woke up stronger, rising 1.5% to $1,522.03, according to data from Coingecko.
Altcoins are trading between losses and gains, among them BNB (-1.2%), XRP (+1.2%), Cardano (+1%), Dogecoin (-0.4%), Polygon (-0, 2%), Solana (- 1%), Polkadot (+0.5%), Shiba Inu (+2.2%), Avalanche (-0.6%).
Genesis Bankruptcy
As expected, the Genesis Global Capital cryptocurrency platform It has filed for creditor protection under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code after suffering two of the industry’s biggest crashes in 2022, news portal CoinDesk reports.
The filing for bankruptcy includes holding company Genesis Global Holdco and affiliates Genesis Asia Pacific and Genesis Global Capital, all under the umbrella of digital currency conglomerate Digital Currency Group (DCG), which also owns CoinDesk and investment firm Grayscale.
In its filing, Genesis, a partner in cryptocurrency exchange Gemini’s passive income program, estimated it had more than 100,000 creditors and between $1 billion and $10 billion in liabilities and assets. The other two entities estimated their assets and liabilities to be in the range of US$100 million and US$500 million respectively.
in Tweet posted Minutes after Genesis declared bankruptcy On Thursday, Gemini CEO Cameron Winklevoss threatened to sue DCG owner Barry Silbert over the $900 million Earn program that has been closed since Genesis suspended recalls in November.
Winklevoss called Genesis’ bankruptcy a “critical step” in recovering Gemini users’ assets. However, it threatened to sue DCG and its owner unless Silbert made a “fair offer” to creditors.
We are preparing to take legal action “Bring direct charges against Barry, DCG and others who share responsibility for fraud that caused harm to more than 340,000 Earn users and others misled by Genesis and its partners,” Winklevoss wrote.
Genesis creditors
Gemini, Cumberland, Mirana, MoonAlpha Finance and VanEck’s New Finance Income Fund are among the 50 largest creditors for Genesis, according to filings filed Thursday. In total, Genesis Global Holdco owes more than $3.5 billion to creditors.
The spat with Genesis seems to have shaken traders’ confidence in Gemini. On-chain data from CryptoQuant shows that Bitcoin transfers from other exchanges to exchanges have fallen to a six-year low.
Sell CoinDesk
With its console in crisis, CoinDesk is already attracting interested parties, such as Charles Hoskinson, co-founder of the Cardano blockchain. His idea would be to remake the news portal into a combination of content provider and community interaction space.
On Wednesday (18), CoinDesk CEO Kevin Worth confirmed that he is considering a full or partial sale of the company and is currently working with advisory firm Lazard to assess the best options.
Hoskinson, who is also a co-founder of Ethereum, he said in the video He posted on Twitter that he had been told the site was for sale for about $200 million, but he has not seen CoinDesk’s financials.
“At $200 million, I think it’s a bit pricey,” he said. “I can pay if I really want to.”
FTX return?
FTT, the original token of the FTX exchange, is now under judicial recovery, It reached a jump of 32% on Thursday (19) after the group’s new CEO, John J. Ray III, he’s considering resuming operations at the brokerage firm he founded, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF).
Ray, who is still trying to locate and recover lost FTX assets, has tasked a team with exploring the possibility of reviving the company’s international arm, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
“There are stakeholders we work with who have identified a viable business,” Ray said.
FTX audience
This Friday, attention turns to another hearing in the FTX bankruptcy process, which will be held in a New York court.
The law firm of FTX’s new management, Sullivan & Cromwell, is likely to come under scrutiny amid questions about potential conflicts of interest. The new FTX’s chief legal officer, Rybe Miller, worked for Sullivan & Cromwell between January 2019 and July 2021. In addition, the firm advised FTX on at least 20 matters prior to bankruptcy, according to court documents.
Bankman-Fried also questioned Sullivan and Cromwell’s role, saying he sometimes worked out of the corporate office when he was in New York.
The threat against Bankman-Fried
The SBF, who is under house arrest, is trying to prevent the names of the other people who signed the $250 million bail from being released, he says, for security reasons. At the moment the only information available is that my SBF parents are among the guarantors.
Recently, three men in a car attempted to break through the metal barrier outside Bankman-Fried’s parents’ home, according to court documents provided by her attorneys and published by Bloomberg.
When confronted by the security guard on duty, the men said something along the lines of: ‘You won’t be able to stop us from entering,’ the lawyers wrote. They said they left before security could take the vehicle’s license plate.
Actions against Braiscompany
In Brazil, cryptocurrency investors are also dealing with issues such as blocked withdrawals and scams.
Braiscompany, whose “crypto rental” customers have not received income payments since the end of December, is already the target of lawsuits, according to a report by InfoMoney.
At least two cases have been opened this week in the judiciary in Paraiba, the company’s headquarters. Investors demand the return of the funds not received and the cancellation of the 30% penalty imposed by the company on those who decide to withdraw the funds.
Even with crisis approaching Braiscompany’s door, Paraíba federal deputy Julián Lemos (União Brasil) decided to support the company and its founder, Antonio Ice, in a message on Instagram.
He wrote with a picture next to Ais and in all caps referring to the surname of the founder of Braiscompany.
Other highlights
In the United States, Nexo Capital will pay $45 million in fines To drop regulators’ accusations that the company broke the rules by failing to register its cryptocurrency lending product, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Thursday. Nexo agreed to pay a fine of $22.5 million to the US Securities Agency and another $22.5 million to state regulators in connection with offering its earnings-benefit product to US investors.
The head of the central bank, Roberto Campos Neto, wants to innovate and create competition With digital reality, Valor Econômico reported. In a lecture delivered Thursday (19) to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Campos Neto stated that the new monetary system will facilitate the internationalization of the real and reduce the use of monetary resources. About Pix, Campos BC said it “opens up the protocols” for countries that want to copy Brazilian code.
In China, the government has enabled the job smart contract into digital yuan through e-commerce app Meituan, one of the country’s largest food delivery apps. China is at the forefront of developing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) among major countries, having begun testing its virtual currency as early as 2020, according to CoinDesk.
In Brazil, Coinext is preparing to launch an asset manager Focusing on a new investment fund based on crypto assets, the CEO of the cryptocurrency brokerage, Jose Artur Ribeiro, announced during a press conference on Thursday.
The new director will be a separate unit Administratively from the brokerage firm and it is in the process of being registered and regulated by market regulators, such as CVM and the Central Bank. The director is expected to receive the green light to work in the first half of 2023.
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, saw a 15% increase in the active institutional customer base in Brazil in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to a report shared by Folha de São Paulo. The company did not disclose the size of the customer base. The company’s 2022 Global Report reports 65% growth among institutional clients, with expansion into high-income businesses.
MZ Web3 Fund, a venture capital fund Led by entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa, one of the richest men in Japan, he has invested $500,000 in Brazilian startup WEB3DEV in a seed round, according to InfoMoney. The company hopes to raise 1.5 million US dollars. This is the first contribution of the Japanese fund to a national company. MZ bets on web3-focused projects, metaverse games, blockchain games and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
BAYZ, a Brazilian company specializing in Web3 gamesIt laid off 80% of its staff this January. The information was passed on by people affected by the cuts Bitcoin portal. According to a former employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, the company’s staff has shrunk from 85 employees to somewhere between 10 and 15.
In a statement via SlackBAYZ co-founder Joao Borges told staff that the current bear market cycle and the collapse of FTX has prompted several partner companies to suspend marketing actions.
In defiance of MetaMask, theThe Robinhood trading platform launched the Robinhood Wallet, a smartphone app that allows users to exchange, transfer cryptocurrencies and view NFTs, Decrypt reported. The app is slowly being rolled out to more than 1 million users who are queued via an access token, according to Robinhood.