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One of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s former confidants and roommates is said to be engaging with the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York with the hope of getting a plea agreement, according to Bloomberg. Nishad Singh, FTX’s former director of engineering, is said to have met with prosecutors in a "proffer session." Such meetings often include an offer of "limited immunity" to encourage the interviewee to speak freely. Singh hasn't been accused of wrongdoing. Central to Singh’s deal is information on FTX’s and Bankman-Fried’s large donations to political campaigns, according to Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the matter. Singh personally has donated more than $9.3 million to Democratic Party-aligned initiatives since 2020.

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After days of muted trading and crushed volatility, the crypto market came back swinging this week, as cryptocurrencies with smaller market capitalizations rallied, outperforming bitcoin and ether. Among the biggest gainers was FTT, the token of the FTX crypto exchange that failed spectacularly in November, jumping 55% on Monday, although it's still down 96% over the past year. Serum (SRM), the native token of the Solana-based decentralized exchange, surged 28% the same day. ZIL, the Zilliqa blockchain project’s native token, increased 37%, while the native token of the Aptos blockchain, APT, known for its rocky launch and venture-capital backing, gained 40% Tuesday.

Coinbase’s (COIN) premium brand as an onshore and regulated entity with a healthy balance sheet should enable the crypto exchange to weather the fallout from the collapse of rival FTX, Jefferies Group said in a research report Monday. Still, the broker initiated coverage of the stock with a hold rating and $35 price target, citing concerns about the broader crypto market. “The fallout from FTX has called into question the safety, security and legitimacy of the broader crypto ecosystem,” Jefferies said. Investors appear to be focused on Jefferies' positive comments as Coinbase shares rose 14% in early trading Tuesday to $37.94.

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Crypto whales, or large traders, are staying on the sidelines of the bitcoin market despite a risk reset in traditional markets because thin liquidity is making transacting without affecting the cryptocurrency's price difficult.

In signs of the increasing appetite for risk, stocks have gathered upside traction while the U.S. dollar has taken a beating on optimism that China’s reopening is gaining steam and the Federal Reserve may be close to winding up its liquidity-tightening cycle. In crypto, however, market depth – a measure of an asset's price resilience to large orders – is relatively low and discouraging activity.

"Aggregated 2% BTC market depth has dropped by almost half to around 8,000 BTC from 14,000 BTC at the end of October," analysts at Bitfinex, one of the top 10 centralized cryptocurrency exchanges by trading volume, wrote in a market report on Monday. "In other words, a large order of the same USD value or size placed today will have more than twice the impact on price in contrast to two months ago."

Chart of the Day

– Omkar Godbole