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Hello and welcome to The Node. This is Daniel Kuhn and Xinyi Luo, here to take you through the latest in crypto news and why it matters. In today’s newsletter: |
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Sam Bankman-Fried No Longer a Billionaire After $14.6B Wipe-out: According to Bloombergs’ best guess, the FTX founder is no longer a billionaire following the collapse of his crypto trading empire. Tuesday, competitor Binance offered to buy FTX after a bank run Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao helped foment. The deal is not yet completed, and likely not going to happen, according to a CoinDesk scoop. Coinbase and other exchanges reportedly declined merger offers proffered by SBF. Stablecoin issuers Circle and Tether have distanced themselves from FTX, looking to stymie liquidity rumors. Anecdotal reports show many industry heavyweights had assets on or tied to the exchange, which has paused withdrawals, including Galaxy Digital, which revealed a $76.8 million exposure. (National Football League legend Tom Brady risks losing his entire “strategic investment.”) Participants are now calling for transparency, and exchanges are scrambling to compile “proof-of-reserves” to show they will not be affected by any FTX contagion. Binance, which may rub up against anti-trust issues during the buyout, has topped up its emergency insurance fund called SAFU with $1 billion due to BNB volatility. Traders in the crypto options market have logged at least $700 million in losses so far. It’s unclear what will happen to SBF or the industry itself considering his web of connections and regulatory efforts – but if there’s a silver lining, convicted felon Martin “Pharma Bro” Shkreli said “jail is not that bad” in an impromptu interview with FTX-sponsored podcast “Up Only.” US Treasury Adds to Tornado Cash Sanctions With North Korea WMD Allegations: The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) is "redesignating" Tornado Cash as a sanctioned entity following industry complaints. It also confirmed Tornado Cash's founders, DAO members and users were not sanctioned "at this time." In its new FAQ, OFAC expanded the definition of a sanctionable entity to include "a partnership, association … or other organization," pushing against an argument that OFAC could not sanction software, a la Coin Center’s lawsuit. Vitalik Buterin’s New Ethereum Roadmap Takes Aim at MEV and Censorship: Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared an updated vision for the network, including a new development track, Scourge, focused on ameliorating the censorship of transactions and an exploitative bot-driven trading practice known as maximal extractable value (MEV). Ethereum’s open-source developer community is famously slow to implement big updates, and the release of a new road map should be viewed as much as a PR play from Buterin as a practical set of next steps. |
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Putting the news into perspective |
Sam Bankman-Fried (Jesse Hamilton/CoinDesk) Why Did FTX Pause Withdrawals if It Wasn't Trading Customer Funds? The issues at FTX have complex roots, but reached a head early Tuesday, Nov. 8, when a huge wave of withdrawals drained FTX of liquidity and effectively froze the platform. The problems at FTX were shocking for many reasons, but perhaps most frightening is the simple fact that customer funds seemingly weren't where they were supposed to be, David Z. Morris writes. Read the full article here. |
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Overheard on CoinDesk TV... |
"The government needs to speed up its work on establishing a clear regulatory playing field." – U.S. Rep. Jim Himes (D.–CT), on the FTX meltdown, on CoinDesk TV's "First Mover" |
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| Multicoin Capital hit by FTX collapse, with 10% of its fund's AUM stuck on the exchange (The Block)Solana Supporters Buck Up Network As FTX Contagion Takes Toll (The Defiant) El Salvador’s $300 Million Bitcoin ‘Revolution’ Is Failing Miserably (Bloomberg - paywalled) |
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