Binance says it will buy FTX after smaller rival stumbles through 'liquidity crunch'

Today, we’ve been learning about what the hell a Mastodon even is, so the timing of Amanda’s piece ‘A beginner’s guide to Mastodon’ is all sorts of perfect.

Give it a read, and come find us on Mastodon after. If you can — that’s another challenge. We have faith in your cyberstalking skills, but here’s a hint: Both of us are on Mastodon.Social. — Christine and Haje.

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Startups and VC

Though finance technology startups are having a moment when it comes to decreased venture capital deals and layoffs, Quona Capital, a venture capital firm that invests in emerging markets that accelerate financial inclusion, has found the appetite is still there for fintechs, Christine reports. The firm had its final close on $332 million in capital commitments for its Fund III, which focuses on financial inclusion.

Also from Christine today (in addition to our resident Daily Crunch newsletter wrangler, she’s a post-writing machine!) is a piece about Doola, a company helping global founders start a limited liability company in the United States, even without a Social Security number. The company raised an $8 million round of funding, less than a year after it raised $3 million worth of seed funding.

A handful more, because we love ya:

Here’s the rundown on the Binance and FTX fiasco

Today we learned that the world’s largest crypto exchange is bailing out the world’s third-largest crypto exchange. But why?

In a detailed explainer, Jacquelyn Melinek wrote about how a CoinDesk report last Thursday on crypto trading firm Alameda Research led Binance to liquidate a mountain of tokens that backed many of Alameda’s loans.

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Big Tech Inc.

As promised from above, Jacquelyn dives deeper into some of the things going on at FTX, including that the crypto exchanges withdrawals seemed to be sluggish. And that its potential new owner, Binance, was going to “slowly withdraw billions of its holdings in FTX’s native token, FTT.” Oh, you two!

And we have five more for you:

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