Financial services platform B. Riley has offered Bitcoin (BTC) miner Core Scientific $72 million in financing to avoid bankruptcy and preserve value for Core Scientific stakeholders. B. Riley, a top lender to Core Scientific with $42 million in loans currently outstanding, outlined the terms of the financing agreement in a Dec. 14 letter noting it’s prepared to fund the first…
Mike Belshe, the CEO of digital asset custodian BitGo has confirmed that Alameda Research attempted to redeem 3,000 Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC) in the days before FTX’s bankruptcy filing on Nov. 11. During a Dec. 14 Twitter Spaces hosted by decentralized finance (DeFi) researcher Chris Blec, Belshe confirmed the firm knocked back the redemption request because the unknown Alameda representative involved…
Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary, aka Mr. Wonderful, has told U.S. Congress that he believes the collapsed crypto exchange FTX failed because rival Binance intentionally put it out of business. He said former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) told him that Binance, which owned a 20% equity stake in FTX, refused to comply with regulators’ requests whenever FTX applied for…
According to Bahamian court records filed on Dec. 14, Ryan Salame, the former co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets told the Securities Commission of the Bahamas (SCB) on Nov. 9 that FTX was sending customer funds to its sister trading firm Alameda Research. He also told the SCB only three people had the access required to transfer client assets to Alameda:…
Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis has attempted to put the FTX collapse into perspective — comparing peak weekly-realized losses in the wake of the exchange’s collapse compared to previous major crypto collapses in 2022. The Dec. 14 report found the depegging of Terra USD (UST) in May saw weekly-realized losses peak at $20.5 billion, while the subsequent collapse of Three Arrows Capital and…
Crypto-friendly Congressman Tom Emmer is considering re-floating a bipartisan bill that would lift the requirement for certain crypto businesses and projects to register as Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) in the wake of the FTX collapse. The bill titled “Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act” was led by Republican Emmer and Democratic Congressman Darren Soto. It was initially tabled at the 117th…
As the crypto world continues to grapple with the fallout from the collapse of FTX, documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday revealed that FTX Digital Chairman Ryan Salame tipped off authorities in the Bahamas about FTX using customer funds to cover losses at Alameda Research. Christina Rolle, Executive Director of the Securities Commission of The Bahamas, sent…
A former employee of crypto exchange FTX has seemingly exposed the company’s excessive luxury expenditures, obsessive workplace culture and grueling work hours leading to the hiring of a company psychiatrist in the year before its collapse. Danielle Cloud, a former employee of FTX claiming to work in the marketing department, posted a series of Tweets on Dec. 13 saying FTX…
Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao has cautioned the crypto community about self-custody, suggesting that 99% of people choosing to self-custody their crypto will likely lose it one way or another. CZ has been been a supporter of self-custody for years, referring to its as a “fundamental human right” but has always urged users to “do it right.” He published a…
At the end of November, an unknown person signed a signature tied to an extremely old block reward mined on Jan. 19, 2009, and the user published a message and verified signature linked to the reward on the forum bitcointalk.org. The message was tied to a bitcoin address associated with block 1,018, a block reward that was minted 16 days…
