Headlines

▌SBF: I Never Tried to Defraud Anyone

Former FTX CEO SBF said, "I have never tried to defraud anyone. I think this is a thriving business. I am shocked by what happened recently." Asked why FTX can transfer customers’ will funding, SBF stated, “I don’t manage Alameda, don’t know what’s going on, don’t know the size of their positions, a lot of which I only learned about last month “in the days before bankruptcy.” SBF continues defending the fact that he did not know Alameda exposure, he stated that in 2019, 40% of FTX’s trading volume came from Alameda, but by 2022, this number has dropped to 2%, which makes him think that FTX’s exposure has decreased.

Policy

▌U.S. Treasury Secretary Yellen: Cryptocurrency Needs to Be Fully Regulated

U.S. Treasury Secretary Yellen expressed skepticism about cryptocurrencies, “There needs to be an openness to financial innovations coming from the crypto space, most activity in the cryptocurrency space has nothing to do with financial innovation, and cryptocurrencies need to be adequately regulated.” Yellen also said that “we want to ensure that there are adequate customer protections for encrypted assets. The turmoil in the cryptocurrency market has yet to spill over to the banking sector. I'm surprised by FTX's debacle. The FTX debacle was ‘the Lehman moment in crypto.’ I never met SBF, former CEO of FTX.”

▌ECB: Bitcoin Should Not Be Legalized

The European Central Bank stated that Bitcoin is neither suitable as a payment system nor as a form of investment, so in terms of regulation, it should be considered unsuitable and therefore should not be legalized. The financial industry should be wary of the long-term damage of promoting bitcoin investments despite their short-term profits. Should Bitcoin investors further lose money, the negative impact on customer relationships and the reputational damage to the industry as a whole could be enormous.

Cryptocurrency

▌Zuckerberg: "Long-Term Optimistic" About the Metaverse

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that he is still optimistic about the metaverse in five to ten years. "The way we communicate has become richer and more immersive," Zuckerberg said in a virtual interview. Zuckerberg said Meta spends 80 percent of its time on its legacy social media app, including Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc. The rest of the time is spent developing Metaverse-related hardware and software. Meta's Reality Lab focuses on the research and development of its Metaverse-related projects, which include three categories, virtual reality, augmented reality and social platforms.

▌Sam Bankman Fried was live on NYT Dealbook Summit

Sam Bankman-Fried was recently live interviewed by Andrew Ross Sorkin from the New York Times as part of the DealBook summit, an interview which was scheduled before the FTX collapse and remained so. The summary is that SBF tried to frame the collapse as a series of mistakes, propped by his ignorance on different aspects of accounting, risk management and what was happening at Alameda. As the NY Times reports, parts of his narrative seem to contradict evidence regarding the comingling of funds between FTX and Alameda.

▌Binance Acquires JFSA Registered Sakura Exchange BitCoin, Committed to Enter Japan Under Regulatory Compliance

Binance has bought Sakura Exchange BitCoin (SEBC), a Japanese crypto exchange regulated by the country's Financial Services Agency (FSA), for an undisclosed sum, according to a blog post Wednesday. With the acquisition, the world's largest crypto exchange by trading volume enters the Japanese market, adding it to the now substantial list of countries in which it has some degree of regulatory authorization.

▌NFTs Are Officially Live On Uniswap

Non-fungible token (NFT) trading is now available on Uniswap, the decentralized crypto exchange said Wednesday. Uniswap users will be able to trade digital collectibles across OpenSea, X2Y2, LooksRare, Sudoswap, Larva Labs, Foundation and NFT20 marketplaces using the platform’s NFT aggregator tool. In addition, the platform says its new open-sourced Universal Router contract can save users up to 15% on gas fees compared to other NFT aggregators.

▌Telegram Plans To Build Crypto Wallets And Decentralized Exchange

Messaging app Telegram has sold $50 million in usernames in less than a month through its blockchain-based auction platform, Fragment, CEO Pavel Durov said Wednesday. The figure speaks to the success of Telegram’s second go-around at bootstrapping its own crypto infrastructure. Fragment is built atop the Telegram Open Network, a blockchain Durov abandoned under regulatory pressure in 2020 and later returned to after its community kept it alive. Bolstered by Fragment’s strong sales, Durov is setting Telegram on a course for deeper crypto buildouts. He said the company will build a decentralized exchange and non-custodial wallets that could reach millions of users. Telegram is already a go-to messaging app for many crypto traders, giving it a captive audience from the start.