- Crypto Carnage: FTX, a top global exchange that counts supermodel Giselle Bundchen as a spokesperson, and was once valued at over $30 billion USD, is on the brink of bankruptcy following a historic liquidity crunch that has the company scrambling for a bail-out from investors or competitors. Founder SBF, who has been compared to J. Pierpont Morgan and is the face of crypto in D.C., has himself succumbed to the hubris and poor risk management that sent the industry into turmoil earlier this year. Today, we stand on the brink of a long, bleak crypto winter. Will crypto emerge from FTX’s collapse with a renewed commitment to trustless, decentralized tools? Or will we end up with an effective monopoly with one too-big-to-fail business in Binance dominating the market? We recorded a special double episode of DeFi Decoded where we break it down.
- Accounting Changes for Crypto Incoming: A proposed change to how cryptoassets are treated on financial statements may open the doors to wider corporate ownership and adoption. Alex discusses in detail in his latest op-ed for Fortune Magazine.
- U.S. Midterms and Web3 Policy: The much anticipated “Red Wave” was more of a pink sprinkle as Republicans made some gains but fell far short of a clean sweep. These were the first U.S. elections where Web3 and crypto was a major issue, partly because crypto firms and their executives have donated an impressive $73 million to candidates, according to the Wall Street Journal. Web3 is a rare issue in American politics with bipartisan support. Read Alex’s section for more analysis.
- Silk Road Redux: On Monday, U.S. authorities announced the seizure of $3.4 billion worth of Bitcoin that was stolen from the darknet website Silk Road in 2012. “For almost ten years, the whereabouts of this massive chunk of missing Bitcoin had ballooned into an over $3.3 billion mystery,” the Department of Justice said. The Bitcoin was found in an underground safe and “on a single-board computer that was submerged under blankets in a popcorn tin stored in a bathroom closet.” (Read more in this article from The Block).
Dry Powder Hits Record High: Stablecoin balances on exchanges hit an all-time high of $40 billion USD this week, just as Bitcoin balances on exchanges declined to levels not seen since 2018. All that dry powder ‘sitting on the sidelines’ in a supply-constrained environment is a recipe for a melt-up when sentiment changes. See our Quantitative Analysis section for more.
