Reboot or Selloff? FTX’s New CEO Weighs Next Steps
FTX CEO John J. Ray III, who is leading the company through its restructuring, said he would explore the possibility of rebooting the exchange instead of simply selling its assets. In an interview with Wall Street Journal, Ray noted that the company has set up a task force to explore the possibility of bringing back the international exchange after some FTX stakeholders “identified what they see is a viable business.” The company is also still trying to retrieve additional funds and is looking into the possibility of selling the platform or simply liquidating assets. The new CEO also criticized former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, saying, “he hasn’t told us anything that I don’t already know.”
China’s Digital Yuan Adds Smart Contract Functionality
China’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), the digital yuan, has been upgraded with smart contract functionality and new use cases. The smart contract function was launched on the Meituan app, a Chinese app offering retail and food delivery services, allowing users to place an order and pay with their e-CNY wallet. This triggers a smart contract that searches for keywords and items in the order, and if a user buys something on the list of keywords for the day, they go in the draw to win part of a prize. Additionally, e-CNY can now be used to buy securities for the first time and make contactless payments using Android phones, even if the device is without internet or power.
Ethereum’s Final Frontier? Anonymizing Transactions
Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin has addressed what he sees as the “largest remaining challenge” for Ethereum – privacy. In a recent blog post, Buterin stated that a solution to on-chain privacy issues is necessary, as all information that goes onto a public blockchain is public. He proposed the concept of “stealth addresses,” which can potentially anonymize peer-to-peer transactions, NFT transfers, and Ethereum Name Service (ENS) registrations. He also noted that implementing the very technical sounding “Diffie-Hellman key exchange” and “key blinding mechanism” would be necessary to ensure the link between the stealth address and the user’s meta-address is not publicly visible.
