Cryptocurrency roundup for December 19: Auditing firm Mazars halts all work with crypto companies, SBF may not fight against his extradition to the US, and more

> France-headquartered auditing firm Mazars Group has suspended work for all cryptocurrency clients worldwide, according to cryptocurrency exchange Binance, a client of the auditing firm.
> “Mazars has indicated that they will temporarily pause their work with all of their crypto clients globally, which include Crypto.com, KuCoin, and Binance. Unfortunately, this means that we will not be able to work with Mazars for the moment,” Bloomberg reported a Binance spokesperson as saying.
> Following the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX in November, prominent crypto exchanges like Binance, crypto.com, KuCoin, and others have scrambled to get their “proof of reserves” verified by French auditing firm Mazars. Full story here.

Amid a crypto market slump exacerbated by the collapse of FTX and the subsequent arrest of its founder Sam Bankman-Fried, crypto trading firm Amber Group on Friday announced it has modified its fundraising strategy and raised $300 million in a Series C raise.
> Fenbushi Capital U.S., together with other cryptocurrency investors and family offices, led the round, the company stated.
> According to data aggregator Crunchbase, the Singaporean investment vehicle Temasek, venerable venture capital company Sequoia Capital China, and Coinbase Ventures have all made prior investments in Amber Group. Continue reading.

The founder and former CEO of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, is anticipated to declare in court in the Bahamas on Monday that he will no longer fight his extradition to the US, where he is charged with criminal fraud, Reuters reported.
> The former cryptocurrency billionaire will appear in court in the Bahamas on Dec. 19 to formally relinquish his right to extradition, enabling federal officials to obtain his return to the United States.
> Bankman-Fried was detained in the Bahamas earlier this week and charged with fraud.
> He was accused by a U.S. grand jury of defrauding FTX's clients and lenders, as well as of conspiring to do so, and of money laundering. More here.

Due to a problem with its cloud services supplier, cryptocurrency exchange OKX has not paused all withdrawals temporarily.
> All coins and tokens on the exchange's site display a partial outage for deposits and withdrawals, and one of its primary hot wallets indicates that no withdrawals have been handled since 2:47 a.m. UTC.
> According to OKX's official Twitter account, the issue was with Alibaba's cloud service in the Hong Kong region. Alibaba stated its engineers were attempting to resolve an "equipment anomaly" that had been discovered.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of FTX, and two other executives are being investigated by U.S. federal authorities for political contributions they made to Republican and Democrat senators.
> Since Bankman-Fried's arrest on Monday, prosecutors have gotten in touch with "representatives for campaigns and committees that had received millions of dollars" from Bankman-Fried and associates at other businesses he co-founded.
> A prosecutor from the Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney's Office emailed a legal firm that represents well-known Democratic political organizations, demanding information on donations made by Bankman-Fried and associates. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and huge super PACs were among those who received emails from campaign organizations. Details here.

After the United States and China, Kazakhstan is the third-largest Bitcoin mining region in the world.
> As such, it has decided to establish its own digital tenge, or central bank digital currency, or CBDC.
> Upon finishing the second phase of testing, the National Bank of Kazakhstan (NBK) made the discovery public.
> Kazakhstan's CBDC would be merged with BNB Chain, a blockchain created by the cryptocurrency exchange, Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao stated in late October.
> Examining CBDC's potential to boost financial inclusion, encourage competition and innovation in the payments sector, and boost the country's competitiveness on the global stage was the main driver behind the studies that were conducted in the country. More here.

> Crypto prices finally began to act normally this week as Sam Bankman-Fried was charged, put in jail, and FTX's implosion has started to recede into the past.
> Following better-than-expected news from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showing inflation decreased in November to 7.1%, Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) surged in lockstep with Wall Street this week, peaking on Wednesday in expectation of a positive interest rate update from the Federal Reserve.
> BTC rose above $18,000 on Wednesday, just before the Fed meeting, for the first time since FTX's catastrophic collapse in mid-November.
> The top two cryptocurrencies then quickly fell as the Fed said the same day that it will maintain raising rates until 2023 in order to fight inflation.
> In comparison to Ethereum, which performed worse, Bitcoin was down 2.6% over the previous seven days as of Sunday.
> But Dogecoin (DOGE), down a staggering 20% since last weekend, is the top 10 loser of the week. The biggest meme coin in cryptocurrency had a difficult start to the week, losing 9% over the course of one day.
> It didn't get any better for the remainder of the week as the coin quadrupled its losses and dropped another 11% to 7 cents by Sunday.