Sam Bankman-Fried Is A ‘Criminal,’ Says Coinbase CEO

Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) CEO Brian Armstrong on Wednesday termed the beleaguered founder of FTX a “criminal,” even as the Bahamas arm of the cryptocurrency exchange filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy in the Southern District of New York. Also slamming a Wall Street Journal report on Bankman-Fried as being a “puff piece,” Armstrong said this was a turning point in citizen journalism. “Twitter has broken just about every piece of this FTX story using blockchain analytics, while NYT is writing puff pieces on a criminal. Feels like a turning point for citizen journalism and loss of trust in MSM,” he said. Full story here. Read details here

Bahamas Arm Of Cryptocurrency Exchange FTX Files For Chapter 15 Bankruptcy

Days after its parent company, along with its 130 other associated companies declared themselves bankrupt, the Bahamas arm of cryptocurrency exchange FTX has filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy in the Southern District of New York. The paperwork, which was registered late Tuesday night, comes after a day after the Bahamas Supreme Court authorized temporary liquidators to manage FTX Digital's assets. Kevin Cambridge and Peter Greaves of PricewaterhouseCoopers were appointed as joint interim liquidators, and Brian Simms of Lennox Paton was named as the court-supervised provisional liquidator. The process is designed to enable the orderly closure of international businesses so that money may be restored to creditors as fully as possible, which may include the site's numerous regular users. Read here.  Take a look

FTX Contagion Continues with Genesis’ Crypto-Lending Unit Halting Customer Withdrawals

Days after the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, the lending division of crypto investment bank Genesis Global Trading has temporarily stopped accepting redemptions and initiating new loans, Interim CEO Derar Islim informed customers in a call on Wednesday. According to the company's website, the division, known as Genesis Global Capital, caters to institutional clients and had $2.8 billion in total active loans at the end of the third quarter of 2022. According to Islim, Genesis Trading, which serves as Genesis Global Capital's broker-dealer, is independently funded and run from that lending arm. He added that Genesis' custody and trading services are still fully functional. More here.  Read more here

According to Coinbase, FTX collapse will prolong an already lengthy winter

According to cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, there were few, if any, substantial marginal sellers left in the market following massive deleveraging in May and June of this year, thus the upheaval around FTX interrupted what was otherwise a growing favourable environment for cryptocurrencies. The current market instability and absence of significant purchasers has left the asset class vulnerable, potentially extending an already protracted crypto winter, warned Coinbase in its report. The research report indicates that market participants will now closely monitor the bankruptcy procedures at FTX, even though much still depends on the route that the US Federal Reserve interest rates take for the asset class. Read details here

Temasek Intends To Write Down Investments in FTX of Up To $300M

State investment fund of Singapore Temasek is prepared to write down investments to the tune of $200 million to $300 million in bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX. In concurrent investment rounds of $400 million each, Temasek invested in the FTX mothership and its US subsidiary FTX US, in January this year. The fund is now preparing to write off all of its investments in the Sam Bankman-Fried led exchange, which witnessed a mind numbing collapse last week, Bloomberg reported, quoting an unnamed source. The fund has been one of the most well-known investors in the cryptocurrency sector. Take a look

Winklevoss Brothers Led Gemini Unable To meet customer Redemptions As Its Unit Halts Withdrawals

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss led cryptocurrency platform Gemini on Wednesday said it will not be able to meet customer redemptions for the next five days, after its lending partner Genesis Global Capital paused withdrawals. The past week has been an incredibly challenging and stressful time for our industry. We are disappointed that the Earn program SLA will not be met, but we are encouraged by Genesis’ and its parent company Digital Currency Group’s commitment to doing everything in their power to fulfill their obligations to customers under the Earn program,” the company stated.  Read more here

FTX ‘Hunted’ Our Positions And Took Us Down, Says Three Arrows Capital’s Kyle Davies

Slamming FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried for allegedly “hunting” its positions and colluding to bring it down, Kyle Davies, founder of the collapsed crypto fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC) on Wednesday said he was the biggest critic of the collapsed crypto exchange in its early days and only associated himself with the exchange after it received backing from prominent firms. Speaking to CNBC from Bali, the beleaguered founder also said he was in constant touch with liquidators, attending their every call, email and doing video interactions with them to co-operate in every possible way. We are here, we are cooperating. We are some of the biggest creditors ourselves, he said. Read details here

Major cryptocurrencies trading in the red after spiking a day earlier

Major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum were trading down 2% and 5% respectively over the last 24 hours, a day after they staged a mini rally on the back of positive data in the United States. Other cryptocurrencies like Binance, Ripple, Cardano and Polygon too were trading down 1.5%, 4%, 2.5% and 6%, respectively. Cryptos witnessed renewed buying pressure a day earlier after U.S. stocks rose as a result of fresh data from the Labor Department's Producer Price Index report, which showed a decrease in the cost of commodities excluding food and energy. The current market capitalization of the crypto industry stands at $8.65 billion.