November Overview
Market update
JKL speaks at Dubai AIM Summit
JKL featured in Forbes China
The downfall of FTX
Regulators
- Hong Kong Fintech Week and the city’s vow to become global crypto hub
- Famous Last Words from Sam Bankman-Fried
Crypto projects
- Solana health check after FTX collapse
- “Proof of reserve”, explaining crypto’s new buzz word
Companies
Financial institutions
Mining
Crypto preview
- Bitcoin performance calendar
- Macroeconomic events
- Crypto events
Market update
Crypto markets took a hard hit in November due to the sudden collapse of FTX, which was the world’s second largest crypto exchange. Bitcoin price breached a new low for this bear market cycle with November’s low at around $15.5k. Compared to its peak from 2021, Bitcoin has already retraced more than 78.6%, which is similar to previous cycles. Nevertheless, past experience shows that the bottom is typically found somewhere between 78.6% and 88.6%, leading some to believe that Bitcoin price could still seek further lows.
Several on-chain indicators are also flashing bottom signals. The adjusted SOPR (aSOPR) metric, which measures market profitability, is at a level that is worse than the 2015 bear market and the 2020 Covid crash. It is only comparable to the crypto winter of 2019. Moreover, Bitcoin is now trading noticeably below the realized price, which historically has been a bottoming zone.
Moving forwards, the position of Bitcoin miners remains a major concern. The constantly depressed Bitcoin prices are putting miners in a difficult position and many are expected to go out of business if Bitcoin price does not recover soon. Recent data shows that Miner Reserves have decreased and roughly reached the level seen at the beginning of 2022. This suggests that miners have been selling their Bitcoin reserves to meet cash flow and liquidity requirements. At the same time, hashrates are finally starting to decrease post FTX collapse. We may be entering the final phase of the bear market when both hashrate and price decrease in tandem.
JKL speaks at Dubai AIM Summit
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — JKL Group CEO Lin Cheung joined the industry experts in an energy debate “Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake” during the AIM Summit — leading alternative investment management summit hosted in Dubai on Nov 22, 2022.
Ever since the Ethereum Mainnet switched to Proof of Stake (PoS) mining algorithm on September 15th, the crypto community has been engaged in a lively debate on the relevance of Bitcoin native Proof of Work (PoW) algorithm. Leaders of the Bitcoin mining industry — including HIVE Blockchain, JKL Group, SATO Technologies and Lake Parime — were brought together to present insights into the current state of Proof of Work mining.
Panellists noted that the U.S. regulators have a longstanding history of scrutinizing PoS blockchains. On the 19th of September, the SEC Chairman Gary Gensler hinted that, since almost half (46%) of Ethereum nodes are hosted in the U.S., all Ethereum transaction fall under the U.S. government jurisdiction. Moreover, the SEC is known for classifying PoS cryptocurrencies as being unable to pass the Howey Test and, therefore, qualifying as securities. Panelists agreed that with the rise of regulations in the digital assets space, PoW based blockchains will become more relevant.
Another point discussed by the panel was Bitcoin mining’s role as load balancer to the power grid. Power stations are designed to function on a particular frequency with a low margin of tolerance. If electricity load outweighs demand for electricity, frequency will rise which may force power plants to disconnect from the grid. Conversely, frequency will decrease during peaks of electricity consumption that the grid cannot satisfy, which can disrupt the grid’s performance.
“Energy production and consumption are not stable. The storage of energy is expensive, inefficient at scale and leads to energy waste,” commented Lin Cheung. The process of Proof of Work mining has 3 features that makes it an efficient grid load balancer. First, PoW provides a stable and continuous demand for energy. Second, PoW mining operation can be switched on and off at any time. Third, PoW mining process is location agnostic.
JKL featured in Forbes China
Despite the current economic turmoil, the Asia Pacific cloud computing market is steadily accelerating at a compound annual growth rate of 15.6 per cent. Distributed ledger computation democratised by Proof of Work mining opened a new line of business revenue. “Cloud data centers can be comparable to Proof of Work (PoW) centers except for one core difference: they do not act as an efficient grid load balancer. However, PoW-based computation centers do, creating new business models that can efficiently leverage energy resources.”, says Lin Cheung, CEO of JKL Group.
See what our CEO has more to say about VCs activity in cloud computing businesses in the link below:
https://www.forbeschina.com/business/62362
Or here for english
The downfall of FTX
Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) has become a world famous name, but not necessarily in the way he hoped. He was a self-made billionaire, a self-proclaimed “effective altruist” who wanted to make as much money as possible, so that he could do good for other people.
In 2017, SBF founded Alameda Research, which was his quantitative crypto trading firm. He then made a fortune by arbitraging the “kimchi premium”, taking advantage of significantly higher Bitcoin prices in Korea compared to the US. Subsequently, he founded FTX in 2019, a crypto exchange that was “built by traders, for traders”, and it became immensely popular with professional traders and institutions. Together, FTX and Alameda Research were the poster children of crypto.
The collapse of Terra (LUNA) earlier this year sent shockwaves across the industry. At that time, several big names in crypto fell into trouble. These included Three Arrows Capital and a number of crypto lending platforms like Celsius and BlockFi. At that time, SBF took a step forward to offer assistance to the wider industry.
In a May interview with Bloomberg, SBF hinted that FTX was sitting on billions of cash. He was ready to bail distressed crypto firms and act as a lender of last resort. In fact, FTX and Alameda engaged in a “dealmaking spree” since the beginning of 2022. They closed at least seven deals including full acquisitions of other crypto exchanges, as well as a 7.6% stake of the discount broker Robinhood.
At that time, it was hugely unexpected that FTX and Alameda themselves were also insolvent, and directly led to yet another black swan event that dominated crypto headlines in November.
On November 2nd, CoinDesk published an article that discloses an alleged balance sheet of Alameda Research. The article revealed that out of the $14.6 billion assets owned by Alameda, the majority was FTX Token (FTT), which was worth $5.8 billion at that time. The remainder of assets were in other highly illiquid tokens, and Alameda only had $134 million cash on hand. On the other side of the balance sheet, Alameda had around $8 billion loans. Essentially this meant that Alameda’s solvency was highly dependent on token prices. If FTT price dumped, this could cause huge problems to Alameda including potential margin calls.
In response to the news, Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) publicly announced that it will sell all its FTT stake as a risk management measure. Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison was quick to suggest an over-the-counter trade at $22 per token, but this was swiftly rejected by CZ.
As such, the abrupt downfall of FTX was widely regarded as a bold and successful tactical move by Binance, which in fact is FTX’s main competitor. Nevertheless, the seeds of war between Binance and FTX were planted long before, in fact, at the very moment when FTX incubated. At that time, Binance was a key investor of FTX and bought a 20% stake for around $100 million.
However, their relationship turned sour as time progressed. Eventually Binance exited the deal in 2021, leaving CZ with total compensation of $2 billion and a large stack of FTT tokens.
In October this year, SBF was advocating for stricter regulations that were hugely unfavourable for the wider crypto industry. He also made a tweet that boasted his influence towards DC lawmakers and mocked CZ. These could also have been factors that culminated in CZ’s declaration of war.
Investors started to withdraw from FTX when they learned about the CoinDesk article. Initially, most were simply taking a precautionary measure and did not believe that FTX or Alameda could genuinely be in trouble.
The situation escalated rather quickly, however, once FTT’s price plummeted through $22. Eventually FTX was forced to suspend withdrawals and came back to seek help from Binance themselves. Starting from the CoinDesk report, it took less than ten days for SBF’s crypto empire to unravel. Investors had limited time to react and many had funds remaining on FTX.
Following FTX’s collapse, insiders began to reveal more stories behind the debacle. In an internal call, Caroline Ellison admitted to have received FTX customer funds in order to cover a shortfall in the Alameda balance sheet. This suggests that Alameda have already been underwater since the Terra (LUNA) crash, and that the motive for SBF to save other firms was ultimately due to self-preservation, especially considering that a number of these firms held significant amounts of FTT tokens.
SBF was also accused of several other shady practices. For instance, he was said to have backdoor access to FTX accounting records so that he could move money without triggering internal risk controls. He also permitted Alameda to trade on FTX without possibility of liquidation.
A source close to the situation claimed that many FTX employees have lost their life savings, as FTX was promoted as a trusted “bank” by SBF. Also, employees were given the option to invest into FTX shares at a 50% discount. This was marketed as a lifetime opportunity, an instant double of money overnight and 4–5x over a few years.
An online conversation between SBF and a Vox reporter was equally shocking. In the exchange, SBF admitted that effective altruism was a dumb westerners’ game that made him more of a likeable personality. He downplayed his responsibility around the failure of FTX, saying that it was due to “poor internal labelling of bank-related accounts”, and denied any wrongdoing or fraud.
In FTX’s bankruptcy filings, the newly appointed liquidation chairman John J. Ray III said that there was “a complete absence of trustworthy financial information”, and that FTX was controlled by “a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals”.
Like the Terra (LUNA) collapse, the FTX debacle led to a wave of contagion across the crypto industry. Among them, crypto hedge fund Galois Capital suffered losses of around $100 million, equivalent to half of its total capital. Prominent investment funds like Sequoia, SoftBank and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan were also affected. Temasek, Singapore’s national investment fund, announced that it had to write off its entire $275 million investment around FTX.
A number of crypto companies had to wind down completely. On 11 November, Genesis Global Capital, a subsidiary of Digital Capital Group (DCG), announced that it will suspend redemptions and new loan originations in the wake of FTX’s collapse. BlockFi, a crypto savings and lending platform that had been bailed earlier by FTX, filed for bankruptcy protection on 28 November.
The attention of crypto investors quickly shifted to Grayscale, a sister company of Genesis. Under their management, Greyscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) is the world’s largest crypto investment vehicle with a reported holding of 633k BTC, equivalent to 3.5% of total supply. In the aftermath, GBTC traded at a discount of up to 50%, a record low that underscored loss of confidence.
Nevertheless, it was noted by analysts that the Genesis situation was not as bad as it initially seemed, and that the crypto lender have more options other than declaring bankruptcy. A report by Bernstein also pointed out that the situation at Genesis does not directly affect GBTC. Even if Genesis is unable to raise liquidity and files for bankruptcy, creditors would have no claim on GBTC assets. As a result, crypto markets have more or less stabilized towards the end of November.
Regulators
Hong Kong Fintech Week and the city’s vow to become global crypto hub
The JKL team was present at the Hong Kong Fintech Week (HKFTW), a two-day event held between 31 October and 1 November. The atmosphere was greatly optimistic, as this is the city’s first major finance conference since the city entered strict Covid restrictions in 2020.
The optimism is especially felt by the city’s crypto professionals, who anticipated a change of government policy. Prior to the conference, the Hong Kong government released a policy statement and announced the ambition to build a vibrant ecosystem for digital assets.
The opening remarks made by Financial Secretary Paul Chan were positive and upbeat, saying that “Hong Kong is back” to doing business with the world. Eddie Yue, the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), added that the city is ready to embrace blockchain-related innovations such as NFTs, tokenized assets and stablecoins.
Regarding the city’s crypto regulations, there was finally further clarity given by Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) director Julia Leung. She noted that now is an opportune time to review the Professional Investor requirement, which essentially excluded retail investors from trading crypto on local exchanges. She also gave the green light to Bitcoin and Ether exchange-traded funds to be listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEx). However, these ETFs will be based on CME futures and there is no mentioning of any spot-based products.
Albeit conservative, these announcements were generally well-received. Adrian Cheng, local business tycoon and well-known Web3 investor, said that thanks to the city’s unique setup, Hong Kong will become the only place in China that has access to crypto. Kris Marszalek, CEO of crypto.com, also praised the development and said that it is “great news for the entire industry”.
Arthur Hayes, founder of BitMEX, said that he is excited about Hong Kong’s potential “comeback”, noting that many prominent crypto firms had roots in the city. He said that Hong Kong could become the testing ground for China to experiment with crypto, and act as a hub for Chinese capital to find its way into the global crypto markets. Given that China still holds close to $1 trillion worth of US Treasuries, China would be comfortable to allow a moderate outflow of US dollars into crypto assets, and this would not destabilize its internal financial system.
Famous Last Words from Sam Bankman-Fried
Sam Bankman-Fried was one of the most anticipated speakers at the HKFTW. He was invited to a conversation with Henri Arslanian to speak about the challenges and opportunities facing the crypto industry. He appeared through Zoom and as you might expect, he showed up with his iconic FTX t-shirt and headphones, similar to a gamer’s outfit.
Kicking off the thirty-minute session, SBF was asked whether Hong Kong could regain its status as a global crypto hub. He was affirmative on the question, pointing out that there is currently no obvious crypto leader in Asia. While Singapore and Busan are also quite competitive, he believes that Hong Kong has the potential to emerge on top.
The discussion then shifted to opinions towards regulatory proposals by global regulators. SBF said that regulators are spending too much time to discuss issues such as classifying cryptocurrencies into commodities or securities, and that what matters in the end is to establish a framework that “makes sense”. SBF also criticized regulations that limit crypto investment access to wealthy individuals, describing these as “deeply classist and deeply racist”. He said that these only allowed the rich to get richer and discriminated against people who are otherwise capable of investing into crypto. Instead of wealth-based qualification, SBF suggested that investors could be given knowledge-based tests to determine their suitability for cryptocurrency investment.
SBF was then asked about his view on FTX and the wider industry in the coming years. He said that he is not sure exactly how things will evolve, but wants to see FTX grow in market share. He said that there would be less distinction between traditional and crypto exchanges, that there would be more overlap in terms of assets traded and products offered.
The session concluded with a series of interesting Q&A. When asked of which crypto CEO he admires the most, SBF answered Anatoly Yakovenko of Solana (SOL). He said that the most interesting person he recently met was the “leader of country” whose name he could not recall. He also mentioned that his favourite vegan food was the Beyond Burger.
In retrospect, these were all very valid and well-argued points by SBF. It appeared that he had a genuine vision towards crypto, and had a game plan to grow FTX into a leader of the crypto industry and beyond. Who would have guessed, that his crypto empire would completely disintegrate in less than a week?
Read More:
● White House Ramps Up Crypto Regulation Rhetoric Following FTX Crash (Read More)
● Bahamas Freezes FTX Assets, Calls for Liquidator (Read More)
● Middle East, Asia and Africa blockchain association launches in Abu Dhabi (Read More)
● National Bank of Kazakhstan to Integrate Digital Tenge With BNB Chain, Binance CEO Unveils (Read More)
● Hong Kong could be key for China’s crypto comeback — Arthur Hayes (Read More)
● FTX’s Failure Is Sparking a Massive Regulatory Response (Read More)
● Alameda Research Was Frontrunning FTX Token Listings: Report (Read More)
● Hong Kong Regulator Calls for Tough Rules Despite Ambitions to Be Crypto Hub (Read More)
● U.S. Banks Launch a Digital Dollar Blockchain Pilot (Read More)
● UK May Need Digital Pound, Bank of England’s Jon Cunliffe Says (Read More)
● Lawmakers Urge Fidelity to Drop Bitcoin Retirement Plan After FTX Crash (Read More)
● Bank of Japan to trial digital yen with three megabanks (Read More)
● El Salvador Proposes Digital Securities Bill, Paves Way for Bitcoin Bonds (Read More)
● Stablecoins could offer central banks a shortcut, says New York Fed advisor (Read More)
Crypto projects
Solana health check after FTX collapse:
Sixte Scepticism against…
Following FTX’s collapse, tokens with a direct exposure to FTX and Alameda have been hit the hardest.
Alameda and FTX venture Portfolio:
While Solana only occupies a small spot in the bottom right-hand corner of this table, FTX real exposure to its ecosystem is much larger. Solana was FTX’s de facto DeFi blockchain and most of Alameda/FTX VC investments were in the Solana ecosystem. Some of the biggest VCs in the crypto market like Multicoin Capital and Sino Global Capital, both early investors in Solana, were heavily impacted by FTX collapse. 10% of Multicoin AUM is stuck on FTX and Sino reported a seven-figure loss following the exchange’s collapse. These numbers only account for assets in custody on FTX and fail to capture the full picture of the monumental losses these VCs incurred due to token price deprecation. On the deck of Sino’s new $200m venture fund built in partnership with FTX, one can read on the executive summary “substantial investment weight” given to FTX, Solana and Serum, Solana biggest decentralized exchange (DEX). Given that their 3 associated tokens are all respectively down by 95%, 66% and 70% since the 1st of November, Sino will need to fix up that hole in their portfolio. Both Multicoin and Sino are very likely to reduce their exposure by selling a share of their holding which will add selling pressure over the short/mid-term on SOL.
Multicoin and Sino may be noteworthy actors in the Solana ecosystem but were mere investors next to FTX and Alameda. SBF’s fallen angels collectively owned 16% of SOL total supply. Since bankruptcy proceedings have just started, no information has been disclosed yet on how these assets will be used to make FTX’s creditors whole. All we know is that Solana is in weak hands. The Solana community came up with a list of solutions ranging from diluting their stack by airdropping SOL to each holder except them to simply burning Alameda/FTX allocation. It shows how censorship resistance in the Solana ecosystem, already underlined by Solana decentralisation critics, is not a priority. Prioritising Solana holders before FTX creditors by diluting Alameda/FTX holdings is bad for the ecosystem. With true decentralisation no party should be able to control the coins of another party.
Looking at Solana DeFi activity things are not looking brighter. soBTC, wrapped BTC on the Solana blockchain, lost its peg following FTX collapse. Being only redeemable for 1 BTC on FTX, its value collapsed to $1000 on Raydium. soBTC is not the only wrapped asset on Solana backed by FTX that lost its peg. Paired with the recent Solana based Mango Markets (MNGO) hack amounting to 9% of Solana TVL, it is hard to feel a pulse in Solana’s DeFi ecosystem. TVL dropped by 78% since the 1st of October while Ethereum’s is only down by 20%. Plagued by recurrent blackouts, 10 in total in 2022, Solana’s poor reliability and dying ecosystem puts off investors. On the trading side, SOL is down 60% MTD and looking at funding rates we have yet to see positive figures since FTX collapse.
Ken optimism on Solana
On the positive side, Solana’s infrastructure is well-established and is unrelated to FTX. Solana was initially built for DeFi and indeed has some of the best DApps in the field, from the basic DEXs to more sophisticated projects such as options and algorithmic stablecoins. When investors will be interested in DeFi again, Solana will still be one of their top destinations. In addition, Solana is still regarded as one of the highest performing blockchains and very suitable for the development of games and Web3 applications. Although often being criticized, Solana’s stability has improved significantly in the recent months, and new updates are constantly rolled out to improve speed and reliability.
The Solana Foundation was also largely unscathed in the FTX debacle. The Foundation revealed that they had less than 1% of its total treasury on FTX, and has around 30 months of runway left in its treasury. This is a long time in crypto — sufficient time for crypto markets to overcome the current winter and revive the project by getting new users and funds.
Last but not least, the Solana NFT markets remain highly active even after the FTX incident. Looking at price data, we can see that the floor of Solana NFTs took a significant hit through the beginning of November, but has noticeably recovered in SOL terms. Price has also stabilized in USD terms. In the past seven days, sales volume for Solana NFTs stood firmly behind Ethereum at second place, accounting for at least four-times the volume of all other chains combined. This indeed reflects high loyalty for Solana users and they would not easily switch to other blockchains.
“Proof of reserve”, explaining crypto’s new buzz word
Some might think FTX collapse was triggered by CZ twits about Binance looking to dumb their FTT holdings, while in fact, the very first domino to fall was CoinDesk’s article that leaked the balance sheet of Alameda, FTX’s sister company. The market soon realised that FTX’s balance sheet was also far from balanced due to several accounting frauds. Lack of transparency from FTX triggered a bank run and the exchange had to halt withdrawals. To avoid a similar downfall, centralised exchanges (CEXs) came up with a way named “proof of reserve” (PoR) to show their clients their assets were still in their custody.
Following FTX collapse, Binance was the first CEX to take a public stance on ‘proof of reserve’ solutions. However, proof of reserve for crypto projects actually dates back to October 2020 with Chainlink, a decentralised oracle network. Chainlink partnered with BitGo, the largest provider of wrapped BTC, an ERC-20 token, allowing users to use BTC on the Ethereum blockchain. Chainlink PoR tool ensures each wrapped BTC (WBTC) issued by BitGo is backed by one BTC on the Bitcoin blockchain. DeFi applications can query Chainlink’s PoR contract to see if there is a balance between the WBTC supply and BitGo’s custodian address on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Binance was not even the first centralized exchange to propose proofs of reserves since Kraken has been doing it for 9 months. Kraken outsources to an external auditor named Armanino who uses the Merkle Tree solution to cryptographically prove all client’s balances are held in the platform reserve. Armanino checks that the publicly verifiable balances of Kraken on chain addresses are equal to the balance snapshot obtained by combining all client accounts in a cryptographic fingerprint named Merkle root.
For now, Gate.io and OKX are the only two other CEXs that have provided a Merkle Tree based proof of reserve. However, one should not be mistaken, the Merkle tree might be a cryptographic proof as long as it has to be executed by a third party or even worse, by the interested party himself (in the case of OKX) the human factor is still in the equation. Assets are only fully safe with self-custody. Merkle trees based PoR allow users to have access to both sides of the balance sheet, assets and liabilities. Since FTX collapse, many CEXs, like Binance, striving to increase transparency posted a snapshot of total amount of assets held. However, like Jesse Powell, CEO of Kraken said, “the statement of assets is pointless without liabilities.” Using unregulated, in-house auditors like OKX or simply not sharing liabilities at all make proofs of reserve worthless. Still, one can note that Binance assets are in better shape than Crypto.com or Kucoin.
BUSD is a heavily US regulated stablecoin issued by Paxos while USDT is facing strong regulatory scrutiny and had two significant depeg in the last 6 months. Kucoin holding almost a third of its assets in USDT is an inherent risk to its balance sheet. Kucoin’s assets are also stained by a 17.55% share of holdings in KCS, Kucoin native coin. KCS is a very illiquid asset supported only on Kucoin. If confidence were to be lost it Kucoin, 18% of its assets could easily evaporate. On crypto.com side, SHIB’s share of total assets alarmed the crypto community. Holding 14.31% of total assets in a meme coin was a red flag for many. Crypto.com later explained total assets held are simply equal to total assets bought by users. However, FUD won’t set out until Crypto.com publishes a trustworthy snapshot of the exchange’s liabilities.
An efficient proof of reserve can ensure assets meet liabilities but will never allow full transparency on potential misuse of customers funds like FTX did with Alameda. Ultimately, regulations are the only viable long-term solution for centralised actors. As we’ve seen with FTX collapse, fear of judicial repercussion would have been a better incentive to do right by customers than a dubious desire to be loved by everyone on crypto twitter. However, regulations at an international scale are difficult to build. The geographically unbounded nature of crypto transactions is making investor protection very inefficient at the national level.
Read More
● Dapper Labs Cuts 22% of Staff as NFT Market Craters (Read More)
● Divisions in Sam Bankman-Fried’s Crypto Empire Blur on His Trading Titan Alameda’s Balance Sheet (Read More)
● Arbitrum Responsible for 62% of All Ethereum Transactions (Read More)
● Programmer spends 69 nights in ‘Bitcoin Cash City’ using only BCH: Here’s how it went (Read More)
● MakerDAO co-founder Nikolai Mushegian dies at 29 in Puerto Rico (Read More)
● Solana unveils Google partnership, smartphones, Web3 store at Breakpoint (Read More)
● OpenSea Breaks Silence on NFT Royalties, But Creators Don’t Like What They Hear (Read More)
● BlockFi Pausing Withdrawals in Wake of FTX, Alameda Collapse (Read More)
● Matter Labs Raises $200M to Scale Ethereum With zkSync Solution (Read More)
● Avalanche Surges to New High in Boost for ‘Subnet’ Strategy (Read More)
● Curve Releases Whitepaper for crvUSD Stablecoin (Read More)
● Solana DeFi Sees Almost $700M in Value Wiped Out on FTX Fallout (Read More)
● Solana Foundation reveals minimal exposure to FTX (Read More)
● Layer 2 Gas Usage Up 170% in 2022 as Adoption Surges (Read More)
● Kraken and ConsenSys back staking platform Kiln in $17 million round (Read More)
Companies
● Elon Musk outlines ambitious payments vision for Twitter (Read More)
● Coinbase Lays Off Over 60 Employees Amid Crypto Market Turmoil (Read More)
● Coinbase, MicroStrategy Bonds Tank as FTX Collapse Dents Institutional Confidence in Crypto (Read More)
● Crypto Exchange Coinbase’s Shares Sink to All-Time Low (Read More)
● Twitter’s Crypto Engineering Lead Resigns as Staff Numbers Dwindle (Read More)
● Crypto Financial Services Firm Eqonex Files for Voluntary Debt Restructuring in Singapore (Read More)
● Crypto Exchange Backed by Social Media Titan Line Shuts Down (Read More)
Institutions
● JPMorgan Trade on Public Blockchain ‘Monumental Step’ for DeFi (Read More)
● UK Bank Santander Will Block Payments to Crypto Exchanges (Read More)
● Citi Says Ether May Be Moving Toward a Deflationary Future (Read More)
● Cathie Wood’s ARK adds $12.1M in Coinbase shares amid turbulent markets (Read More)
● Wall Street Banks Seen as Unlikely Saviors as Crypto Firms Struggle (Read More)
● Billionaire investor Bill Ackman says ‘crypto is here to stay’ (Read More)
● JPMorgan Chase Crypto Wallet Trademark Is Approved (Read More)
● Singapore Bank DBS Completes Fixed Income Trade on JPMorgan’s Blockchain Network Onyx (Read More)
● Man Group Readies Crypto Hedge Fund Despite FTX Chaos (Read More)
Mining
● Bitcoin mining firm Bitdeer could delay public offering till 2023 (Read More)
● Record hash rates may see Big Oil become a major BTC mining player (Read More)
● Bitcoin Miner Iris Energy On Verge of $103 Million Loan Default (Read More)
● Crypto Miner Marathon Digital Mines Record 615 Bitcoin in October (Read More)
● Crypto Miner Consolidation Imminent as Some Industry Players Struggle (Read More)
● Bitcoin Miner Hive Blockchain Holds $68M of BTC, Has no Debt Costs on Equipment (Read More)
● Startup Arkon Energy Raises $28M to Further Expand Into Bitcoin Mining (Read More)
● Iris Energy to cut mining hardware after defaulting on $108M loan (Read More)
● DCG’s Foundry Digital buying Compute North facilities amid possible Genesis bankruptcy (Read More)
● Core Scientific breaks hard from the pack, the wrong way (Read More)
● New York Enacts 2-Year Ban on Some Crypto-Mining Operations (Read More)
Crypto preview
Stepping into December, market focus will be placed on the latest macroeconomic data from the US. This follows the release of US Manufacturing PMI at a preliminary reading of 47.6, which is below the expansion line of 50. Michigan Consumer Sentiment also came in at a four-month low. While further weak data would mean less pressure for the Fed to keep its aggressive stance, early signs of a weakening economy could bring concerns to the trajectory of corporate profits in the upcoming six to twelve months.
Bitcoin performance calendar
With a split record over the past ten years, December is historically a mixed month for Bitcoin. The median return is rather neutral at 1.4%. Nevertheless, looking at individual years it is seen that volatility for December can be quite high, as Bitcoin recorded double-digit percentage change for seven out of ten times.
Macroeconomic events
Crypto events
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