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Top Stories This Week

Sam Bankman-Fried enters not guilty plea for all counts in federal court

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (has pleaded not guilty to all charges related to the collapse of the crypto exchange, including wire fraud and securities fraud. He faces eight criminal counts, which could result in 115 years in prison if convicted. Furthemore, a petition has been filed by Bankman-Fried’s legal team asking a court to redact and not disclose certain information on individuals acting as sureties for his $250-million bond, alleging threats against his family.

US Feds put together ‘FTX task force’ to trace stolen user funds

A task force organized by the Southern District of New York has been formed to track and recover missing customer funds as well as investigate and prosecute the collapse of crypto exchange FTX. A similar effort had already been underway by FTX’s new management, which hired financial advisory company AlixPartners in December to conduct “asset-tracing” for missing digital assets.

After a one-year hiatus, Our Man in Shanghai returns, but he’s no longer based in Shanghai (the crypto crackdown was a factor in the column’s retirement), so a rebranding is in order. This space is now called “Asia Express,” and it’s a weekly roundup of news from mainland China and Taiwan and the rest of Asia too. Check in each Friday for news about Asia’s more influential projects, changes in the regulatory landscape and enterprise blockchain integrations. Much has changed since the last edition on Dec. 17, 2021. Without further ado, let’s dig in.

China’s national NFT market

In a joint effort between the state-owned Chinese Technology Exchange, the state-owned Art Exhibitions China and the corporation Huban Digital Copyrights Ltd, China’s first national NFT marketplace is scheduled to come online this week.

It’s designed as a secondary market for trading digital collectibles, along with copyrights for digital assets. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s built on China’s national Wenbao, or “cultural protection” blockchain, which helps verify the authenticity of artifacts and commercial goods. Currently, only the NFT platform’s landing page is accessible. 

1,400 blockchain firms in China

On Dec. 29, the state-owned China Academy for Information and Communications Technology, or CAICT, disclosed in its national white paper that over 1,400 blockchain firms are operating in the country despite strict regulations. Together, Chinese and U.S. blockchain firms account for 52% of such entities globally. In one example of distributed ledger applications in public service, CAICT researchers wrote: 

“[In the] Zhejiang Provincial blockchain electronic invoice platform, [authorities] used blockchain’s multiple access point and decentralized process capabilities, along with technological highlights such as smart contracts, to improve the trust verification across various departments. This led to the digital circulation of electronic invoices; their issuance, receipt, inspection, reimbursement, and improved the information management level and service capabilities of electronic invoices in financial departments.”

On Oct. 1, 2019, Cointelegraph Magazine’s founding editor, Jon Rice, pressed publish on the first-ever feature story for the publication — a story by Swedish fintech writer Jinia Shawdagor about the country’s embrace of a cashless economy.

The brainchild of former Cointelegraph CEO Jay Cassano — who was managing editor at the time — Magazine was designed to fill a major gap in crypto media with in-depth features exploring all angles of the issues in a thoughtful, considered way. While it’s easier to get traffic writing breathless stories about Bitcoin price predictions, Magazine is an attempt to give readers and the industry a more intelligent approach.

I came on board after meeting the team at Cointelegraph’s conference in Singapore. Due to an amusing mix-up between “Austria” (where a story they wanted to cover was based) and “Australia” (where I actually live), I was commissioned to write Magazine’s seventh-ever published article, “Blockchain startups think justice can be decentralized, but the jury is still out.” 

This stroke of good fortune led me to become a staff writer, and later to take over as editor after Rice moved on (he’s now editor-in-chief of Blockworks). Three years on, Magazine has amassed a great team of regular contributors, including Blockland author Elias Ahonen — who joined after being interviewed for a story on physical Bitcoin — Andrew Singer, Max Parasol of the RMIT Blockchain Innovation Hub, Christos Makridis of Stanford University, and freelance crypto writers Jillian Godsil and Julian Jackson. Magazine is always looking for more contributors, so if you would like to write for the publication, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Without further ado, here are some of the highlights (and a couple of lowlights) of the first three years of Cointelegraph Magazine.

Top Stories This Week

Bankman-Fried may enter plea in NY federal court next week before Judge Lewis Kaplan

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is scheduled to appear in court on the afternoon of Jan. 3 to enter a plea on two counts of wire fraud and six counts of conspiracy against him in relation to the collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange. After being released on a $250 million bail bond, Bankman-Fried reportedly met with Michael Lewis, author of The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, a bestseller that was turned into a movie, spurring speculation that a film about the disgraced exchange’s saga is on the way.

SBF borrowed $546M from Alameda to fund Robinhood share purchase

In another headline related to Sam Bankman-Fried, an affidavit by the founder of FTX revealed that he previously borrowed over $546 million from Alameda Research to fund a purchase of Robinhood shares. Later, those same shares were used by Bankman-Fried as collateral for a $600 million loan taken by Alameda from digital asset lender BlockFi. The shares are currently frozen and are worth around $450 million. BlockFi filed a lawsuit seeking to receive the collateral shares in November.

Name: Mati Greenspan
Anonymous: No
Twitter followers: 48,000
Known for: The “face” of eToro for years, Greenspan is a rare moderate voice on Crypto Twitter.

Who is this guy anyway?

The friendly but cynical Mati Greenspan became a well-known crypto market commentator in publications such as Forbes, Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal as a senior market analyst for eToro until he set off on his own by founding research and advisory firm Quantum Economics in 2019. He’s been on Cointelegraph’s Top 100 Notable People in Blockchain for the last two years.

Unlike the talking croissants and anime whales on Twitter, Greenspan is personally accountable for his views, which may explain why he’s a lot less bolshie and provocative than some. With 48,000 followers, Greenspan doesn’t have the biggest account but does offer informed market insights and alpha. 

His slightly obsessive attitude toward crypto stems from working as a market analyst in the 2000s and watching the “financial crisis from an insider perspective.”

He believes we “have the power to completely displace the traditional finance industry” in the next five to 10 years.

Steve Newcomb is a Silicon Valley veteran with a long list of achievements. He built software for trading energy in the 90s, was a pioneer in adding email to phones, and helped create the back end of the Bing search engine under Peter Thiel’s mentorship. Today, he heads up development for Berlin-based Matter Labs, which is building scaling solutions for Ethereum.

“I was very much a skeptic” when it came to cryptocurrency and blockchain, explains Newcomb, zkSync’s chief product officer. He adds that it took two years of study before he understood the topic and the benefits to his satisfaction. 

Calculating that Ethereum had a 65% market share of the layer-1 market, Newcomb was convinced that it held the greatest promise in becoming the de facto “world computer.” But he describes blockchain as being slow and cumbersome today as the internet was 25 years ago, so he set to work scaling it up to one day to become as fast as Web2 is now.

Layer 2s to the rescue

As a veteran of the dot-com era, Newcomb sees the current state of the blockchain environment — not just Ethereum — as similar to that of the internet in 1995, when the World Wide Web’s 25,000 websites could be accessed by average dial-up speeds of less than 30 kilobits per second. 

“It’s slow as molasses. Our very well-known ‘Ethereum internet computer’ that claims to have the power to change the world runs at a grand total of 15 transactions per second, and we have 4,000 legitimate projects on Ethereum — very, very similar to 1995.”

Top Stories This Week

SBF sent home after his parents put up their house to cover his astronomical bail bond

Sam Bankman-Fried will spend the holidays with his family in Palo Alto, California, after his parents secured $250 million in bail funds with the equity in their home. Among the conditions of the bail are home detention, location monitoring and his passport surrender. The former FTX CEO signed surrender documents on Dec. 20, allowing his extradition from the Bahamas to the United States, where he faces eight charges that could keep him behind bars for the rest of his life. Bankman-Fried will now wait for his sentence at home with his family.

Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang plead guilty to fraud charges

Former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison and FTX co-founder Gary Wang have pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges. Ellison, however, is working on a plea deal with the Office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which would evade all the seven charges against her, resulting in a $250,000 bail bond and prosecution only for criminal tax violations. The agreement doesn’t provide protection against any other charges that Ellison might face from any other authorities. Wang and Ellison are reportedly cooperating with U.S. authorities on investigations related to FTX’s collapse.

Magazine: Animoca was a successful mobile gaming company, with 10 million downloads and various apps in the top 10 on Apple’s App Store. Then you were suddenly thrown off the store in 2012. How did that change your views on Big Tech?

Yat Siu, Animoca co-founder:The fact that platforms could become as powerful as they became — the App Store, Google Play, Facebook, you name it — caught many of us by surprise. Open source had become the predominant form in which code was written, and it was kind of a wake-up call when Apple basically just decided to push the button and get rid of us.

We didn’t fully know the exact reasons, but there was no discussion, negotiation or process. Hundreds of people were potentially out of work, and millions of customers lost access to the apps they loved because of the decision of some person or some small group of people who can never be held accountable. And that, to us, was basically a shock. It’s not that we saw blockchain and decentralization as the solution back then — it’s just that we knew there was a problem.

Deplatforming users with no explanation seems very authoritarian, like having rulers but not courts and no solid laws.

Exactly. Blockchain is not only a technological solution but also, in many ways, a political-socioeconomic movement. That’s when people get into it. They don’t get into it because “Oh, look, it’s a decentralized ledger. I can have copies of everything!” No, they get into it because it means freedom. It means a kind of digital sovereignty they yearn for because they lost it during the transition to the digital world.

I attempted to spend two weeks travelling in El Salvador living on Bitcoin. I tried to pay for every single thing with Bitcoin, or Satoshis, small amounts of Bitcoin. Spoiler alert, I failed. 

Outfoxed by car hire companies (fortunately my car of choice was not Fiat); stubborn restauranteurs, a parking meter, pupusas, and a fancy dress shop where I was obliged to purchase a multicoloured wig with a $5 bill, I could not survive in “Bitcoin Country” on Bitcoin alone. 

So where did I go wrong? How did this happen? Isn’t El Salvador supposed to be Bitcoin Country? Is Bitcoin broken? Am I a scammer? 

First up, there’s no denying: El Salvador is unashamedly a Bitcoin destination. From Bitcoin conferences, big name Bitcoiners, ubiquitous “Bitcoin accepted here” signs, a laser eyed President and oodles of Bitcoin investments streaming into the country like transactions into the Bitcoin mempool, the nation is the first and greatest sign of Bitcoin adoption worldwide. 

Moreover, let’s not forget the motivations behind the the “Ley Bitcoin,” or Bitcoin Law, voted in on June 8th 2021. In a statement, El Salvador’s National Assembly, shareed: 

Top Stories This Week

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried arrested, set to be extradited to US

Sam Bankman-Fried was taken into custody by the Royal Bahamas Police Force and is likely to stay there until February, after his application for bail was denied in Bahamian court. A second application for bail has been reportedly filed by SBF in the Supreme Court of the Bahamas. His arrest came after the United States government officially filed criminal charges against him — including eight counts of fraud. If convicted, Bankman-Fried could face 115 years in jail, but legal commentators have told Cointelegraph there is a “lot to play out” in the case. The domino effect resulting from FTX’s meltdown has also impacted the professional lives of Bankman-Fried’s parents, resulting in their courses at Stanford Law School being canceled. In other recent developments regarding FTX, a class-action lawsuit against Silvergate Bank was filed in California, aiming to hold the bank accountable for its alleged roles in placing FTX user deposits into the bank accounts of Alameda Research.

Binance ‘put FTX out of business’ — Kevin O’Leary

Venture capital investor Kevin O’Leary claimed at a U.S. Senate committee hearing that Binance and FTX “were at war with each other, and one put the other out of business intentionally.” The hearing was part of a larger investigation by lawmakers into FTX’s collapse, in which Binance had a significant role, O’Leary claimed. Recent days have seen Binance beset by fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD), resulting in a drop in the exchange’s liquidity. Crypto analytics firm Nansen reports that Binance had net withdrawals of more than $3.6 billion from Dec. 7 to Dec. 13.

“A highly profitable trading strategy” was how hacker Avraham Eisenberg described his involvement in the Mango Markets exploit that occurred on Oct. 11.

By manipulating the price of the decentralized finance protocol’s underlying collateral, MNGO, Eisenberg and his team took out infinite loans that drained $117 million from the Mango Markets Treasury. 

Desperate for the return of funds, developers and users alike voted for a proposal that would allow Eisenberg and co. to keep $47 million of the $117 million exploited in the attack. Astonishingly, Eisenberg was able to vote for his own proposal with all his exploited tokens.

This is something of a legal gray area, as code is law, and if you can work within the smart contract’s rules, there’s an argument saying it’s perfectly legal. Although “hack” and “exploit” are often used interchangeably, no actual hacking occurred. Eisenberg tweeted he was operating within the law:

“I believe all of our actions were legal open market actions, using the protocol as designed, even if the development team did not fully anticipate all the consequences of setting parameters the way they are.”

“In a massive solar storm, which would be hugely damaging to a modern economy’s infrastructure, the blockchain parts might well be the only parts that survive.” — Jason Potts

What was the Carrington Event?

In a November 1859 meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society, British astronomer Richard Christopher Carrington reported to the esteemed scientific body that “in the forenoon of Thursday, Sept. 1, in taking my customary observation of the forms and positions of the solar spots, an appearance was witnessed which I believe to be exceedingly rare.”

The phenomenon caused brilliant auroras across the globe, some as far south as Cuba, that were so bright observers were able to read newspapers by their light at night.

It was the most intense geomagnetic storm in recorded history, likely the result of a coronal mass ejection from the sun colliding with the Earth’s magnetosphere — and one with worrying implications for the cryptocurrency industry were it to happen again today. A storm of such intensity would have the potential to affect the majority of electrical systems in use today: satellites, internet service providers, power supplies and all forms of communication.

The geomagnetic disturbances were so strong that telegraph operators in the United States reported sparks leaping from their equipment, which in some cases even caught fire. Telegraph systems across Europe and North America failed.

Vancouver hosts a massive mural in honor of Polkadot, and entire city blocks here are heated with Bitcoin mining. The site of the first Bitcoin ATM, the city has also hosted a blockchain wedding overseen by a “Doge Preacher.” Home to Dapper Labs and other blockchain projects, there is also a share of mystery, like the crypto exchange CEO who allegedly died in India.

Fast facts

City: Vancouver
Country: Canada
Population: 2.64 million (Metropolitan Area)
Established: 1886
Languages: English and French

Overview

Situated on Canada’s west coast in the province of British Columbia, Vancouver makes up the country’s third-largest metropolitan area. Consistently rated among the world’s most livable cities, Vancouver is notable for its ethnic and linguistic diversity brought on by waves of immigration, and less than half the population speaks either of Canada’s official languages, English and French, as their first language. Nestled between mountains and the ocean and aiming to become the world’s greenest city under an urban planning philosophy called Vancouverism, it rates among the most expensive cities in the world in terms of housing.

Originally settled by indigenous peoples over 10,000 years ago, the modern city grew around a tavern on the edge of a sawmill built in 1867. Its prominence grew with the introduction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Very close to nature and various climates, it is a major tourist hub offering whale watching, skiing, old-growth forests and other outdoor activities. It is today a major port city and travel hub, serving as a gateway to the far east both via Vancouver International Airport and in terms of culture, with people of Chinese ethnicity alone making up 27% of the population. The city hosted the Winter Olympics in 2010 and is sometimes called “Hollywood North” due to its notable film industry.

Compared to the more business-like Toronto, which is a 4.5-hour flight away, Vancouver takes after the United States west coast with a more casual atmosphere — perhaps helped by the far milder weather, which makes Eastern Canada with its freezing rain seem a world away. Despite its relatively small population of 38 million, Canada is an outsized contributor to the blockchain industry, perhaps most notably as the birthplace of Ethereum.

Top Stories This Week

7 class action lawsuits have been filed against SBF so far, records show

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has been named in seven class action lawsuits filed since the fall of his crypto empire. These lawsuits, however, are separate from the numerous probes and investigations examining the crypto exchange and its founder, including a reported market manipulation probe by federal prosecutors. Another headline shows the United States House of Representatives has called on SBF to speak at a hearing on Dec. 13. Amid investigations by lawmakers and a flurry of civil litigation, SBF hired former federal prosecutor Mark Cohen to act as his defense attorney. A team of financial forensic investigators was also hired by FTX’s new management to track down the billions of dollars worth of missing customer crypto.

3AC subpoenas issued as dispute grows over claims of Terraform dump

An order signed by a federal judge overseeing the bankruptcy proceedings of Three Arrows Capital has authorized subpoenas for the company’s former leadership, including co-founders Su Zhu and Kyle Davies. Under the authorized subpoenas, Zhu and Davies are required to hand over any “recorded information, including books, documents, records, and papers” related to the firm’s financial affairs or property. The founders will not be served on Twitter, as previously required by the advisory firm and liquidator in this case, Teneo.

“Many years ago, it was AI. Now, it’s metaverse,” he says. “From the government’s perspective, […] as long as you don’t have a coin itself, they’re willing to support a lot of these new technologies” — Doo Wan Nam from StableNode

South Korea: The land of the metaverse

If you had to pick the one country that’s most primed to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the metaverse, South Korea would be high on the list. 

It’s a technology-obsessed country that eagerly adopts new products, where 98% of people own a smart device and more than 10% of the population own at least some cryptocurrency. Despite being the 13th-largest economy in the world by GDP — and the 27th by population — it’s the fourth-largest gaming market in the world, with its 33 million gamers generating $8.3 billion in revenue for the sector in 2021.

Gaming is already a metaverse-style social activity. The most popular games are either cooperative or competitive, and the country dominates esports, with thousands packing stadiums to watch professional players battle it out. 

“For [Australians], our entertainment on a day-to-day basis would be watching TV or watching a movie or whatever,” says Melbourne-based Zerocap analyst Nathan Lenga, who has researched South Korea’s metaverse plans.

One-quarter of the global populace is going to be spending at least an hour a day in the metaverse by 2026, according to tech consulting firm Gartner, for shopping, gaming, education and more. But at some point, people are going to have to demonstrate that it’s really them behind the avatar.

That’s just one reason many believe that decentralized identity (DI) is likely to play an increasingly important role in Web3’s evolution. And even if DI has been generally overlooked by mainstream media, recent events suggest that is about to change.

Consider that in July, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announced a new standard for decentralized identifiers, culminating years of mostly quiet work and deliberations in this area. In August, Gartner proclaimed DI a “must-know” emerging technology, where people can “control their own digital identity by leveraging technologies such as blockchain […] along with digital wallets.” Earlier this year, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed Soulbound Tokens (SBTs), which would include many DI elements in a non-transferable NFT format.

Sometimes called self-sovereign identity (SSI), decentralized identity can play a key role in mitigating fraud, data breaches, social engineering and theft in the expanding metaverse, say technologists, but perhaps more importantly, it may impact broad and diverse sectors of human endeavor, including education, healthcare, law, travel and employment. 

“I believe that SSI will be revolutionizing how we perceive identity management in the upcoming years,” Adam Gągol, co-founder of Aleph Zero, tells Magazine, while others suggest it is on course to disrupt traditional identity management. 

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

BlockFi files for bankruptcy, cites FTX collapse for its troubles

Digital asset lending company BlockFi announced on Nov. 28 that it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New Jersey. The bankruptcy filing revealed, among other details, that BlockFi aims to restructure and keep specific employees on board. BlockFi has eight daughter companies that are also included in the bankruptcy motion. Later news revealed bankruptcy proceeding details, including BlockFi’s attorney reporting that $355 million of the organization’s capital is sitting frozen on FTX.

Kraken settles with US Treasury’s OFAC for ‘apparent’ sanctions violations

In a settlement with the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), U.S. crypto exchange Kraken will pay a fine of approximately $362,000 for breaking sanctions against Iran. The firm self-reported the violation to the OFAC, according to comments from Marco Santori, Kraken’s chief legal officer. Kraken allegedly allowed usage of its exchange by Iran-based participants and did not have a proper system in place for banning certain IP addresses. The firm has agreed to put $100,000 toward sanctions compliance measures as part of the settlement, in addition to the $362,000 fine.

What is a sports fan’s dream come true? To be the announcer at an AC Milan home game, in front of 75,000 roaring Rossoneri fans?

To play a football match on the hallowed turf of your beloved FC Barcelona?

To tour the garage of an F1 team pre-race, then watch the Monza Grand Prix from a VIP box?

These are some of the biggest rewards handed out as incentives to join Chiliz, or CHZ-based, fan token schemes on Socios.com. There are also lesser, but still desirable prizes, like meeting your sports idols, choosing the music to be played when your team scores a goal, or voting on the design of next year’s team strip.

Socios.com has now partnered with over 170 sporting clubs across 25 countries and 10 sports, including American football, soccer, basketball, cricket, esports, ice hockey, mixed martial arts, motorsports, tennis and rugby. Eighty of these organizations have already launched their official fan tokens on the Socios.com app, and it has high-profile deals with giants, such as Manchester City, Barcelona and the Aston Martin F1 Team. 

Maybe it’s the language barrier, or the walls authorities have set up to prevent money from leaving the country. But whatever it is, South Korea has built its own unique corner of the cryptoverse that’s unlike anywhere else on the planet.

Doo Wan Nam, a MakerDAO delegate who co-founded the research and advisory firm StableNode, laughs as he describes how crazy the intense speculation and crypto gambling can get in South Korea. He says it’s a country where the price of stablecoins like Dai or USD Coin can sometimes trade sky-high because if the price starts to rise a little above the $1 peg for some reason, speculators will jump in on the momentum trade. 

“They sometimes trade for $20 because they don’t know it’s a stablecoin,” he explains. “They go, ‘You know, it was trading at $10, I bought it because it was pumping… I don’t know, I didn’t read, I just bought.’”

“So, I think that kind of tells you whether people knew what Terra was.”

The spectacular $60-billion implosion of the Terra ecosystem, headed up by the charismatic but ultimately deluded Korean developer Do Kwon, casts a pall over the entire ecosystem.

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev to stay detained until next year’s hearing

Amid an ongoing investigation into crypto mixer Tornado Cash, the product’s developer, Alexey Pertsev, will be subject to at least another three months of detainment, as per a court ruling this week. Earlier in 2022, United States authorities flagged Tornado Cash as a tool nefarious parties allegedly used to launder funds. Pertsev was detained for suspicions of foul play, although the situation has drawn controversy.

US Senate committee schedules FTX hearing for Dec. 1, CFTC head to testify

A U.S. senate hearing slated for Dec. 1 will aim to look into FTX and the events surrounding its downfall. Titled “Why Congress Needs To Act: Lessons Learned From The FTX Collapse,” the hearing will feature Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Rostin Behnam, among other witnesses. According to recent documentation from FTX’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy case, FTX Trading Ltd. owes a combined sum of more than $3 billion to its 50 largest creditors.