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Cryptocurrency exchange FTX took to Twitter to address user complaints surrounding sluggish withdrawals. FTX assured users that everything is running smoothly with the matching engine, although node throughput is limited for Bitcoin (BTC) withdrawals.

In the series of tweets, the exchange also addressed stablecoin withdrawals, saying redemptions or creations might be slow until banks open for the week and wires clear.

Meanwhile, the community on Twitter had mixed reactions regarding FTX’s response. Some users tweeted their support of the exchange while others expressed their skepticism:

Users on Reddit also expressed alarm toward the developments likening the situation to Celcius halting withdrawals and misleading its users prior to the platform’s collapse.

These issues come as the exchange faces major liquidations of its native FTX token (FTT) as a result of an unspoken feud with rival exchange and blockchain developer Binance.

An ongoing selloff in the FTX Token (FTT) market could worsen in the coming months owing to a mix of pessimistic technical and fundamental indicators.

FTT could plunge 30%

From a technical perspective, FTT has formed an inverse-cup-and-handle pattern on the daily chart, identifiable by its crescent-shaped price trend followed by a less extreme upward retracement.

On Nov. 6, FTT broke below the pattern's support line near $22.50, accompanied by a volume spike. The FTX exchange token's selloff continued on Nov. 7 below the support line, raising risks of a bearish continuation phase in the coming months.

As a rule of technical analysis, the inverse-cup-and-handle breakdown can push the price down by the length equal to the distance between the pattern's support and peak level. That puts FTT's breakdown price target at around $16, down roughly 30% from the current price.

The bearish technical setup came as Changpeng Zhao (CZ), the CEO of crypto exchange Binance, said his company would liquidate its entire FTT holdings in the coming months, on fears that the token might collapse in the same manner as Terra (LUNA) in May 2021.

Social media and tech giant Meta is reportedly gearing up for “large-scale layoffs” this week amid rising costs and a recent collapse of its share price.

According to Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report on Nov. 6 citing people familiar with the matter, the planned layoffs could impact thousands of employees in a broad range of divisions across Meta’s 87,000-strong workforce.

It is not currently understood whether the firm's Reality Labs division, which registered a $3.7 billion loss in the third quarter, would see staff cuts. 

Last week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company would be focusing its investment on “a small number of high-priority growth areas," including its Artificial Intelligence (AI) Discovery Engine and its advertisement and business messaging platforms in addition to the Metaverse, stating: 

“So that means some teams will grow meaningfully, but most other teams will stay flat or shrink over the next year [...] In aggregate, we expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size, or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today.”

Over several years, social media influencers have earned a bad rep among regulators for shilling risky and unvetted tokens to millions of investors. Pursuing the crackdown on such scenarios, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reportedly issued a subpoena to influencers who were found promoting cryptocurrencies such as HEX, PulseChain and PulseX.

Swedish researcher Eric Wall shared an official letter from the SEC dated Nov. 1, which was addressed to influencers. It read:

“We believe that you may possess documents and data that are relevant to an ongoing investigation being conducted by the staff of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.”

The letter was accompanied by a subpoena that was issued as part of the investigation, which demanded the influencers in question to produce the required documents by Nov. 15, 2022.

While the HEX community members retaliated against the finding as fake news, Wall quickly pointed out that HEX information channels on Discord and Telegram were filled with information on preserving anonymity on data and discussions.

Solana (SOL) has been in a steady downtrend for the past 3 months, but some traders believe that it may have bottomed at $26.80 on Oct. 21. Lately, there's been a lot of speculation on the causes for the underperformance and some analysts are pointing to competition from Aptos Network.

The Aptos blockchain launched on Oct. 17 and it claims to handle three times more transactions per second than Solana. Yet, after four years of development and millions of dollars in funding, the debut of the layer-1 smart contract solution was rather unimpressive.

It is essential to highlight that Solana presently holds an $11.5 billion market capitalization at the $32 nominal price level, ranking it as the seventh largest cryptocurrency when excluding stablecoins. Despite its size, SOL’s year-to-date performance reflects a lackluster 82% drop, while the broader global market capitalization is down 56%.

Unfortunate events have negatively impacted SOL’s price

The downtrend accelerated on Oct. 11 after a leading decentralized finance application on the Solana Network suffered a $116 million hack.

Mango Markets’ oracle was attacked due to the low liquidity on the platform's native Mango (MNGO) token which is used for collateral. To put things in perspective, the hack represented 9% of Solana's total value locked (TVL) in smart contracts.

Dogecoin (DOGE) has surged nearly 100% quarter-to-date (QTD) on hopes that Elon Musk would integrate the token onto the Twitter platform. However, DOGE's potential to continue its uptrend in the coming weeks is low, one popular market analyst argues.

Short Dogecoin hard?

Independent market analyst GCR said he is moderately short on DOGE based on its price's recent reaction to a Musk tweet. Notably, DOGE formed a local top at $0.158 on Nov. 1. The same day, Musk shared a picture of his pet Shiba Inu wearing a t-shirt with the Twitter logo.

GCR argues that the Musk-effect is wearing off when it comes to Dogecoin's potential integration into Twitter, meaning that most of the gains are already priced in. Therefore, if the actual integration happens, it will likely become a sell-the-news event. 

Overbought correction begins

Meanwhile, Dogecoin continued its correction move on Nov. 4, three days after topping out at $0.158.

DOGE's price dropped to as low as $0.115 on Nov. 4, in part due to rumors of Twitter pausing its crypto wallet development project. That brought the token's net percentage correction from the Nov. 1 local top to nearly 27%.

Blockchain gaming company Gala Games urged its community for calm after misplaced fears of a  multi-billion dollar rug pull or hack caused the GALA token to temporarily crash 25.6%.

The initial panic, which Gala Games later implied was unfounded, came after a single wallet address appeared to mint over $2 billion GALA tokens out of thin air — which was flagged by blockchain security firm PeckShield on Nov. 3.

Fears that the unusual activity was a sign of an exploit or rug pull caused the GALA token price to drop a dramatic 25.6% from $0.0394 to $0.0293 over a 130-minute stretch late on Nov. 3, according to data from CoinGecko.

However, Gala Games took to Twitter on Nov. 4 to dispel the “FUD” surrounding its native token, explaining that “lots of people are tossing around words like ‘hack’ and ‘rug’. Neither of these is the case.”

Gala Games president for blockchain Jason Brink explained that the unusual activity detected on decentralized exchange (DEX) PancakeSwap was performed by pNetwork, who was working to drain the liquidity pool as a means to safeguard it from a potential vulnerability.

October may have seen a decline in nonfungible token (NFT) trading volume and sales, but analytics firm DappRadar says an 18% growth in monthly unique NFT traders shows the market is still in “great demand.”

According to a Nov. 3 report from DappRadar, the number of monthly unique NFT traders in October reached 1.11 million, increasing 18% from September, of approximately 950,000. 

This is despite trading volumes falling 30% to $662 million in October, the lowest registered in 2022, while the sales count decreased by 30% to 6.13 million, the firm said, adding:

“The rise in the unique traders’ count indicates that new people are entering the NFT market, and it is still in great demand.”

The month was a busy one for the NFT community.

A local report from South Korea claims that the country's prosecutors have obtained evidence to suggest Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon had onceordered an employee to manipulate the price of Terra Luna Classic (LUNC).

A report by Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) on Nov. 3 quotes an official from the South Korean Prosecutors Office, who said they have obtained a "conversation history" in which "CEO Kwon specifically ordered price manipulation."

The reported evidence came in the form of a "messenger conversation" between Kwon and a former Terraform Labs employee. Prosecutors did not disclose further details, noting: 

“I can’t reveal details, but it was a conversation history where CEO Kwon specifically ordered price manipulation.”

While the exact details of the price manipulation remain undisclosed, the price action of Terra’s LUNC (formerly LUNA) during the last bull market was undoubtedly one of the most impressive across all cryptocurrencies.

On this week’s episode of Market Talks, we welcome Jake, also known as “Korean Jew Crypto” on Twitter and the founder of “The Trading Dojo,” a platform that provides quality coaching and education to help traders identify profitable trades on their own. 

The wide reaching interview covered KJ’s take on how to trade the Federal Open Markets Committee and Consumer Price Index events, along with his views on how Federal Reserve policy is impacting crypto prices.

According to KJ:

“In regards to what Powell said, and the way the news cycle has been, a few weeks ago I was adamant that something has changed. I was quite bearish and expecting a support break for BTC, ETH and everything else. We got the dip on Friday that swept everyone out of the tight range but it was immediately bought back…Bullard from the Fed had some bullish things to say and we reclaimed the support and held on with nice volume, as well as in stocks. I said to my friends and the dojo, something is different. That was supposed to breakdown but there were buyers there. The market just feels very different.”

When asked about whether or not Dogecoin’s (DOGE) recent 100%+ pump is a one-off or a sign of a wider trend change, KJ said:

After an impressive 23.7% rally between Oct. 25 and Oct. 31, Binance Chain BNB, has faced a strong rejection from the $330 resistance. Is it possible that the two-day 6% sell-off from the $337.80 peak could indicate that further trouble is ahead?

Let’s take a look at what the data shows.

Analysts pinned the recent rally to the Oct. 28 news that Binance had invested $500 million in Twitter. However, the network's deposits and decentralized applications metrics have not accompanied the improvement in sentiment.

The strong upward movement was largely based on reports that Binance was preparing to assist Twitter in eradicating bots. The speculation emerged after billionaire Elon Musk raised the $44 billion required to complete his purchase of the social media platform.

In absolute terms, BNB's year-to-date performance reflects a 40% decline, but it ranks ahead of competitors as Ether (ETH) is down by 59%, Solana (SOL) 82% and Polygon (MATIC) registers a 79% correction.

Polygon (MATIC) emerged as the best-performing asset among the top-ranking cryptocurrencies on Nov. 3 as the market's attention turned to the latest Instagram and JPMorgan announcements.

Polygon in high-profile partnerships

Notably, Meta, the parent company of Instagram, named Polygon as its initial partner for its upcoming nonfungible token (NFT) tools that allow users to mint, showcase, and sell their digital collectibles on and off the social media platform.

Meanwhile, banking giant JPMorgan used Polygon to conduct its first live trade (worth about $71,000) on a public blockchain, marking a concrete step toward integrating cryptocurrencies into the traditional financial frameworks. 

MATIC, a utility and staking token within the Polygon blockchain ecosystem, rose over 13% to $0.985 after the announcements, accompanied by an uptick in daily trading volume.

Polygon's upside move came as a part of a broader recovery rally across the crypto sector that started in mid-June. MATIC's price has rebounded by more than 200%, a trend that will likely sustain in the coming months.

The price of Litecoin (LTC) could skyrocket by up to 200% by July 2023, coinciding with its halving event, reducing miner block rewards by 50%.

Litecoin has bottomed out?

Litecoin has undergone two halvings since its launch in October 2011. The first one occurred in August 2015, which reduced its block reward from 50 LTC to 25 LTC. The second happened in August 2019, which slashed the 25 LTC reward to 12.5 LTC.

Interestingly, each Litecoin halving event occurred after a volatile LTC price cycle, namely an enormous price pump, followed by a similarly massive correction, a price bottom, and recovery to a local top.

After the Litecoin halvings, LTCs' price corrected from its local top, established another bottom, and followed it with another massive price rally to a new record high, as shown below,

Litecoin's third halving is scheduled to occur sometime in July 2023. Meanwhile, market analysts are already pointing out that LTC's price is undergoing the same pre-halving trajectory as before the 2011 and 2019 events, now in the bottoming-out stage.

Shiba Inu (SHIB) price can rise by nearly 150% versus its top meme-coin rival, Dogecoin (DOGE), in the coming months, based on a technical fractal.

SHIB hits record low against DOGE

The bullish setup appears as the SHIB/DOGE pair rebounded slightly after dropping to 0.0000841 — its lowest level ever — on Nov. 1. The price level coincided with a descending trendline that has served as strong support for the pair since November 2021.

For instance, Shiba Inu’s previous drop to the said trendline occurred in May 2022, which preceded a 100% recovery rally in the next three months. Similarly, in January 2022, the SHIB/DOGE pair rebounded by more than 50% in less than a month.

Interestingly, all the SHIB/DOGE’s rebound moves reached the 0.0002186-0.0002536 range as their primary upside targets. This area coincides with the pair’s 0.786-1 Fib line range, derived from the Fibonacci retracement graph drawn from the 0.0002536 swing high to the 0.0000899 swing low, as shown in the chart below.

Therefore, SHIB could once again see a sharp bullish reversal versus DOGE if history repeats, with the upside target in the 0.0002186-0.0002536 range. In other words, at least a 150% price rally by Q1 2023.

When programmer Jonathan Silverblood flew to Townsville, Australia from his Finland home for a two-and-a-half-month holiday in August, he had one main task — pay for everything he could using Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

The coastal city of Townsville is known as the “Bitcoin Cash City,” a name derived from a conference of the same name that first launched in 2019. It is understood to have a strong number of merchants that accept the Bitcoin-forked token.

Silverblood said while attending the conference in 2019, he was intrigued by the number of merchants and vendors offering BCH as a payment option in Townsville and had planned a return to the city once COVID-19 restrictions were lifted.

"Going to this destination was entirely about using BCH and was also kind of an excuse to spend more than I usually do, while simultaneously getting more work done by letting family and kids have a vacation with their grandma," he told Cointelegraph after he returned home from the trip. 

"Using it to pay for things while I was there just made sense, partially because I already have my income paid in BCH, and partially because it's just so much less effort than some of the other forms of payment I use."

Multinational banking firm JP Morgan has successfully executed its first ever cross-border transaction using decentralized finance (DeFi) on a public blockchain.

The trade was facilitated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) Project Guardian on Nov. 2 — which was established as part of a pilot program to “explore potential decentralized finance (DeFi) applications in wholesale funding markets.”

In other words, the pilot was another step into examining how traditional financial institutions can use tokenized assets and DeFi protocols to conduct financial transactions, among other use cases. 

Singapore’s largest bank — DBS Bank, Tokyo-based banking firm SBI Digital Asset Holdings and business leadership platform Oliver Wyman Forum also took part in the pilot program. 

The trade was executed on Ethereum layer-2 network Polygon, using a modified version of AAVE protocol's smart contract code.

Stablecoin issuers Circle and Paxos have each received approvals for their respective licenses from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the city-state's central bank.

Circle received in-principle approval for a Major Payments Institution License allowing it to issue cryptocurrencies and facilitate domestic and cross-border payments while Paxos received its license to offer digital payment token services.

Circle and Paxos both announced their approvals on Nov. 2, which came a week after the MAS issued two consultation papers on proposals for regulating digital payment token service providers and stablecoin issuers under Singapore’s Payment Services Act (PSA).

The PSA was passed by the Singapore Parliament in 2019, which purports to regulate payment systems and authorizes MAS to oversee the conduct of payment service providers.

Circle, the issuer behind USD Coin (UDSC), and Paxos with its Pax Dollar (USDP), both U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins will now be able to offer their respective stablecoins and other digital payment token products within Singapore.