🫠 The World’s Biggest Crypto Firm Is Melting Down
Binance was left to clean up the mess last fall when FTX crashed — but now, the world's biggest crypto exchange appears to be falling apart itself. As the Wall Street Journal reports, one of the exchange's co-founders warned employees that the company is in a "do-or-die situation" amid major staffing tumult and trouble with financial regulators. "Every battle is a do-or-die situation, and the only thing that can defeat us is ourselves," Yi He, Binance's chief marketing officer and co-founder, wrote in a message to staff reviewed by the WSJ. "We have won countless times, and we need to win this time as well." 🔗 Read more

❌ Elon Musk And X Could Be About To Decide The Fate Of Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP And Crypto Amid Wild Price Swings
Bitcoin, Rthereum, XRP and other major cryptocurrencies are currently braced for volatility after a looming Joe Biden executive order set alarm bells ringing. The bitcoin price is languishing at under half of its all-time high of almost $70,000 per bitcoin it hit in late 2021, weighing on ethereum, XRP and other major cryptocurrencies such as the meme-based dogecoin—which Telsa billionaire and X (Twitter) owner Elon Musk has been revealed to have been "quietly" funding. Now, X chief executive Linda Yaccarino is due to meet with seven banks that funded Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter and its re-brand to X this coming week and will reportedly propose expansion into payments after a leak suggested Musk could turn X into an "updated version of PayPal." 🔗 Read more

📰 This Week In Crypto (CW39)

1. Bitwise announces Ethereum ETF launch on Oct. 2

2. SBF trial dates revealed: FTX founder to stand trial over 6 weeks

3. Cryptocurrency exchange Binance to exit Russia

4. Ethereum Supply Is Starting to Grow Again as Gas Prices Plummet

5. Binance urges users to convert euros to USDT after Paysafe debank

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CW38 (last week)

📈 Is ‘Uptober’ here? Bitcoin, Ethereum suddenly pump, wiping $70M in shorts
More than $70 million in crypto shorts were suddenly liquidated after a surprise jump in the price of Bitcoin, Ether and other cryptocurrencies on Oct. 1. Similarly, the price of Ethereum’s native currency, Ether, also surged, gaining as much as 4.7% in a brief spike to $1,755 before leveling out to $1,727 at the time of publication. The sudden movement has left most in the community scratching their heads. Many commentators said the move aligned with the arrival of “Uptober.” According to data from TradingView, the sudden pump saw Bitcoin surge 3% in just 15 minutes from $27,100 to $28,053 before settling down just below the $28,000 mark at the time of publication. 🔗 Read more

⚖️ Trial of former cryptocurrency star Sam Bankman-Fried to start in Manhattan
A federal court in Manhattan will start hearing the case against erstwhile crypto star Sam Bankman-Fried, with jury selection beginning on Tuesday. Bankman-Fried, who founded cryptocurrency exchange FTX and associated hedge fund Alameda Research, is facing trial on finance crimes stemming from the shocking collapse of FTX. Bankman-Fried faces seven conspiracy and fraud counts for allegedly siphoning investors’ money into risky trades and other unlawful purposes. 🔗 Read more

✋ Time to ‘pull the brakes’ on Ethereum and rotate back to Bitcoin: K33 report
The relatively lackluster performance of nine new Ether futures exchange-traded funds (ETFs) has prompted analysts at K33 Research to urge a “rotate back” into Bitcoin. In an Oct. 3 market report, analysts Anders Helseth and Vetle Lunde said that it’s “time to pull the brakes on ETH and rotate back into BTC,” with the initial trading volume of Ether futures ETFs only accounting for 0.2% of what the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) amassed on its first day of trading in October 2021. While the analysts noted that no one expected to see initial trading volume on the Ether futures ETFs “come anywhere close” to that of the Bitcoin futures ETFs — launched amid a raging bull market — the underwhelming first-day numbers “strongly” missed expectations. 🔗 Read more

🧠 Interest in BlackRock ETF, MicroStrategy shares show cryptocurrency is here to stay
As the digital landscape reshapes our conventional understandings about nearly everything in the world around us, the rise of cryptocurrency and its impact on financial systems stands as one of the most transformative movements of all. Delving deeper into this evolution, Roundtable anchor Rob nelson held a compelling dialogue with Luke Stokes, the managing director of crypto wallet project FIO. Their conversation unveiled intriguing perspectives on cryptocurrency's trajectory, the challenges it faces and the potential it holds for global financial ecosystems. Nelson initiated the dialogue by referring to bitcoin as a “baby currency,” pointing to the timeline of its universal adoption. 🔗 Read more

⚖️ Gary Wang, an FTX Founder, Says Sam Bankman-Fried Steered Misuse of Funds
Gary Wang, a former top executive of the failed FTX cryptocurrency exchange, testified that Sam Bankman-Fried, the company’s founder, was the final decision maker at the firm and directed a closely related hedge fund to misuse as it pleased billions of dollars in money from FTX customers. Over more than six hours of testimony in federal court in Manhattan on Thursday and Friday, Mr. Wang said Mr. Bankman-Fried was fully aware that a sister cryptocurrency trading firm, Alameda Research, had siphoned off $8 billion in customer money from FTX. He said Mr. Bankman-Fried had lied in his public statements in November about FTX customer assets being safe and secure. 🔗 Read more

📉 U.S. Dollar ‘Collapse’—Shock $8 Trillion Predicted Fed Inflation Flip To Spark A ‘Critical’ Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP And Crypto Price Boom To Rival Gold
Bitcoin —alongside other major cryptocurrencies ethereum and XRP —have lost momentum after surging into 2023 (though a surprise leak from a major tech company could mean that's about to change). Subscribe now to Forbes' CryptoAsset & Blockchain Advisor and successfully navigate the bitcoin and crypto market rollercoaster ahead of next year's historical bitcoin halving! The bitcoin price has lost around 60% since peaking at almost $70,000 per bitcoin in late 2021, wiping around $2 trillion from the price of ethereum, XRP and the rest of the crypto market—even as a BlackRock insider primes the market for a $17.7 trillion earthquake. Now, as the Federal Reserve grapples with a $33 trillion U.S. "debt death spiral," Jefferies' analysts have warned the Fed will be forced to restart its money printer—potentially collapsing the U.S. dollar and fueling a bitcoin price boom to rival gold. 🔗 Read more

📰 This Week In Crypto (CW40)

1. SBF Trial Begins

2. SEC v Ripple continues

3. ETH price action… surprising?

4. US House Speaker drama lands us a crypto-friendly Speaker

5. OpenSea makes it easier for creators to create

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CW39 (last week)

🚀 Bitcoiner drops BitVM paper — Bringing Ethereum-like contracts to Bitcoin
The author of the white paper, Robin Linus, based BitVM’s architecture on Ethereum’s optimistic rollups with fraud proofs and recent Merkle tree developments. A Bitcoin developer has proposed a new way to bring more expressive off-chain smart contracts to Bitcoin without needing a soft fork. Announced in an Oct. 9 white paper titled “BitVM: Compute Anything on Bitcoin” by ZeroSync project lead Robin Linus, BitVM enables Turing-complete Bitcoin contracts without altering Bitcoin’s consensus rules. 🔗 Read more

🔒 Trezor releases new hardware wallet and metal private key backup
Trezor, a major provider of hardware cryptocurrency wallets, is celebrating its 10th anniversary by releasing three self-custody products, including a new Trezor wallet, a proprietary private key backup solution and a Bitcoin-only wallet. The Czech Republic-based company officially announced the launch of Trezor Safe 3, its brand-new hardware wallet supporting more than 7,000 cryptocurrencies, on Oct. 12. The firm highlighted that the new wallet launch marks an important milestone in Trezor’s provision of entry-level hardware wallets. The release of the Trezor Safe 3 wallet comes nearly five years after the hardware wallet firm rolled out the Trezor Model T in February 2018. Retailed for $79, Trezor Safe 3 is available in four colors: solar gold, stellar silver, galactic rose and cosmic black. 🔗 Read more

❌ Elon Musk’s X platform faces backlash over pro-XRP account suspension

X (formerly Twitter) executive chair and chief technical officer Elon Musk has faced criticism for the suspension of an XRP-related account. Crypto Eri, a well-known figure in the cryptocurrency community, directly reached out to Elon Musk on X, seeking clarification on whether the account suspension was an error.

The account in question — Digital Asset Investor.XRP — was recognized for its outspoken advocacy of XRP, the asset of the XRP Ledger blockchain. Various controversies and legal disputes have long surrounded XRP, notably a lawsuit by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) claiming that XRP is an unregistered security.

🔗 Read more

📰 This Week In Crypto (CW41)

1. SEC Won't Appeal Decision in Grayscale's Spot Bitcoin ETF Case

2. Mastercard Tests CBDCs on Ethereum in Australia Pilot

3. Ferrari to accept crypto payments in the US

4. FTX estate stakes $122 million of Solana

5. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Announces Settlement with Voyager

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CW40 (last week)

🚀 Fake “Bitcoin Spot ETF Approved” Source Allegedly Opened a Long Position Before the News
A few hours ago, a tweet was shared on the Cointelegraph official X account stating that the Bitcoin Spot ETF was approved. Bloomberg analysts and Fox Business journalists contacted BlackRock and confirmed that this information was not true. Then, Cointelegraph edited its initial tweet as “according to rumors” and then deleted it completely. Cointelegraph apologized in its last tweet and stated that it was conducting an internal investigation and would publish an information within 3 hours. However, Rollbit, a cryptocurrency platform, shared a screenshot of a long position that it claimed belonged to Cointelegraph in a Tweet. According to this screenshot, whose accuracy has not been confirmed, a long position of $ 50,000 was opened in Bitcoin at $ 27,774. This position, opened using 50x leverage, was closed at $ 30,274 and a profit of $ 2,250,800 was obtained.

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🥷 North Korea's Lazarus Group Launders $900 Million in Cryptocurrency
As much as $7 billion in cryptocurrency has been illicitly laundered through cross-chain crime, with the North Korea-linked Lazarus Group linked to the theft of roughly $900 million of those proceeds between July 2022 and July of this year.

"As traditional entities such as mixers continue to be subject to seizures and sanctions scrutiny, the crypto crime displacement to chain- or asset-hopping typologies is also on the rise," blockchain analytics firm Elliptic said in a new report published this week.

Cross-chain crime refers to the conversion of crypto assets from one token or blockchain to another, often in rapid succession, in an attempt to obfuscate their origin, making it a lucrative method for money laundering for crypto thefts and an alternative to traditional approaches like mixers.

🔗 Read more

🚀 BitPanda Secures Norway’s First Foreign Crypto License as Virtual Asset Provider
Bitpanda, one of Europe’s largest cryptocurrency exchange­s, has successfully acquired a virtual asset se­rvice provider license­ in Norway. The achievement make­s Bitpanda among the pioneering fore­ign companies to obtain this license. Bitpanda officially announced its successful acquisition of crypto license on X (formerly Twitte­r) on Oct. 19. Additionally, Bitpanda already holds licenses in various European nations, including Austria, Germany, France, Czechia, and Swe­den. Lukas Enzersdorfer-Konrad, the de­puty CEO of Bitpanda, expressed that the­ registration in Norway marks another significant milestone­ in the company’s expansion throughout Europe. 🔗 Read more

🔥 BlackRock And JPMorgan Are Quietly Laying The Groundwork For The Next Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP And Crypto Price Bull Run
The bitcoin price has swung wildly this week—temporarily boosting other major coins including ethereum and XRP—due after a false report that BlackRock's closely-watched spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) application had been approved went viral and was picked up by the likes of Reuters and Bloomberg. Meanwhile, BlackRock has become the first Wall Street giant to use JPMorgan's blockchain-based collateral settlement system, part of a plan that BlackRock's chief executive has said will usher in "the next generation for markets." 🔗 Read more

⚖️ Sam Bankman-Fried’s Trial Reveals Inside Details of How FTX Died
On the morning of Nov. 6, Nishad Singh, a top executive at the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, sent a message in a group chat with two senior colleagues. Customers were rushing to withdraw funds from the exchange, he wrote. Within the last day, they had tried to move $1.25 billion off the platform, and $120 million in withdrawal requests had come in over the last hour.

Caroline Ellison, who ran FTX’s sister hedge fund, Alameda Research, replied with an image of a sad face. Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX’s founder, responded with a single word: “Oof.”

Less than a year later, Mr. Bankman-Fried, 31, is on trial in federal court in Manhattan, fighting criminal charges that he stole more than $8 billion from FTX customers. The company is bankrupt, and Mr. Singh and Ms. Ellison, both 28, have pleaded guilty to fraud and testified in court against their onetime friend.

🔗 Read more

⚖️ U.S. SEC and Ripple gear Up for November 9 showdown in Pivotal XRP lawsuit
In a twist in the ongoing XRP lawsuit, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Ripple Labs are slated to meet for a critical discussion on November 9. While the charges against Ripple’s top brass have been dismissed, the broader issues remain unresolved, making this meeting a crucial determinant for the future of digital assets in the United States. Highlighting the significance of the forthcoming meeting, the SEC has put forward a date that is expected to provide more clarity on the direction the legal battle will take. In a recent correspondence sent to Judge Analisa Torres, the SEC announced this pivotal “meeting and confer session”. The crux of this rendezvous lies in its objective: to delineate the roadmap for the case. The deliberations during this session are anticipated to revolve around the potential briefing schedule concerning the pressing issue at hand. What is this issue? It’s the question of the appropriate remedies needed to address Ripple’s purported Section 5 violations related to its institutional sales of XRP. 🔗 Read more