More from Crypto collapse: FTX’s fall is one piece of a long, cold, contagious crypto winter
They just didn’t want to listen:
Some of the warnings were serious: sources say that MacAskill and Beckstead were repeatedly told that Bankman-Fried was untrustworthy, had inappropriate sexual relationships with subordinates, refused to implement standard business practices, and had been caught lying during his first months running Alameda, a crypto firm that was seeded by EA investors, staffed by EAs, and dedicating to making money that could be donated to EA causes.
FT Alphaville rounds up the Signature Bank music videos.
Yes, that’s right. In addition to loans, Signature made music videos. This seems weird until you remember that it’s one of two banks that heavily serviced Broadway productions — so they’re meeting their customers where their customers are, I guess.
[FinancialTimes]
Hey, remember the industry that isn’t the traditional US financial system?
Binance halted deposits and withdrawals for new customers in the UK after its local partner, Paysafe, said it would drop support because “the UK regulatory environment in relation to crypto is too challenging to offer this service at this time.”
And federal prosecutors are reportedly looking into Telegram conversations between traders at Jump Trading, Jane Street, and Alameda Research for signs of market manipulation around a possible TerraUSD bailout.
The fall of Silicon Valley Bank, explained.
It’s the promise the president made to depositors in a speech at the White House on Monday. Throughout his brief remarks, Biden also reassured viewers that no taxpayer money would be used to bail out the bank.
The speech followed a Sunday announcement from the government’s top banking regulators that they were setting up an emergency lending program to ensure all SVB depositors are made whole.
Silvergate is gone. The FDIC took over Silicon Valley Bank. Several other banks have lost billions in value, and it’s unclear whether a number of tech companies will be able to keep operating while all of this gets figured out.
If you’re unclear why our situation is the way it is, go back and take a look at Liz Lopatto’s article from a few weeks ago about interest rates and what they mean for tech companies right now.
Less money and more fear: what’s going on with tech
Elizabeth Lopatto has all the information you need about why this now-collapsed institution was so important to US crypto companies, and what its collapse could indicate for the wider economy.
Uh-oh! The crypto collapse has reached the real financial system
If you’ve been following the case closely, most of the facts here won’t be a surprise to you. Hearing from the people who put their money into Celsius, around 15:24, is the stand-out here: people who lost money saved from years of work, and one person who couldn’t put a down payment on a house because his funds were locked in Celsius.
Bad actors prey on hope. Be careful when someone tells you what you want to hear.
Nishad Singh, FTX’s head of engineering and owner of a 7.8 percent stake in the company, has pleaded guilty to criminal fraud charges. He wrote the software that let Alameda exempt itself from being auto-liquidated, Reuters previously reported.
Also of note: Singh gave $8 million to Democratic campaigns and PACs in 2022, according to Open Secrets.
The founders of Forsage, a alleged Ponzi purporting to be a DeFi protocol have been indicted for fraud. That’s not the funny part.
This is:
Analysis of the computer code underlying Forsage’s smart contracts allegedly revealed that, consistent with a Ponzi scheme, as soon as an investor invested in Forsage by purchasing a “slot” in a Forsage smart contract, the smart contract automatically diverted the investor’s funds to other Forsage investors, such that earlier investors were paid with funds from later investors.
Binance.US’s executives were concerned by the outflows because the transfers were taking place without their knowledge, according to messages reviewed by Reuters. The CEO of Binance.US at the time, Catherine Coley, wrote to a Binance finance executive in late 2020 asking for an explanation for the transfers, calling them “unexpected” and saying “no one mentioned them.”
Fine and normal, we haven’t had any recent cryptocurrency issues with secret transfers, have we?