So remember when FTX was going to get bought by Binance, except whoopsie, Binance did due diligence for a couple hours and noped out?
US authorities would like to know what Binance saw.
Most of FTX’s legal and compliance staff quit yesterday, reports Semafor, who counts FTX’s CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, as an investor. Incidentally, a bunch of regulators are investigating FTX.
Yesterday, Binance’s CEO was like, sure, yeah, we’ll buy our troubled competitor FTX, pending due diligence. And now, after a couple hours of due diligence, it’s looking like no deal. What’s on those books? Binance is the biggest crypto exchange and FTX is the third-largest, so that combo would be real trouble for competitors — it should be a deal that makes sense. I sure hope nothing funny is going on with the customer deposits!
Not content with buying his rival’s business, CZ has also taken a victory lap, implying that FTX was using its FTT token as collateral for borrowing. CZ drove down the price of FTT earlier this week by announcing Binance would sell all its holdings.
So Coinbase has $15 million in deposits on FTX “to facilitate business operations and client trades.” However, the company says it has no exposure to Alameda Research, FTX’s sister firm, and no loans to FTX.
On Twitter, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong chalks the FTX debacle, which resulted in a Binance buyout, up to “risky business practices, including conflicts of interest between deeply intertwined entities, and mis-use of customer funds (lending user assets).”
[www.coinbase.com]
You may remember Tornado Cash from getting sanctioned by the US Treasury for its role in money laundering.
It’s now getting “redesignated” for “allegations that North Korea has laundered over $100 million worth of crypto through Tornado Cash to support its WMD program, including the development of ballistic missiles,” CoinDesk reports.
