🥷 A $100 Million Rugpull?

In today's edition: 🚶‍♂️ FTX's road to recovery, ❄️ Binance.US explains BCH withdrawal freeze, ❌ Algorand's biggest DeFi protocol, and more!

July 12, 2023

What’s Poppin’?

by Samyuktha Sriram

Some users reported issues with the bankrupt crypto exchange’s claims portal shortly after it went live on Tuesday.

Suspicions around a rug pull orchestrated by insiders were reinforced on Tuesday after Multichain saw another round of abnormal outflows across various chains.

The crypto exchange assured users that it maintained 1:1 reserves for assets held on the platform and a “technical issue” was behind the halt in BCH withdrawals last week.

Algofi, which accounted for more than 50% of value on Algorand, said it will shortly move into withdrawal-only mode.

On the Pod…

Daily Bits…✍️✍️✍️

  • 🕵️‍♂️ Ryan Salame, a former executive at bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, is under investigation by federal prosecutors for potentially violating campaign finance laws during his partner Michelle Bond's 2022 congressional race.

  • 🤝 Grayscale Investments and Fir Tree Capital Management agreed to settle a lawsuit, with Grayscale agreeing to provide documents related to its flagship product, GBTC.

  • 🔐 Crypto lender Celsius is suing StakeHound, alleging the staking platform failed to return $150 million worth of various tokens, amid Celsius's bankruptcy proceedings.

  • 🚔 Former security engineer, Shakeeb Ahmed, was arrested in New York for allegedly defrauding a DeFi exchange and stealing about $9 million in crypto, marking the first criminal case involving an attack on a smart contract operated by a DEX.

  • 👤 Amid debates over crypto anonymity, Arkham Intelligence's CEO Miguel Morel faced criticism during a Twitter event for encouraging users of their new Intel Exchange platform to expose personal data about crypto wallet owners.

  • 🚀 ConsenSys, the firm behind MetaMask, is launching Linea, its zkEVM layer-2 solution, on the main Ethereum network, promising cheaper and faster transactions, with no plans for a Linea token as yet.

  • 📈 Coinbase's stock surged by up to 11% following the news of a surveillance agreement with Cboe for the spot Bitcoin ETFs that would be traded on it.

  • The U.S. Senate Financial Services Committee asked the digital asset community for input on how crypto assets should be taxed.

The $$$ Corner…

  • 💰 Alluvial, a software development company supporting the Liquid Collective staking protocol, raised $12 million in a Series A funding round to promote the global adoption of liquid staking.

  • 🎨 NFT lending protocol Gondi launched after a $5.35 million seed funding round led by Hack.vc, providing a platform for users to monetize their valuable NFT collections on the Ethereum blockchain.

  • 💻 Web3 security startup Olympix secured $4.3 million in a seed funding round, led by Boldstart Ventures, to advance its AI-backed solutions for identifying smart contract vulnerabilities during the early stages of project development.

Bringing institutional-grade financial products on-chain, starting with the tokenization of US Treasuries and money market funds.

What Do You Meme?

Learn 🤓

A crypto pair trading strategy enables trades to place market-neutral positions to potentially generate returns regardless of the market direction.

📈 Your Market Update 📉

  • BTC is up 1%, trading at $30,682

  • ETH is up 1%, trading at $1,885

  • BTC dominance: 48.23%

  • Crypto market cap: $1.24 trillion

*All data as of today, 7:00 am ET

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