Another Bankruptcy? 📉

Unchained Daily feat. Uniswap's trading volume, FTX's contagion, the 'Alameda Gap', and more...

November 16, 2022

November 16, 2022

On the Pod…

Welcome to The Chopping Block! Crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra were joined by Laura Shin, CEO of the show, to chop it up about the collapse of FTX. The conversation covered:

  • Why FTX blew up, and whether it was a Ponzi scheme

  • How Sam Bankman-Fried became a billionaire

  • The weird sale of Serum, a project backed by SBF

  • The lack of proper accounting and security practices in FTX and Alameda, and whether FTX faked its volume figures

  • How the media and VC culture built SBF's character

  • How Sam convinced Tom Brady to invest in FTX

  • Whether Sam’s Effective Altruism caused his mistakes

  • How FTX's failure will set the crypto industry backListen Now!

What’s Poppin’?

Liquid Global and Salt Lending are the latest additions to the FTX contagion, with both platforms halting withdrawals on Tuesday.

Uniswap became the second-largest exchange for Ethereum trading in the last 24 hours. Was FTX the catalyst that DeFi needed?

The absence of Alameda, one of the biggest market makers in crypto, has thinned out liquidity across several exchanges.

The FTX drainer is one of the largest ETH holders in the world.

Hardware wallets are seeing massive demand after the collapse of centralized trading platform FTX.

In Other News…✍️✍️✍️

  • Serum (SRM), the token of the Solana-based, SBF-backed DEX protocol, doubled in price on Tuesday.

  • Authorities in South Korea are pushing for a regulatory framework after the failure of FTX.

  • The Golden State Warriors will end their $10 million sponsorship agreement with FTX. 

  • Alameda Research owes bankrupt lender Celsius $12 million.

Today in Crypto Adoption...

  • Businesses that accept Circle’s stablecoin USDC will now be able to interact with Apple Pay.

  • The Federal Reserve and four other major banks are testing a program to use digital tokens to settle transactions.

The $$$ Corner…

  • NFT fraud detection startup Yakoa raised $4.8 million in an equity round co-led by Brevan Howard Digital, Volt Capital and Collab+Currency.

  • Shima Capital led a $2.3 million pre-seed round for Web3 gaming monetization platform PlayEmber.

  • Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, sold over 30,000 Class A Coinbase shares for $1.6 million, according to a filing with the SEC.

  • Cathie Wood’s fund ARK acquired 315,000 shares in Grayscale’s Bitcon Trust (GBTC).

What Do You Meme

Tune in to NPR's "All Things Considered" to hear Laura discuss how FTX’s collapse impacts crypto.

📈 Your Market Update 📉

  • BTC: $16,720

  • ETH: $1,229

  • BTC dominance: 37.12%

  • Crypto market cap: $865 billion

*All data as of today, 5 am ET

Recommended Reads

  1. HanSolar on options and how to trade this volatile market:

  1. Jason Choi on SBF and FTX:

  2. Petrify, a web3 analyst, on the moment Alameda started to go wrong:

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