FTX Execs Rat Out SBF 🗣️

In today's edition: Ellison's and Wang's pleas, SBF's extradition, Genesis/DCG creditors’ plan, a funny video on 'crypto villains', and more!

December 22, 2022

Crypto Villains of 2022

2022, the year of crypto CARNAGE...and nefarious characters who all have something in common: They don't think they did anything wrong. 🙃 🤡

So...Unchained is asking the audience: who's the biggest villain of them all?

On the Pod…

What’s Poppin’?

Former FTX executives Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges. The CFTC and the SEC also filed charges against them.

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has officially signed documents agreeing to be extradited to the U.S.

A creditor committee for Digital Currency Group and its subsidiary Genesis have been presented with a plan to tackle their liquidity issues.

The team behind DeFi protocol Ankr said that a former employee was responsible for a $5 million exploit on its aBNBc token.

Global peer-to-peer crypto marketplace Paxful has removed Ethereum from its marketplace in a push towards encouraging users to focus on Bitcoin.

Brett Falk, a computer science professor and researcher at UPenn, talks about what he found while studying NFT royalties.

In Other News…✍️✍️✍️

  • Sen. Pat Toomey introduced a new bill that would create a federal license for stablecoin issuers and require that they be backed by "high-quality liquid assets.”

  • A major pro-Democrat political action committee (PAC) is returning $3 million of donations made by former FTX executives, including Sam Bankman-Fried and Nishad Singh. 

  • Auros, a crypto market making firm, defaulted on a $7.5 million loan it took on Maple Finance, an undercollateralized lending protocol.

  • Peter McCormack, a Bitcoiner and podcaster, has been ordered to pay Craig Wright, an Australian scientist who claims to be Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto, $1.1 million in costs following their legal battle.

  • The proposed $1.5 billion merger between Swyftx and Superhero has failed due to regulatory hostility towards crypto in Australia.

Today in Crypto Adoption...

  • The Central Bank of Ireland granted crypto exchange Coinbase approval to operate as a Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP).

The $$$ Corner…

  • Neal Stephenson and Peter Vessenes, the creators of metaverse-focused blockchain Lamina1, are launching the Lamina1 Ecosystem Fund (L1EF) to provide capital to Web3 builders and investment opportunities to investors in open metaverse projects.

  • Mask Network acquired Pawoo.net, the second-largest server of Mastodon, a decentralized social media platform.

  • Hardware wallet startup Cypherock closed a $1 millon seed round.

What Do You Meme

📈 Your Market Update 📉

  • BTC is down .37%, trading at $16,829

  • ETH is down .15%, trading at $1,216

  • BTC dominance: 38.5%

  • Crypto market cap: $841 billion

*All data as of today, 5 am ET

Recommended Reads

  1. CoinDesk’s Margaux Nijkerk on Ethereum’s censorship problem.

  2. Yoda Research on BTC mining: 

  3. Connor Dempsey on Farcaster: 

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