Is FTX to Blame *Again*? 😥

In today’s edition: 🔥 Judge questions SEC's stance, 📉 Alameda ends Grayscale suit, 🚨 Single client dominates ETH, 📱 False ETF post explained, and more!

January 23, 2024

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What’s Poppin’?

by Sam Sriram, Kollen Post, and Sage Young

If almost half of the outflows from Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF is from the beleaguered crypto exchange’s estate, the market may calm its fears that investors are fleeing Bitcoin. 

A court in Washington, DC heard arguments in the SEC’s case against beleaguered crypto exchange Binance on Monday.

Alameda Research has voluntarily dismissed its lawsuit against Grayscale Investments, as its sister company FTX pulled $1 billion from GBTC.

The Ethereum community’s concerns about execution client diversity has intensified, as roughly 84% of all validators are running Go Ethereum.

The SEC said its X account was compromised in a “SIM swap” attack, which led to the false spot Bitcoin ETF approval post earlier this month.

Polychain Capital founder and CIO Olaf Carlson-Wee has been through every single bubble in crypto history, from Bitcoin’s rise past the single digits in 2012 to the ICO craze of 2017 to 2021’s NFT mania, and he says his main thesis about crypto has remained consistent since the beginning. That is, that crypto constitutes an “incentive vortex” that will replace the world’s preoccupation with country-backed currencies.

Carlson-Wee, who was the first employee at Coinbase, joins Unchained to discuss the significance of the launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs, how he successfully navigated all the industry blow-ups in 2022, the challenges of balancing incentives for early adopters versus new users, why EigenLayer is so significant, why Worldcoin’s distribution strategy is a “disaster,” and the strange places that the intersection between crypto and AI could take us.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Pandora, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Daily Bits…✍️✍️✍️

  • 📈 The 9 newly launched U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs have accumulated over 100,000 BTC in assets under management within a week of trading.

  • 🚫 Cosmos Hub community voted against proposal 868, which aimed to reduce ATOM's minimum inflation rate to zero.

  • 📜 Coinbase challenged the U.S. Treasury's proposed crypto mixing rules, arguing against the inefficiency of bulk data reporting requirements.

  • 🔍 Investment firm B. Riley is reportedly under investigation by the SEC, related to its connections with an individual involved in a criminal case, though B. Riley denies knowledge of any investigation.

  • 👨‍🏫 Su Zhu, cofounder of defunct Three Arrows Capital, shared his positive perspective on prison life following a four-month stint, suggesting it offers valuable life experiences.

  • 🗳️ Donald Trump reaffirmed his opposition to CBDCs at a New Hampshire rally, citing advice from former candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

  • 🔓 Abra, following a settlement with Texas regulators, will allow 12,000 investors to withdraw approximately $13 million in frozen crypto assets.

  • 🔐 EigenLayer is developing a shared security model for dapps, allowing protocols to use a collective pool of re-staked ETH for enhanced network security.

  • 🎨 "Genesis Cat," a Bitcoin-based digital art piece, sold for $254,000 at a Sotheby's auction, indicating the rising interest in Bitcoin Ordinals inscriptions.

  • 🧩 An anonymous entity airdropped 21,000 Bitcoin Ordinals as part of a mysterious game, sparking intrigue and scam concerns in the crypto community.

What Do You Meme?

Recommended Reads

📈 Your Market Update 📉

  • BTC is down 4.7%, trading at $38,847

  • ETH is down 6.8%, trading at $2,221

  • BTC dominance: 47.82%

  • Crypto market cap: $1.59T

*All data as of today, 06:28 am ET. Source: CoinGecko

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