Cryptocurrency
FTX money back? Exchange reports that it regained access to $5 billion
The FTX money laundering scandal is still going on. The troubled crypto exchange FTX could recover $5 billion in liquid assets and cash. CNBC reports about it, citing the lawyers of the bankrupt trading platform. Exactly how the exchange could return the money is not specified.
FTX money back? It is not clear how soon the exchange plans to distribute the recovered funds among creditors. According to CNBC, in November 2022 the FTX’s debt to creditors amounted to about $8 billion. In addition to the restored $5 billion, another $3.5 billion was frozen in the accounts of the Bahamas Securities Commission. Financial regulator will hold FTX assets until the Supreme Court of The Bahamas will not oblige the return of assets to customers and creditors of the exchange. However, it is not clear when this may happen.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Justice Department is trying to recover $400 million stolen from FTX. The media found out that the regulator could recover some of the money, but that amount is insignificant compared to the stolen amount.
In early November, FTX declared bankruptcy due to a large shortage of assets to cover liabilities to customers. As the media found out, the founder of the exchange, Sam Bankman-Fried arbitrarily used the assets of customers of the trading platform to cover the debts of an affiliated firm with the exchange, Alameda Research.
Later, the head of Alameda Research Caroline Allison, admitted that the trading firm sometimes used the funds of FTX clients for their transactions. The extent and number of such trades, however, is unclear. According to her, Bankman-Fried was aware of such a loophole. Both agreed to hide it from lenders and made false financial statements to hide the amount of Alameda loans.
According to the former head of Alameda Research, she understood that “it was wrong” to take perpetual loans from FTX without any risk management or collateral. She said she was aware of the detrimental nature of the practice as early as 2019. FTX co-founder Gary Wong said he was “obligated” to make changes to the crypto exchange’s code. It is not clear who exactly was obliged.
Earlier, we reported that hundreds of companies are interested in buying FTX assets.
Cryptotraders had a tough day: almost 68,000 positions were liquidated on exchanges in the last 24 hours, and the total volume of liquidations exceeded $257,000,000. All this happened against the news of the US Federal Reserve’s rate hike and another Securities and Exchange Commission regulatory action against cryptocurrencies.
Cryptotraders lost $132,000,000 in BTC
Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple were the leaders in the number of forcibly closed positions. BTC liquidations totaled almost $132,000,000; Ethereum traders lost $51,000,000. XRP positions accounted for about $8,000,000 of liquidations. Bitmex exchange executed the largest order of $7.39,000,000.
Cryptocurrency market capitalization has declined 2% in the last 24 hours, but is still above the $1 trillion mark.
The weekly CoinShares report also recorded a massive outflow of funds for six consecutive weeks. During that period, nearly $500,000,000 was withdrawn from cryptocurrency platforms, with $113,000,000 coming from bitcoin. Analysts at the company believe the outflow is due to liquidity needs during the banking crisis rather than a negative outlook. The company mentions that a similar scenario was seen in March 2020 amid a COVID-19-induced panic.
Regulators continue to hunt the cryptobusiness
Another reason for the increased volatility in the market has been harsh action from U.S. regulators. Last night it became known that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued cryptomagnate Justin Sun, accusing him of fraud and market manipulation.
The SEC also issued a notice of wrongdoing against Coinbase, the largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange. The securities regulator sued Coinbase Global Inc, for some of the products it offers.
We previously reported that Bitcoin (BTC) tests $28,000, but onchain metrics urge caution.
Employees of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance help clients from China to bypass compliance and verification. CNBC writes about it, citing hundreds of corporate emails from exchange employees on Discord and Telegram. It is reported that Binance has helped over 200,000 users register, bypassing its own security system. One case describes correspondence between a user from China and a Binance employee.
The employee under the pseudonym yaya.z suggested the user from China turn on a VPN, register as a Taiwanese resident and then return the location to China. Binance employees also advise customers not to use VPN services from the U.S., Hong Kong and Singapore, because the exchange does not provide services in those regions, writes CNBC. At the same time, Binance freely processes applications from U.S. email providers like Gmail or Outlook for registration.
The exchange even offers specialized mobile applications for customers from China. A CNBC reporter could download a special mobile application from Binance via email. At the same time, no VPN was needed to download the app, as the download was conducted through the domain of binance[.]com. It is also alleged that the exchange still verifies users with Chinese phone numbers.
An exchange spokesperson denied the existence of a special Chinese version of the mobile application. The exchange also added that it has improved the system to identify users from banned regions. CNBC notes that after providing evidence, Binance removed employee messages from corporate chats to circumvent KYC.
We previously reported that the Ethereum (ETH) price crossed the $1,800 mark, opening the way to $2,000.
The market remains in a bearish trend and bitcoin (BTC) will resume its fall and test $16,000. There are two reasons:
The first statement can be confirmed or disproved by a technical analysis of the cryptocurrency market, but there is not enough additional information for the second.
The market capitalization of altcoins (ALTCAP) does hold nearly $605 billion of resistance. Although ALTCAP has risen above it several times, it didn’t develop above this area.
However, the daily RSI has broken through the bearish divergence trendline (green line). Such a breakout often precedes significant reversals into a bullish trendline. As a result, ALTCAP will move higher towards the $680B resistance area. If not, ALTCAP could fall back to the $518B support area.
There are also those who argue that bitcoin will test the $10000-$11000 area because there is a CME price gap that needs to be filled. The gap refers to the difference between the closing price of bitcoin futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) on Friday and the opening price on the following Monday.
We previously reported that Hong Kong has allocated another $50,000,000 to the crypto industry.
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