Kategorie: Crypto Markets

• FTX lawyers are seeking permission from a US bankruptcy court to be allowed to sell their businesses.
• The businesses that FTX seek to auction were only acquired recently.
• FTX wants to auction the businesses before they lose too much value or have their licenses permanently revoked.

FTX lawyers have filed for permission from a US bankruptcy court to be allowed to auction four of its active businesses. According to the filing made on December 15, FTX seeks to auction its Japanese and European FTX branches, stock-clearing platform Embed, and recently acquired derivatives exchange LedgerX.

According to the lawyers, the mentioned businesses have been under pressure since the collapse of FTX which is the main reason they seek auctioning. They note:

“The longer operations are suspended, the greater the risk to the value of the assets and the risk of a permanent revocation of licenses.”

FTX Japan and FTX Europe currently suspended

FTX Europe currently has its licenses and operations suspended while FTX Japan is currently under business suspension and improvement orders.

Besides the businesses’ suspensions, the lawyers argue that the businesses have lost customers and employees since FTX filed for bankruptcy. The lawyers also argue that selling the businesses now would enable them to resume operations and maximize value for the FTX estate.

The lawyers also point out that the four businesses were recently acquired by FTX and had been operating relatively independently of FTX which would make their auction process less complicated.

Set auction dates

If their prayers were to be allowed by the US court, the auctioning of the businesses would start on February 21 2023 assuming there is more than one bidder.

Embed would be the first to be auctioned on February 21, followed by Ledger which would be auctioned on March 7. FTX Japan and FTX Europe would both be auctioned on March 21.

The post FTX seeking to auction its functioning businesses including LedgerX appeared first on CoinJournal.

• Binance has faced a FUD storm in the past few days about its reserves.
• Binance has also been in the spotlight amid the ongoing FTX collapse hearing.
• Blockchain analytics provider CryptoQuant has verified Binance reserves in its new audit report.

Blockchain analytics provider CryptoQuant has verified Binance’s proof of reserve in its recently released audit report analyzing the recently released proof-of-reserves by Binance. This settles the FUD storm that has been circulating within the internet especially following the recent surge in withdrawals.

Over the past few days, Binance has seen crypto assets worth as much as $3 billion leave the exchange in a span of 24 hours making investors worry about the future of the exchange seeing that FTX’s troubles started in a similar manner.

Binance scrambling to reassure customers

Amid the heightened customer worries after reports of increased outflows from Binance, the crypto exchange has been scrambling to reassure its customers and investors that it has sufficient reserves that are fully backed.

Earlier this month, Binance released a proof-of-reserves report for transparency purposes but it ended up being criticized for not being a full audit but rather an “agreed-upon procedure.” The tussle led to some customers withdrawing their crypto assets; something that sent shock waves throughout the crypto space since FTX’s fall started in a similar manner.

However according to CryptoQuant, the liabilities that Binance reports are close to audit firm Mazars’ estimation of 99%.CryptoQuant notes:

“The report shows Binance’s BTC liabilities (customers’ deposits) are 97% collateralized by the exchange assets. Collateralization increases to 101% when the BTC lent to customers is accounted for.”

CryptoQuant also added that Binance’s stablecoin and Ether reserves don’t show an “FTX-like” behaviour. The firm reported:

“Additionally, Binance has an acceptable ‘Clean Reserve,’ which means its own token, BNB, is still a low proportion of its total assets.”

According to data provider Nansen, only about 10% (Approx. $6.2 billion) of Binance’s reserves ($60.2 billion) are held in its native token BNB.

The post CryptoQuant confirms Binance reserves are accounted for appeared first on CoinJournal.

• Bitcoin’s mining difficulty fell by 7.32% over the past two weeks, the largest negative adjustment in almost 18 months.
• Mining difficulty adjusts every 2,016 blocks or roughly two weeks and depends on average block time (10 minutes) and hashrate.
• Bitcoin’s next mining difficulty is expected to increase by 4.24%.

Bitcoin mining difficulty, a measure of how hard it is for miners to find and ‘mine’ a new block, fell by 7.32% last week.

The downward adjustment occurred at block height 766,080,  the largest negative adjustment in the metric since July 2021. As of 15 December 2022, and according to data on BTC.com, the last biggest downward adjustment occurred at block height 689,472 in July 2021 when difficulty fell by 27.94% . 

Incidentally, that negative adjustment is the largest in Bitcoin mining history and happened at a time when the crypto industry recorded a massive exodus of miners from China following the country’s crackdown on Bitcoin. Other huge downward adjustments occurred in May 2021, March and November 2020 and December 2018.

Next difficulty estimated to jump 4.24%

Mining difficulty is a metric that looks at the number of hashes or guesses a miner needs to make to arrive at the correct one and be able to mine BTC. It’s been increasing since Bitcoin’s inception and adjusts every two weeks, or after about 2,016 blocks – going up or down to keep the creation of new coins within the network’s average block time.

The current difficulty is 34.24 trillion and the next difficulty adjustment is expected to rise by 4.24% to an estimated 35.69 trillion.

How does mining difficulty work?

This is how difficulty works – it will adjust downwards if it takes less than 10 minutes to create a new block, or upwards if the average block time is above 10 minutes. 

Also critical to difficulty adjustment is Bitcoin’s hashrate, which is the total computing power of all the miners on the network. Hashrate increases with an increase in the number of miners dedicating their computing power to processing transactions and secure the network. 

The metric falls when miners decrease. In this case, the more miners join the network, the higher the difficulty adjusts and the more miners switch off their equipment, the lower the adjustment.

Bitcoin’s hashrate has increased slightly from 245.10 exahashes per second (EH/s) at the last difficulty adjustment, with on-chain data showing its currently at 257.04 EH/s. 

The post Bitcoin mining difficulty falls 7.3%, largest since July 2021 appeared first on CoinJournal.

• FLOKI has hit a daily high of $0.00001066 today.
• OKX has promised to list FLOKI this week.
• At press time, FLOKI had risen by 10.47% over the past 24 hours.

FLOKI is today’s biggest gainer after surging by more than 10% in a day when the general crypto market is bearish. The global crypto market cap has dropped by 1.72% to $859.37 billion today.

With the recent market plunge, it is evident that the bearish market sentiment after the FTX collapse is likely to reverse the little gains that the market had made in the past month. Bitcoin, for example, is threatening to go below 17000 while Ethereum has dropped below $1300.

Why did FLOKI price surge today?

The main reason for the Shiba Inu-inspired meme coin FLOKI to stage a bullish rally at a time when the general crypto market is on a downward trend is the announcement by the OKX crypto platform.

OKX has announced that it will list FLOKI trading pairs starting December 16 at 10 AM (UTC). According to the press release, OKX will list FLOKI/USDT and FLOKI/USDC.

The move offers an opportunity for OKX users to expand their trading portfolio while also giving FLOKI investors an opportunity to trade the token on OKX.

The post FLOKI price surges by more than 10%: here’s why appeared first on CoinJournal.

• FTX filed for bankruptcy in November and Senator Patrick Toomey says Congress should move to provide regulatory clarity on crypto, adding that FTX’s collapse has nothing to do with cryptocurrency.
• According to the lawmaker, cryptocurrency is software that has nothing instrinsically good or evil about it.
• He says the ‘code committed no crime’ and that the US cannot ban crypto  as that only pushes it offshore.

US Senator Patrick “Pat” Toomey Jr., a crypto-friendly lawmaker who believes regulatory clarity can benefit the sector, says the FTX case is about the crimes committed by Sam Bankman-Fried and others, and that the saga has nothing to do with cryptocurrency or the underlying technology.

Toomey, who said in an interview with CNBC’s ‘Squawk Box’ on Tuesday that the indictment of the former FTX CEO should not be an indictment of crypto, maintains that the ‘code committed no crime.” 

He was commenting on FTX’s implosion following a House Committee hearing.

“The wrongful behaviour that occurred here is not specific to the underlying asset. What appears to have happened here is the complete breakdown in the handling of those assets,” he said.

‘Nothing intrinsically good or evil about software’

According to Senator Toomey, handling of the saga going forward should not involve calls to ban crypto altogether until regulations are in place. Indeed, his view is that FTX would not have happened if Congress had moved to offer the regulatory guidelines necessary to promote the ecosystem and help robust, well-regulated US-based exchanges take root.

That hasn’t happened, and it’s important to note that there’s a difference between crypto as the underlying software and the companies built on top of it – like FTX. He added:

“There’s nothing intrinsically good or evil about software…it’s about what people do with it. And with this analogy in mind, what we should all understand here is one simple thing – the code committed no crime. FTX and cryptocurrency are not the same thing.”

No one banned mortgages after 2008

The lawmaker also stated that it’s the FTX founder and his team that were ‘opaque’ and dishonest. Not the crypto.

He referenced the 2008 financial crisis, noting that no one moved to ban mortgages following the crisis, nor the US dollar when certain individuals mismanaged customer funds. Likewise, it would be inconceivable for people to suggest a ban on crypto – as the problem is clearly FTX and the misuse of customer funds.

Pause crypto! Toomey says ‘no way’, and that would only succeed in pushing the industry offshore.

“Short of enacting draconian, authoritarian policies, cryptocurrency cannot be stopped. If we try, the technology will simply migrate offshore. Cryptocurrency does not need brick and mortar facilities to operate.”

To help streamline the crypto sector and have properly regulated American crypto exchanges, he points to Congress.

The collapse of FTX is not an indictment of crypto. It’s an indictment of those who misused customer assets.

As I’ve said for months, Congress needs to give regulatory clarity so business flows to prudent, sensible, well-regulated American crypto exchanges. pic.twitter.com/oXKZdawO0m

— Senator Pat Toomey (@SenToomey) December 14, 2022

Senator Toomey’s remarks on Wednesday come after Bankman-Fried’s arrest in the Bahamas. The former FTX CEO faces several criminal charges from the US Department of Justice, US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). 

As reported earlier, new FTX CEO John J Ray III believes what happened at FTX is ‘old-fashioned embezzlement.’

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