Kategorie: Crypto News

Tezos co-founder Kathleen Breitman says the eventual filing for bankruptcy by embattled crypto lender Celsius Network is not surprising at all.

Breitman, commenting on the unfortunate turmoil that’s threatening to suck any pending warmth from an already cold crypto winter, said the lender’s trajectory towards trouble was inevitable.

The die was cast for Celsius

According to the Tezos co-founder, a suspect business model, underpinned by the massive yield offered to investors and the crypto price crash spelled bleakness for the likes of Celsius.

So when crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital collapsed and filed for bankruptcy, followed by crypto brokerage Voyager Digital, the die was cast for Celsius.

The lender, which paused customer withdrawals in early June, indicated in its filing that total liabilities stand at $5.5 billion, with over $4.7 billion owed to users. However, the total assets are about $4.3 billion to leave a $1.2 billion hole in the balance sheet.

#Celsius is missing $1,190,000,000. @Mashinsky destroyed everyone. If you lost money to him or his scheme, you did so because you straight up ignored me begging to save you. pic.twitter.com/Z7BjoqkzJ8

— Richard Heart (@RichardHeartWin) July 15, 2022

Before the bankruptcy filing, Celsius had been hit by a class action lawsuit brought by a former employee. The lawsuit alleged that the crypto lender had, among other things, disregarded risk management practices and even manipulated the market by artificially inflating the price CEL, its native token.

Before hitting the wall, the lawsuit alleges Celsius had operated more like a Ponzi scheme, using new customer deposits to sustain withdrawals.

These are the events that paint a picture of a company doomed to fail.

“For those of us who’ve been in this industry for quite some time, it’s completely unsurprising that something like Celsius would go bankrupt,” she told Bloomberg Technology.

She added that this outcome was likely “because economics does have laws that transcend the word blockchain.” The unfolding, she explained, is a “shakeout” of what wouldn’t just work – especially for businesses that staked their future on “the theory that numbers will always go up.”

The post Tezos co-founder says Celsius going bankrupt was inevitable appeared first on CoinJournal.

At the start of this year, Alpaca Finance integrated the Notification Protocol and the integration has been of great help to DeFi users especially those that use Alpaca Finance.

Alpaca users are now able to set up “position health” notifications that give an alert when the safety buffer of leveraged positions drops below the specified threshold. This way users can monitor their leveraged positions 24/7 without worrying about missing out on any notification.

Depending on the issued alert, users are able to take immediate action like adding collateral to mitigate liquidation in case of a low safety buffer alert.

What is Open DeFi Notifications Protocol?

Open DeFi Notification Protocol is a community-led initiative that was developed by defi.org. It provides users with free decentralized mobile notifications of any on-chain events that happen. The protocol is powered by the Orbs Network.

The Defi Notification Protocol is fully open meaning anyone can contribute new notifications. One only needs to implement a simple JavaScript web3 class that is responsible for extracting the notification from the data on the chain.

The protocol has an app called Open DeFi Notification Protocol App that is available on both Google Play and Apple AppStore.

What is Alpaca Finance?

Alpaca Finance is the largest lending protocol for leveraged yield farming (LYF) on Binance Smart Chain (BSC). It has a total value locked (TVL) of $ 800 million.

Alpaca borrowers are able to take under collateralized loans for leveraged yield farming positions. The loans enable users to increase their asset base and ultimately their yields.

However, opening a leveraged yield farming position comes with certain risks especially the risk of liquidation. Therefore, borrowers have to find a way of ensuring that they do not cross the liquidation threshold that triggers an automatic liquidation where all positions are closed to repay the debt.

Need for real-time notifications for LYF positions

Alpaca calculates the safety buffer of the entered positions for customers and displays how close the positions are to potential liquidation. However, displaying it does not help much since you may not be available to see the dashboard all the time.

That is where the Open DeFi Notification Protocol integration comes in. Through the integration, Alpaca Finance users can now get real-time notifications not only of real-time on-chain events but also in relation to the calculated safety buffer.

After the integration, Alpaca has also created a notification widget on their Portfolio page user interface to allow users to set alerts seamlessly.

In a nutshell, real-time notifications for DeFi users are a must especially when money is at stake and there is a likelihood of liquidation. With the Open DeFi Notification protocol integration on Alpaca Finance, DeFi users are assured of never missing any crucial alert.

The post Open DeFi Notification Protocol integration a big relief for Alpaca Finance users appeared first on CoinJournal.

• Coinbase added to its headcount by 200% year-over-year as crypto saw massive growth.

• The risks of that is what informed the decision to thin out the employee numbers in June.

• Now the focus on “driving efficiency” with scaling in mind to better serve customers.

Coinbase is looking at ways to ensure efficiency at all of its operations during these lean crypto times, Brian Armstrong, the CEO of the top crypto exchange said in a blog post.

Commenting on the company’s massive employee growth over the past eighteen months, Armstrong noted that it was a “ton” of growth. However, even as they adjust to that, it’s time to focus on “driving more efficiency.”

Coinbase grew a ton in 2021 and we’re still adjusting to that growth. One of the crazy parts about our industry is that in any given year we might be growing 300-500% or -50%. It makes it incredibly challenging to plan and culturally to absorb so many people during up periods.

— Brian Armstrong – barmstrong.eth (@brian_armstrong) July 12, 2022

According to the Coinbase boss, unchecked workforce growth may see a company slow down and become less efficient. 

When this happens, most largely to massive scaling, getting off the wrong turn often eats up “more dollars, more people and more time” just to get things going. In the meantime;

“Coordination headwinds increase, vetocracies emerge, risk tolerance fades, and teams become inwardly focused instead of staying focused on their customers,” he added, pointing to the risks of unchecked headcount growth.

What great companies do

Armstrong, whose company is among those to lay off employees amid the crypto winter, said that the outcome (layoffs) was what any great company would do.

“Every great company, from Amazon to Meta to Tesla, found ways to retain their founding energy in conjunction with appropriate controls, even as they scaled to be much larger than Coinbase is today,” he wrote.

He explained that in most cases, the so-called great companies always find ways to “maintain their insurgent mindset,” doing so to avoid careening into complacency and turning into an “irrelevant” at a later date.

“That’s why we’re focusing on driving more efficiency at Coinbase. After 18 months of ~200% y/y employee growth, many of our internal tools and organizing principles have started to strain or break. So we’ve been digging in to identify the set of changes we need to make to help us succeed at this new scale,” he added.

One of the steps towards achieving this was to cut their headcount as was done in June. 

The exchange will also continue to find novel ways to add more efficiency to its services, with the objective being to return to that “mindset and approach” by which the company saw much success.

The post Coinbase ‘grew a ton in 2021’, and is still adjusting, CEO says appeared first on CoinJournal.