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FTX Political Donations Came From Stolen Customer Funds 🚨

FTX Engineering Chief Nishad Singh testified how FTX customer funds were funneled into political donations -- plus the top news, stats, and reports of the week in crypto.

Author

Ryan Allis
October 18, 2023

Issue Summary: Welcome back to Coinstack, the weekly newsletter for institutional crypto investors and industry insiders. We review the top news, stats, and reports in the digital asset ecosystem for our 150k weekly subscribers. This week we cover insider Nishad Singh testifying, Caroline Ellison’s balance sheet debacle, a judge ordering Genesis to respond to a subpoena, and new crypto venture rounds for Account Labs ($7.7M) and Squads Labs ($5.7M).

Price performance since we began writing Coinstack in January 2021

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đź’µ Weekly Crypto Fundraises & Deals

Here are all the crypto fundraises we heard about this week, ranked by size…

🗞️ Crypto News Recap: The Top 5 Stories

Welcome back to This Week in Crypto… everything you need to know in one scannable format. Here are the top 5 stories of the week…

  1. ⚖️ FTX Insider Nishad Singh Testified that FTX Customer Funds Were Illegally Funneled into Political Donations: On Monday, former FTX engineering chief Nishad Singh became the latest member of Sam Bankman-Fried’s inner circle to testify against the crypto founder, telling Department of Justice prosecutors how he helped direct customer funds for the company’s own purposes. Wow. Here’s hoping the proceeds from Anthropic’s AI success (a FTX venture investment) will eventually make all FTX depositors whole.

  2. 🎭 Inside SBF’s Trial: The Corruption of Caroline Ellison: Before Caroline Ellison, in her role as Alameda Research CEO, repaid billions of dollars in loans Alameda had taken out from third-party lenders, she checked with the firm’s owner, Sam Bankman-Fried. She checked with Bankman-Fried before speaking to employees. She checked with Bankman-Fried before tweeting. She checked with Bankman-Fried before sending Alameda’s balance sheet to investors — and asked which of her seven drafts he liked best.

  3. 🎭 Judge Orders Genesis to Respond in 5 Days to subpoena in Terraform case:A New York district judge ordered crypto lender Genesis to comply with a subpoena after he said the firm failed to share certain documents in a case involving the dramatic collapse of algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD.

  4. 👋 SEC Won’t Appeal Loss in Grayscale Case, Boosting the Odds GBTC Can Become a Bitcoin ETF: The Securities and Exchange Commission won’t appeal a court’s scathing reversal of its decision not to let Grayscale convert its bitcoin trust into a more investor-friendly exchange-traded fund, according to a person familiar with the matter, possibly clearing the way for the first bitcoin ETF in the U.S.

  5. ⚖️ Tether CEO Steps Down, Naming Paolo Ardoino as Successor at Stablecoin Issuer: Stablecoin giant Tether has appointed the company’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Paolo Ardoino as CEO, assuming the role formerly held by Jean-Louis van der Velde (JL). Ardoino will formally assume his leadership role beginning in December while continuing to operate as CTO. He also remains CTO of crypto exchange Bitfinex, and Chief Strategy Officer of Holepunch, an app development platform.

đź’¬ Tweet of the Week

Source: @Cointelegraph

đź“Š Key Stats of the Week

Here are the most important and interesting stats in crypto this week...

1. Base’s daily activity on the network remains ahead of its two main competitors, Arbitrum and Optimism.

Source: @TheBlockPro__

2. On 10/14 only 587.28 ETH were burned, the lowest amount since 10/2/2022 as activity on the network slows down in the bear market.

Source: @TheBlockPro__

3. The discount on GBTC has widened due to a lack of news and a slew of delays on spot BTC ETF decisions, hitting 23% by end of September.

Source: @TheBlockPro__

4. The top L2 Networks, including Arbitrum, Optimism, zkSync, Linea, StarkNet, and Polygon zkEVM have collectively generated roughly $1M in profits per week since March.

Source: @DavidShuttleworth

5. stETH supply growth has slowed Ethereum's activation queue has emptied, suggesting that the network has reached a temporary staking equilibrium.

Source: @KaikoData

đź“ť Highlights from the Top Crypto Reports

Here are the top highlights from the best crypto research reports this week…

About the Author: Paul Veradittakit, is a Managing Partner at Pantera Capital, one of the oldest and largest institutional investors focused on investing into blockchain companies and cryptocurrencies. This is an excerpt from the full article, which you can find here.

I wanted to highlight Sorare which is bringing NFTs to a larger audience through sports, gaming, and collectibles by further abstracting away crypto and strengthening fanatic communities.

Key Takeaways:

  • Sorare is a web3 fantasy sports game with 5 million users across 180 countries, and has formed partnerships with major sports leagues like the Premier League, NBA and MLB.

  • Players collect NFT player cards representing real sports stars, build teams, and earn rewards based on real-life player performance. These cards have different rarities and are traded on Sorare's marketplace.

  • The game's unique scoring system ties card values to real-life player performance, encouraging fans to engage with actual sports events.

  • Sorare's success lies in its collectible-first approach, and its future lies in abstracting away the blockchain tech to onboard non-crypto users.

Introduction

Sorare is one of the most established web3 fantasy sports games, combining the familiar fantasy sports genre with blockchain technology to create a pioneering experience that allows players to realise their dreams of owning and managing their own sports team. In addition to its flagship fantasy football game, Sorare expanded in 2022 to launch games for basketball, through an NBA and NBPA partnership, and baseball, through an MLB and MLBPI partnership.

Within the Sorare game, there are three main components: collecting digital players cards, building team lineups, and competing in tournaments for rewards based on your team’s real-life performance. In this article, we will explore how Sorare leverages the web3 tech stack to create and implement this in-game experience, focusing in particular on its flagship football game. We will then use this case study to discuss Sorare’s significance and the future of fantasy sports and other forms of gameplay on-chain.

🎧 Top Crypto Podcasts of The Week

Here are the crypto podcasts that are worth listening to this week...

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đź“° The Coinstack Newsletter:

Tracking the most important blockchain stories of the 2020s, including a decentralized internet and the creation of a new open global monetary system that works for everyone. As always, published for informational purposes only. Please do your own research. Just our opinions. Not intended as financial advice as we are not financial advisors. We may own some of the digital assets we write about as we believe strongly in the sector. Please do your own research. Published and written weekly by Ryan Allis and Mike Gavela.

Coinstack is a news and analysis newsletter for the digital asset industry. None of the information here is a recommendation to invest in any securities or other types of investments. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Any historical returns, expected returns, or probability projections may not reflect actual future performance. All investments involve risk and may result in loss.

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