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Huobi co-founder to sell major stake worth over $1B?

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Huobi’s co-founder Leon Li is apparently in negotiations to sell the majority of his shares in the company, which may be worth over $1 billion.

According to Bloomberg, Li reportedly held talks with a number of investors about selling a 60% share in the cryptocurrency company, which may be worth more than $1 billion and, according to some, as much as $3 billion.

Without going into specifics, a Huobi representative told Bloomberg that the co-founder is in talks to sell his controlling stake in the cryptocurrency exchange with a number of global juggernauts. Li reportedly told the company’s other investors about his choices at a shareholder meeting in July of this year. Li has given Hua Zhu the CEO responsibilities so he can concentrate on his health.

FTX and Sun to invest in Huobi?

According to the Bloomberg story, Justin Sun, the founder of Tron, and the global cryptocurrency exchange FTX were among the initial investors in discussions with the co-founder of Huobi. At the time of publication, Huobi had not responded to Cointelegraph’s requests for comments.

The purchase might be completed by the end of this month, according to the article. Once completed, it may rank among the largest transactions since the upheaval that began in the crypto market in May of this year.

For crypto goliaths like FTX, who have pledged $1 billion to the rescue of crypto exchanges battling to stay afloat due to significant losses and a lack of money, the market slump has also turned into an opportunity.

However, Sun took to Twitter to deny his involvment.

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Source: Twitter

Huobi, which was established in 2013, now represents a daily trading volume of more than $1 billion. After BTCC was shut down, the cryptocurrency exchange rose in popularity and quickly became the main location for Chinese cryptocurrency traders. After Beijing declared all cryptocurrency exchanges illegal and forbade foreign exchanges from providing their services, the exchange eventually stopped serving Chinese users.

Since the Chinese government’s ban, Huobi has significantly increased its global presence by obtaining licences in Dubai and New Zealand, as well as one from the United States Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).

Ethereum merge to leave Ether derivative trading unaffected: FTX

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The ETH-related futures markets would not be impacted before the Ethereum merger, the crypto spot and derivatives exchange FTX informed users on Tuesday, 9 August 2022. The platform with its headquarters in the Bahamas made it clear in a blog post that it won’t suspend or settle ether derivatives like futures and perpetual before the integration and that it plans to continue live trading throughout the event.

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Source: Ethereum blog post

It is believed that the merge, an Ethereum upgrade that will change the blockchain from proof of work to proof of stake, will go live in the upcoming months. FTX stated,

“FTX does not have any plans to halt or settle ETH futures prior to the Merge, and we will do our best to support continuous trading.”

The exchange also said that once the merging is complete, its Ethereum futures and perpetual contracts, ETH-0930, ETH-1230, and ETH-PERP, would track the price of proof-of-stake ether.

According to CoinGecko, FTX is the second-largest cryptocurrency exchange in terms of daily derivatives trading volume. The exchange has supported derivatives contracts worth $7.5 billion over the past 24 hours. Among other crypto assets, the exchange provides futures and perpetual contracts with ether as their underlying value.

According to data from local media, the aggregate open interest of ether futures across exchanges has increased from $5 billion in mid-June to more than $7.7 billion at this moment, which coincides with FTX’s statement today. A futures market’s open interest is the sum of all unsettled trading contracts. Increased open interest is a sign that more capital is flowing into the asset market. While perpetual contracts and futures provide traders access to ETH, they also give investors a method to protect themselves against potential price volatility.

Proof of work is an ‘Essential’ part of Ethereum: Justin Sun

The always contentious founder of Tron, Justin Sun, stated that he believes Ethereum’s proof-of-work model is an “important” part of the platform, just as the Ethereum community is getting ready to switch to a different proof-of-stake model after a lengthy struggle. There are many billions of dollars on the line.

The cryptocurrency entrepreneur continues to promote Ethereum’s Merge, the much-awaited event that, if all goes as planned, would see Ethereum reborn as a speedier and less expensive blockchain. But that may be the case because Sun has subsequently promised to support “EthereumPOW” if the hard effort pays off.

Solana, Avalanche, and the network he established, Tron, are just a few of the many proof-of-stake networks in the market, according to Sun. However, most PoW chains, including those like Monero and Bitcoin, are not helpful for developing apps or supporting complex economies like decentralized finance (DeFi).

Solana Attack: Slope Is to Blame; Sam Bankman Extends Support

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Following yesterday’s attack on the Solana ecosystem, information is now emerging suggesting wallet provider Slope is primarily to blame for the security flaw that allowed thousands of Solana customers to have their cryptocurrency stolen.

Slope is a layer-1 (L1) Web3 wallet service for the Solana blockchain. The foundation blamed Slope, claiming that “it appears impacted addresses were at one point created, imported, or used in Slope mobile wallet applications” through the Solana Status Twitter account on Wednesday.

Anatoly Yakovenko, a co-founder of Solana, also connected Slope wallets to the attack on his own Twitter account.

He advised customers to acquire a seed phrase from a provider other than Slope as early as they could. Additionally, he advised one of the impacted users to “Start practicing the cold/hot wallet distinction.”

Slope said that “A cohort of Slope wallets were compromised in the attack,” including some belonging to its own workers, in a statement on Wednesday regarding the status of its continuing investigation into the matter.

Users of Slope wallets were asked by the team to create new, unique seed phrases and move all assets to them rather than leaving any money in older wallets that could still be vulnerable in the future.

The Phantom team increased the caution by encouraging users to switch to a new non-Slope wallet and move their funds elsewhere.

Sam Bankman backs Solana

A day after the platform was subjected to a significant exploit, Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of FTX, came out in favor of the SOL coin. SOL is now the most underrated cryptocurrency, according to SBF, who said as much in a recent interview with Fortune magazine.

“Any blockchain would’ve broken if it’d tried to do what SOL had done. This was a way for it to figure out what needed to be refined. Pushing the boundaries to see what breaks is what other blockchains “should be doing”.

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Solana Attack: Slope Is to Blame; Sam Bankman Extends Support 4

He said that despite all the negative publicity, Solana has effectively resolved two-thirds of its technical problems. He continued by saying that he is convinced it will pass the last third.

Dogecoin Is Now Available for Japanese Investors Through FTX Japan

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Dogecoin is now officially listed on FTX Japan, which makes it the first local exchange to offer perpetual DOGE trading.

The information was made available on both FTX Japan’s website and on the company’s official Twitter account. According to the release, the exchange intends to conduct DOGE transactions at its exchanges and sales offices.

Starting at 11:00 a.m. JST on July 5, DOGE will be available for perpetual trading. Furthermore, the exchange claims to be the only domestic exchange offering Dogecoin perpetual transactions.

Dogecoin is enjoying soaring adoption

The project Dogecoin (DOGE), which started as a joke, has gained pace because Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, decided to support it. He recently revealed how he began backing the biggest dog-themed token available and added that he will continue to support the initiative despite a class action complaint being brought against him.

Individual investors have expressed interest in cryptocurrency over time, and several organizations and businesses have started using it as a form of payment. The dog-themed token has maintained a strong trend thanks to these and other events, including the decision to list on FTX Japan.

Intriguingly, according to WhaleStats, Dogecoin is now one of the top 10 tokens bought in the last day by the 100 largest Binance Smart Chain (BSC) whales. Yesterday DOGE came on the list of the top 1,000 BSC whales.

Dogecoin is now down 1.7 percent over the past 24 hours, trading at $0.067706. In the previous seven days, the meme coin’s value has increased by 2.6%. In terms of the coin’s overall performance, DOGE has fallen 90% from its all-time high of $0.7376.

FTX and Celsius-The saga

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Due to a $2 billion hole in Celsius Network’s balance sheet, cryptocurrency exchange FTX has decided not to proceed with the acquisition. Initial plans for Sam Bankman-Fried’s exchange included assuming control of the Network.

The Block received the information from two people who confirmed to them that FTX was pulling out of the agreement. The struggling Network was in contact with FTX about financial support or a takeover, the Block reported on Thursday. But after carefully examining Celsius’s financial situation, FTX made the choice not to proceed.

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According to one of the individuals, FTX found it difficult to cope with the Network and also discovered a $2 billion shortfall in its balance sheet. On June 13, Celsius made an announcement just as people were starting to gently recover from Terra’s fall. The crypto lending site stopped trading, transferring funds, and withdrawing funds due to challenging market conditions.

Numerous consumers still can’t access their cash after more than 17 days, and user funds are still frozen. As it was stated on June 19 that the process would be gradual as they continue to improve their operations and liquidity, the platform has been very slow to release any updates.

Although withdrawals are no longer permitted, the network’s crypto lending business still rewards investors every week. It has been referred to as “insulting” by many.

What this signifies is unclear to investors. They are accruing rewards, but there is no mechanism for them to cash them in. Many users used Twitter to express their anger with the business. CEO of Celsius Network Alex Mashinsky stated that the assets were secure in the meantime.

Celsius finally clears the air

Breaking its silence, Celsius publishes a new blog to inform its audience of what is happening. The blog, however, doesn’t appear to give consumers even the tiniest bit of faith that their withdrawals and trading will resume.

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Source: Celsius blog

According to the blog, the Celsius team is moving fast to stabilize platform operations and liquidity. According to the staff, rapid actions are done to give the community more information.

The team’s various activities are described in detail on the blog. A timetable for when they will resume full platform activity is not specified, though.

Additionally, the Celsius team stated that they are taking the required actions to safeguard the assets. The group emphasizes several procedures, such as liability restructuring, among others. These activities will take time and are complex, according to Celsius.

FTX ‘Not Looking For M&A’ With Robinhood

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Bahamian cryptocurrency exchange FTX was in news lately after reports emerged of a potential takeover of Robinhood Markets. According to people familiar with the matter, FTX was in discussions to acquire Robinhood.

Bloomberg later clarified that the derivatives platform has not extended Robinhood with a buyout proposal and could still decide against pursuing any kind of deal. 

In a follow-up statement to Bloomberg, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried stated that his firm is excited about potentially collaborating with Robinhood but that there were no active merger conversations, as mentioned in previous reports.

“We are excited about Robinhood’s business prospects and potential ways we could partner with them, and I have always been impressed by the business that Vlad and his team have built,” Bankman-Fried said. “That being said there are no active M&A conversations with Robinhood.”

Robinhood declined to comment.

FTX is one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world and offers derivatives products as well as spot trading. The firm has become a rival to Coinbase and Binance, though it doesn’t offer its services in the U.S.

FTX On The Move

In recent weeks, Bankman-Fried’s firm signed deals to bail out embattled crypto players. It had lend a helping hand crypto lender BlockFi by providing $250 million credit facility. Alameda, his quantitative trading firm, also committed $500 million in financing to Voyager Digital, a crypto brokerage.

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FTX 'Not Looking For M&A' With Robinhood 8

Despite mass layoffs in the crypto exchange business, SBF-led firm confirmed earlier this month that it not be slashing jobs. Bankman-Fried tweeted on June 6 that his trading platform plans to “keep growing” for the foreseeable future. 

With respect to Robinhood, the popular trading platform that introduced millions of traders to Bitcoin [BTC], Ether [ETH] and Dogecoin [DOGE] came under pressure this year as trading volumes ease from 2021’s frenzy.

Those were times when retail investors were rushing to pump money into shares of so-called meme stocks such as GameStop and AMC Entertainment.

But since its 2021 debut in NASDAQ, the discount brokerage platform has shed roughly three-quarters of its value and its current share price has too depleted form its initial public offering.

That said, Last fall, Robinhood announced it was testing a crypto wallet and revealed that the waitlist for it had reached 1 million customers.

Crypto Investors Gear Up For Goldman Sachs’ $2B Shocker

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Crypto Market’s leading assets traded in the green on June 27, after going through major downdrafts. Bitcoin, XRP, Cardano, Doge, and the like have recovered after months of downturn. Dogecoin and Solana in particular have regained over 20% in the weekly index.

Bitcoin’s price too rebounded 20% since crashing to a low of under $18,000 last week.

But a recent report of Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs looking to raise $2 billion to buy up distressed assets of beleaguered crypto lender Celsius has generated quite an attention.

Anonymous sources familiar with the matter said if the proposed deal goes ahead, investors would be able to buy Celsius’ assets at potentially steep discounts in the event of a bankruptcy.

The move comes after Goldman’s recent bullish push into crypto, including establishing its own trading desks and gauging interest from institutional investors in lending products.

For those new to the market, Celsius was on the brink of insolvency after suspending user withdrawals from the platform earlier this month, citing “extreme market conditions”. This in turn accelerated a price crash that sent bitcoin spiraling under $20,000.

According to a Forbes report, Goldman Sachs’ reported deal for Celsius’ crypto assets is likely to infuse some degree of confidence into crypto traders who were left rattled by the mega sell-offs.

Recently. digital assets exchange FTX was reportedly in talks to acquire a stake in BlockFi after the trading platform extended a $250 million credit to the lending firm.

Crypto Bailouts To Embattled Projects

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, FTX is currently in talks with BlockFi regarding purchasing a stake in the firm, but so far no equity agreement has been finalized.

FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried a.k.a SBF, has provided a helping hand to many crypto projects amid a bear market that forced many firms to cut down staff.

However, it’s not clear if FTX’s reported intent to buy a stake in BlockFi was linked to financial difficulties at the crypto lending firm amid a bear market.

On 22nd June, Trading firm Alameda Research, under SBF’s management, announced it had provided loans worth 15,000 Bitcoin [BTC] to Voyager Digital which is seeking to cover losses from its exposure to Three Arrows Capital [3AC].

WSJ Claims Crypto Has An Insider Trading Problem; Binance & FTX Denies It

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A Wall Street Journal article on insider trading in crypto platforms has caused quite a stir. Citing publicly available data, the article claimed that several anonymous crypto investors profited from inside knowledge of when tokens would be listed on exchanges.

It then takes back to August 2021 when one unknown crypto wallet had acquired a stake worth $360,000 of Gnosis coins, days before Binance revealed via a blog post that it would list Gnosis, to be traded among its users.

Shortly after the announcement, the wallet took advantage of the token’s rising price and began liquidating it entirely. As per an analysis performed by Argus Inc, the anon wallet netted a profit of about $140,000 and a return of roughly 40%.

The same wallet also exhibited similar patterns with at least three other tokens.

The report further said that the wallet was among 46 that purchased a combined $17.3 million worth of tokens that were listed shortly after on Coinbase, Binance, and FTX. However, the identity of the wallet’s owners remains unknown.

Crypto Exchanges’ Reaction To The WSJ Report

Spokespersons from both Binance and FTX said they are studying the analysis before confirming the trading activity in Argus’s report didn’t violate their policies. Coinbase maintained it has compliance policies in place which prohibit employees from trading on privileged information.

A Binance representative divulged that employees have a 90-day hold on any investments they make and that leaders in the company are mandated to report any trading activity on a quarterly basis.

“There is a longstanding process in place, including internal systems, that our security team follows to investigate and hold those accountable that have engaged in this type of behavior, immediate termination being minimal repercussion,” she said.

The spokesperson also said none of the wallet addresses were linked to its employees

In an email sent to WSJ, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried a.k.a SBF wrote that the firm has a zero tolerance policy toward employees from trading on or sharing information related to upcoming token listings.

“The trading highlighted in Argus’s analysis didn’t result from any substantive violations of company policy,” SBF added.

FTX flexes its muscle by pumping $4M to a Republican PAC

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In a show of strength, FTX Digital Markets co-CEO Ryan Salame has contributed $4 million to a new political action committee or PAC that claims to support “forward-looking Republican candidates who want to protect America’s long-term economic and national security.”

As revealed by Politico, the FTX top exec will unveil the new PAC dubbed American Dream Federal Action which will have a broader focus on national and economic security, in addition to cryptocurrency. Announcing the same, Salame released a statement saying,

“We look forward to supporting forward-looking conservative leaders who understand the urgency of advancing smart policies that set America up for success.”

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FTX flexes its muscle by pumping $4M to a Republican PAC 10

What is crypto PAC?

For the uninitiated, it is a political organization, that comprises a cadre of crypto heavyweights to represent its interests in DC. The crypto market has seen its participants gradually flex their muscles to mount pressure on the skeptical Washington political class.

Several crypto-focused firms and top-level executives have in the past committed to numerous initiatives to expand their involvement in the midterm election campaign and make their voices heard in the mainstream.

It’s the latest example of cryptocurrency interests spending cash across the election landscape as individual candidates embrace bitcoin on the campaign trail and Congress eyes new regulations. However, Salame isn’t the only crypto executive launching a political group.

FTX also remains the primary backer of super PACs

Earlier in 2022, a group of crypto financiers launched GMI PAC, aiming to spend $20 million to boost congressional candidates. Salame is among the super PAC’s early backers, along with CMS Holdings co-founder Dan Matuszewski and SkyBridge Capital, the hedge fund led by former Trump communications director Anthony Scaramucci.

Another instance of cryptocurrency moguls pouring millions into congressional primary elections was Protect Our Future PAC and Web3 Forward, both called super PACs, which spent above $2 million to boost Texas Democrat Jasmine Crockett in the March elections.

FTX co-founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried are involved in Protect Our Future, while Web3 Forward is linked to GMI PAC.

The rise of crypto PACs comes as federal agencies have been working on crypto regulation in the past year. Some remain highly skeptical, but others feel the changes are necessary for both national security and economic stability.

SBF-led FTX opens its new branch in Australia

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Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of Bahamas-based crypto exchange FTX announced the launch of its services in Austalia in the opening keynote at this year’s Blockchain Week, held at the headquarters of the Australian Securities Exchange [ASX]. 

The latest move, according to Bankman-Fried, is part of a larger effort to penetrate as many countries as possible. Stating that the world is “very much” looking for a major crypto hub in the APAC, he noted that other locations in the region “haven’t played out as expected”. “I think that has really left an opening for someplace to kind of grab that and service that region,” he added.

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The recent development comes amidst the Australian gov preparing to roll out cryptocurrency regulation. As per sources, the administration is planning to release three crucial documents by EOD aimed at reforming the crypto industry.

They would include suggestions for a new taxation structure for cryptocurrencies, rules to ensure investor protections against unscrupulous sellers, and regulations for regulating digital banks, crypto exchanges, and brokers, the article read.

Senator Andrew Bragg in a speech stated, “A new Digital Services Act would protect consumers but also “wholeheartedly and comprehensively” grasp an opportunity for Australia and “signal that we fully appreciate the promise and potential of blockchain technology”.

FTX expansion spree in Africa

Recently, the world’s largest crypto exchange by volume announced a partnership with Africa’s leading cross-border payment solutions AZA Finance. According to the press release, the collaboration intends to “expand the adoption of Web3 and digital currencies throughout Africa.” This also encompasses non-fungible tokens [NFTs].

A statement released by AZA Finance said the two firms will work to “create pathways for African users to participate and learn about the Web3 economy including educational resources & networking opportunities.”

The P.R added that the two firms are also hoping to “Make it easier than ever to deposit and payout in African currencies on FTX.com, including mobile money and local bank account integrations.”

In addition to building the Web3 infrastructure, the two companies will work to “onboard African NFTs and artists onto the FTX NFT marketplace.” They will also launch African currency and digital currency trading pairs, the release read.

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