Last Week’s Cryptocurrency News. Friday, January 13th


Friday, 13th of January. As the week comes to an end, we can focus on the highlights of the crypto industry over the past few days.

Forbes: Binance faces massive asset outflow

Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange, encountered a significant outflow of assets – over the past two months, it has lost about $12B, according to Forbes.

Nansen analysts reported on December 13, 2022, that $3 billion had been withdrawn from the exchange within seven days. As of that time, it represented 4% of the total balance, the report said.

“A Forbes investigation revealed that, in fact, Binance lost 15% of its assets since a Twitter posting by Zhao (widely known as CZ) on the same day as he downplayed the Nansen report withdrawals,” the paper reads.

Reporters noted that the platform’s net assets have plummeted 24% since November, while investments in MATIC, APE and GALA tokens have shrunk by 40-50% on the exchange.

As Forbes believes, the lack of confidence between investors is best demonstrated by the trends of Binance Coin (BNB) and Binance USD (BUSD). Starting from the same month, the former has lost 29% of its value and, judging by the edition’s estimates, the exchange has about 29 million BNB – which is 51% less than what was listed in the list of cryptocurrency reserves dated November 10.

What the publication also highlighted was the discrepancy in estimates of the platform’s wallet balance made by a number of analytical organizations. As of November 10, Binance held 58 million BNB (~$17 billion at the exchange rate at the time).

On January 4, CoinMarketCap (CMC) evaluated the BNB exchange’s holdings as high as 57 million. The publication cast doubt on the “reliability” of the figures regarding the number of tokens, citing data from other analytical agencies:

  • Nansen – 22 million BNB;
  • DefiLlama – 40 million BNB;
  • Arkham – 24 million BNB.

Bitcoin surges above $18,000 amid U.S. inflation data release

Overnight on January 12, bitcoin price rallied above the $18,000 mark for the first time since mid-December 2022. In the last 24 hours, BTC rose 4% in value, according to CoinGecko.

As of this writing, the asset is trading around $18,100. Increased price was accompanied by a spike in its trading volume.

The captain of crypto industry dragged along the rest of the market – in fact, it took all of the assets from the top 10 by market cap to enter the “green” zone. Ethereum (+4.9%) and Cardano (+3.5%) proved to be the best performers.

As Coinglass reports, over $245 million worth of positions in the futures market were liquidated overnight. Ethereum-based contracts account as much as $112 million of the total (~$77 million are the bitcoin derivatives).

This hike in price occurred due to expectations of declining inflation in the U.S..

As per CNBC, a consensus poll of analysts suggests the rate will slow to 6.5% year on year (7.1% in November). According to experts, the baseline inflation rate is expected to reach 5.7% (6% a month earlier).

FTX Group regained access to $5B in liquid assets

Advisors to the FTX Group in bankruptcy recovered more than $5 billion in assets to be used to repay affected creditors. This is reported by Bloomberg Law, citing Andy Dietderich, the lawyer of the group.

“We have located over $5 billion of cash, liquid cryptocurrency and liquid investment securities,” Reuters quoted Dietderich as saying. 

Specified amount does not include funds previously frozen by the Bahamas regulator. The attorney estimated their value at $170 million. 

What he explained was that the assets seized in the Bahamas mostly consisted of utility tokens from the FTT exchange. It is difficult to sell tokens on the open market given their high volatility. 

At the Jan. 11 court hearing, the attorney also asserted that the company had “discovered a large number” of other risk assets. Dietderich explains that FTX Group intends to sell non-strategic investments with an estimated book value as high as $4.6 billion.

The FTX Group legal team has identified more than 9 million customer accounts, Dietderich added. John Dorsey, the judge. granted a motion to conceal the names of identified users, declaring the information to be a trade secret.

The attorney pointed out that the group’s advisors have not yet calculated the amount of its customers’ losses.

As you may remember, there are approximately 117 potential buyers interested in acquiring FTX units, according to court documents.

Yuga Labs to launch an online game with NFT rewards

Yuga Labs, the company behind the NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), unveiled plans to launch Dookey Dash, a game that offers non-fungible tokens as a reward for activity.

They will give away Sewer Pass tokens to NFT owners from the Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club collections on January 17. Sewer Pass will allow you to connect to the game itself. 

To participate, you are not obligated to hold the above NFTs. It is possible to purchase the Sewer Pass on the secondary market.

This event will be concluded on February 15. Until February 8, players can earn points, which are then exchanged for “mysterious new power source,” the nature of which remains undisclosed.

The company noted that “sources” will “evolve” throughout the year and “prepare for the battles to come.”

“You’ll get 3 weeks to play as many times as you want. Players will be rewarded based on their performance in the sewer. The highest score gets the key,” the project website says.

In an interview with CoinDesk, co-founder Wylie Aronow dropped a hint that the Dookey Dash is part of Yuga Labs’ broader plans to improve the Otherside metaverse experience. With the platform, players will be able to own land and turn NFTs into playable characters.

To recap, in 2022, the trading volume of Ethereum-based NFTs exceeded $23.7 billion. The peak their activity came with this very announcement by Otherside.

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