FTX condemned as “unprecedented failure” amidst restructuring efforts

Edition #43 - 20 NOV 2022

In a stinging court filing posted on Thursday, John Ray III, the new boss of the bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, said the company had suffered an “unprecedented and complete failure of corporate controls”. Ray has overseen some of the biggest bankruptcies ever, including the collapse of the energy giant Enron, and has 40 years of experience in restructuring companies. He said he had never seen anything as bad as FTX.

He wrote in a filing with the Delaware bankruptcy court: “Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here”

gaming developments

• Blockchain football game Sorare under pressure from France’s gambling regulator, will expand free access;

• Axes Metaversem a play-to-earn metaverse on the BNB Chain, has been officially released on mainnet, introduces a $2,000 prize pool during Season 1;

• VeChain enters billion-dollar blockchain gaming market through new partnership with ExoWorlds.

metaverses & Adoption

• World’s top 10 most metaverse-ready countries revealed;

• Meta and EU officials disagree on metaverse centralization;

• JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America potentially exposed to Samuel Bankman-Fried’s FTX exchange;

• US senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Durbin probe FTX collapse;

• Binance resumes deposits for USDT (SOL) shortly after delisting form platform;

• Ethereum software firm ConsenSys co-launches Ethereum climate platform;

• Binance set to relaunch its bid for bankrupt crypto lender Voyager.

defi

• Crypto.com accidentally sends 320k ETH to Gate.io, recovers funds days after;

• DeFi giant MakerDAO speeds up DAI transactions and withdrawals, expands to Arbitrum and Optimism;

• Cardano’s staking numbers revealed, the second largest PoS blockchain in terms of staking market capitalization with over $8 billion;

• Nexo set to launch their own non-custodial smart wallet;

• JPMorgan: the shrinking stablecoin market is another sign of investors’ exodus from crypto;

• DeFi platforms see profits amid FTX collapse and CEX exodus;

• Decentralized credit scores: Polygon looks to disrupt market with its new identity system.

funding rounds

• zkSync parent company Matter Labs raises $200 million in a Series C round led by Blockchain Capital and Dragonfly, with participation from LightSpeed Venture Partners, Variant and a16z;

• Freelancer-focused neobank Ping raises $15 million in a Seed funding round. Y Combinator, Race Capital, BlockTower, Danhua Capital, Signum Capital and Goat Capital are among investors;

• World’s largest network of web3 builders Buildspace raised $10 million in a Seed funding round led by a16z. Founders Inc, Weekend Fund, Y-Combinator, Vayner Fund, Protocol Labs, OrangeDAO, DreamerVC, We3, Solana Ventures, Open Sea Ventures, Alchemy Ventures, Dunce Capital, Melo7, MastryVC, Earl Grey Capital and ShrugVC are among investors.

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