Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Coinsents Crypto Wire, your regular update of news and events regarding Bitcoin, Ethereum, the other digital assets and the greater global geopolitical scene at large. Today's December 15, 2022, let's get started.
At a U.S Senate Banking Committee hearing on FTX's collapse, Shark Tank investor Kevin O'Leary claimed that Binance put the crypto exchange out of business. O'Leary said that Binance and FTX were at war with each other and Binance intentionally put FTX out of business. He added that Binance is now a massive Global Monopoly. Binance CEO CZ has previously criticized O'Leary for defending Sam Bankman-Fried.
Ripple's Chief Technology Officer, David Schwartz, has hit back at Canadian businessman Kevin O'Leary after the latter claimed Binance was responsible for the collapse of FTX. Schwartz says that O'Leary's allegations are against the entire weight of an absurdly massive amount of evidence.
U.S congressman Tom Emmer has claimed that SEC Chairman, Gary Gensler, knew that FTX was fraudulent, but still held meetings with the exchange's founder Sam Bankman-Fried. The SEC has charged Bankman-Fried with defrauding FTX investors of over $1.8 billion since the exchange's inception in May, 2019. Emmer has claimed that Gensler was aware of the fraud from the start, and will be held accountable for his meetings with Bankman-Fried. Emmer also alleges that Gensler was working to help FTX obtain a regulatory monopoly.
On December 9th, the number of active Ethereum addresses reached a new all-time high at 1.4 million, according to data from Glassnode. This is the first time active addresses have exceeded 1 million since July. The surge in activity was also accompanied by spikes in ERC20, and stable coin transactions. With ERC20 transactions reaching a new all-time high, and stable coin transactions reaching near all-time high levels. The increase in activity suggests growing interests and adoption of Ethereum and its associated technologies
On-chain data aggregator Santiment has said the on-chain data shows that Bitcoin and Ethereum's prices have jumped to their highest levels since November, back when FTX announced it was insolvent. Santiment also said that Ethereum's utility had hit its highest levels since May, 2021, and the surge in the activity of Ethereum wallets was likely not caused by regular profit-taking opportunities. The market the data analytics firm said that after the total social volume surged for Bitcoin and Ethereum, prices reversed and reached a five-week high. It said that in order to push prices higher, traders enthusiasm must stay high, with fear remaining low.
Taking a look at sentiment, the daily average scores for Bitcoin on Twitter continue their uptrend despite the recent downtrend in prices. This is the daily average of the Bitcoin upvote to downvote ratio on Reddit. Leading up to the FED announcement, it was serving as a leading indicator leading the price increase, and then before the announcement you can see sentiment took a sharp dive. Sentiment has recovered, although here lately it seems to have been leveling off. This is the sentiment scores for comments on Benjamin Cowan's YouTube channel. The commenters on his channel typically have a good idea of what's going on in the market; they seem to be correlated. Their sentiment seems to be correlated, and you can see a very sharp drop, very sharp drop, um, maybe a day ,18 hours before the FED announcement. Whatever Benjamin Cowan's video said on December 13th convinced his viewers that, uh, there was a price drop coming the next day. And, uh, taking a look at Altcoin Daily, same thing on Altcoin Daily's YouTube channel, uh, sentiment analysis on the comments on their channel has a habit of being a uh being in harmony or being a leading indicator, and you can see that price was increasing, uh, leading up to the uh uh fed announcement. But, then sentiment is now following price uh it's still in harmony but following the price.
The price of Bitcoin has dropped 3.2 percent following the United States Federal Reserves decision to raise interest rates by 50 basis points. The federal funds rate has been raised to four and a quarter to four and a half percent and the crypto market reacted immediately to the news. The best performing sector in the crypto market is yield farming, which has gained nine percent.
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission has charged eight individuals with securities fraud involving Twitter and Discord. The defendants allegedly promoted themselves as successful Traders on the platforms, encouraging their followers to buy certain stocks. They then allegedly sold their own shares without disclosing their intentions, resulting in fraudulent profits of around $100 million. The SEC is seeking penalties including a permanent injunction, and disgorgement. Parallel criminal charges have been filed against the individuals by the Department of Justice's fraud section.
The co-CEO of FTX Bahamas, Ryan Salame, told the Bahamas Securities Commission that clients assets held with FTX digital have been transferred to Alameda Research, a sister trading firm. This would constitute misappropriation or fraud, according to a letter from the Securities Commission of the Bahamas. The co-mingling of funds between FTX and Alameda research is a key issue in the FTX Saga, as former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has been charged by the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission with fraud for allegedly giving Alameda Research access to FTX customer funds. FTX filed for bankruptcy on November 11th.
PayPal is working on a Metamask Web3 wallet integration, which will enable users to buy Ethereum using their PayPal accounts. The integration will facilitate the transfer of ETH from PayPal to Metamask, making it simpler for users to purchase ETH and interact with the Web3 ecosystem. The offering will initially be available to select US-based Metamask customers, however, the company plans to roll out the feature to all US-based customers in the coming weeks. The integration with Metamask follows PayPal's introduction of a feature that allows users to transfer their crypto assets from their accounts to other external wallets or exchanges.
A new survey undertaken by Gaming industry payment processor Zebedee has revealed that gamers are generally positive about the benefits of playing and earning with blockchain based games. The survey asked 903 gamers in North America, Europe, China and Southeast Asia, about their opinions on blockchain based gaming, with results indicating that 68 percent of respondents were open to integrating crypto assets into gameplay, and 76 percent were interested in earning rewards in exchange for playing games. Furthermore, 74 percent of respondents said that they would like to be able to securely store their digital assets within a wallet connected to a game platform or server cluster.
The Layer 1 blockchain technology protocol Algorand has been chosen as the public blockchain to support Bank and Guarantees Insurance in Italy. The Algorand supported digital guarantees platform will be used in Italy's Banking and Insurance markets and will be launched in early 2023. This is the first time an EU country will use blockchain technology for Bank and Insurance guarantees. The project is being developed by the Catholic University of Milan's Research Center for Technologies Innovation and Finance, and has been endorsed by the bank of Italy and the Italian Insurance Authority.
In a recent Twitter space, CZ from Binance addressed concerns about the impact of regulatory compliance policies on the adoption and development of Web3 economy, particularly in Africa. CZ suggested that regulatory clarity can make adoption easier and highlighted the potential for faster adoption of technology in regions with a strong need for it. He addressed rumors and misinformation about Binance, stating that the company holds user assets on a one-to-one basis, and that building is the best way to combat fud. CZ emphasized the importance of providing good service to Binance's users, and mentioned that the company uses an AI bot to handle most inquiries. He also discussed the current state of the NFT market and Binances plans for 2023.
Binance CEO CZ has warned that the next few months will be a bumpy road for crypto as the sector faces a long bear Market impending regulation and overall fud. CZ said that governments and banks are taking advantage of the situation to take crypto out of the hands of retail investors and build a regulatory wall to ensure that the sector is squashed until Central Bank Digital Currencies can be rolled out. CZ advised retail investors to take their digital assets off of centralized exchanges and store them in wallets in their own custody. Binance itself is currently experiencing fud with more than $3 billion drawn off the exchange in recent days.
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