The week was a cautiously optimistic one for an industry still shaken by the turmoil of last year. Prices grew all week with Solana leading the charge with a 36% rally, all the more surprising considering SOL’s price was in freefall for the last two months following the collapse of FTX.
But there are still further crises in the industry, like that of crypto exchange Gemini and its lending partner, crypto prime broker Genesis. Genesis allegedly owes $900 million to users of Gemini’s Earn service, who have been unable to withdraw their money since FTX collapsed back in November.
Gemini co-founder Cameron Winklevoss on Monday tweeted a sharp open letter to Barry Silbert, CEO of Digital Currency Group, and by extension, Genesis, its wholly-owned subsidiary. “It is now becoming clear that you have been engaging in bad faith stall tactics,” wrote Winklevoss, accusing Silbert of squandering $1.675 billion of creditors’ and investors’ funds.
Silbert vehemently denied the charges. Cameron rejoined and then several more tweeters piled in and bickered.
DCG did not borrow $1.675 billion from Genesis
DCG has never missed an interest payment to Genesis and is current on all loans outstanding; next loan maturity is May 2023
DCG delivered to Genesis and your advisors a proposal on December 29th and has not received any response
— Barry Silbert (@BarrySilbert) January 2, 2023
Progressive political blogger Max Berger on Tuesday deep dived into disgraced FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s history of political donations. Berger claims SBF supported right-leaning Democrats and right-voting billionaires to stunt the growth of more progressive voices.
I spent some time looking into SBF’s political giving and what I found was pretty shocking.
SBF was collaborating with AIPAC and Trump supporting billionaires to stop the growth of the squad and the electoral left.https://t.co/S5gra6NsRv
— Max Berger (@maxberger) January 3, 2023
That same day, blockchain sleuth @ZachXBT that day publicly pilloried Twitch streamer and NFT creator DNP3, who earlier posted a confession and an apology for squandering investors’ funds in crypto casino Stake to feed his gambling addiction. He also said he is “working with a help group” to recover.
Cardano founder and creator Charles Hoskinson served up a watertight economic argument for right-clicking and saving other people’s NFT profile pics.
I liked the picture so I used it as my profile picture. The artist and NFT owner don’t mind because it increased the value of their work and product having the historical association with me. I get a cool PFP for a little while. It’s called an economy. Pretty cool isn’t it?
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) January 3, 2023
On Wednesday, Financial Times reporter Kadhim Shubber tweeted an update about Celsius’ ongoing bankruptcy proceedings. Several tweeters responded by highlighting the advantage of self-custody.
On Thursday there were rumblings of layoffs at Huobi as internal employees’ communications went down. By Friday, it was confirmed that Huobi had become the latest popular exchange to announce mass layoffs as a result of the bear market, following Coinbase and Crypto.com.
BREAKING: Huobi shut down internal employee communication groups and feedback channels.
What’s going on at @HuobiGlobal
— Garlam (@GarlamWON) January 5, 2023
Finally, Ryan Selkis, co-founder of crypto market intelligence firm Messari, was briefly suspended from Twitter on Saturday for pretending to be Ryan Selkis.
“Good to be back to this hell on earth app I call home,” he posted upon his reinstatement. “48 hours of Twitter ‘permanent suspension’ got me pretty excited for the year in decentralized finance, governance, social media, identity, and hardware networks.”
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