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2023-03-13 17:45:40
Market situation
After several gaining sessions, US stocks fell yesterday. Stock futures also showed a similar downtrend. Gold and oil fluctuated around the price of 1799 USD/ounce and 78 USD/barrel, respectively.
The crypto market in general rose slightly. Bitcoin price is still around 16,800 USD despite the past two days of US stocks rising and falling.
Google has released new details about a major change to its performance rating system, and it shows how easy it will be for employees to fall into the more underrated categories. More Google employees will be at risk of low performance ratings, and fewer are expected to get high scores under a new performance review system starting next year.
Questions asked by employees at a recent hand-over meeting showed a lack of confidence in leadership’s candidness with the way they handle headcount. Employees said the new system amid industry-wide layoffs had caused “a lot of suffering and anger”.
Update on FTX
Two of his top executives, Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang, pleaded guilty Wednesday to multiple criminal charges related to fraud at FTX and are cooperating with the federal government.
The SEC and CFTC have also announced charges against both, saying that Ellison manipulated the price of FTT tokens issued by FTX. The SEC also said that all three people including SBF were active participants in a scheme to hide important information from FTX investors, manipulate FTT prices, and serve as collateral for unsecured loans. disclosed that Alameda withdrew from FTX without credit limit.
Caroline Ellison has only assumed the position of chief executive officer of Alameda since August 2022, before that, Sam Trabucco had no information related to any indictment. Both Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang pleaded guilty and said they followed Sam Bankman-Fried’s request.
In Caroline Ellison’s plea agreement, she will be released on bail at $250,000. At the same time, Caroline needs to hand over her passport and confiscate her property. In addition, the Justice Department will waive all charges, except criminal tax violations, as long as she accepts all of them.
As for Gary Wang, he pleaded guilty to complicity in organizing fraud. To the SEC’s charges, he pleaded guilty to creating software that allowed Alameda to take unlimited funds from FTX customers. Currently, Gary is also on bail with the amount of 250,000 USD.
The SBF was extradited to the United States. And he will be released on $250 million bail while awaiting trial on eight federal criminal charges related to alleged fraud at his crumbling crypto empire. SBF needs 10% collateral for the $250 million guarantee, which means only $25 million in collateral is required. The mortgage amount is equal to the house of SBF’s parents (about 4 million USD), money from a relative and an anonymous helper.
SEC calls FTT a security
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) calls the FTT token a security. The agency gave the reasons given as:
First, this “buy and burn” program of FTT tokens is like companies buying back their shares. FTX company will use the revenue to buy back FTT and burn it. Thus increasing the value of FTT.
Second, FTT investors have a reasonable expectation of profiting from FTX’s efforts to deploy investment funds to generate FTT usage and deliver demand and value to the business. joint business of FTX and FTT.
To date, Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison and FTX co-founder Gary Wang have both pleaded guilty to various charges and have not challenged the SEC’s charges.
The question is why the SEC calls FTT a security at this point. Maybe they want to take advantage of when the FTT company collapsed and the leaders couldn’t fight their accusations. So, the SEC easily won the case and set a precedent for securities regulation for a crypto token.
At this point, many worries about the BNB token will be accused of the same. About FTT and BNB are similar in that both are exchange tokens. At the same time, BNB also has a copper burning mechanism.
Previously, BNB was burned periodically based on their earnings. However, from Q4 2021, Binance has changed the burning mechanism, the amount of BNB burned is based on the BNB price and the number of transactions of the network at the time of burning. This is the difference with the mechanism of FTT.
Another difference is that Binance doesn’t use their earnings to buy burned BNB. The burned BNB is in their treasury. In addition, FTT has a greater dependence on FTX. BNB is less dependent and has its own network. This is the difference between FTT and BNB coins. Currently, the SEC has only sued the FTT token and has not mentioned BNB.
Other information:
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The President of Brazil has officially signed the crypto bill, recognizing Crypto as a legal means of payment and protected property by law. While not recognizing crypto or Bitcoin as official currency, this is a significant step forward.
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Gemini Earn customers have stopped allowing users of the Earn product to withdraw because the Digital Currency Group (DCG) incident involving FTX left them with $1.7 billion in debt to Genesis. Recently, Gemini announced they are working with Houlihan Lokey company to come up with a solution to their problem with DCG.
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The Senate passed a $1.7 trillion government funding bill, sending it to the House of Representatives, where it is expected to pass later in the day. The bill would provide $772.5 billion in non-defense discretionary programs and $858 billion in defense funding. It also allocated nearly $45 billion in assistance to Ukraine.
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