The crypto soap opera of miffed partners and questionable dealings continues with the latest revelations from Genesis’s bankruptcy filing. The crypto lending firm is claiming that Gemini, the crypto exchange that is one of its biggest creditors, violated terms of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) and, therefore, its claim of almost $766 million should be voided altogether. Genesis gave collateral to Gemini in the form … Continue reading Notes 1/24: Genesis Bankruptcy Filing

As expected, Digital Currency Group’s (DCG) lending arm Genesis Global Capital filed for bankruptcy last evening. Genesis was the biggest lender in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Its business model consisted of providing yield on cryptocurrencies from firms like BlockFi and Gemini by rehypothecating them to institutional borrowers. At its peak, the company had over $16 billion on its loan book in the middle of November of … Continue reading Notes 1/20: Genesis Bankruptcy Filing, FTX Tech

It was not the allegations of “rampant” wash trading. It was not the absence of proper audits or the *snigger* decentralized chief financial officer. It was not the presence of an unregulated stablecoin or a useless security token masquerading as a utility coin on its exchange. Eventually, it was Binance’s brush with crypto exchange Bitzlato that brought the world’s biggest crypto trading exchange by volume … Continue reading Notes 1/19: Binance Drinks Bitzlato, DCG Falls Apart

The Wall Street Journal today has a long piece on Barry Silbert, founder of Digital Currency Group (DCG). As has been evident for some time now, problems are brewing at two of the firm’s most profitable businesses – Genesis and Grayscale. The former is one of the biggest trading and lending firms in crypto and the latter runs the world’s biggest publicly traded bitcoin instrument. … Continue reading Notes 1/18: Trouble at DCG

Binance is on a roll. After increasing its headcount by 5,000 people last year, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume plans to ramp up its hiring by between 15% to 30% this year, according to its chief executive officer and co-founder Changpeng Zhao or CZ as he is popularly known. Binance claims to have 8,000 employees currently, meaning it will hire somewhere between … Continue reading Notes 1/12: Binance Hires, Bitcoin Bonds

Yesterday, I wrote about the open letter sent by Cameron Winklevoss to the Digital Currency Group (DCG). The letter accuses DCG of “beyond commingling” its assets with those of Genesis, the group’s lending arm responsible for yield in the Earn program. DCG is reported to have made a loan, in the form of a ten-year promissory note, to Genesis to help the latter cover its … Continue reading Notes 1/10: More Winklevoss Drama: Will GBTC Become A Casualty?

December was a terrible month for Binance. Even as the exchange attempted to fashion order in a chaotic cryptocurrency ecosystem erupting with scandals daily, Binance found its own house unraveling. Investors are reported to have converted their holdings of Binance’s stablecoin BUSD to Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC. [There is a comment to be made here about the intelligence about said investors, but I shall … Continue reading Notes 1/9: Binance’s Assets, GBTC Discount

The Celsius bankruptcy case is back in the news. The crypto lending platform, which claimed to run a “sophisticated finance platform”, filed for bankruptcy last year amid the rough and tumble of a debilitating crypto winter. In a decision about the case today, Judge Martin Glenn wrote that the company’s contract with its users was “unambiguous” and that it had ownership rights to its customers … Continue reading Notes 1/5: Celsius Bankruptcy, BNB Burn

Binance.us, the supposedly independent American arm of the world’s biggest exchange by trading volume, has bought troubled crypto broker Voyager Digital’s assets for $1.022 billion, according to reports. Voyager filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. Binance’s purchase price is a slight decline from the $1.4 billion price that FTX was planning to pay for the assets, back in September. What Is Binance.US Buying? FTX had … Continue reading Notes 12/19: Binance.US Buys Voyager’s Assets

Over the weekend, the spotlight in cryptocurrencies shifted from FTX’s problems to those for Binance, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume. The exchange, which does not have a headquarters, is attempting to take charge of the crypto ecosystem after FTX’s shenanigans have left it without a representative. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) has replaced FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried as the public face of cryptocurrencies. … Continue reading Notes 12/12: Binance’s Problems Multiply

What to make of the action at Grayscale’s Bitcoin Investment Trust (GBTC) and Ethereum Trust (ETH)? Both are trading at deep discounts to the price of their underlying assets. There’s talk that they might be affected by the liquidity crisis afflicting crypto and that they might wind down soon. Why Does GBTC Trade at a Discount? Since their launch (GBTC in 2013 and ETH in … Continue reading Notes 12/8: GBTC Discount, Withdrawing Staked Ether