With the crypto world still reeling from the FTX collapse, Brazil recently passed legislation that legalized cryptocurrency use for payments in the country. How to reconcile this with all those declarations in the West that crypto is having its “Lehman moment”? Brazil may have inadvertently revealed a cleft between the developed world and emerging markets with regard to the uses and misuses of cryptocurrencies. (The legislation still requires a presidential signature before it becomes law.) Unquestionably, FTX’s Nov. 11 bankruptcy filing hurt crypto exchanges and other crypto-focused enterprises in Brazil, as well as many crypto-based companies all through Latin America …

Within the past 24 hours, the Binance cryptocurrency exchange has seen outflows of over $1.14B due to rising fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) within the crypto ecosystem. According to Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the exchange has seen this before and believes “it is a good idea to ‘stress test withdrawals’ on each CEX [Centralized Exchanges] on a rotating basis”. We saw some withdrawals today (net $1.14b ish). We have seen this before. Some days we have net withdrawals; some days we have net deposits. Business as usual for us. I actually think it is a good idea to “stress …

Binance appears to be suffering from a decline in liquidity. A report from crypto analytics firm, Nansen, indicates that Binance has had net withdrawals of more than $3.6 Billion from Dec. 7 to Dec. 13. Binance gross outflows have been approximately $8.8 billion, while gross inflows have been around $5.1 billion. Binance Netflow 7D ($) -3,660,311,347 8,783,380,428 - Outflow 5,123,069,081 - Inflow Exchange Flows dashboard ⤵️https://t.co/CYrBQLryQ0 pic.twitter.com/vV6vcqoWKK — Nansen (@nansen_ai) December 13, 2022 In addition, daily net inflows of Ethereum ERC-20 tokens to Binance were more than $2 billion per day back in November, but have reversed into outflows of …

The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA), the council of Canada's provincial and territorial securities regulators, on Dec. 13 issued an update to crypto trading platforms operating in the country. The CSA said that the authority has been reinforcing its approach to the supervision of crypto trading platforms by expanding existing requirements. According to the statement, all crypto trading firms operating in Canada — both local and foreign ones — have to comply with newly expanded terms, which ban them from offering margin or leverage trading services to any Canadian clients. The expanded terms also require crypto exchange services providers in Canada …

Bitcoin (BTC) withdrawals from largest crypto exchange Binance have passed $500 million in the past 24 hours as its CEO calls out “FUD.” Data from on-chain monitoring resource Coinglass shows Binance’s BTC balance decreased by over 30,000 BTC into Dec. 13. CZ: FUD is "thoroughly annoying" The latest hotspot for fallout from the FTX debacle, Binance has joined exchanges seeing an exodus of user funds. According to Coinglass, users withdrew 30,300 BTC ($515 million) in the 24 hours to the time of writing, this accounting for the majority of the week’s 40,150 BTC total. The abnormal behavior comes as Binance …

Crypto Twitter has blown up over the shocking news of Sam Bankman-Fried’s arrest in The Bahamas — many of whom weren’t expecting it to happen so soon. On Dec. 12, the disgraced FTX founder was arrested by the Royal Bahamas Police after receiving notification from the United States government that criminal charges has been filed against him. Within hours, politicians, crypto executives and influencers all booted up their Twitter apps to comment on the arrest of the FTX’s former CEO. New York Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who’s held a fairly neutral view on the crypto industry to date, told her …

Following the collapse of FTX and its bankruptcy filing on Nov. 11, $73 million worth of its political donations are currently at risk of being recalled to repay the failed exchange’s creditors, according to a report by Bloomberg. Speculators online allege that the former FTX CEO and his executives sought to influence industry regulations with their generous multi-million dollar donations to politicians and super-PACs. Sam Bankman-Fried, along with his executives Ryan Salame and Nishad Singh, are believed to have been among high paying donors to both the Republican and Democratic U.S. political parties. Many politicians who were at the receiving …

2022 was a near-unprecedented year of extremes and black swan events for the crypto market, and now that the year is about to wrap up, analysts are reflecting on the lessons learned and attempting to identify the trends which may point to bullish price action in 2023. The collapse of Terra Luna, Three Arrows Capital and FTX created a credit crunch, a severe reduction in capital inflows and an increased threat that additional major centralized exchanges could collapse. Despite the severity of the market downturn, a few positives have emerged. Data shows long-term hodlers and smaller-sized wallets are actively accumulating …

The consumer price index (CPI) data on Dec. 13 and the outcome of the Federal Reserve meeting on Dec. 14 could influence the United States stock markets and the cryptocurrency markets in the near term. Traders are likely to play it safe and not take large directional bets until the CPI print because any nasty surprise could produce a sharp knee-jerk reaction. Some analysts believe that Bitcoin (BTC) could fall further before it hits a bottom, but Arthur Hayes, the former CEO of crypto derivatives platform BitMEX, thinks that Bitcoin may have passed its worst phase for this cycle. While …

The cryptocurrency exchange Bybit joins the parade of exchanges in the industry pushing for transparency post the FTX catastrophe. On Dec. 12, it announced that it has launched a Merkle Tree-based proof of reserve system. The new transparency initiative allows its users to directly verify Bybit’s holdings, along with their personal assets deposited into the exchange. The feature is available to all users with funds in both trading accounts and funding accounts, which also includes crypto holdings in Bybit Earn products. Additionally the new feature enables verification of Bybit’s wallet ownership, that assets are held with a 1:1 ratio. Ben …

The case for self-custody grows stronger as investors demand evidence of their assets over crypto exchanges. While some CEOs chose to double down on assuring the funds’ safety on their platforms, Ray Youssef, the CEO of crypto exchange Paxful, sided with the idea of self-custody as he took responsibility for over 11 million users. The fall of FTX was an eye-opener for investors who predominantly entrusted crypto exchanges with safeguarding their assets. FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, however, broke this trust by misappropriating users’ funds via Alameda Research. Ever since, numerous exchanges had to share wallet information as proof of reserves …

Binance's efforts to improve transparency of its reserves also exposed red flags in the crypto exchange's finances, according to accounting and financial specialists consulted by The Wall Street Journal. As noted by a former Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) member and investment manager, the report released by the audit firm Mazars does not bring investors confidence about the exchange's finance as it lacks information related to the quality of internal controls and how its systems liquidate assets to cover margin loans. Another red flag raised by the newspaper's sources is regarding the lack of information about Binance's corporate structure. As …