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- 🐻 CFTC sues Binance and CZ
GM friends 👋 . If you are still looking for a Bitcoin signal, here it is. Brazil and China have just signed a deal to settle trade in their own currencies instead of the US dollar. You might not realize it, but this is big news. The US dollar is the world’s leading currency reserve. The more countries move away from the standard currency, the less power and value it will have.
On top of that, BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) just surpassed the G7 nations in GDP this week. All I have to say is: 🥇 🥈🟠 .
3. The BRICS overtook the G7 in GDP this week
BRICS = Brazil, Russia, India, China, SA (+ Bangladesh, Egypt and UAE)
G7 = Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK (+ EU)
"It's no longer developed & developing world. It's ascending & descending world" - @balajis@balajis/
— George Mack (@george__mack)
5:47 PM • Mar 29, 2023
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In this issue:
📣The big story of the week. Binance and CZ get busted by the CFTC.
🚀The good. Amazon teases their web3 plans, Ticketmaster debuts their new token-gated feature and Ethereum confirms the scheduled date for the Shanghai update.
🐻The big, bad FUD. Safemoon loses nearly $9 million from an exploit, SBF is charged with another felony and Disney lays off its Metaverse department.
📣The big story of the week
Binance and CZ get busted by the CFTC
The ongoing Binance FUD has quieted in the past few weeks in favor of the global banking crisis. But it was only a matter of time before the focus would shift back to taking down the biggest crypto exchange.
On Monday, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) pressed charges on Binance and CZ for a slew of allegations.
1/23
Oh boy
Case is up and it's bad.
This is the CFTC attempting to strike *fatal* blow to Binance, and at first read through... I think they actually have really strong chances here of succeeding in toppling the Binance empire.
— Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth) (@adamscochran)
3:42 PM • Mar 27, 2023
The 74-page lawsuit goes into detail about the allegations, including:
Failing to register with the CFTC and offering unregistered derivatives products
Encouraging US customers to use VPNs and key corporate clients to set up shell companies in specific locations to avoid US restrictions and regulation
Knowningly servicing sanctioned entities and individuals
Writing fake compliance audit reports
They have also claimed that Binance has been secretly trading against their customers with 300 “in-house” accounts that are all directly or indirectly connected to CZ, but according to Binance, those accounts were exempt from their insider trading policy.
So Binance is being sued by the CFTC (USA) for basically having a 'secret' in-house trading desk with 300 accounts.
This states that Binance is basically trading against all of their users, with their 'quant' desk using private transactional data.
It seems they also "sold" it… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
— wolf (@ImNotTheWolf)
3:53 PM • Mar 27, 2023
Oh boy, those are hefty claims to be making. What was CZ’s response to this?
This refers back to his viral tweet from earlier this year, where he often refers to all the FUD as simply, “4”.
Will try to keep 2023 simple. Spend more time on less things. Do's and Don'ts.
1. Education
2. Compliance
3. Product & Service4. Ignore FUD, fake news, attacks, etc.
In the future, would appreciate if you can link to this post when I tweet "4". 🙏
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance)
9:00 PM • Jan 2, 2023
Now the real question on everyone’s mind is, what happens now? Here’s what some crypto Twitter folks are saying.
People thinking this is the End of Binance and Crypto because CFTC Sued Binance.
This is how it will end.
1. Government will ask Binance to pay a Huge Fine.
2. The fine will be equal to how much CZ spends on Lunch on the days he doesn't have lunch.
3. Back to Business.
— Emperor👑 (@EmperorBTC)
4:24 PM • Mar 27, 2023
The CFTC suit against Binance is not new information to anyone who has been paying attention.
It was a risk factor which became increasingly likely after the whole FTX debacle.
The only change here is that a probable risk became a certain one.
— Dylan LeClair 🟠 (@DylanLeClair_)
8:20 PM • Mar 27, 2023
The CFTC suing Binance is a nothing burger
The US hates innovation and crypto
All the crypto companies will go over seas and just pay a fine for their "bad behavior"
Americans down bad
— Wendy O (@CryptoWendyO)
6:32 PM • Mar 27, 2023
Between FTX and the fiat bank collapse, it seems like most people are generally unphased by this Binance FUD. In fact, Bitcoin didn’t even budge much.
Are we finally becoming FUD-resistant? It’s certainly giving strong signs of a strong narrative.
cftc sued binance & we didnt even touch 26k
— Ansem 🃏 (@blknoiz06)
7:23 AM • Mar 29, 2023
Probably the most interesting thing about the CFTC lawsuit is that crypto like Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin were referred to as commodities in the document and not securities.
This is the silver lining with the CFTC suit
CFTC is saying that many of the cryptocurrencies traded on #Binance are commodities
This would be a much friendlier and more straightforward framework for crypto.
We might finally get the regulatory clarity the industry needs
— Shingo Lavine (@shingolavine)
7:08 PM • Mar 27, 2023
Stay up and have a wonderful rest of your week!
🚀The good
🚀 The Ethereum Shanghai update is scheduled for April 15th. The much-anticipated upgrade will finally allow stakers to withdraw their ETH assets. If all goes well, it’ll likely be a bullish move for Ethereum that will bring more stakers.
🎟️ Ticketmaster debuts their token-gated feature for artists. The debut was done in partnership with metal band, Avenged Sevenfold who also have their own NFT collection. Owners of the NFT will have early access to purchase upcoming concert tickets, providing more value and utility to the holder.
👀 Amazon teases its NFT plans that includes a digital token and NFT gallery. In an email sent to a Coindesk journalist (possibly accidentally, we don’t know), it reveals the e-commerce giant’s plan to implement a native token and collectible gallery. Imagine if this launches on the Amazon homepage - majorly bullish!
🐻The big, bad FUD
🐛 Meme coin, Safemoon loses nearly $9 million from a bug exploit. Shortly after its smart contract upgrade, an exploiter found a vulnerability in its code and stole funds from Safemoon’s liquidity pool. But in a turn of events, a white hat hacker front ran the transaction by paying a higher gas fee and now holds the stolen funds. The individual claims they will return the funds to Safemoon.
🚪 Disney shuts down their Metaverse department. The Metaverse team of around 50 will be disbanded and is part of the company’s greater layoff plan that will see over 7,000 folks gone in the coming months. We would have loved to see Disney execute on a metaverse strategy as global leaders in storytelling and consumer experience, but I guess we’ll have to wait a bit longer!
🚨 Sam Bankman-Fried gets hit with yet another criminal charge, now totalling to 13 felonies. The newest criminal charge is for SBF’s alleged bribery of over $40 million in crypto to one or more influential Chinese officials. I’m sure he’ll have a comfy jail cell next to Do Kwon very soon.