Hello and welcome to The Node. This is Daniel Kuhn and Xinyi Luo, here to take you through the latest in crypto news and why it matters. In today’s newsletter:
FTX’s Bankman-Fried ‘Didn’t Knowingly Commingle Funds’: FTX ex-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried again clung to the narrative that FTX’s collapse resulted from an untimely market crash and insisted that he had not knowingly committed any crimes during an interview with The New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin. (Read the full transcript of the interview here.)
Nothing new came to light in the DealBook interview, though when asked about customer deposits Bankman-Fried doubled down saying he “didn’t knowingly commingle funds.”
Kraken Cut 30% of Workforce Amid Crypto Winter: U.S.-based crypto exchange Kraken said Wednesday it is laying off 30% of its global staff – around 1,100 people – in response to the crypto market downturn. Kraken said as recently as June it would hire 500 people as other companies laid off staff, indicating a worsening mass crypto layoffs trend.
Telegram CEO Building Wallets, Decentralized Exchange: In his Telegram channel on Wednesday, the messaging platform’s founder and CEO Pavel Durov announced he’s committing resources to build a decentralized exchange and non-custodial wallets that could reach millions of users. Telegram planned to develop a blockchain, Ton, and raised hundreds of millions in an initial coin offering (ICO), before it was shut down by securities regulators.
More recent crypto initiatives have fared better: The messaging app sold $50 million in usernames in less than a month through its blockchain-based auction platform, Fragment.
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David Z. Morris, CoinDesk’s chief insights columnist, makes the case that Sam Bankman-Fried belongs in prison. He runs down a list of the crypto exchange founders’ alleged crimes. Read the full story.
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Overheard on CoinDesk TV…
Sound Bites
“It takes time to conduct an audit of the scope and scale that is required of Binance.”
– Binance Chief Strategy Officer Patrick Hillman, discussing the exchange’s proof-of-reserves strategy, on CoinDesk TV’s “First Mover”
In looking to find how crypto will return to its roots, we had the opportunity to speak with Paddy Cerri, the co-founder and chief architect of Minima, an ultra-light blockchain striving to create a censorship-resistant, completely decentralized network. In our conversation, we talk about what true decentralization looks like, why we should care about censorship resistance and how Minima plans to create a better protocol for everyone. Read the full interview here
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What others are writing
Off-Chain Signals
FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried Wants You to Believe He’s Just an Idiot Boy Genius (Gizmodo)
Rising Tether Loans Add Risk to Stablecoin, Crypto World (WSJ – paywalled)
While Crypto Bro Scammed Clients, Reporters Scammed Readers (FAIR)
