Bankrupt crypto lender BlockFi has asked a U.S. court to green light customer withdrawals that are locked up in the platform, court filings show. Crypto held in BlockFi wallets belongs to customers and the company has “no legal or equitable interest,” in funds that were frozen when the platform halted operations on Nov. 10, a motion filed on Monday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey said.
CoinDesk
Collapsed crypto exchangeFTX will attempt to recoup voluntary paymentsmade to third parties prior to its collapse, pursuing them in court if necessary. These payments may include founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s political donations in recent years. FTX said Monday it had been “approached by a number of recipients of contributions or other payments” looking to return what they had received from Bankman-Fried or other FTX executives. FTX did not immediately respond to CoinDesk’s request for clarity on this point.
FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried gave ex-Jane Street traders who formed Modulo Capital $400 million. Modulo was founded in early 2022 and operated out of the same luxury Bahamian condominium community where Bankman-Fried and other FTX employees lived. Though this amounted to one of Bankman-Fried’s largest venture capital bets, Modulo’s identity was a mystery, giving rise to plenty of speculation.
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Market Insight:
Bitcoin (BTC) traded higher early Tuesday, defying the Bank of Japan (BOJ)-inspired slump in stock markets.
The BOJ unexpectedly lifted the cap on the 10-year Japanese government bond yield to 0.5% from the previous 0.25%, ending the long period of near-zero interest rates. The 10-year yield serves as a benchmark for other borrowing rates.
The central bank said the policy tweak would facilitate the transmission of monetary-easing effects, indicating that it didn’t want markets to read it as a sign the BOJ is finally pivoting away from liquidity easing.
However, risk assets did just that. The futures tied to the S&P 500 fell nearly 1% and Nikkei, Japan’s benchmark equity index, tanked nearly 3%. Bitcoin, however, remained resilient, rising 2% to $16,800.
The chart compares the price of BETH, a tokenized version of staked ether on Binance, with Coinbase’s wrapped ether token cbETH.
BETH is trading at the widest discount to ether’s price in six months, while the discount in cbETH has narrowed to levels last seen in August.
The discount in BETH shows investors are pricing in risk on the Binance-issued token.
Fears of Binance’s insolvency recently reached a fever pitch after the exchange’s proof-of-reserves report did not provide details about the exchange’s internal controls in Binance’s margin and loan products.
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