Crypto’s Hellish Start to 2023.

oh man the crypto Market has had a lot

of updates over the last day and a half

here from mutant ape fraud to the SEC

investigating

binance's Voyager acquisition to what's

going on with FTX and Sam bankman fraud

taking out money when he's not supposed

to be doing it what's going on with the

Robin Hood stake and holy smokes

Bitcoins stability in fact that is

exactly where I want to begin I have to

say it is a very impressive how stable

Bitcoin has been uh since really the end

of November here in the face of still

relative Market turmoil I mean look at

this we bottomed out at about 15-4 and

we've been sitting on a zero percent

Phoebe lime but not falling further when

we go look at the NASDAQ for example oh

good old Weeble updates gotta love those

we zoom out and look at the NASDAQ hey

we're off of that bottom that we had in

October great but the markets really

been suffering at least that's what it's

been feeling like and certainly if you

look at a stock like Tesla oh good lord

but BTC stability in the face of all of

this

pretty impressive pretty surprising now

of course we don't want to suggest that

the decline it's faced is impressive but

then again we've seen a decline of risk

assets across the board and that's

exactly what Bitcoin is it is a form of

a risk asset especially if you invest in

nfts like the mutant Apes nft this is a

derivative of the board ape Yacht Club

and this individual sold nfts for

approximately 500 a piece ended up

taking about 2.9 Million Dollars before

rug polling using that mostly for

personal purposes living in Dubai a lot

of people actually moved to Dubai

because of their LAX extradition tradies

with countries basically meaning if you

get in trouble in the United States you

can live in Dubai and Dubai might not

kick you out because they kind of want

more people living in Dubai anyway uh

and even if you're a criminal I guess oh

geez uh yeah I don't know maybe that's

the exception but anyway uh french guy

living in Dubai here apparently landed

in a JFK at the New York airport well

one of them there's LaGuardia and JFK

but anyway uh JFK airport and boom

government arrested him individual

blamed the toxic nft community and the

government said no Fu you are a fraud

and a scammer so bye Felicia speaking of

Fraud and scams we got to talk about

well binance although this one's a hot

tamale because a lot of folks think no

no no no they back their assets one to

one look at those proof of reserves a

lot of other people say no no no no no

no no no no no no no proof of reserves

do not show debt there's a reason

binance is auditor mazarus who prepares

those proof of reserves reports has

stopped doing them because they're

frustrated that well the people are

realizing oh wait a minute what about

liabilities now of course crypto Quant

has been supporting binance based on on

chain data but we still don't know what

other derivative liabilities could be

out there for binance but in the

meantime and maybe also what is spawning

the sec's investigation into binance the

SEC has now intervened in a deal where

binance is trying to buy Voyager digital

they announced about a month and a half

ago that they were interested in buying

Voyager digital for a billion dollars

and about 20 million in extra residual

value for the platform that's about a

billion dollars in bailouts for customer

assets and again 20 million dollars in

value for the actual platform which is

basically nothing in in the scope of a

billion dollar deal here the SEC has now

filed objections to binance's

acquisition suggesting that the SEC has

insufficient evidence to show how

binance would actually consummate the

transaction and a transaction of this

magnitude in other words how would

customer assets be protected what kind

of liabilities does binance have if

they're getting a billion dollars of

customer assets are those going down

actually remain customer assets are they

going to get used for something else

now we don't know but the SEC is saying

we're stopping this deal until we

actually have transparency from binance

which is quite interesting now Finance

so far has been weathering the storm

they faced about 6 billion dollars of

withdrawals in December

but they still haven't gone out of

business despite a lot of the drama

that's been happening in the crypto

space consider that Genesis is now

complaining saying they need more time

to file disclosures this led the

vinklevoss brothers to freak out sending

an open letter to uh while posting it on

Twitter complaining that Genesis needs

to provide answers and stop with their

quote bad faith stall tactics for when

they're actually going to provide

people's money back through Gemini earn

okay more detail so Gemini earned was

basically a way where you could deposit

money and then get yield on the money

you deposited when you left it in stable

coins and enabled the earn platform on

Gemini now I've always warned against

the yield on these stable coins as I

don't know where this is coming from

it's very very risky and this is an

example of the risk what Gemini did is

they took that money and they basically

gave it to Genesis Genesis could then

try to invest and make a higher yield

which work great in a bull market when

prices were going up now the prices are

not going up Genesis has had to pause

withdrawals and Gemini therefore had to

pause withdrawals on Gemini earn which

again was being fulfilled by Genesis

Gemini is owed around 900 million

dollars and they complain that policemen

firefighters teachers individuals of all

walks of life have their money tied up

and Genesis owes the money back as soon

as possible Genesis is now laying off

about 30 percent of its trading floor

about 60 people have been fired they're

trying to avoid bankruptcy at the same

time you have drama over at coinbase

which actually was seen as good news but

coinbase finally settled with the state

of New York for anti-money laundering

violations know your customer violations

and failures 50 million dollars is going

to go into a two-year program to improve

their kyc processes and 50 million

dollars is sort of of a punished

punishment for uh weak compliance

measures just crazy because uh coinbase

is one of the big ones but anyway

FTX uh and they're they're publicly

listed right so it's like you're

publicly listed and you screwed up boy

the big old fine uh but anyway uh FTX

has officially uh had a trial date set

for Sam bankman freed via his uh judge

we expect there to be a four-week trial

for the eight charges against him the

trial date is set for October 2nd so far

sandbagment Fred has pleaded not guilty

and you might wonder why does it take so

long to get to trial that's 10 months of

him staying at home playing video games

and that's because there's an

expectation that thousands maybe even

hundreds of thousands of documents and

subpoenas and searches and chats will be

submitted to the court for evidence and

this will all have to be reviewed and uh

presentations will have to be put

together by both the defense and the

prosecution that that takes a lot of

time and costs attorneys a whole lot of

money

so far though the judge has also allowed

the ceiling of evidence of whom the two

individuals are who co-signed outside of

sambachman Freed's parents for Sam

begman Freed's bail we believe that the

bail uh collateral requirement was about

25 million dollars the parents of Sam

begman freed have a home that they've

pledged as collateral which is only

worth a few million dollars net of debt

maybe even less so there are two others

who have pledged a significant form of

collateral to get Sam begman freed out

of jail and everyone's wondering who

those individuals are but so far the

judges

sealing that data

blockchain data is also noticing that

around 684 thousand dollars of coins

related to Alameda wallets have uh

suddenly been moved around

uh Samba free does have a condition that

is not to spend more than a thousand

dollars without Court approval and uh

it's unclear whether this actually is

considered spending money but this

moving of hundreds of thousands of

dollars when he claims to have no net

worth is quite sus and is frustrating a

lot of folks as these could be customer

assets that are being toyed with by Sam

begman freed as he's out on bail pretty

disgusting Silver Gate uh heavily

exposed to crypto here obviously has

fired 40 percent of its staff customers

withdrew four or sorry 8.1 billion

dollars in the fourth quarter they had

to sell 718 million dollars of assets at

a loss just to maintain cash liquidity

the new deposits are down 68 percent the

stock ticker symbol s i is what's been

uh suffering the silvergate capital

group down another 10 percent this stock

once trading for 239 dollars is now

trading for 11 you might have thought

that Tesla's stock drop was rough but

this stock has lost over 95 now in bad

news for earned tokens a Celsius is

earned tokens have been called unsecured

creditors by the Celsius bankruptcy

judge that basically means that if you

had deposits in Celsius earn you're not

looked at as a depositor who's usually

in the first line for getting your money

back you're actually an unsecured debt

or like creditor so in other words they

owe you a debt and uh they get moved way

back in bankruptcy proceedings in terms

of when you might ever get your money

back so for Celsius coins not looking

good on top of that you've got uh ftx's

Robin Hood stake getting seized by the

government right now Sam bankman Freed's

Robin Hood purchase which was conducted

mostly with margin from Alameda has been

seized it represents about 460 million

dollars worth of shares in Robinhood

stock Robin Hood stock trading at about

eight bucks a share right now and that

money is now being held by the

government who knows if that'll end up

getting liquidated to help try to

reimburse and help people recover some

of their deposits that were on chain or

or at the platform with um with FTX so

we'll see

but uh boy oh boy you've got a lot of

crypto happenings and despite all of

this

BTC sitting at 16-8 pretty dang

impressive you got to give BTC credit

for that uh you've got ethereum sitting

at 12-6 not as low as the 880 we saw in

July but uh boy oh boy actual stability

in ethereum and Bitcoin despite all of

these crazy things happening All Eyes

though of course on binance to see how

that story is going to unfold thanks so

much for watching folks and we'll see

you in the next one goodbye