June 27, 2022 / Unchained Daily / Laura Shin
Daily Bits✍️✍️✍️
- Harmony, a layer 1 blockchain, suffered a $100 million exploit and is now offering a $1 million bounty.
- Yuga Labs, the entity behind BAYC NFT collection, filed a lawsuit against Ryder Ripps for scamming customers.
- Bitpanda, a European crypto exchange, announced layoffs.
- The Ronin bridge, which connects the Ronin sidechain with Ethereum, will reopen after the $552 million exploit.
- Coinbase will launch Bitcoin futures via Coinbase Derivatives Exchange.
- Ripple will open an office in Toronto, Canada, and will hire 50 engineers.
Today in Crypto Adoption…
- Salvatore Ferragamo, an Italian luxury fashion brand, is launching an NFT collection.
The $$$ Corner…
- Flowdesk, a French crypto firm, raised $30 million in a Series A funding round.
- Cryptoys, an NFT gaming platform, received $23 million in funding led by a16z.
What Do You Meme?
What’s Poppin’?
Goldman Sachs to Buy Celsius?
By Juan Aranovich
Goldman Sachs, one of the leading financial institutions in the world, is raising $2 billion to buy distressed assets from Celsius, according to CoinDesk. Celsius, one of the biggest crypto lenders in the US, has recently been dealing with liquidity issues, or perhaps even insolvency.
Two weeks ago, and in the middle of the crypto market plummeting, Celsius halted withdrawals from its platform due to what it called “extreme market conditions” and caused major panic among its users.
Goldman Sachs seems to be looking to raise money from investors with the intention of buying Celsius assets at a discount. Just a few weeks ago, Goldman Sachs released a report which concluded that cryptocurrencies “were not a viable investment.”
Arthur Hayes, former CEO and cofounder of BitMex, was a little skeptical about the news. “Please don’t believe Goldman Sachs is putting their own money at risk unless they explicitly say so (…) Any and all “bailouts” should be viewed PR stunts, until actual money is deployed, and actual depositors can withdraw some or all of their funds from insolvent CENTRALISED crypto lenders,” he said on Twitter.
Celsius has already started preparing for bankruptcy, even though they haven’t confirmed it officially. On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Celsius had hired restructuring advisers from the firm Alvarez & Marsal, in order to help them prepare the potential bankruptcy filing. This move comes days after Celius engaged lawyers from Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP with the same intention.
Alex Mashinsky, founder and CEO of Celsius, has said little since this situation started except that “the team is working non-stop”.
In related news, Morgan Creek Digital, a crypto investment firm, is looking to raise $250 million to buy a stake in BlockFi, another crypto lender that has been going through a similar situation to Celsius. It seems that Morgan Creek’s was forced to make this move because of the credit line that BlockFi secured with FTX. According to the terms of that deal, FTX could buy BlockFi for very little money, which would in turn wipe out BlockFi’s equity shareholders.
Recommended Reads
1) Haym Salomon on Maximum Extractable Value:
2) Michael Blau on detecting metamorphic smart contracts:
3) Brain Frye on Yuga Labs vs. Ryder Ripps:
On The Pod…
Derek Hsue, cofounder at Reverie, discusses the recent controversial decisions by Solend DAO and Bancor, the importance of establishing processes for black swan events, and whether decentralized governance truly exists. Show highlights:
- what situation prompted Solend to feel it was in jeopardy
- what Solend DAO’s response was to that situation
- why Derek views it as “the nuclear option”
- why the proposal sparked an outcry from the crypto community
- whether this issue could have been prevented or managed differently if the protocol was built on a blockchain other than Solana
- why, a day later, the DAO reversed its first decision to take over the whale’s account
- whether Derek thinks the DAO made the right decision to not take over the whale’s account
- what is Impermanent Loss Protection, a feature offered by Bancor
- why Bancor decided to pause Impermanent Loss Protection
- whether Celsius and 3AC had anything to do with Bancor’s problem
- how Bancor’s decision was made unilaterally
- how DAOs should deal with black swan events
Book Update
My book, The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze, which is all about Ethereum and the 2017 ICO mania, is now available!
You can purchase it here: http://bit.ly/cryptopians
