This week’s Friday summary in news
It’s Friday, which means it’s time to reflect on another glorious week in crypto.
This week has had it all. There were hacks, regulatory smackdowns and prank phone calls, and Michael Saylor continues to move forward despite the Bitcoin price knocking him to the canvas more times than we can count.
Forget Saylor, my head is spinning just thinking about it. Let’s do this.
MicroStrategy buys the dip. Again
In a Ctrl+C Ctrl+V news event, MicroStrategy bought Bitcoin this week.
Whatever else you may say about co-founder and executive chairman Michael Saylor, you can never doubt his determination or conviction.
MicroStrategy now has 130,000 Bitcoin (BTC) purchased at an average price of $30,639 per coin. Ouch. The price collapse of BTC in 2022 may have left Saylor bloodied and bruised, but this pugnacious warrior isn’t about to give up on his BTC fever dreams just yet.
Perhaps it’s fitting that MicroStrategy’s headquarters are (honestly) located in Tysons Corner. As Saylor himself once said, “It’s not about how hard you hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.”
No wait, that was Rocky. Same energy though.
Stablecoins a threat to stability
Michael Barr, deputy chairman for oversight of the board of the Federal Reserve System, said that stablecoins could pose a threat to financial stability. On Wednesday, we reported that US Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen is proposing to advance legislation that would make new stablecoins illegal.
Cynically minded crypto bosses may argue that the bigger risk to financial stability is troubled inflationary fiat currencies like the rupee, euro and yen, but Janet Yellen isn’t listening. So there.
Crypto legal updates
Who is being sued this week? Ian Balina.
Which stablecoin issuer lost a major court ruling? Tether.
Who claims to have authority over the entire Ethereum network? SEC.
Who is rumored to be approaching a settlement with the SEC? Ripple.
Binance is centralized. Fear?
ONE Be[In]Crypto analysis has revealed that 94% of BUSD is held by just four addresses. While such centralization issues can slow down other projects – this is Binance. It’s not clear that Binance customers care that much about hypercentralization or any of the other hot button issues that animate the rest of the crypto industry. They just want things that on the surface of things seem to work and are good for them.
In other Binance news that will depress cryptolibertarians, the exchange maintained its top position in the market with a massive 55.1% share of the total exchange volume while the rest of the industry has to split the minority share between them.
Finally, in a strange moment of serendipity, WazirX, the Indian exchange that Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao categorically denied owning, announced that it would now convert all stablecoins to BUSD, just like Binance.
The big hack
Wintermute was hit with a $160 million exploit earlier this week in a case that has since had its fair share of twists and turns. At least now we can put a price tag on vanity.
FTX says “it wasn’t me”
In perhaps the strangest story of the week, Sam Bankman-Fried told the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) that it went punk. According to the SBF, “a fraudster has impersonated FTX in the UK by telephone.”
This came in response to the FCA saying that FTX does not have the proper authorization to operate in the country. Great throwback Sam. It will be interesting to see if the FCA changes their mind on the matter now that he has told them they don’t even know who the hell they are talking to.
Oh, one more thing before you go. Has anyone seen Do Kwon lately?
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