Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said his exchange is liquidating its FTT holdings. Through a $2.1 billion combination of FTT and BUSD, FTX acquired Binance’s ownership stake in the business. FTT’s funding rate or the cost of holding bullish long positions has dropped sharply to an annualized -36%, per data provided by Matrixport Technologies. Volume in the FTT spot market has increased from $58 million to $3 billion, according to CoinGlass. Due to the state of the market and the low liquidity, the liquidation is anticipated to take months. Binance accounts for 6.3% of FTT’s trading volume, or $95.4 million, according to CoinGecko. Binance was one of the earliest investors in the company. Although Binance did not announce the amount of its first investment in FTX, it is estimated to have been in the $100 million range.
Euro-backed stablecoin Euro Coin is set to be launched by crypto payments company Circle in the first half of 2023. Marcus Boorstin, director of engineering (Circle) at a conference in Lisbon, Portugal, stated “there’s already a lot of enthusiasm from the ecosystem” for the launch. Boorstin also revealed that Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol will launch on 2023. The protocol will at first only handle native transfers of Circle’s USDC stablecoin, but it will later add support for Euro Coin. In addition, he stated that support for Solana would come in the first half of 2023 when the Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol is expected to launch on Ethereum and Avalanche.
The two companies with the largest staff reductions were Dapper Labs (22% of employees) and Stripe (14%). According to Bloomberg, Galaxy Digital is considering worker reductions of 10% to 15%. As it shifted its business away from spot trading, custody, and brokerage services, Bitmex made an undisclosed number of personnel reductions. One company concerned that things might get worse is Coinbase, which recently reorganized its product team and made staff reductions early this year. In its third-quarter shareholder letter, the business stated, “For 2023, we’re preparing with a cautious stance and assuming that the current macroeconomic challenges will stay and probably deepen.” Alexander Höptner, the CEO of Bitmex, left the exchange after less than two years. The employee levels at Stripe will return to those of February, which were close to 7,000.
That’s it for today, see you tomorrow
